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.

What We Teachers Worry About

Those of you who read Faculty Focus probably saw the following list in a recent posting. It categorizes the concerns expressed by new teachers, listed from most to least important. 

• Exhibiting command of the material (being able to answer student questions, give relevant examples)
• Balancing "teacherly" authority and student rapport
• Dealing with communication anxiety (public speaking)
• Engaging rather than boring students
• Managing students’ perceptions of teacher
• Juggling roles (teaching, research, service, life)
• Resolving grade complexities
• Being memorable
• Negotiating flexibility in policies, assignments
• Overcoming cultural differences between teacher and students

I was struck, when I read through this “top 10” list how little I worried about some of the issues but how much some of the others, after all my many years of teaching, still cause the occasional sleepless night.  I don’t spend much time anymore thinking about authority vs. rapport, for instance; my comfort level there developed over the years, as did my comfort level with student perceptions of me, whatever they may be.  Similarly, being appropriately--but not too--flexible in my demands and being able to resolve student grade protests do not cause me much concern any more; one learns from experience, I guess.  

On the other hand, despite my experience I still find myself struggling with how to get my tired, busy, adult students focused and engaged, and with each new  semester I still experience nagging doubts that I have prepared enough to show that I’m up to date and in command of new scholarship.

One item I would add to the list, that I never used to worry about, is just what my role in any given class period should be.  Am I  still, too often, being that sage on the stage even if I am standing off to the side and talking about material on students' computer screens?  Did I prepare enough material to keep the learning going?  Too much?  The wrong sort?

I’d be interested in hearing--wherever you might be in your teaching career trajectory--what worries you the most as you strive to be successful in your chosen profession. Or what you don't worry about at all.

Following Up Our Faculty Conference Discussion

In this first blog of the 2015-16 academic year, I was hoping that we could carry on the discussion started at our opening Faculty Convocation.  (At least in the blogosphere, unlike in the Wellness Center, we can all hear each other…)

At the Friday morning session of the conference, we talked about learner-centered teaching and  the fact that research suggests that active, engaged, motivated, mindful students are more apt to learn and retain information than are students who put in the same amount of learning time but do so in a more passive, listening role.

Maryellen Weimer, in Learner-centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice, describes  learner-centered teaching as teaching that     

1. engages students in the hard, messy work of learning;
2. motivates and empowers students by giving them some control over learning processes;
3. encourages collaboration, acknowledging the classroom as a community where everyone shares the learning agenda;
4. promotes students’ reflection about what they are learning and how they are learning it;
5. includes explicit learning skills instruction.

Would you argue a different point of view?  Great--let's hear it. Do you have any observations or questions to follow up your small group discussions at the conference?  Please share. Do you have a successful teaching/learning experience that you have tried out already or have planned for later in the semester that is aimed at enhancing student motivation, collaboration, reflection, metacognition?  Do you have suggestions for brown bag discussion topics that could provide some practical how-to teaching tips?

The floor is yours. Let's actively continue the "active learning" conversation!

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.