In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in.
Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools unsuffered. We hope it’s a welcome break from the world of shit falling on our heads daily in the political sphere.
Tonight’s Topic: What Learning Styles Work For You?
Take it away, BG!
In this week’s Medium Cool, let’s talk about learning.
We’ve touched on this subject before, in terms of best teacher, most influential class or subject, etc. I’d like to shift the focus. As I prep for the start of classes this semester, which will be fully remote, I’m wondering what kind of learning worked best for you.
It seems to me most teachers (OK, I have no idea, really) operate either on the model of someone they were taught by, or they construct classes and classrooms to work for the student they were. However they/we do this, it’s meant to reach the most students possible. It won’t work for everyone. I’m struggling mightily with this now, as there is so much info and static about methods in this emergency.
For example, the lecture-discussion model works really well for me. I love listening to a smart, passionate person talk about a subject, along with discussion, questions, arguments. It’s old-fashioned, but it really gets my brain going.
My question, then, is: What learning styles work for you? It might not be one thing, but give us a description, or example, of some situation (or method) that really impacted you.
Benw
I’m definitely a read and work my way through it kind of guy.
BGinCHI
@Benw: As in re-reading?
Benw
@BGinCHI: like read the chapter/assignment/novel/etc and work my way through attached questions. Lecture and discussion never worked great for me
Benw
Whoah stompage!
Roger Moore
I am definitely a hands on doing stuff learner. Lectures and discussions are great, but I never really get anything until I’ve done it myself.
BGinCHI
@Benw: Interesting.
I’d qualify what I said above, emphasizing that not all lectures are created equal. If they just reiterate what you already read, or provide context you could get anywhere, they aren’t worth much. I sat through many classes like that.
The best lectures ask exactly the kinds of questions I think you’re talking about. They explore intricacies, dig beneath the surface, challenge first/naive readings. This forces students, I think, to challenge themselves to read more deeply, and especially to re-read and re-think simple, intuitive conclusions. Shakespeare, for example, lays endless traps of simplicity for those who are content to fall into them and stay there. It’s only by pushing past and through them that the texts come to have their proper complexity.
different-church-lady
About a dozen years ago I realized that when I was trying to learn something new from a book, I retained it better if I wrote down outline-style notes. But the funny thing was I didn’t need to look at the notes again — just the act of writing it down somehow encoded it into my memory better than just reading it.
BGinCHI
@Benw: Some of my colleagues complain when students aren’t paying sufficient attention, and I always say the same thing: I run my class and bring my best game if there are 40 students or 2 students.
BGinCHI
@Roger Moore: It’s true for me that by teaching I learned the most.
In higher ed, I think we have to get students to own the material, as if they were teachers, but it’s a challenge.
Ruckus
I was/am both a read and study and a listen and learn. But. The teacher has to work at my speed and have a similar thought process or I tend to drift. But being a teacher is no walk in the park either. I don’t believe that any teacher will reach everyone. I’ve had to teach technique and process of different things and not everyone gets any particular method.
BGinCHI
@different-church-lady: This works for me too!
It also works when I’m stressed. I make a list and once it’s out of my head a bit, I feel like I can more easily get through it.
zhena gogolia
@BGinCHI:
I’m sure this will be more like 40 :)
I like lecture/discussion too. Maybe that’s because that’s the way I like to teach. But my favorite classes in college were sitting around a table with a smart guy (of any gender) telling us stuff and then us trying to converse with each other about it.
Mary G
Another reader here, and the teachers I hated with the heat of a thousand suns are the ones who read the textbook to us and did not want questions or arguments. My junior year in high school I was told to do independent study on all but German and gym. I spent my days in the library or at the beach. I was also expelled from kindergarten also, too.
BGinCHI
@Ruckus: Yes, so what do we do about it?
I’m not sure there’s anything we can do.
But….over time I’ve become way, way more open about keeping everything out in the open. I talk to my classes about the pace, about how they’re thinking, and I share my struggles to figure something out, etc. I’ve become WAY better at learning along with my class, even if I know much more about the subject than they do. At one point I realized that the most boring courses were ones where the prof/teacher just didn’t feel curious about the subject anymore.
