Dynamic Transfer at #IWAC16

I spent the end of the week in Ann Arbor at the International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference.

I presented the below on day one of the conference. Aside from some AV hiccups, the session went very well.

The research is from  my dissertation and it sums up the portion I'm currently writing up for an artilce I aim to submit to the WAC Journal.

The bit of knowledge I'm trying to introduce to the discourse is the concept of "dynamic transfer." It shows up about half way through the presentation where I shared a graph and table from the Martin and Schwartz chapter that describes dynamic transfer.

The graph is an adaptation of a learning model from artificial intelligence, and I think that's fun, but I also think the graph shows a number of learning trajectories that helped me understand learning to writing in new spaces.

Those learning trajectories are influenced by how complete a learner understands the key concepts related to a new task. What dynamic transfer offers is an acknowledgement that learners often enter a problem space with only partial knowledge of those key concepts. What happens when a learner has to innovate - create new knowledge - they coordinate that partial knowledge with resources in the new environment. The process takes time, and often results in a brief dip in performance.

I know that dip well. I've experienced it and I've seen it in my students.

I like that dynamic transfer adds some important detail to the mechanics of high road transfer - it goes into what happens when students "detect, elect, and connect" with prior knowledge.

I attended three panels (on the program D3, F1, H3, I1) that I felt this idea could inform. I was able to speak with Liane Robertson about this, and the discussion did a lot to deepen my understanding of transfer as a whole.

The conference was a great experience, and I look forward to unpacking all I learned.