The Language of the Field

On October 11, 2018October 11, 2018 By teachingcyborgIn Education Reform, Pedagogy, Textbook2 Comments

“All I know is what I have words for.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein

There are many components to a bachelor’s degree, part of the goal of the degree is to give students a wide range of skills and knowledge. The single largest component of the degree is the disciplinary component. While there is often overlap in basic skills in addition to the content knowledge of the field students learn how to think, analyze information, and communicate in and outside their field.

Throughout four (sometimes more) years that a bachelor’s degree takes students to build their skills. Over the last decade or two, there has been a significant focus on the teaching of higher order thinking skills. Whether or not this focus on higher order thinking skills has been successful, I think, like many things we have embraced higher order thinking skills without a lot of thought, this focus on higher order thinking skills above everything is causing damage to our educational process.

While I agree that the introduction of higher order thinking skills can and should as early as possible, it is critical to realize that higher order skills don’t work independently of the so-called lower order thinking skills. I remember consulting with an instructor that was having trouble with his student’s test performance; his students were performing significantly lower than students in other classes. He brought in a couple of tests for me to look at, one of my first questions was what are your goals. He said he was focusing on higher order thinking skills.

His tests had some of the most thoughtfully written questions I had seen. It was composed almost exclusively of open-ended and long answer word problems. Even though the questions were excellent, I immediately had an idea of what the problem was. Most of the questions relied heavily on discipline-specific language. Since he was teaching a lower division course, I asked if he is sure that his students understood the meaning of the words he was using, after a little discussion he realized he was assuming information about his students that he didn’t know.

After making some changes and including some content about language his student’s scores improved, which shows its essential to keep all skills in mind. I have never liked the idea of defining skills as lower level and higher level. I think these skills are more of a gradient than levels. Additionally, characterizing them as lower level and higher level suggests a hierarchy of importance that is not true. The skills we are teaching in a course should be dependent on the goals of that course not some external evaluation about the “best” skills. However, that is probably a discussion for another day.

Continuing with the devaluation of “lower order thinking skills” I have been thinking about how this might be affecting textbooks. In many fields, textbooks are used extensively in the introductory courses. One of the most important things that take place in these introductory courses is teaching the students the language of their field. Since learning the language of a field is the main component of introductory classes textbooks should support learning the discipline language.

I have been looking at several textbooks lately especially open source textbooks, and I think I have started to see a problem. Imagine you are a student working on a homework assignment, and you come across a word you don’t know or remember. Yes, today I know it is likely that a student will Google it. Let’s suppose instead they go to their textbook; how do they look up the word. The student could look it up in the glossary.

Surprisingly this could be a problem; if you go to the back of many textbooks, you will find there isn’t a glossary in the back. It turns out that many of the new books both open source and some commercial are designed to be customized. You only choose the parts of the book that fit your course if, and I do mean if, the textbook has a glossary it has probably been divided into small sections and placed at the end of every chapter.

So how are you our student supposed to find the word you are trying to look up. Since you can’t remember what the word means, in which section do you look? You probably start with the most recent section you read if it’s not there well then, I guess you look through the entire book till you find the definition.

While we are currently trying to solve many problems with textbooks, cost, compatibility with curriculum, and accessibility we need to be sure we don’t introduce new problems by not paying attention to what we are doing. Students are not going to want to use textbooks that are difficult to use. While many of the problems go away with the use of digital textbooks, isn’t the search function simply fantastic, we need to design textbooks for both digital and print.

While I understand the idea of designing textbooks so that you can pick and choose which parts you want to use splitting up the glossary confuses me. It should be relatively apparent that separating the glossary into a lot of separate section through the whole book makes the glossary harder to use. I wonder if this glossary design is because book designers think lower order thinking skills like memorizing definitions is unimportant.

Independent of the reason for this separate glossary model what is wrong with having a single glossary in the back of the book? Why does it matter if the glossary has words in it that don’t appear in the text? A single glossary in one place (I don’t care if it’s in the back) is much more usable than a scattered one.

I suppose if you think have extra words in a glossary is a problem the glossary could be laid out in a separate section like in an appendix. We could label glossary sections by chapter and page, and each would be a separate section. For example, G.12.2 would be the glossary for the 12th chapter second page. Then you could leave out the unused parts of the glossary.

While a glossary organized by chapters might still require some searching by a student (if they don’t know what chapter a word they are looking for comes from), they would at least know where in the book to look. Of course, I suppose if we are talking about Open Source textbooks we could edit the glossary and remove the extra words.

Lastly, if you think that a divided glossary is the best thing to do there is one other potential solution. That solution would be to include all the words in the glossaries in the index. Listing the glossary words in the index would give the students a single place they could look to find the definitions.

As we design the next generation of textbooks and learning materials we always need to remember that the most critical design consideration needs to be usability.

