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How to use cognitive psychology to enhance learning

with Robert Bjork

| October 29, 2015 | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

Robert Bjork on using cognitive psychology to enhance learning.

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PODCAST NOTES

Guest:

Dr. Robert Bjork

  • Distinguished Professor of Psychology at UCLA
  • Learning and memory; the science of learning in the practice of teaching.
  • The Bjork Learning and Forgetting Lab

Common misperceptions

Belief that we work something like a man made recording device.

In almost every critical way, we differ from any such device.” – Robert Bjork

How can it be that we have all these years of learning things and formal education and then end up really not understanding the process? You might just think by sheer trial and error during all of our educational experiences we would come to understand ourselves better than we apparently do.” – Robert Bjork

We found all these different situations where the very same thing that produces forgetting then enhances learning if the material is re-studied again. Forgetting is a friend of learning.” – Robert Bjork

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The spacing effect

  • Delay in re-studying information

The environmental context

  • If you study it again, then you're better off to study it in a different place.
  • This is counter to the advice to study in a single place.

Retrieval practice

When you recall something, it does far more to reveal that you did indeed have it in your memory.

“Using our memories shapes our memory.”- Robert Bjork

As we use our memories, the things we recall become more recallable. Things in competition with the memories become less recallable.”- Robert Bjork

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We should input less and output more.”- Robert Bjork

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Test yourself; retrieval practice

Low-stakes or no-stakes testing is key to optimizing learning.”- Robert Bjork

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“When I say they become inaccessible, they are absolutely not gone.”- Robert Bjork

Interleaving

“In all those real-world situation where there's several related tasks or components to be learned, the tendency is to provide instruction in a block test. It seems to make sense to work on one thing at a time.”- Robert Bjork

“We are finding that interleaving leads to much better long-term retention. It slows the gain in performance during the training process but, then leads to much better long-term performance.”- Robert Bjork

“Forgetting is not entirely a negative process. There are a number of senses in which forgetting can be a good thing.”- Robert Bjork

“The very same people who just performed better, substantially, with interleaving, almost uniformly said that blocking helped them learn better.”- Robert Bjork

Desirable difficulties

They're difficulties in the sense that they pose challenges (increased frequency of errors) but they're desirable in that they foster the very goals of instruction (long-term retention and transfer of knowledge into new situations).

  1. Interleaving vs blocking
  2. Varying the conditions of learning and the examples you provide rather than keeping them constant
  3. Spacing vs massing (cramming)

“The word desirable is key. There's a lot of ways to make things difficult that are bad.”- Robert Bjork

The generation effect

Any time you can take advantage of what your students already know and give them certain cues so that they produce an answer, rather than you giving them an answer, you greatly enhance their long-term retention.”- Robert Bjork

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Incorporating generation is a desirable difficulty but people have to succeed at the generation. If they fail, it is no longer a desirable difficulty.”- Robert Bjork

Errors are a key component of effective learning.”- Robert Bjork

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Successful forgetting

  • Memory relies on being in the same situation
  • Present it in a different context, produces longer-term learning
  • Encode the information differently; encoding variability
  • Retrieval is powerful, but depends on success to make it so

Many things are involved in remembering people's names.” – Robert Bjork

Self regulated learning

The key is for us all to learn how to learn more effectively.”- Robert Bjork

tihe-quote3

As a consequence of our complex and rapidly changing world and also changes in technology and educational environments, more and more learning is happening outside any formal classroom setting. It's in our own hands.”

  • Across a lifetime

Recommendations

Bonni recommends:

GoCognitive’s Robert Bjork videos on YouTube

Bob recommends:

Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning

Several books on research on learning

  • Make it stick: the science of successful learning

 

  • How we learn: The surprising truth about when, where, and why it happens

  • What if everything you knew about education was wrong?

Closing notes

  1. Rate/review the show. Please consider rating or leaving a review for the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast on whatever service you use to listen to it on (iTunes, Stitcher, etc.). It is the best way to help others discover the show.
  2. Give feedback. As always, I welcome suggestions for future topics or guests.
  3. Subscribe. If you have yet to subscribe to the weekly update, you can receive a single email each week with the show notes (including all the links we talk about on the episode), as well as an article on either teaching or productivity.

Tagged With: learning, memory, podcast

Flipped out

with Derek Bruff

| October 22, 2015 | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

Derek Bruff gives his unique take on the flipped classroom… what to have the students do before they enter the classroom and what to do once they get there.

flipped-out

PODCAST NOTES

Guest:

Dr. Derek Bruff

On Twitter

His blog

  • Ph.D., Mathematics, Vanderbilt University, 2003
  • Director, Center for Teaching, Vanderbilt University, November 2011 to present
  • Bruff, D. (2015). An indirect journey to indirect impact: From math major to teaching center director. In Rogers, K., & Croxall, B. (Eds.), #Alt-Academy. Online: MediaCommons

The flipped classroom

Shin, H. (2015) ‘Flipping the Flipped Classroom: The Beauty of Spontaneous and Instantaneous Close Reading’, The National Teaching & Learning Forum, 24(4), pp. 1–4. doi: 10.1002/ntlf.30027.

