Phase II - Part II - Tyler Orner

4. Operant learning definitely has its place in our school. Operant learning occurs when a behavior is either strengthened by a reinforcer or diminished by a punisher. This occurs in various instances throughout our school such as detention, the deduction of a final exam, and awards such as student of the month. A detention is a negative reinforce because it takes away the time of the student and is promoting, or reinforcing, the idea that the student should follow the rules. The deduction of the final exam is also a negative reinforcer, but is one that the student likes. The final is taken away; making it negative, but it promoting the behavior of working hard and doing ones work. Finally, the student of the month is a positive reinforcer since it gives the student an award and is promoting a positive attitude in the classroom.
8. I feel that grades do fall under this Chapter. For example, if one person sees that someone received a good grade, they are likely to try and reciprocate the actions of the person who got a good grade. This could be interpreted as observational learning. Also, just receiving a grade alone will be operant conditioning because a good grade is reinforcing the positive behavior of hard work and studying whereas a bad grade also reinforces the same desired behavior of hard work and studying.
9. I do agree with this positive bias that Skinner’s research had on operant learning. For mainly one reason, a lot of his methods are still in use today. One example is how teachers teach their classes. The successful and good teachers are the ones that individualize their class for the students that they have in them. Another example is in the workplace. Employers may give raises or rewards, whether monetary or not, to employees who are successful in reaching their goals, targets, or just doing a job-well-done.
C. The students in this class learn in all different types of ways. Some of the more common and reoccurring answers were that the students learned by listening to lectures (auditory), looking at pictures and diagrams (visual), and others learned best by reading and writing notes. This will be helpful into designing our project because it will allow us to structure our style towards fitting and incorporating everyone’s needs. One way to do this is to create a PowerPoint for our visual learners, lecture about it for the auditory learners, which then allows the remaining students to take additional notes.