7 Ways of Learning

If you haven’t read Facilitating Seven Ways of Learning:  A Resource for More Purposeful, Effective, and Enjoyable College Teaching by Davis and Arend, I highly recommend it. (We've ordered it for the library but I would be happy to lend my copy to anyone who wants to take a look at it right away.)

Their thesis is that we learn in different ways depending on which of seven desired outcomes we are targeting: building skills; acquiring knowledge; developing critical, creative and dialogic thinking; cultivating problem-solving and decision-making abilities; exploring attitudes, feelings and perspectives; practicing professional judgment; or reflecting on experience). Each way of learning, they believe, requires different ways of teaching. Teachers who don't use a variety of teaching methods, therefore, are teaching too narrowly. 

If we simply want our students to acquire knowledge of a topic, for instance, we can teach via lecture and readings.  If we want them to learn specific skills, on the other hand, we can’t lecture that skill- building knowledge into existence; we need to provide practice exercises and set tasks for students to work through. If our desired outcome instead is for students to become good problem solvers, we can’t just provide canned practice exercises—we need to help them work through real-life problems, case studies, labs, projects.

It was eye-opening to consider the differences in learning outcomes, the related theories of learning associated with each, and the common teaching methodologies (See table with summary below) that lead to the desired outcomes.  Here, though, is the passage that made me stop and think hardest:

Almost anything that once required class time can be done outside class electronically, technologies can often perform educational tasks more efficiently than humans, and information is readily available for free to anyone with Internet access.  So the fundamental question arises:  What is class time for?

How would you answer that question?


Summary of Seven Ways of Learning

Intended Learning Outcomes (What Students Learn)	Way of Learning (Origins and Theory)	Common Methods (What the Teacher Provides)
Skill building (Physical and procedural skills where accuracy, precision, & efficiency are important)	1.       Behavioral learning (behavioral psychology, operant conditioning)	·         Tasks and procedures ·         Practice exercises
Acquiring Knowledge (basic information, concepts, and terminology of a discipline or field of study)	2.       Cognitive learning (cognitive psychology, attention, information processing  memory)	·         Presentations ·         Explanations
Developing critical, creative, & dialogical thinking (Improved thinking & reasoning processes)	3.       Learning through inquiry (Logic, critical and creative thinking theory, classical philosophy)	·         Question-driven inquiries ·         Discussions
Cultivating problem-solving and decision-making abilities (Mental strategies for finding solutions & making choices)	4.       Learning with mental models (Gestalt psychology, problem solving, & decision theory)	·         Problems ·         Case studies ·         Labs ·         Projects
Exploring attitudes, feelings, & perspectives (Awareness of attitudes, biases, & other perspectives; ability to collaborate)	5.       Learning through groups and teams (Human communication theory, group counseling theory)	·         Group activities ·         Team projects
Practicing professional judgment (Sound judgment  & appropriate professional action  in complex, context-dependent situations)	6.       Learning through virtual realities (Psychodrama, sociodrama, gaming theory)	·         Role playing ·         Simulations ·         Dramatic scenarios ·         Games
Reflecting on experience (Self-discovery & personal growth from real-world experience)	7.       Experiential learning (Experiential learning, cognitive neuroscience, constructivism)	·         Internships ·         Service-learning ·         Study abroad

from:

Davis, James R., & Arend, Bridget D. (2013). Facilitating seven ways of learning:  A resource for more purposeful, effective, and enjoyable college teaching.  Stylus: Sterling, VA.

How We Learn

Although learning has emotional, motivational, and developmental aspects, any of which might be more important than the cognitive aspect, I wanted to take a minute to focus on cognition this week. 

Arthur C. Graesser, editor of the Journal of Educational Psychology, has cataloged 25 cognitive principles of learning (see below). One that stood out for me as I read through the list was #21, the Goldilocks Principle: Assignments should not be too hard or two easy, but at the right level of difficulty for the student’s level of skill or prior knowledge.

