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Focusing on Specific Goals and Sufficient Practice 

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Focusing on Specific Goals and Sufficient Practice 

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The problems in the two stories discussed in How Learning Works is that the professors do not spent their time well in class. One spent too much time giving comments (Professor Cox), and the other professor put an excessive amount of time on aspects of the presentation that didn’t matter to her  (Professor Strait). Furthermore, Professor Cox  did not design the class so that the skills could be built upon each other. So, even when the professor gave feedback, there was no opportunity for the students to build and improve. Hence, the professor saw a lack of improvement no matter how much feedback was given. Hence, effective practice and feedback are necessary to student learning. These stories connected with the material in Doyle.

For example, Doyle discusses how important it is  for an instructor  to identify the information from the course they want their students to remember a year from now and focus on that as the course outcome.  It is that information that an instructor will want to effective practice and keep elaborating on (not details that don’t matter). Through this repeated practice, neutral connections regarding the content matter will be reinforced. How Learning Works essentially also makes the same connection by indicating how learning happens best when students engage in practice that  “focuses on a specific goal or criterion for performance” and “is of sufficient quantity and frequency to meet the performance criteria” (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010, p. 127). Hence, given the time restraints, it is important that teachers focus on the essential material that must be learned.

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How people pay attention to information is one of the most important factors to how much a person will recall. Encoding is the first step to creating a memory, and the encoding process begins with perception. The way we perceive information affects the way our neural connections are made.

Neural connections grow stronger when brain cells send signals to each other and create a network. Hence, the more signals that are shared, the stronger the network will become.

It was fascinating to me how the structure of our brains are constantly changing as a result of our everyday experiences. In fact, "how you use your brain helps determine how your brain is organized" (Doyle, 2011, p. 138). This is called brain plasticity.

It is through practice that new neutral connections are reinforced.

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Plasticity of the brain - VCE U4 Psychology

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This file covers Developmental Plasticity including Synaptogenesis, Pruning, Migration and Myelination & Adaptive Plasticity including Rerouting & Sprouting. T...

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In order to help our student not forget information, it is first important to understand why our students forget. There are four main reasons why people forget: 1) retrieval failure, 2) interference, 3) failure to store, and 4) motivated forgetting.

1)  Retrieval failure is when a memory begins to dissipate and disappear, also known as decay theory

2)  Interference is why similar memories essentially interfere with one another. This usually happens when students are taking similar courses at the same time. Proactive interference is when an old memory makes is difficult to remember a new memory. Retroactive interference is when new information makes it difficult to remember an old memory.

3)  Failure to store is when a memory never makes it into the long-term memory. This usually happens when a student fails to pay attention.

4) Motivated forgetting was the most compelling to me, especially when it comes to transience. Transience, which can occur both short-term and long-term, is when a memory is lost over time. What was most fascinating to me was how “sixty-five percent of a lecture is lost in the first hour” (Doyle, 2011, p. 141). Furthermore, when students take breaks after learning, they give their brain a chance to consolidate memories. Hence, rest is essentially to memory formation. Brain scans show how students who took rests helped their brain’s connection activity.

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Teachers should create a safe and engaging learning environment

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Teachers should create a safe and engaging learning environment

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When students are in a stressful environment or experience long-term stress, their learning is hindered due to the impairment of cell communication that results from the stress. Hence, as teachers, we must create safe, supportive, and engaging environments.

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How Learning Works talks more about the feedback aspect than Doyle. However, both focus greatly on the importance of practice and repetition. It is important to note how important formative and summative feedback is along with practice, as “goal - directed practice alone is insufficient to foster students ’  learning. Goal - directed practice must be coordinated with targeted feedback in order to promote the greatest learning gains” (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010, p. 137). Even feedback must be given with care. For example, if too much feedback is given, it can end up overwhelming the student, instead of helping. Feedback is good when it effectively guides students and can be incorporated into a students’ further practicing. Furthermore, it is important that an instructor determine the appropriate timing of such feedback. Providing feedback at a group-level is also quite effective (i.e. identifying the most common errors and misconceptions). Real-time group feedback is also effective (i.e. Clickers, or TopHat, as Pacansky-Brock suggested). Furthermore, peer feedback is another great way to increase the frequency of constructive feedback, given there are clear guidelines(Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010. p. 121- 152).

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“sixty-five percent of a lecture is lost in the first hour” (Doyle, 2011, p. 141). 

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“sixty-five percent of a lecture is lost in the first hour” (Doyle, 2011, p. 141). 

