Transcript What Do We Know About Undergraduate Learning

What Do We Know about
Undergraduate Learning?
Bertram C. Bruce
Library & Information Science
U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Writing assignment
• What learning experience do you
remember from your undergraduate
years?
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Learning is …
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developmental
personal, meaning-based
purposeful
social, situated, material, multimodal
difficult
reflective
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Learning is developmental
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dualism/received knowledge
multiplicity/subjective knowledge
relativism/procedural knowledge
commitment/constructed knowledge
--William Perry
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Learning is meaning-based
Interpretant
Neptune
(representation)
Sea
(object)
--C. S. Peirce
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Ex: Weddings
• "Did you know that Pam was going to wear her
grandmother's wedding dress? That gave her
something that was old, and borrowed, too. It was
made of lace over satin, with very large puff
sleeves and looked absolutely charming on her."
• One Indian reader: "She was looking all right
except the dress was too old and out of fashion".
--Steffenson, Joag-Dev, & Anderson, 1979
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Learning is purposeful:
Response to exhibit
Interpretive
strategy
Visitor sees
gallery as ...
Pragmatic
Utopian
classroom/workshop
encounter session
Critical
Diversionary
museum
amusement park
Visitor asks
what can ...
"I do with this?"
"this say about my
relationships?"
"be thought about this?"
"I feel about this?"
--Jean Umiker-Sebeok (1994), Behavior in a museum
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Learning is multimodal:
What shape is the earth?
1.
3.
2.
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Is the world round?
Child:
I can see it. The world is flat.
Adult:
No, the world is round.
Child:
It’s round? Oh, a pancake!
Adult:
No, no... a ball! Look at this photo
of earth from outer space.
Child:
Oh! Two earths! The round one in
space and the flat one we live on.
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Learning is difficult
• Piaget: disequilibrium
• Vygotsky: zone of proximal
development
• Dewey: felt difficulty
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Learning is reflective
We always live at the time we live and not at
some other time, and only by extracting at
each present time the full meaning of each
present experience are we prepared for
doing the same in the future. This is the only
preparation which in the long run amounts to
anything.
–John Dewey, Experience & Education
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Interpretation
Not occasionally only, but always, the meaning
of a text goes beyond its author. That is
why understanding is not merely a
reproductive, but always a productive
attitude as well.
--H. Gadamer. Truth & method
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Curriculum & instruction
We seek a curriculum design and instructional
methods that are universal, non-developmental,
decontextualized, impersonal, individual-based,
unreflective, unidimensional, and easy.
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Trends
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information doubling every six years
new forms of work
globalization
language changes
new technologies
concentrated control of media, information
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Performing -> web design
Few people are ever taught to create successful,
satisfying experiences for others. Mostly, those
folks are in the performing arts: dancers, comedians,
storytellers, singers, actors, etc. I now wish I had
more training in theater and performing arts to rely
on...especially improvisational theater.
––Nathan Shedroff (1997, internet.au)
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21st-century challenge
• Find problems
• Integrate knowledge from multiple
sources and media
• Think critically
• Collaborate
• Learn how to learn
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Undergraduates…
• are smarter (James Flynn)
• are better educated (Berliner & Biddle; Marable)
• more professionally-oriented, older, more female,
more non-white, more non-English speaking
• get too little sleep (Mary Carskadon)
• use the Internet instead of print sources, but
trust print more (Leigh Healy)
• focus on grades too much
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Connecting what we know
about…
• learning
• curriculum & instruction
• students today
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Inquiry-based learning
• Questions: arising out of experience
• Materials: diverse, authentic, challenging
• Activities: engaging. hands-on, creating,
collaborating, living new roles
• Dialogue: listening to others; articulating
understandings
• Reflection: expressing experience; moving
from new concepts into action
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Teacher as inquirer
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Inquiry about the world
Partner in inquiry
Modeling
Guiding
Inquiry about teaching and learning
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LIS 391: Literacy in the
information age
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Discoveries
Projects
Collaborative activities, e.g., timeline
Media: web board, doc cam, video,
web interactive syllabus
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Instant messaging
(synchronous communication)
• all of the students use it
• none of the faculty do
• questions:
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What functions does it serve?
What are its drawbacks?
Why are student and faculty needs different?
What are their communication practices?
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GradeAIM
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Continuing inquiry…
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help with homework
linking to family/friends at home
the use of "away" messages
checking away messages
checking on the checking (ImSpot)
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Progressive education
The education of engaged citizens involves:
–respect for diversity, meaning that each individual
should be recognized for his or her own abilities,
interests, ideas, needs, and cultural identity, and
–the development of critical, socially engaged
intelligence, which enables individuals to understand
and participate effectively in the affairs of their
community in a collaborative effort to achieve a
common good
––John Dewey Project on Progressive Ed.
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Learning to teach - 1
As a guide for the experimentation we so
freely encourage, the table opposite will be
helpful. We must caution, however, that it is
rife with half-truths--despite our best
efforts at disclosure. We are dealing here
with living things whose colors, habits, and
general constitutions will vary with locale and
with the skill of the individual gardener.
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Learning to teach - 2
This unpredictability, which strikes terror into the
heart of the beginner, is in fact one of the glories of
gardening. Things change, certainly from year to
year and sometimes from morning to evening. There
are mysteries, surprises, and always, lessons to be
learned. After almost 40 years hard at it, we are
only beginning.
–Amos Pettingill, The Garden Book, 1986
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Inquiry in language learning
Berghoff, et al, Beyond reading and writing:
Inquiry, curriculum, and multiple ways of knowing.
Bruce & Easley, Emerging communities of practice:
Collaboration and communication in action
research.
Short, et al, Learning together through inquiry:
From Columbus to integrated curriculum.
Wells & Chang-Wells, Constructing knowledge
together: Classrooms as centers of inquiry and
literacy
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Inquiry in science learning
National Science Foundation: “research-validated
models (e.g., extended inquiry, problem-solving)”
Reinventing Undergraduate Education (Carnegie
Foundation's Boyer Commission): “#1 Make
research-based learning the standard”
Project 2061 (American Association for the
Advancement of Science): “#1 …science literacy
for all high-school graduates”
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