Darkrose
For me, reading and then doing it are the best ways to learn something in general. I’ve become very interested in learning styles as it relates to video games. In FFXIV, you’re expected to watch a video guide before doing high-end group content like savage raids or extreme trials. I’ve found that while videos are a decent overview, the only way I learn the mechanics is by running the content over and over and dying a lot until the mechanics become muscle memory. There’s usually too much going on visually for me to follow, especially as I’ve gotten older and I find it hard to track movement and flashing lights.
Mike J
In sailing instructor training, US Sailing makes a big deal out of using visual, kinesthetic, and aural modes of learning in classes. After I took the course I was talking to a random person who studies pedagogy who told me that the VAK theory had been found to be overblown, if not quite discredited.
Benw
@BGinCHI: I had a great Shakespeare prof, some of my favorite lectures/discussions. But yeah, I’m mostly really shy in person so tend to really really not want to speak up.
Probably the best example of how I work is learning a new game. I can’t remember anything if someone explains it to me. I want to skim the instructions and then work through a “demo” round with lots of references to the instructions.
Benw
@BGinCHI: what do you teach?
Sab
@different-church-lady: I am the same with lectures. I just can’t absorb it by listening. I get too distracted by everything visual going on. So I wrote down everything, and often never referred to my notes again.
I had an accounting professor (there is a reason they call them “auditors”) who tried to forbid me from taking notes. “Just listen.” I had to go complain to the dean that I refused to pay good money for a class where I couldn’t take notes.
James E Powell
It depends on what I’m trying to learn. I’m also a teacher and the delivery method depends on the material, the students, the context. I try to mix it up so that it’s not the same thing all the time.
Mostly I learn to do by doing – which is what my 8th grade math teacher said at least twice a day. Or as I tell my students, you can’t learn to swim till you get in the water.
I enjoyed the socratic method in law school. None of my professors were dicks like Kingsfield.
BGinCHI
@Mary G: We do a lot of professional development seminars for HS teachers. I did one last year on Shakespeare, as I’ve done many times. In this one there were several teachers from highly-regarded suburban high schools. More than a few of them talked about how they read the plays out loud in class.
I have very strong opinions about this. I don’t know who told teachers this was a good idea, or what they think it’s accomplishing, but it drives me crazy. There is literally no benefit to it. It’s lazy, and fails completely to engage with the ideas of any text. I sat through it for countless hours as a HS student, simply reading some other book as I’d already read so far ahead.
It’s not teaching.
geg6
My MEd research was on multiple intelligences. Read a lot of John Gardner’s Frames of Mind for that. Now, multiple intelligences are NOT learning styles, which is a term he despises. But, if you know which of the nine intelligences are your strongest ones, you can learn most easily by having course materials in the methods that play to your strengths. Back when I was doing my research, there were seven intelligences he identified. Now he has expanded that to eight. I believe that my strengths are visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical and intrapersonal. He is considering adding a ninth, teaching-pedagogical, which I also believe I have strength in.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences
That said, I can ace any test if I hear a lecture, read the textbook and then re-copy my notes from the lecture and book at least once. I am a complete failure when it comes to working in groups.
misterpuff
Paper Chase FTW.
But the Socratic method doesn’t really work for me. Hands on learning here.
Although when I was young I was a sponge and just kept feeding data in.
geg6
@different-church-lady:
Me, too. Went through undergrad that way and got summa cum laude!
BGinCHI
@zhena gogolia: Yes!
I know there are students who are shy, and there are many reasons students of color, second language learners, and other folks have a difficult time speaking in class. But, and I work my ass off to bring those people into the conversation, to make a safe space where that’s possible. I had to be brought out of my shell, and I want to do this for others. I want my first-generation (as I was) and my BIPOC students to find their voice, and argue, and stake out claims for what they think and believe. I’m lucky that my classes are really diverse and that I have those students in my classes.
zhena gogolia
@Darkrose:
This reminds me of Zoom video tutorials. They mean nothing until I actually try to perform the operation myself. (not removing my own appendix, just like creating “breakout rooms” or something like that).
