Imperfect Cognitions

Today we continue our mini series exploring issues regarding technological enhancement in learning and education, featuring papers from the  “ Cheating Education ”  special issue of Educational Theory. T his week, Sophie Stammers discusses her  paper “Improving knowledge acquisition and dissemination through technological interventions on cognitive biases”. When we think about the role that technology could play in enhancing cognition, much of the literature focuses on extending faculties that are already performing well, so that they perform even better. We also know that humans possess a range of cognitive biases which produce systematically distorted cognitions. Could we use technology to erase our cognitive biases? Should we? In this paper I wanted to think about the specific threats that cognitive biases pose to learning and education, and focused on two commonly recognised types of cognitive bias in particular: 

This is the first in a mini series of posts exploring issues regarding technological enhancement in learning and education, featuring two papers that have appeared in the “ Cheating Education ” special issue of Educational Theory.  This post is provided by Kathy Puddifoot , Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Durham and Cian O’Donnell , Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Bristol. They introduce their paper " Human Memory and the Limits of Technology in Education ". Have you ever had the intuition that there are risks associated with students or teachers supplanting traditional methods of learning with the use of technologies that store and provide easy access to information, such as cloud storage, note-taking applications, open access sources like Wikipedia, or social media resources? It can be difficult to articulate exactly what is problematic about the use of such technologies. They provide a way of storing accurate represent...