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This is making me even more aware the of the importance of learner-centered teaching where students are engaged in "doing the work" instead of "passively listening." I've noticed such a huge difference in engagement and active learning ever since I have implemented flipped teaching. Students' brain are activated to learn! They are awake, alert, and always collaborating. "When we are active, the human brain releases chemicals that increase cognitive function" (Pacansky-Brock, 2017, p. 12). Furthermore, students are engaged in multisensory learning, instead of unisensory learning.

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“People who take a nap after learning a new task remember it better than those who don’t” (Doyle, 2011, p. 139).

“Brain regions shift dramatically during sleep: ‘when you’re asleep, it seems as though you are shifting memory to more efficient storage regions within the brain’” (Doyle, 2011, p. 139).

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Teaching for Long-term Recall: What Do You Want Your Students to Remember a Year From Now

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Teaching for Long-term Recall: What Do You Want Your Students to Remember a Year From Now

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A question that should define an instructors’ course learning outcome is what information from the course do you want your student to remember a year from now. It is that information that you want to keep elaborating on and repeating through the course, as the repetition and elaboration of that information is what will reinforce the neutral connections needed for that knowledge to go into the long-term memory. We need to teach for transfer! Ways in which we can teach for such transfer is by 1) teaching student to space their practice for better recall, instead of cramming  (which does not lead to long-term recall); 2) Implement Cumulative tests for exams. By doing so, we can repetitively cover the important elements that are the outcomes we want. Not only will cumulative assessment help with information recall and long-term memory. But, even more excitingly, it will help your students make connections between the material covered throughout the term – pattern recognition!; 3) Having student reflect in order to help them make connections between new and prior knowledge; and 4) Asking students to explain what they have learned in their own words. This not only helps connect prior knowledge with new knowledge since students are using their own language, but it also shows student how well they actually understand the material. Writing in their own language helps with pattern recognition.

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But spacing your learning requires advance planning. If you have the summer off, then now is the best time to plan for spaced practice in the Fall.
How should you space your learning?

Start planning early - the beginning of the semester, or even earlier. Set aside a bit of time every day, just for studying, even if your exams are months away. This may seem strange at first, if you are used to cramming right before an exam; but it's just a new habit that you will get used to if you persevere.

Review information from each class, but not immediately after class. A good way to do this is to reserve some time one day after each of your classes meet. For example, if you have classes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you might review the information on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday respectively for each of those classes.

Spacing your learning doesn't mean you won't be studying at all right before the exam. You can still study up until the exam - but instead of only studying then, spread it out so that you're studying days and weeks before the exam as well. You'll spend less time and learn more, in the short-term and in the long-term.

What should you do during these short learning sessions?
It's important that you don't just sit down and re-read your notes. Instead, you should use effective learning strategies such as retrieval practice or elaboration.

After you study information from the most recent class, make sure to go back and study important older information to keep it fresh.

This may seem difficult and you may forget some information from day to day, but this is actually a good thing! You need to forget a little bit in order to benefit from spaced practice - see this guest post for an explanation.

Create small spaces (e.g., a few days) between your study sessions, and do a little bit at a time, so that it adds up!
"But, but...cramming works!"
If you're reading this and you're skeptical because cramming has worked just fine for you in the past, here's why. Cramming can, indeed, do exactly what it suggests - cram information into your mind right before an exam. However, there are at least three really big problems with this.

1. First, cramming actually takes more time. Think about it: if you learn more in the same amount of time spaced out (e.g., 5 hours in 1-hour increments compared to one 5-hour cram session), then you have to spend more time during the cramming session to get to the same level of learning.

2. Second, as quickly as you learned that information, you will then also forget it. You may do fine on the test, but all that extra time you spent during cramming? It will all have been wasted. If you had spaced your learning, you would forget much less after the test. No matter what you are learning - science, math, a foreign language - future learning will depend on previous learning. It is therefore very inefficient to forget everything you learned for one test, only to have to re-learn it again later along with new, more complicated information! This also applies to future classes, where it might be helpful to retain knowledge from a previous class.

3. Another reason why cramming is a bad idea is that it inevitably replaces sleep, which is very important for learning and also for your mental and physical health more generally. So, resolve to form a healthy habit today and plan to space your learning!

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This is the third post in a series designed to help students learn how to study effectively. You can find the first post here and the second post here. The purpose is to provide students with a resource that can help them take charge of their own learning. Today's ...