BGinCHI
@Mike J: Luckily, if I have a bad day teaching, no one drowns.
zhena gogolia
@Sab:
That is so weird!
geg6
@Mary G:
Hahaha! I got tossed from first grade at a Catholic school. Too many uncomfortable questions that I asked. In high school, I was told not to bother showing up in most of my classes because, again, too many questions and, at that point, corrections of the information the teacher or book provided. Teachers who like me and a challenge loved me but they were few and far between. I hated every second of high school.
BGinCHI
@Benw: I have a weird inability to read instructions.
I have to just do it, which results in lots of error before I get something right, or build the damn Ikea thing properly.
BGinCHI
@Benw: Literature, film, creative writing. My specialty is Shakespeare, but I’m a Johannes Factotum.
zhena gogolia
@BGinCHI:
First-generation here too. I try to provide ways they can contribute without talking — at first. That usually gets them talking eventually.
BGinCHI
@Benw: Who was your Shakes prof?
MattF
I’m largely self-taught. This includes teaching myself large amounts of physics and mathematics– my PhD thesis advisor came to me after my final oral exam and asked me, “Where did you learn all that?” I think this is not uncommon in technical fields, and is a quick and dirty explanation for why teaching in those fields is often so bad; the teachers are experts who have never really had the experience of learning from another person.
BGinCHI
@zhena gogolia: SAME
BGinCHI
@geg6: Can god make a rock so heavy that even he can’t lift it?
BGinCHI
@zhena gogolia: There’s also a “all students must talk” fetish, that drives me nuts.
I was often learning the most deeply when I was shutting up and listening attentively.
Also, it’s good for students to listen and think before they’re ready to engage. Some students have been led to believe that just saying whatever they think is learning. It ain’t.
BGinCHI
@MattF: I’d say given the Physics PhDs I’ve met, this is 100% true.
Roger Moore
@BGinCHI:
I think my hands on learning style means I learn better from lectures that explain how we know what we know rather than just listing a bunch of facts. Some of it is that the story about how we learned things helps to organize the knowledge, but a big part of it is that going through the process of how other people worked stuff out is the closest a lecture can get to that hands on learning.
One other thing I’ve found about myself: I am absolutely terrible at taking notes. It’s not just that my notes are disorganized or something; I just I can either focus on my notes or on the lecture, but I can’t do both at the same time. It helps that my memory is good, so I don’t really need the notes to remember the lectures.
One of my favorite college classes had a professor who banned note taking in his lectures. He had the head TA take notes that were copied and passed out at the beginning of the next class, and he wanted the students’ full attention. He loved to have interactive lectures. He would get to a logical point to ask a question and then pick out a random student in the class- it was small enough that he knew all our names- and demand an instant answer from them. If they didn’t have an answer, they were supposed to say “I don’t know” and he would go on to the next person, but they had to be paying careful enough attention to respond instantly when he called on them. And I’ll definitely say, I never forgot the right answer to a question I got wrong in the lecture.
zhena gogolia
@BGinCHI:
Right. I do not have this fetish. I can tell if somebody is paying attention and reacting mentally — they don’t have to run their mouths.
Mike J
@BGinCHI: You’re just not trying hard enough.
James E Powell
@Mike J:
When I started teaching in 2005, VAK was the rule. There were spaces in the the form for our lesson plans where we were required to describe how we would deliver the lesson to each of the three. Shortly thereafter I came across an article by Daniel T Willingham who argued that there was no research support for “learning styles” in the sense that VAK theory uses the term. Here is an article by Willingham in which he reviews and comments on more recent research.
My experience in teaching is that it is important to be able to present ideas in several different ways because teenage brains are teenage brains.
Another Scott
Interesting topic!
I did well in high school and worked hard but not really, really hard, but was in for a shock when I got to college because I quickly discovered that I really didn’t have the study skills that I assumed I did. I managed to get through the course work, but never had the kinds of grades that I assumed I’d be able to get.
For me, learning takes repetition, and multiple ways of input. I guess I was stuck in the grade school mode – reading, talking/singing, writing. Whoever came up with the ABC song was a genius. Maybe Tom Lehrer has songs about Maxwell’s Equations and Completing the Square and Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs, but I didn’t come across them in time. ;-)
Otherwise, for me to really learn something, I need to read it multiple times – especially these days. I seem to have a visual memory (I can often picture things on particular pages), but it takes a while to program it.
