Handling Complexity in Learning Environments

Currently a professor of Educational Psychology and Technology in the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California, where he directs a doctoral program in Human Performance at Work. He was the 2002 recipient of the prestigious Thomas F. Gilbert Professional Achievement Award by the International Society for Performance Improvement. He has served as a performance improvement specialist in a great variety of organizations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia in the past two decades. For two years he served as Program Board Member and lecturer in Organizational Psychology at Dublin City University in Ireland, and he is Professeur Associe at the Universite de Montreal, Faculte des sciences de l education in Montreal, Quebec. He is president of Atlantic Training Inc., a consulting company with offices in Los Angeles and Dublin. Clarks interest is in the performance of people and technology in culturally diverse, multinational organizations where complex knowledge work is accomplished in a constantly changing environment. He is the author of more than 150 published books, chapters, articles, and monographs, including, most recently, Learning from Media: Arguments, Analysis, and Evidence (Information Age Publishing Inc., 2001), which sold out its first print run in advance of the books release. He is an Educational Psychologist who is an elected Fellow in the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society and the American Association of Applied Psychology.

• Contributors. Preface. Introduction. Setting the Scene: Complexity and Learning Environments (J. Elen and R. E. Clark). How the Human Cognitive System Deals With Complexity (J. Sweller). Motivational Challenges Experienced in Highly Complex Learning Environments (R. E. Clark, K. Howard, and S. Early). Mental Models and Complex Problem Solving: Instructional Effects (N. M. Seel). The Social Complexity in Establishing and Sharing Information Resources (U. Cress and F. W. Hesse). The Culture of the Mathematics Classroom: A Complex Determinant of Students Learning (F. Depaepe, E. De Corte, and L. Verschaffel). Scaffolds for Computer Simulation Based Scientific Discovery Learning (T. de Jong). Coping With Complexity in Multimedia Learning (R. E. Mayer). Collaboration Load (P. Dillenbourg and M. Betrancourt). Balancing Support for Student Learning (J. D. Vermunt). The Use of Instructional Interventions: Lean Learning Environments as a Solution for a Design Problem (J. Elen and G. Clarebout). Performance Assessment and Learning Task Selection in Environments for Complex Learning (J. J. G. van Merrienboer, D. Sluijsmans, G. Corbalan et al.). Meeting Challenges to Researching Learning From Instruction by Increasing the Complexity of Research (P. H. Winne). System Theoretic Designs for Researching Complex Events (W. Winn). The Systemic vs. Analytic Study of Complex Learning Environments (G. Salomon). Hypothesized Performance on Complex Tasks as a Function of Scaled Instructional Strategies (M. D. Merrill). Conclusion - When Less Is More: Research and Theory Insights About Instruction for Complex Learning (R. E. Clark and J. Elen). Author Index. Subject Index.