On the one hand, the principle is clear and obvious, the “meet the student where the student is at” idea. On the other, it can be really difficult to achieve sometimes. I’m currently teaching a technical applications course in which students are creating brochures, newsletters, websites, and the like.  The problem I face is that it’s a gen. ed. requirement, and students come to the required course with a wide range of skill and experience with technology and with a wider range of interest/disinterest. I struggle to make the learning “not too hard, not too soft, but just right,” when every student brings a different technical background. 

Did any of the principles below resonate with you, whether because you struggle with it or disagree with it or because you agree and have developed a good way to address it?

  

 25 Cognitive Principles of Learning

1. Contiguity Effects. Ideas that need to be associated should be presented contiguously in space and time.
2. Perceptual-Motor Grounding. Concepts benefit from being grounded in perceptual motor experiences, particularly at early stages of learning.
3. Dual Code and Multimedia Effects. Materials presented in verbal, visual and multimedia form richer representations than a single medium.
4. Testing Effect. Testing enhances learning, particularly when the tests are aligned with important content.
5. Spacing Effect. Spaced schedules of studying and testing produce better long-term retention than a single study session or test.
6. Exam Expectations.  Students benefit more from repeated testing when they expect a final exam
7. Generation Effect. Learning is enhanced when learners produce answers compared to having them recognize answers.
8. Organization Effects. Outlining, integrating, and synthesizing information produces better learning than rereading materials or other more passive strategies.
9. Coherence Effect. Materials and multimedia should explicitly link related ideas and minimize distracting irrelevant material.
10. Stories and Example Cases. Stories and example cases tend to be remembered better than didactic facts and abstract principles.
11. Multiple Examples. An understanding of an abstract concept improves with multiple and varied examples.
12. Feedback Effects. Students benefit from feedback on their performance but the timing of the feedback depends on the task.
13. Negative Suggestion Effects. Learning wrong information can be reduced when feedback is immediate.
14. Desirable Difficulties. Challenges make learning and retrieval effortful and thereby have positive effects on long-term retention.
15. Manageable Cognitive Load. The information presented to the learner should not overload working memory.
16. Segmentation Principle. A complex lesson should be broken down into manageable subparts.
17. Explanation Effects. Students benefit more from constructing deep coherent explanations (mental models) of the material than memorizing shallow isolated facts.
18. Deep questions. Students benefit more from asking and answering deep questions that elicit explanations (e.g., why, why not, how, what if) than shallow questions (e.g., who, what, when, where)
19. Cognitive Disequilibrium.  Deep reasoning and learning is stimulated by problems that create cognitive disequilibrium, such as obstacles to goals, contradictions, conflict, and anomalies.
20. Cognitive Flexibility. Cognitive flexibility improves with multiple viewpoints that link facts, skills, procedures, and deep conceptual principles.
21. Goldilocks Principle. Assignments should not be too hard or two easy, but at the right level of difficulty for the student’s level of skill or prior knowledge.
22. Imperfect Metacognition. Students rarely have an accurate knowledge of their cognition, so their ability to calibrate their comprehension, learning, and memory should not be trusted.
23. Discovery Learning. Most students have trouble discovering important principles on their own without careful guidance, scaffolding, or materials with well-crafted affordances.
24. Self-Regulated Learning. Most students need training on how to self-regulate their learning and other cognitive processes.
25. Anchored Learning. Learning is deeper and students are more motivated when the materials and skills are anchored in real-world problems that matter to the learner.

Arthur C. Graesser,  in “Inaugural Editorial for Journal of Educational Psychology, 2009, Vol. 101 (2), 259-261 Adapted from 25 Principles of Learning, by A.C. Graesser, D.F. Halpern, and M. Hakel, 2008, Taskforce on Lifelong Learning at Work and at Home.

What We Assign

While working on a new syllabus for one of my spring classes, I took a break to read a Faculty Focus blog posting entitled “Could We Be Doing Better with our Assignments?”  (Yes, if I were talking to a student I would identify this as procrastination…) One paragraph there made me stop and think.