More generally, away from a STEM focus, I found that discussions in class were good to get a better handle on the ideas and implications of things, and for picking up trivia (“Tolstoy rewrote War and Peace more times than I’ve read it, and I’ve been teaching this class for a long time!”), but exams in such classes often seemed to be arbitrary. Maybe constructing exams for such things is an art that is poorly taught, or something. ;-) And discussion really only works well up to about 20 students or so – it’s hopeless for giant lectures (even with “discussion sessions”) – because the discussion can’t really inform the lectures.
Good teaching is really, really hard. Good teachers are treasures.
Cheers,
Scott.
BGinCHI
@Roger Moore: Amen to your first paragraph. Just facts, or info, is not what lecturing should do. It should be teaching you how to learn, and working to take you past the surface of things. This is what all great non-fic books do. You could read the facts of the South Seas Bubble, or you could read Levenson’s book. The latter takes the facts and teaches you their greater significance, etc.
MattF
@BGinCHI: And it starts early. I was in an ‘honors calculus’ section in the specialized high school I attended– the first day of class, the teacher turned to the class and asked “who doesn’t already know calculus?” One child raised a hand, apparently attending with the expectation of learning something in the class.
Benw
@BGinCHI: dang I can’t remember and google ain’t helping. It was a guy at UC San Diego in the 90’s. He was big on the concept of foils throughout the plays. I tried to go to literature grad school but didn’t get in. Paths not taken
BGinCHI
@Mike J: I’m preparing them to be good citizens and quality cocktail party guests.
BGinCHI
@Another Scott: OMG. When I taught in Norway, one of the classes had collaborative texts but different sections. So we met to construct and norm the exams. They insisted on having questions about things we didn’t discuss in class. “Well, they are supposed to read it, so it can be on there,” they said. I wanted to reply, but didn’t, that you should not do it that way. It’s like a power game to some people.
Benw
@MattF: you self trained in physics and math!? I for sure walked into almost all of my undergrad classes not already knowing the material, and then hung on for dear life!
BGinCHI
@MattF: I still have regular dreams about calculus, and they are not happy ones.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
I’ve found that I learn best by doing things, ideally with somebody who knows how to do it–the teacher, whether formally or not–there with me. I learn more theoretical things, things that you don’t do, best by talking it through, back and forth with somebody.
MattF
@Benw: It may sound like I did it the easy way, but I’ve spent a lot of effort to mitigate the damage from growing up that way. You pay a price, regardless.
geg6
@Roger Moore:
I would have failed that class miserably. He was handicapping students like me in his class. I would have HATED that class.
Benw
@MattF: oof sorry to hear that. I just don’t think it would have been possible for me to learn ANY physics without regular instruction
MattF
@BGinCHI: Calculus is hard, and it takes years to really understand what’s going on, so how to teach it effectively is a puzzle.
BGinCHI
@MattF: I had a pretty good teacher, but I was 17 and was mostly thinking about beer and fast cars and music and fiction and…..
Roger Moore
@BGinCHI:
I wonder if your inability to read instructions is partly because they don’t play to the way you learn. For example, I like to have a big picture understanding of the process before I get into the details, and a lot of instruction manuals are exclusively step-by-step procedures without any kind of big picture.
I actually like the Ikea instructions! It’s not that I’m a visual learner rather than a verbal learner, but that they’re structured in a way that one set of instructions let me see things at different levels. First, I can get the big picture of which major components go together in what order. Once I have that concept, I can start focusing on the detailed stuff like how many of which fastener to use. They don’t force me to think at the level the author thought was best; they let me work at the level I think is best.
marklar
There seems to be two threads here…one for how you learn best, and one for how you teach. I can’t really separate those two, because I teach in a way that feels intuitive to me, i.e., in the way that I learn best. I when I learn something new, it often affects the way that I teach.