Thanks for Listening to My Musings

The Teaching Cyborg

Shh I’m hunting (for) Digital Natives

On October 4, 2018October 4, 2018 By teachingcyborgIn Ed Tech, PedagogyLeave a comment

“Technology has become as ubiquitous as the air we breathe, so we are no longer conscious of its presence.”
Godfrey Reggio

Elmer Fudd holding finger to lips while hunting

Anyone that has worked in educational technology knows that there is often a lot of pushback when you try and introduce new technology to the classroom. In some cases, pushback and questioning are good. It is always beneficial to think critically about all aspects of education after all the goal is to provide the best educational experience we can.

However, I have repeatedly encountered pushback from faculty that is not about whether a piece of technology is beneficial to teaching. In these cases, the faculty says things like “I don’t want to use this (technology) because my students understand it better than I do.” This attitude comes directly out of the idea of the Digital Native.

Marc Prensky coined the term Digital Natives in Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants in 2001. Since then the idea of the Digital Native has been an almost a central theme in education spawning terms like Homo zappiëns and iGeneration and the notion that we need to redesign education because of the new abilities and skills these “new” humans have.

This belief in “new” humans has directly led to the fear that students know more about technology than their teachers. I’m a biologist, and I have some questions about Digital Natives and their new skills and abilities. Where did these new abilities come from are they magical? I’ve even had people tell me it is the processes of evolution.

The idea of evolution and Digital Natives generates a teachable moment. First, evolution is a slow process substantial changes are the result of many small changes over lots of generations. Two, evolution is selective it is a process that plays on the parents. For the appearance of Digital Natives to have been evolution, the parents would have to be Digital Natives, and being a Digital Natives would have had to confer an advantage in reproduction. There are several other points I can make, but I think it is safe to say that these new skills are not the product of evolution.

There is another possibility for the creation of Digital Natives the development of the brain. A lot of neural development occurs in young children and according to some physiological studies continues at a high degree until around 25. So maybe exposure to lots of technology from a young age leads to a difference in how the brain learns to work. Fortunately for us, researchers have started looking at Digital Natives and their skills.

The research into Digital Natives is uncovering the same thing that I have experienced in my work. The research results and my experience show that as far as having lots of computer/technologies skills and the ability to multi-task Digital Natives don’t exist. One of my favorite comments about digital natives comes from a review paper The myths of the digital natives and the multitasker by Paul Kirschner and Pedro De Bruyckere “Many teachers, educational administrators, and politicians/policymakers believe in the existence of yeti-like creatures populating present-day schools namely digital natives and human multitaskers.”

In addition to a catchy phrase, the editorials section of Nature references it as “The digital native is a myth, it claims: a yeti with a smartphone,” Kirschner and Bruyckere make some crucial points. First, when Prensky first coined the term Digital Natives, this was not based on any controlled research merely an observation about children born after the widespread adoption of mobile devices and how they interacted with them. Because of these observations, he proposed several skills and abilities that these individuals would have as they grew up.

We are now collecting information about the Digital Natives, and the research is showing that while these students use a lot of mobile technology for communication and socializing, they don’t have a deep understanding of the technology. I have often served as escalated tech support (especially for things I have built or helped to develop), many of the students I have worked with are from the generation of Digital Natives. Since so many people talked about the Digital Natives I think to some degree I even believed in the Digital Native.

When helping students, I quickly discovered that many of these students could not do any form of troubleshooting on their own. If the button didn’t seem to do what they wanted, the students didn’t know what to do next. In one of the programs which involved fully online students, I would always start my troubleshooting with the question “What operating system are you using?” Some of the answers I got were “I don’t know the computer says Toshiba.”, “I think I’m using Firefox.”, “how would I tell?” and these were not one-offs I got these answers a lot.

Beyond in-depth technical knowledge, Kirschner and Bruyckere also discuss the student’s ability to utilize the internet. Looking at the papers Information behavior of the researcher of the future: Work Package II and The Google generation: The information behavior of the researcher of the future the researchers conclude that students of the Digital Native generation have pore information retrieval skills. Specifically, the students have limited ability to deeply dive into information and often fail in critical thinking and evaluation of the information they do retrieve.

One of the most significant points of the internet and Web 2.0 and beyond was that we had reached a point where we were not just consumers of information but creators as well. While there still needs to be more research, it also appears that Digital Natives are mostly passive consumers of information and not the general creators we assumed they would be.

All this information suggests that the idea that we should be scared to incorporate technology into our classrooms because the students know tech better than we do is a fallacy. Closely related to this, the idea that we need to redefine and redesign the classroom because it is no longer suited to the skills and abilities of our students is also a fallacy.

As I have said, technology can be a huge benefit to the classroom. Technology can be a massive equalizer in education. However, we need to incorporate technology into the classroom based on educational pedagogy and as the solution to actual, not yeti-like, problems. I do think we need to make some changes to education based on our modern technological world. We should be teaching our students how to determine the value and validity of information sources on the internet. If they are going to live in a technological world, we should teach them problem-solving skills, so they know what to do when the button does not do what they want. We should be teaching communication skills, so they can make sure their thoughts and ideas get communicated. Specifically, we should use good educational practices when we design our courses and programs, not yeti footprints.

