This week's readings were a bit challenging in that I was getting easily confused between operant and classical, when it came down to the letters. I am okay with explaining it when it comes to the behavior but then when I have to put it into the contact of letter symbols I found that I was sEcond guessing myself and wondering if I really knew at the information or not. I guess it just takes practice. I am thinking about my learning environment and since I am not a teacher, and have no desire to be such either, I think I will have to make something up instead of having the ability to use an example from my own experience. Or I could choose to use something from my steamfitting days. That work was all practical application but you had to know it, and know it properly. One mistake could cost someone their life. And I went through an apprenticeship with my union so maybe I will use something surrounding that form of education. I would like to use something related to disaster education but I don't think I'm confident enough in my knowledge abilities in that area to make any scenarios up. We'll see. I'm not going to see out about it, which I felt like the whole class was doing in class Monday night. I was getting more confused with each question! I understand the assignment but with others throwing out so many questions I was again, second guessing myself and wondering why I didn't have those questions as well. I think perhaps the questions were causing me to think I hast put enough thought into the project, but alas, I should have trusted my gut because I was correct, everyone else was just confused! I hope no one is reading this but you!!
So let's see...what surprised me this week? I guess it was my inability to fully grasp the differences between operant and classical as mentioned above. I really liked the in-class activity though, that helped a great deal. It also showed me what I didn't know though too so that was a bonus. Admittedly I struggles with the whole negative reinforcement vs punishment issue. Still not sure if I have it down yet but I will keep working on it.
This seems to be a common theme in the journals. So I am just gonna paste in the comment I wrote for someone else!
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There is a comparison of classical and operant conditioning in Figure 4.2 of the text (page 54). The key points are that, in classical conditioning is that you pair a neutral stimulus to a unconditioned stimulus, where an unconditioned stimulus is one that will get the ‘learner’ to give an involuntary response. If we go back to pavlov’s dogs, Salivation is the response to food. It is a response the dogs don’t control, it just happens. The pairing the bell with food essentially teaches the dogs to start salivating at the sound of the bell. In classical conditioning the stimulus comes before the response.
In operant conditioning, the response is the desired behavior that the learner voluntarily performs. The stimulus initially is defined in the text as stimulus reinforcement that comes after the response. There can be a stimulus that comes before the response. In operant conditioning this is a descriptive stimulus (see cueing). But in the end, the key in operant conditioning is the presence of a reinforcer. It is the reinforcer, not any preceding stimulus, that increased the likelihood of the response happening again.
Hopefully this is helpful.