I’m with James Powell. It depends upon what is being taught. When I’m teaching a course neuroscience or psychopharmacology, I’ll do lecture/discussion (with loads of metaphors and examples) for the first half of the semester. There really isn’t much to discuss with regards to action potentials, or downregulation of post-synaptic receptors. The fun starts in the second half of the semester. That’s when we focus on “so what” questions. Why does it matter if the brain is ‘in control’ of what we do? What are the implications for the criminal justice system? Should we permit football to be played? Were Nicole, Ron, AND OJ all victims of the NFL-CTE complex? Is addiction a moral failing, a disease, or something else? What are the implications for each model?
For other classes, “So What” questions start right off the bat. For Intro to Psych, all the content they need is in the textbook, and there are online quizzes that make sure they read it. Classes are ALL DISCUSSION, ALL THE TIME (this even works well for Zoom, but I have fairly small class sizes). Toss in assignments through discussion boards, and the discussions continue asynchronously.
Oh, and for any class beyond the Sophomore level, small-group semester-long research projects (including navigating the IRB) are integrated in the course. It’s not good enough to study what is known…how do you go about discovering the unknown? As Ivan Pavlov wrote , “Don’t become a mere recorder of facts, but try to penetrate the mystery of their origins.”
One final ingredient? In the words of the early 20th Century learning theorist Edward Tolman, “In the end, the only sure criterion is to have fun.”
BGinCHI
@Roger Moore: Agreed!
The Ikea example was a bad one. I actually like those and they make good sense to me. It’s the list of things that are each incomprehensible that I can’t tolerate.
I need a narrative to learn.
BGinCHI
@marklar: Your opening paragraph says what I was trying to say in my intro perfectly. That’s it, exactly, and I was kind of afraid to say it that directly.
Also, it took me a while to be comfortable teaching as a learner. With age came the confidence to jettison the knowingness, which was really just a defense against vulnerability.
BGinCHI
@marklar: I totally agree about the fun, but it’s hard! Esp now with Zoom, though it’s not impossible (as some seem to be pretending).
I love the spontaneous feeling of something clicking on a subject you’ve been through many times. I love being curious and not having any limits on where that curiosity can go.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
I had shit study skills in high school because I was always one of those people who picked up the material too easily to bother. I don’t know that I got any better at studying, per se, but I managed to get through because being in sports had made me learn how to work hard at something I wasn’t naturally good at. I probably would have failed out if I hadn’t had that kind of practice.
Omnes Omnibus
What am I learning? In a academic setting, lecture and discussion along with reading is my preferred method. My note taking is unintelligible to anyone who isn’t me. I write down words and phrases that strike a chord with me, and when I review them I mentally recreate the lecture. Also (and this may come as a huge surprise to everyone), I have always been comfortable speaking in class – responding to questions in a lecture hall, back and forth in a seminar, and socratic method on law school. In a non-academic setting, I like to be more hands on, but I still find a book on the subject if I can because I want to know the theory behind it.
Roger Moore
@BGinCHI:
I once had a class that was literally the classic of lectures on one thing, textbook on another,
lectures[corrected] exam on a third. It wasn’t quite as bad as it sounds. It was an organic synthesis class, and the lectures were designed to be complementary to the textbook. The textbook was basically a big compendium of different synthesis reactions, and you were supposed to study it on your own to learn what was possible. The lectures were about the logic of designing a synthesis: how to do you take your knowledge of what’s possible and figure out how to make a specific target. The exams were about your ability to combine the two separate strands and actually design a synthetic plan for a challenging molecule. It was a very, very hard class, but also incredibly rewarding.BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Do you think it makes teaching easier when you’re less shy about speaking in public?
Intuitively, I’d say yes. I’ve always struggled with that. I can (and do, regularly) speak in public, but I get nervous as hell. I wonder whether that anxiety makes me better at it, or holds me back.
IDK, I thought everything would get easier over the years, but I still have a lot of nerves.
JPL
@BGinCHI: fyi thinking of you..
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: A noble pursuit. Seriously. That’s my shorthand for what a liberal arts BA (major immaterial) does.
BGinCHI
@Roger Moore: That sounds really interesting. I started my undergrad career as a geology major, and it reminds me of those classes. They were really hard.
