Diane F. Halpern Claremont McKenna College

Overview

• • • The Context and the Challenge Introducing the Science of Learning 7 Principles of Durable Learning

Challenging Times in Higher Ed • • • • • Ill-prepared Students Consumerist Attitudes Rising Costs Shrinking Resources Calls for “Accountability”

Let’s Start by Thinking About the Lives of Our • Students Present and Future What do they need to know in a world where knowledge is accumulating an unprecedented rate?

• Where our students will work at jobs that do not exist today.

• Where a college degree is a requirement for 90% of the fastest growing jobs. • Where pollution is a major problem, along with racism, poverty, and terrorist attacks

• • • •

Preparing Our Students for Their Future

It’s a complex and technical world Average users spend 12 hours a week on the internet (Kerr, 2009) Information is literally at our fingertips – Both Good AND Bad

Are our students prepared?

Information, information, information… •

"A weekday edition of The New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in 17th. century England." Information Anxiety, R.S.Wurman

The Goal: Durable Learning

• • • How can we apply and extend new knowledge of how people learn, think, and remember?

How can we promote engagement in learning?

How can we foster effective academic performance and learning that lasts?

The Big Questions

• Our future depends on the twin abilities of learning efficiently and thinking

critically

--the pillars of cognitive science.

Is this a Good Use of Our Work?

Nora Newcombe asked: Biology: Medicine :: Cognitive Psychology: Education True or False?

Science of Learning

• • • • An emerging field Dependable findings Key publication: How People Learn: Brain,

Mind, Experience and School

Fragmented literatures—but growing at a rapid pace—Department of Education evidence based projects

Cognitive Psychology …is not just the title of a textbook or course—it is a empirically-validated body knowledge that we should be using to redesign education. We need to elevate the application of knowledge to a level equal to its creation, or in the language of cognitive psychology, make the inert knowledge of our field accessible to all teachers and learners.

http://psyc.memphis.edu/learning/

Rethinking the Purpose of Education

The first and only goal: Teach for long-term retention and transfer

Start Here:

1. Be clear about the outcomes you want to promote. If you don’t know where you want to be, you will never know if you’ve arrived.

Here are the outcomes I want for you from this morning’s session:

I want you to remember that

• • • • There are powerful learning strategies that can promote long-term retention and transfer It’s what the learners do that determines what and how much is learned You need to look for evidence when evaluating claims about what works in education This is important

Principles of Transfer

1. Practice with Effortful Retrieval 2. Spaced practice 3. Variable Learning Conditions 4. Multiple Representations 5. Alter Mental Models 6. Use Feedback as Information 7. Understand the Learners’ Epistemology

Principles in Cognitive Psychology that should be guiding the design of learning activities • • Acquisition (learning) and Retrieval (remembering) Have Different Operating Principles—Don’t Confuse What Looks Like Good Learning with Good Remembering A Corollary—Don’t confuse What Looks Like Good Teaching With Good Learning

Principles in Cognitive Psychology that should be guiding the design of learning activities

• • Practice at retrieval strengthens memory traces (generation effect) Retrieval both before and after learning.

Use Pretests to Introduce a New Topic • • • Pretests help students identify what they do not yet know, which can serve as a study guide.

Pretests activate relevant prior knowledge, which can improve learning. So, let’s try it.

A Few Pretest Questions

1. Students often prefer when course topics presented in class are in the same order as those in these textbook. Is this a good idea? In one sentence, explain why or why not.

2. Which promotes durable learning--open or closed-book tests? Why?

3. In general, is it better (for promoting durable learning) to give cumulative exams? Why?

Demonstration: Activating Prior Knowledge • • • 1. What continent is Kenya in?

2. What are the two opposing colors in the game of chess?

3. Name any animal?

Demonstration from Buonomo (2011)

The single most important variable in promoting long-term retention and • • • • • • • transfer is practice at retrieval Have students make frequent summaries as a check on comprehension Present a brief problem to solve Use reciprocal peer-teaching Have students find relevant information and rate it for degree of relevancy Use different perspectives Post questions on list serves, etc.

Ask students/patients/others to repeat instructions • Other Ideas? Learning games—computerized—jeopardy- others

• • • • • Short Demonstration of the Benefits of Retrieval I am handing out a brief reading—2 paragraphs.

1/3—read it once and turn it over, then check your phone for emails or text messages (or some other distracter task) 1/3—read it twice and turn it over, then check your phone for emails or text messages.

1/3 read it once, then turn to someone near you and answer the questions on your handout.

(Problems with this demonstration--ceiling effect likely, especially without a longer delay).

A few questions

• • • What is an action potential?

When a neuron receives an excitatory signal, what happens?

What sort of signal decreases the likelihood that a neuron will fire?

Principles in Cognitive Psychology that should be guiding the design of learning activities • • Spaced practice enhances long-term retention (cramming only works for short retrieval intervals) Some ideas for spacing in your classes???

