The Future of Education

The primary objective of this research is to test the use of perceptual learning techniques for the teaching of concepts in design. The essential task of this experiment is to associate with a target stimulus, that is, previously selected by the researcher, to a determined number of similar stimuli. The experiment had 25 participants, 19 design students and 6 lay people used as a control group. The research is based on the execution of a rapid and visual learning test of 20 formal concepts used to teach manufacturing processes in industrial design courses. Study participants were exposed to a prior visual or target stimulus for 5 seconds. Subsequently, they chose 5 from 20 visual stimuli referring to formal typologies presented every 3 seconds each. Participants of all groups did seven complete cycles. This research model is a replica of the classic study developed by Eleanor Gibson, from scribbles and also handwritten letters "D & V." These experiments grounded the whole theory and experimental field of perceptual discrimination. Differentially, this experiment was carried out with the exposure of the stimuli in a video. Also, we added two different ways of collecting data to this research project: some participants experimented with digital forms, others on paper, with different variables selected for each group. As a result of data, we have a percentage increase of hits in all groups. Design students, in general, as predicted based on literature, achieved better results with a 30% increase in the percentage of visual pattern recognition in the paper experiment, and a 50% increase in the digital execution of the same experiment. The control group, in turn, achieved a percentage increase of 11% in paper execution, and a surprising 40% in the digital version, surpassing the assimilation rate of the design students who carried out the paper test. Unlike other experiments of this nature, where the stimuli were much more straightforward, no subject was able to finalize the test sessions with 100% accuracy. Still, in general, it was proved that the design students achieved better results than the laymen, due to prior knowledge and visual repertoire. However, the results achieved by the laymen in the digital executions of the experiment achieved promising learning results and higher than the students who performed the same paper experiment. This point of the research identified that the selected variable positively impacts the rapid assimilation of visual stimuli. Although the experiment has a small number of participants, it is possible to investigate in depth the results for the impact of the study of perceptive discrimination, and the development of derived educational technologies.

Perceptual Learning; Experiment; Design Pedagogy; Instructional Design; Educational Technology

[1] Eleanor J. Gibson. Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development (New York: Meredith Corporation, 1969)

[2] James J. Gibson; Eleanor J. Gibson. Perceptual Learning: Differentiation or Enrichment? Psychological Review, v.62, n.1, 1955, 32-41.