| Teaching based on situated learning theory and cognitive apprenticeship, a related concept employs techniques that enable learners to experience the concept within the circumstance in which it would most likely be useful and is presumed to facilitate transfer of knowledge from the instructional situation to its application to environments outside the classroom. Too often, distance education can remove the learner from the purpose of the knowledge being taught, in the absence of the physical environment and the real-life environments (much like learning in any physical classroom). Teaching that is based on the principles of situated learning, not only in distance education but in all learning formats, has the potential to provide usable knowledge that can be transferred to real world contexts.;The purpose of this experimental study is to investigate the efficacy of a situated learning environment for facilitating transfer during tasks requiring the evaluation of information. Eighty-five university students enrolled in a distance education library research course were randomly assigned to a situated learning condition or a control/traditional instruction group. Participants completed the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire in order to control for intrinsic motivation, test anxiety, and self-regulation. Students assigned to the situated learning condition demonstrated transfer more often, and a logistic regression analysis revealed that the grouping variable was a significant predictor of transfer. These results reveal that teaching models based on the principles of situated learning have potential to facilitate transfer. The implications of this study may inform curricular decisions, by providing evidence-based instructional design for instructors wishing to use the cognitive apprenticeship/situated cognition tool kit in order to teach for transfer, thus improving distance education courses in general and library instruction specifically. |