Spaced Learning

• • • Align lectures, assignments and tests, so that important information will have to be remembered at different times distributed throughout the course, enhancing long-term retention. Have students retrieve this information in multiple ways by either varying the questions or context in which it is assessed: During lectures, ask students questions to elicit responses that reflect understanding of previously introduced course material. This serves the dual purpose of probing students' knowledge, so that misconceptions can be directly and immediately addressed in the lecture.

On homework assignments, have students retrieve key information from lectures and readings. Chapter summaries, for instance, may include study questions that ask students to recall major points or conclusions to be drawn from the reading.

Spaced Learning

• • Encourage group studying in which students actively discuss course topics. In these groups, students have an opportunity to explain difficult course concepts to one and another, engaging in "practice at retrieval." As with probing questions during lectures, test questions offer another opportunity for "practice at retrieval," thus, potentially enhancing knowledge of the material being tested. Ideally tests should be cumulative and test items should probe for understanding of the material.

Principles in Cognitive Psychology that should be guiding the design of learning activities • Variability during learning can make learning more effortful, but it is beneficial to long-term retention and transfer

•

An example

Children learning to write practice each letter multiple times e e e e e e e Versus practing new letters along with those already learned e e b a e a d b e a e b (you get the idea) +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Stat books—work on one statistical test in each chapter—makes learning easier, but retention and transfer are reduced.

Principles in Cognitive Psychology that should be guiding the design of learning activities • Dual Coding of Information in Visuospatial and Verbal Formats Will Enhance Learning and Memory

Verbal and Visual Information

Mayer & Massa. 2003 article

Use Different Formats Draw a graph; Write out an explanation; Provide a formula Use concept maps--

Medication schedule for an actual patient It is written in list format, exactly as written by his physician .

Day, R.S. Comprehension of prescription drug information: Overview of a research program. http://www.aaai.org/Papers/Symposia/Spring/2006/SS-06-01/SS06-01-005.pdf

Matrix representation for the same medication schedule Day, R.S. Comprehension of prescription drug information: Overview of a research program. http://www.aaai.org/Papers/Symposia/Spring/2006/SS-06-01/SS06-01-005.pdf

Concept Mapping without Software • • • Brainstorm issues/concepts/processes involved in designing a greenhouse.

Usually get about 50 steps.

Teams organize the steps and post them on sticky notes to create concept maps.

Principles in Cognitive Psychology that should be guiding the design of learning activities • We use our mental models about the world to make sense out of experience. We may be more likely to change our memory for an event than to change a belief system that cannot account for the event.

Think about our knowledge of the physical world • • • The elevator problem (or walk light problem) How dishwashers work (i.e., not like a washing machine) The thermostat (or oven) problem

Think about our knowledge of the physical world

• Here is a ball shooting out of a curved tube.

Mental Models

Mental Models

Past Learning

• • • What and how much gets learned in any situation depends heavily on prior knowledge and experience.

For example, what do you know about governments in South America?

Memory for complex pictures—e.g., boats

Principles in Cognitive Psychology that should be guiding the design of learning activities • • Feedback as Knowledge of Results How does the learner make sense from the feedback?

Learning from Feedback

Kluger & DeNisi’s (1996) meta-analysis – Experimental vs. control, studies back to 1917 – Feedback yields poorer performance in 1/3 of cases Focus on the task to be learned and motivation to perform it.

The Effect of Feedback Depends

• • Negative Suggestion Effects—learn incorrect information from testing (both multiple choice and essay—immediate feedback is best for this problem, but Students need to be able to judge their own performance—reduce feedback as learning proceeds.

Principles in Cognitive Psychology that should be guiding the design of learning activities • Learning is influenced by our students’ and our own epistemologies. Academic motivation is related to beliefs about learning.

Is intelligence a fixed quantity or is it the result of hard work?

• Fixed quantity view is detrimental whether you think you are smart or not.

• Saying you are good at this versus saying you worked hard.

“What the teacher says in the classroom is not unimportant, but what the students think is a thousand times more important. The ideas should be born in the students’ mind and the teacher should act only as midwife.” George Polya (1982, p. 104)

Outcomes Assessment is not “one more thing—it’s the only thing.” It’s the only way of knowing if your students are learning what you think you’re teaching, and it tells you what to change if they’re not.

How will you transfer these principles of learning to your teaching practice?

- State clear learning objectives - Actively engage students in learning - Challenge student and teacher epistemologies - Use effortful learning—create desirable difficulties - Challenge existing cognitive models - Teach for transfer—frequent uncued review with real-life examples - Make careful choices because less can be more - Check for long-term retention - Use re-representing--visuospatial and verbal formats

Alfonso X, The Learned

• • • • Lived in Challenging Times Wrote on law and history Wrote poetry Deposed by Dukes and his son

“Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.”

• • Alfonso X, the Learned, King of Spain, 1252-1284

Present at the Creation

• • It is clear that knowledge and learning are constructed by learners.

Our task as teachers is to be present at the creation of learning by the learner.

Contact Information

Dr. Diane F. Halpern Department of Psychology Claremont McKenna College 850 Columbia Ave.

Claremont, CA 91711 [email protected]