Omnes Omnibus
What has changed in the ensuing 72 years?
WaterGirl
@Mary G:
For real? I love that. What didn’t they like?
WaterGirl
@misterpuff: I loved that show!
WaterGirl
@BGinCHI: Yes! My calculous instructor my freshman or sophomore year in college would do that – put stuff on the exams that he never covered.
He expected us to take what we had been taught an extrapolate. I think he was why I ended up not being a math major.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: I taught my first classes after being an army officer for several years, going to law school, and then practicing law. I had overcome my fear of have to talk about shit and being found out as someone doesn’t know shit. Just being a second lieutenant in the army does that.
Also, whatever crippling social anxieties I many have had in my youth, I was entirely confident in my intellectual capabilities. Even though I went to public schools until college, I was in an academic hothouse environment from middle school on. I really only knew about 75 people in my high school and a good chunk of them were from sports. The rest were the other kids from the IB program and activities like debate, student government, and the Hester Prynne Fan Club. Oddly enough, they were the same people.
WaterGirl
@BGinCHI: hahaha
back to the teach/learn discussion!
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Did you like Paper Chase?
Mike J
@James E Powell: Thanks!
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh my god, the night before my first university class I had to teach i was so wired, I was up all night. I remember listening to music with headphones on, lying on the floor right by the stereo because the headphones wouldn’t reach anywhere else.
I finally told myself that I would pretend to be the teacher. Three days in and I was totally comfortable, but yikes, going into that was stressful.
NotMax
Cannot in all honesty provide an answer to what is best.
Every day, in every way, I learn something(s). It’s a never ending process. Some of the most valuable learning I have retained came from taking the time to pause in order to investigate the scenery along the path to the original destination.
So long as the recipient is open to gaining/increasing knowledge, and while there may be quicker or more efficient processes of instruction tailored to a specific subject area, learning occurs. Am perfectly capable of disliking the teacher but that doesn’t translate for me to rejecting the teaching.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Lawyers are required to like it. The one thing I hated about law school was the creation of an outline for a course. I had sources and friends who had other sources for prior outlines and I relied on those for studying. Creating my own was a rote project and not a good way to learn. I sometimes find writing to be that way. If I started a research paper because I was really interested in answering a question I would be fired up until I had answered the question. Writing it down for someone else could be pure drudgery unless I made the act of writing a separate project, i.e., trying to avoid certain words, mixing in song references, and otherwise entertaining myself. My papers and briefs have always tended to be short. 10-15 pages? My paper, 9 1/2. Hell, you’ll notice that this is one of my longest comments on this blog.
marklar
@BGinCHI:
There are many kinds of fun…engrossment is one iteration. Challenge can be another.
I sent out an e-mail this week to all my students (classes start next week). The opening paragraph included the following passage:
“Earlier this summer, I took a series of trainings offered by REDACTED FOR ANONYMITY’s Digital Learning program. One thing really struck me was a quotation from American educational philosopher and activist Maxine Greene. She wrote, “Experiences of shock are necessary if the limits or the horizons are to be breached.” I took this as a challenge that applied to my teaching. The Coronavirus has clearly caused a shock to our system of education. The question we face is how we address that shock. Do we look at is with frustration and long for things to go back to the comfortable way that we all knew? Or do we use it to revise how we think about what we do, and what we value? I spent the summer reworking this course to do the latter, and am excited to see how the revisions will affect how and what you learn. I would encourage you to look at Dr. Greene’s words and adopt a ‘challenge-mindset’ as well. You are dealing with a challenge to how you have learned how to learn…this is an opportunity to grow and develop new skills!”
I’m hoping to help build a growth mindset in my students. That too can be fun, even when its not FUN!!!
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Pretending works. I have thought of myself as a actor. “I am not really an army officer, but, if I play the role well, no one will notice.”
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Cars.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: The cars themselves or your thinking about them?
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: God I love Hester Prynne.
Do not tell anyone.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, god, my life in a nutshell.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: I want a truck now, though it’s totally impractical.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: Man, what happened to you? You used to be cool.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: I blame society.
marklar
@WaterGirl:
My Learning Theory (Pavlovian Conditioning) professor did the same in graduate school. His rationale was “I know that you can answer all the stuff I taught you. Let’s see how you think through stuff you haven’t yet learned.”