What are the experiences and activities we want to have our students engage in that will help them make sense of this material and have them do something interesting with it?” – Derek Bruff

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Eric Mazur – learning as a 2 stage process

  1. Transfer of information (during class)
  2. Assimilation of that information by the students (outside the classroom)

A definition

  • A shift in time to that process
  • Class time spent on the assimilation process

The classic flipped classroom

  • Students encounter the info before class
  • Come to class already having exposure
  • Practice and feedback

Flipped Classroom resources

Vanderbilt flipping the classroom

FlippedClassroom.org

The Learning process

If students aren’t doing the pre-work before they come to class, the time together isn’t going to be well-served.” – Derek Bruff

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Concerns that the flipped classroom is doubling the work for the students.

First exposure

Effective Grading, by Barbara Walvoord

Schwartz, Daniel L. and Bransford, John D.(1998)'A Time For Telling',Cognition and Instruction,16:4,475 — 522

Diet coke and Mentos experiment

This video is just an example of the Mentos/Diet Coke experiment; it isn't Derek's daughter

Creating times for telling

Students first need to encounter a problem, or a challenge, or something mysterious… and then that provides motivation to hear the 15 minute [explanation].” – Derek Bruff

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  • Linear algebra course
  • Look at the board game Monopoly. What are the best places to buy on the board?
  • Markov chain modeling

Classes should do hands-on exercises before reading and video, Stanford researchers say. (2013, July 16). Retrieved 21 October 2015, from http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/july/flipped-learning-model-071613.html

Even when you have defaults [in your teaching], you want to have good defaults…” – Derek Bruff

tihe71-quote2

Peter Newbury on Teaching in Higher Ed talks about Peer Instruction

RECOMMENDATIONS

Bonni recommends:

  • Pictures as a means for reminders

Derek recommends:

  • The adventures of Babage and Lovelace

Not yet-ness

with Amy Collier

| October 15, 2015 | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

Amy Collier joins me to talk about not yet-ness, geekiness, Jazzercise, Stevie Ray Vaughan, teaching, and learning.

not-yet-ness

Podcast notes

Guest: Dr. Amy Collier

  • Amy's blog
  • Connect with Amy on Twitter

Amy admits to some shenanigans

Stevie Ray Vaughan sings Mary Had a Little Lamb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cGphy7XeZk

The great thing about Lego is that it gives kids these tools and they don't have to be built a certain way.” – Amy Collier

Vaughn builds Lego with instructions

Vaughn builds Lego without instructions

Thoughts on education and teaching

You can work with students to do something related to what you're talking about in class, but they can find creative ways to do things you might not have predicted.” – Amy Collier

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…finding out what drives them, keeps them coming back, and helping them find their own voice – that's what education is about. That's where I find the most joy.”

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  • Not Yet-Ness
  • Amy's post on Not Yet-Ness
  • Jen Ross
  • Creating conditions for emergence
  • Living in that not yet-ness…

When you embrace not yet-ness, you are creating space for things to continue to evolve.” – Amy Collier

tihe70-quote1

By not creating space for those things, we end up creating a more mechanistic approach to education, rather than something that feels more human and more responsive to our humanity.” – Amy Collier

tihe70-quote2

Multidisciplinary examples

  • Domain of One's Own
  • They have this flexible interface while also connecting to a community
  • Messiness

How do we evolve the ways in which we understand what learning is?” – Amy Collier

tihe70-quote4

More conversation is needed

Amy invites us to consider for which students not yet-ness works best and for which students might it cause some kind of disequilibrium that will cause them not to be successful in their educational experience?

More on not yet-ness

  • Audrey Watters: Privileged Voices in Education
  • Embodiment

Recommendations

Bonni recommends:

Doug McKee's advice: “Your job is to move them one step along a path. You can do that job no matter where they are when they enter your class.”

Amy recommends:

Anne Lammot

“These are the words I want on my gravestone: that I was a helper, and that I danced.” – Anne Lammot

We are human and our dance is one of the things that we bring to a human interaction.” – Amy Collier

tihe70-quote3

Closing notes

  1. Rate/review the show. Please consider rating or leaving a review for the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast on whatever service you use to listen to it on (iTunes, Stitcher, etc.). It is the best way to help others discover the show.
  2. Give feedback. As always, I welcome suggestions for future topics or guests.
  3. Subscribe. If you have yet to subscribe to the weekly update, you can receive a single email each week with the show notes (including all the links we talk about on the episode), as well as an article on either teaching or productivity.

Tagged With: podcast

Correcting mental models

with Meg Urry

| October 8, 2015 | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

Meg Urry shares approaches we can use to help our students correct inaccurate mental models and grasp complex information.