Weimer writes:

 Most faculty, regardless of discipline, use a similar mix of assignments. We have our students write papers. In recent years, we have seen some movement away from the traditional, research-based, term paper. Today’s papers are shorter and more frequent, but they are still papers. We give multiple-choice or short-answer exams, which students take individually, usually within a designated time period and without access to resources or expertise. We use quizzes, assign homework problems, and maybe some sort of group project in an upper division or capstone course, but that’s about it. And we recycle assignments, using pretty much the same ones every time we teach the course and in every course we teach.

I realized that while I spend time rethinking topics for assignments, or dates for assignments, or weights for assignments, or directions for assignments, or rubrics for assignments, I really don't spend much quality time rethinking the mix and type of assignments per se. 

Help?  What kind of assignment–other than the traditional papers, homework questions, quizzes, individual timed exams, and group projects—do you assign in your courses?  What made you think of it?  How does it work?  I would love to learn some new tricks to spice up my old assignment categories.  Please share your ideas in this last Teaching Matters blog before the holiday break.

Authentic Learning

According to Authentic Learning for the 21st Century: An Overview, an interesting white paper published by EDUCAUSE, we need to immerse our students in authentic learning activities because it is through this sort of learning that they will develop

• The judgment to distinguish reliable from unreliable information
• The patience to follow longer arguments
• The synthetic ability to recognize relevant patterns in unfamiliar contexts
• The flexibility to work across disciplinary and cultural boundaries to generate innovative solutions (p.2) 

If I am a writing teacher, then, my focus should not be what I want to teach my students about writing but how I can teach them to be writers.
 

While the article focuses on technology-based examples, it includes an interesting 10-point checklist that teachers can use to judge the authenticity of any learning component.

1. Real-world relevance: Authentic activities match the real-world tasks of professionals in practice as nearly as possible. Learning rises to the level of authenticity when it asks students to work actively with abstract concepts, facts, and formulae inside a realistic—and highly social—context mimicking “the ordinary practices of the [disciplinary] culture.”
2. Ill-defined problem: Challenges cannot be solved easily by the application of an existing algorithm; instead, authentic activities are relatively undefined and open to multiple interpretations, requiring students to identify for themselves the tasks and subtasks needed to complete the major task.
3. Sustained investigation: Problems cannot be solved in a matter of minutes or even hours. Instead, authentic activities comprise complex tasks to be investigated by students over a sustained period of time, requiring significant investment of time and intellectual resources.
4. Multiple sources and perspectives: Learners are not given a list of resources. Authentic activities provide the opportunity for students to examine the task from a variety of theoretical and practical perspectives, using a variety of resources, and requires students to distinguish relevant from irrelevant information in the process.
5. Collaboration: Success is not achievable by an individual learner working alone. Authentic activities make collaboration integral to the task, both within the course and in the real world.
6. Reflection (metacognition): Authentic activities enable learners to make choices and reflect on their learning, both individually and as a team or community.
7. Interdisciplinary perspective: Relevance is not confined to a single domain or subject matter specialization. Instead, authentic activities have consequences that extend beyond a particular discipline, encouraging students to adopt diverse roles and think in interdisciplinary terms.
8. Integrated assessment: Assessment is not merely summative in authentic activities but is woven seamlessly into the major task in a manner that reflects real-world evaluation processes.
9. Polished products: Conclusions are not merely exercises or substeps in preparation for something else. Authentic activities culminate in the creation of a whole product, valuable in its own right.
10. Multiple interpretations and outcomes: Rather than yielding a single correct answer obtained by the application of rules and procedures, authentic activities allow for diverse interpretations and competing solutions.  (pp. 3 – 4)

Do any of those 10 checkpoints stand out to you with respect to an assignment that has worked well in your class? Please share a brief description of that activity—what you do and how it works?  Let’s start an authentic Lincoln learning list!