I’m not sure if that approach is appropriate for first year undergraduates like you experienced (Bloom’s taxonomy and all that jazz), but I thought it was great for graduate students! Especially those that had no problem with being wrong the first time you try something (in fact, his tests helped us develop that way of approaching the unknown).
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: Titus Andronicus.
Another Scott
@Omnes Omnibus: In many ways, being an actor is a tougher job – people know famous works and will judge you on how well you recite the lines, etc.
I tell myself when I have to give a talk that ‘nobody knows what I will say’, so it doesn’t have to go exactly as I rehearse it.
BG mentioned being nervous. There are many stories of famous actors and performers having terrible stage fright, having to vomit before performances, etc. I get jittery – don’t watch my laser pointer if you don’t want to get sick! – even with telling myself the things above, but things usually go well enough. ;-) Everyone knows that public speaking is one of those nearly universal phobias and will usually cut others slack about it.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@marklar
Have long felt that if the student cannot elucidate further questions after the conclusion of the class or the course then the teaching has been inadequate.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Scott: You are missing my point. I was not an actor. Pretending I was and acting the part was a thing I could do when my confidence was low. Another version of what I was talking about is “Fake it ’til you make it.”
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: This for me too.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: I like that band as well.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Agree. You pick a master’s project or thesis topic that’s really interesting and by the time you have to write the fucking thing up you have to hold a gun to your own head because you are so sick if it that you can barely stand it.
In my opinion, if it’s true that having a master’s degree is highly correlated with success in your work, it’s not because you’re smarter than anyone else. It’s because finishing the fucking thing takes perseverance and fortitude.
Ajabu
I went to a prominent music college. Although upon graduation you received a liberal arts degree it was, for all practical purposes, a trade school. Most students had a natural aptitude and the emphasis was on performance. It came easy to some, others had to sweat blood for each note. I was a combination of the two and ultimately had a career as a performer and teacher. Occasionally there would be a student whose decision to attend a music college was a horrible misjudgment. At the conclusion of an ensemble performance one such sorry ass individual was singled out by the professor who said, “you’re going to be wonderful at musical cocktail parties. You know all the jargon and can drop all the big words. Just stay the fuck away from bandstands. “ I assume he became a CPA…
WaterGirl
@marklar: I’m pretty sure it’s not appropriate for a first semester freshman. :-)
marklar
@NotMax:
I had one professor who, after a student would describe a fact, or give a presentation, always ask “So what”? (it wasn’t obnoxious, since we knew it was always coming). He was trying to make the same point that you stated…if you stop with simply knowing the information but not applying it or expanding upon it, the learning is simply esoteric masturbation.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Yep, that’s exactly it.
The amazing thing was the all these students – I taught 3 classes each semester – completely believed that I was the teacher, right out of the gate!
WaterGirl
@marklar: That’s how I feel when I read some of the tweets here, and I have no context for what is in front of me.
I’m sure it would not go well if I started saying “so what?” when that happens. :-)
NotMax
@marklar
Band name!
:)
RSA
@Mike J:
This is what I’ve gathered from colleagues who study education in my discipline. Students may have learning styles, but efforts to tailor teaching to such styles haven’t produced much empirical evidence that it’s effective.
Ruckus
@BGinCHI:
I can see that you’ve hit upon the major crux of learning. The desire to know more, an interest. Every class I’ve ever taken, in school, in the navy, in learning to be a mental health counselor, learning how to operate 4 axis machine tools that cut with electricity, the basis of how well I learned or how well I taught others depended upon my interest/desire. There had to be a rational for the effort. If it was only to move on, I would do homework from the last class during the next, so I didn’t have to do it at home. The teachers always thought I was taking notes because if I was bored it was because the class was easy and my motivation was “because.” And that’s not enough.
BGinCHI
@WaterGirl: Correct take, potty mouth.
BGinCHI
@Ajabu: And that man was William Jefferson Clinton.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: No, Clinton isn’t a CPA.
