Enhancing Knowledge Transfer

“How can design for learning with technology facilitate knowledge transfer from educational to non-educational contexts?” To answer this question, we start with a review of five theoretical approaches to transfer: behaviorist, cognitive, situated, participationist, and developmental practices approach. We stress that they are not mutually exclusive, but that they emphasize different types of knowledge. We distinguish between declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, and relational knowledge. Next, we identify four strategies for utilizing educational technologies to enhance transfer: coupling of educational and non-educational contexts, separate context of training, simulating a non-educational context, and introduction of educational context within non-educational setting. We illustrate each of them with paradigmatic learning designs and link them to the different strategies for technology use. Specifically, we discuss the learning designs of computer-based skills training (behaviorist approach), model-based learning (cognitive approach), epistemic games (situated cognition approach), mediational practices (participationist approach), and knowledge co-creation (developmental practices approach). We emphasize that all learning designs have greater chances of being effective if they are well integrated in wider learning contexts. This places limits on their scalability, both in terms of student numbers and in terms of situations of use.