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More tips for helping students recall information 

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More tips for helping students recall information 

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Furthermore, other tips include telling our students to focus their attention on one task at a time, not cram for exams and instead study regularly, relate new information to prior knowledge, teach new concepts to another person, pay extra attention to information in the middle of the class (more easily forgotten than information in the beginning and end), vary study routine, and structure and organize information. This last part about structuring information was quite interesting to me, as it turns out the brain organizes information in clusters. So, if students group similar concepts together, they’ll better remember.

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What do you think of AI as engagement tools such as the following tools from Brain Power (such as "google glass" and "learning eye"

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What do you think of AI as engagement tools such as the following tools from Brain Power (such as "google glass" and "learning eye"

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AI Tools in Classroom Help Teachers Keep Students Engaged

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Artificial intelligence & the future of education systems | Bernhard Schindlholzer

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Artificial intelligence & the future of education systems | Bernhard Schindlholzer | TEDxFHKufstein

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According to the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (2018), “learning in itself changes the physical structure of the brain, and the changing structure, in turn, organizes and reorganizes how the brain functions. Thus, different parts of the brain may be ready to learn at different times” (p. 15).

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interesting fact:  one “study found that the combination of caffeine and sugar enhanced attention, learning, and memory” (Doyle, 2011, p 142). 

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interesting fact:  one “study found that the combination of caffeine and sugar enhanced attention, learning, and memory” (Doyle, 2011, p 142). 

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Research is needed in the development of “designs for technology-based interventions linking in-school and out-of-school learning” (National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018, p. 231).

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Connecting New and Prior Knowledge (this was from the earlier chapters in How Learning Works)

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Connecting New and Prior Knowledge (this was from the earlier chapters in How Learning Works)

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When learners give meaning to new facts and connect them to previous facts they have attained, it makes the new knowledge more memorable. For example, the How Learning Works text discussed how when students make connections with what they are learning, they can better organize their information, and therefore, can apply and retrieve that knowledge more effectively. The more connections that are made, the better a student can learn for transfer and create a highly interconnected network of knowledge. Nodes of knowledge make the most connections when new knowledge is built upon prior knowledge. Therefore, the activation of prior knowledge will enhance student learning (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010).

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Ambrose, S.A., Bridges, M.W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M.C., & Norman, M.K. (2010). How

learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Doyle, T. (2011). Learner-centered teaching: Putting the research on learning into practice.

Sterling, VA:  Stylus Publishing.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2018). How people learn II:

learners, contexts, and cultures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.17226/24783.

Pacansky-Brock, M. (2017). Best practices for teaching with emerging technologies (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge

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Making the Learning Personal and Emotional to Improve Recall 

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Making the Learning Personal and Emotional to Improve Recall 

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“Emotional arousal appears to increase the likelihood of memory consolidation during the retention (storage) stage of memory… whereas memories for nonarousing events are more vulnerable to disruption” (Doyle, 2011, p. 146-147).

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"Are the skills our students acquire throughout the path of completing a four-year degree the right set of skills that will support their success in a digital society?" (Pacansky-Brock, 2017, p.6). 

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"Are the skills our students acquire throughout the path of completing a four-year degree the right set of skills that will support their success in a digital society?" (Pacansky-Brock, 2017, p.6). 

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This quote was particularly important to me, especially with the emergence of our post-Millennial generation on college campuses who have been raised within a digital and mobile society.

We should be concerned that current college learning is not preparing our students for a digital society. It is "irrelevant and ineffective at meeting the future goals of 21st-century students" (Pacansky-Brock, 2017, p. 11).

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Reusing Copyrighted Material for Teaching and Learning

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Reusing Copyrighted Material for Teaching and Learning

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I actually was not aware of such strict copyright laws and have grown concerned about accidentally breaking them in the future. No wonder people are afraid of sharing content that contains copyrighted works, even within fair use. From what it seems, it is actually difficult to even determine if material falls into fair use.  As someone diving into flipped teaching, this has made nervous (especially since it means at time I'll have to trust my own judgement). What if I get "slapped with a lawsuit for violating copyright laws" (Pacansky-Brock, 2017, p. 43).

Hence, my question is how to you use fair and safe judgement when choosing copyrighted material? Are you also afraid of a possible lawsuit? How has open licensure worked for you (i.e. Creative Commons (CC)) if you have used it?

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How do you effectively and frequently give feedback and creatively assess student generated work when you have a large classroom? Time is my main concern! I want to engage in such a way, but I just don't know how I'd find the time. Any clever ways you could share?

How do you provide productive practice  and effective feedback for your students?