Ruckus
@geg6:
To learn or teach successfully in groups you have to either have complementary learners or work to the least common denominator. It is easier when everyone in the group is about the same level even if their particular learning method is different. But it is really a tolerance level, an understanding that not everyone has the same strengths or if you will learning curve. Learning/working in a group is like anything else, not everyone can or wants to but if one person leads by making sure everyone is involved, the group progresses far better.
RSA
For classroom instruction, I used to take cues from education research in my field and related fields. Mathematics and physics education were the most relevant areas, and I think they produced the most relevant results.
One practice I adopted was breaking up a lecture with short group problem-solving exercises. I’d put up a problem statement and say, “Okay, break up into groups of two or three, talk with each other, and work out a solution. You have five minutes.” I’d move from one group to another, maybe offer a comment, encourage the students, kick-start a discussion. Sometimes, if the solution took the form of a diagram, I’d collect sketches; otherwise I’d ask for students to just describe their thinking, and we’d review a few samples. It was slow going at the beginning of the semester, but when students became comfortable with the process and realized that their results would not receive harsh judgments (I’d say, “I only gave you five minutes–I’m not expecting miracles”) things picked up. It meant fifteen minutes that wasn’t devoted to introduction of new material, but it was worthwhile.
I should also say that in area I was teaching, collaboration is considered a valuable skill. Even if that wasn’t formally evaluated in the classroom, I think the exercises might have been helpful to the students.
Ruckus
@BGinCHI:
YES!
In any situation were the people varied I’ve found that putting people together and letting them run works, when learning process. When learning ideas it seems better to study and then discuss. But the big bit is involving everyone. Some are shy, some are afraid of failure, some are full of themselves, some are full of – well we’ll leave that up to your imagination… I’ve always seen that there is generally someone who is a true leader among the learners, who will help others if given the chance.
Ruckus
@MattF:
Yep. I learned calculus in one weekend. The teacher had told us that if we could show on the chalkboard our work we didn’t have to come to class and we’d get the grade we proved we’d earned. So next class I took him up on it. Spent the class solving every problem he gave me, successfully. At the end he asked how I’d learned all that – I read the book. He told me I had learned all 4 yrs of calculus. OK so I get a decent grade and can go to work rather than sit here every week? Nope, he was lying. Pissed me off, I may have called him an asshole. But it wasn’t difficult because I was learning process, not bullshit facts about who developed which theorem, which everyone but a professor would forget the second they finished the test. BTW this was after being in the navy, I may have developed an attitude about self important assholes who fuck with you for no reason during my enlistment.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Ikea instructions are great. Exactly for the reason you state. You get big picture, you get step by step with every bit shown, exact counts of parts etc. It’s not difficult because it’s logical in a way that shows the logic.
I’ve been building 3 dimensional things from drawings for 60 yrs, and designing/making drawings for others to do the same thing. I still teach others how to see both the steps and the finished part. And some learn this easy some with more effort. We have a 21 yr old at work, been there 2-3 yrs, never did machine work before, he’s amazing with his understanding of how to grasp what the part is supposed to look like when he’s done. Most take quite a few years to get to his level. I say it’s a gift.
eddie blake
oy.
yeah, um, reading. mostly reading. i read a lot and i read very quickly. it was rare to find a professor in college who could keep up..
so yeah, mostly reading and doing. i’m very good with my hands.
Chris Sherbak
I never really thought so much about it during school – but my total lack of retention of history shows there was something about my thinking/retention style, which might be connected to learning? Seems like different things but maybe not.
Anywho, I seem to do better retaining and integrating stuff that has a pattern (or logical steps) (math, logic, geometry, science) or a story (language, history, civics) that hangs it all together. So that even if the whole thing doesn’t come to mind, there are enough feelers/edges to the knowledge that I can get to what I need by traversing thru to the nugget I’m after.
E.g. a long while back i discovered that the history of mathematics is A Thing (my BA is in Math) and it opened a whole new world about how geometry, calculus, infinities, transcendant numbers, and set/group/number theory came about. I love that stuff even today. Very sad we only got a glimpse of it while we were doing drill and repeat. I think my appreciation/retention of (general) history would have been much better had they weaved some of that in there. HTH.