Correcting mental models

 

PODCAST NOTES:

Correcting inaccurate mental models

  • Guest: Dr. Meg Urry
  • Connect with Meg on Twitter

Interest in science

At some moment it clicked and I understood what it meant. Not only was that the moment that I started to like physics, but also the moment I realized everybody can learn physics if they get this key that unlocks the door. You don’t want to leave them in the same state that I was in… of wondering why the heck we’re doing this… You want people to get over that hump and suddenly see that this is really simple, straightforward, beautiful, and useful.” – Meg Urry

tihe69-quote8

Gender discrimination in the sciences

“It was very typical for me to be one of the only women in the class and the guys just sort of took over.” – Meg Urry

“I always assumed that if someone claimed authority about something, that they must, indeed, know about it. It turns out lots of people do that all the time.” – Meg Urry

“When I entered graduate school in 1977 at John Hopkins university, it had allowed women in as undergraduates only since 1970.” – Meg Urry

It hasn’t been easy [for women].” – Meg Urry

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People who feel different than the norm (who feel outside the tribe) have a harder time learning.” – Meg Urry

tihe69-quote6

Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students

Moss-Racusin, C. A., Dovidio, J. F., Brescoll, V. L., Graham, M. J. and Handelsman, J. (2012) ‘Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(41), p. 16474. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1211286109.
(Moss-Racusin et al., 2012)

Despite efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender disparity persists within academic science. Abundant research has demonstrated gender bias in many demographic groups, but has yet to experimentally investigate whether science faculty exhibit a bias against female students that could contribute to the gender disparity in academic science. In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent. We also assessed faculty participants’ preexisting subtle bias against women using a standard instrument and found that preexisting subtle bias against women played a moderating role, such that subtle bias against women was associated with less support for the female student, but was unrelated to reactions to the male student. These results suggest that interventions addressing faculty gender bias might advance the goal of increasing the participation of women in science.”(Moss-Racusin et al., 2012)

“Both the women and the men made this gender-biased judgment.” – Meg Urry

Early lessons in teaching

“I didn’t realize how hard these students were working.” – Meg Urry

The first year, I did straight lecture intro to physics, but, I realized something was missing.” – Meg Urry

tihe69-quote5

  • Video of Eric Mazur sharing his teaching approaches
  • Article about Eric Mazur: Twilight of the lecture
  • Mazur Group
  • Making large classes interactive with Dr. Chrissy Spencer

“You listen to what the groups are saying and you can tell from that what their misperceptions are…” – Meg Urry

What they need to do is to explain it to someone else, because that is how they will come to understand it better.” – Meg Urry

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Learning catalytics

More ways to teach complexity

They’re not going to get there by you talking at them. It just doesn’t work.” – Meg Urry

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Real learning takes time. We often don’t allow students the time they need to get there.” – Meg Urry

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“You can only get them to understand stuff when they have had to think about it and reject some possible alternatives.” – Meg Urry

  • Bonni’s blog about showing the “not” in the learning

Trying to tell students things, before they were in a state to listen.

“You have to make them care about what you’re saying before you say it, or they’re not going to hear you.” – Meg Urry

That moment when they don’t know what to do is a perfect teaching moment.” – Meg Urry

tihe69-quote1

Tool: How to solve problems

Meg's prescriptive checklist for solving problems

  • Always share a picture of what you’re trying to solve.
  • Figure out the principle of what you’re trying to solve.
  • Etc.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Bonni recommends:

  • David Wilcox's: Leave it like it is

IMG_0118

 

Meg recommends:

  • The Only Woman in the Room

“This book is a gift to any person who is a minority in science.”

Closing notes

  1. Rate/review the show. Please consider rating or leaving a review for the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast on whatever service you use to listen to it on (iTunes, Stitcher, etc.). It is the best way to help others discover the show.
  2. Give feedback. As always, I welcome suggestions for future topics or guests.
  3. Subscribe. If you have yet to subscribe to the weekly update, you can receive a single email each week with the show notes (including all the links we talk about on the episode), as well as an article on either teaching or productivity.

Tagged With: STEM

Grading exams with integrity

with Dave Stachowiak

| October 1, 2015 | XFacebookLinkedInEmail

Bonni and Dave Stachowiak share about ways to reduce the potential for introducing bias while grading exams.

PODCAST NOTES

Grading exams with Integrity

In today's episode, Dave Stachowiak and I share about ways to reduce the potential for introducing bias while grading exams.

Risks of bias in grading exams

  • Halo effect
  • Exam-based halo effect
  • Inflating favorite students' grades
  • Vikram David Amar calls “expectations effect”
  • Exhaustion factor

Techniques to reduce potential bias

  • Blind grading (sticky notes, LMS-based, etc.)
  • Grade by question, not exam
  • Inner-rater reliability practices
  • Block time for grading during peak energy hours
  • Be transparent and over-communicate your practices and rationale
  • *** Re-grade the earlier exams, to avoid what Dave spoke about…

Recommendations

Bonni recommends:

Asking your students what they want to listen to before class

Coming Home, by Leon Bridges

Dave recommends:

Coaching for Leaders episode #211: How to be productive and present

Closing notes

  1. Rate/review the show. Please consider rating or leaving a review for the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast on whatever service you use to listen to it on (iTunes, Stitcher, etc.). It is the best way to help others discover the show.
  2. Give feedback. As always, I welcome suggestions for future topics or guests.
  3. Subscribe. If you have yet to subscribe to the weekly update, you can receive a single email each week with the show notes (including all the links we talk about on the episode), as well as an article on either teaching or productivity.
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