Thanks for Listing to my Musings

The teaching Cyborg

Abracadabra: Your number is 7 Sort of or is it?

On August 30, 2018August 30, 2018 By teachingcyborgIn Pedagogy, Research2 Comments

“Science is magic that works.”
Kurt Vonnegut

In 1956 George A Miller’s paper “The Magical Number Seven Plus Or Minus 2 Some Limits On Our Capacity For Processing Information” was published in Psychological Review. This paper would go on to be one of the most cited psychology papers. The article starts with Miller talking about being persecuted by a number.

My problem is that I have been persecuted by an integer. For seven years this number has followed me around, has intruded in my most private data, and has assaulted me from the pages of our most public journals. This number assumes a variety of disguises, being sometimes a little larger and sometimes a little smaller than usual, but never changing so much as to be unrecognizable. The persistence with which this number plagues me is far more than a random accident. There is, to quote a famous senator, a design behind it, some pattern governing its appearances. Either there really is something unusual about the number or else I am suffering from delusions of persecution.

George A. Miller

This paper has to do with the similarity in a person’s performance on one-dimensional judgment tasks and memory span. In one-dimensional judgment tasks, individuals are asked to discriminate between items that differ only by one characteristic. The frequency or loudness of a tone or the saltiness of a solution. While there are some variations in different types of items individuals can distinguish about seven (plus or minus) different objects correctly. Memory span is the maximum number of things a person can recite back correctly immediately after being exposed (hearing, feeling, or seeing) to them. Again, the memory span is about seven. The similarity of these two items led to the obvious question, are they related? Was there something magical about the number seven, especially as Miller says since we see seven everywhere.

What about the magical number seven? What about the seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, the seven deadly sins, the seven daughters of Atlas in the Pleiades, the seven ages of man, the seven levels of hell, the seven primary colors, the seven notes of the musical scale, and the seven days of the week? What about the seven-point rating scale, the seven categories for absolute judgment, the seven objects in the span of attention, and the seven digits in the span of immediate memory? For the present, I propose to withhold judgment. Perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens, something just calling out for us to discover it. But I suspect that it is only a pernicious, Pythagorean coincidence.

George A. Miller

You may ask “why do we even care”? I first heard about the magic number in a teaching workshop years ago. Where it was being used to define the number of things you could present in a lecture. However, from a practical point of view, we care about memory span because it is a component of short-term memory and working memory. In education to “learn something,” the information needs to move into long-term memory. Information can’t reach long-term memory without passing through short-term memory. Working memory interacts with both short-term and long-term memory since working memory is the place where we do things with information; compute, analyze, and modify information.

The process of conversion to long-term from short-term memory requires reinforcement of the neural pathways, which is accomplished by repetition or reloading of the information into short-term memory. Repetition and reloading of information is where the capacity limit becomes essential. If we are teaching and we keep bumping information out or filling the short-term memory than the new information cannot be reloaded and reinforced.

In Miller’s law capacity is 7 + or -2 or 5 to 9 chunks. So, if we use this as part of a lesson plan do we teach five or seven or nine new things? I would argue the answer should be the lowest number since that gives the best chance for all the students to learn. Some people say we should teach seven or nine because that lets us identify the “best” students. I think this is incorrect because it fails to acknowledge one of the fundamental differences between short-term and long-term memory. Short-term memory has a capacity limit while long-term memory does not. So as long as there’s sufficient reinforcement every student in the class can learn (transfer to long-term memory) all the information regardless of what their memory span is.

Now I’m going to drop the other shoe the magic number seven was published 62 years ago it was a review of the research as it stood at that time. In 2010 Cowan published a new review titled “The magic mystery four: how is working memory capacity limited and why.” In this paper, Cowan goes on to show how research since Miller’s work has demonstrated chunking and multivariable decision-making shows a wide range of capacity limits that seem to be dependent on the type of information. However, working memory does seem to have restrictions, and moreover, these limits can be used to predict mistakes and failures in information processing. This limit on working memory is 3 – 5 or 4 + or -1.

I like this number a lot better, why? Not because of any research. The reason is that of course design. If I use the argument from earlier, I would “teach” three new concepts at a time. It’s that number “three” that makes me like the research better. Instead of saying I’m pursued and persecuted by a number, perhaps I will say three has been my companion.

A story has three parts, the beginning, middle, and the end. When I write a proposal, I include three goals. The three primary colors in the RGB spectrum. I know these are just coincidences there’s no real meaning behind it. I also suspect if I’m aware of it and willing to think logically when the need is there, there is no actual harm in my companionable number three, for the time being at least I have some research to back me up.

How much do “magic” numbers influence course design? How much should they change course design? In the teaching is an art or science debate I’m on the science side, so I like research. What are you? The critical thing about Miller’s review is that he eventually concluded that the capacities of memory span and one-dimensional judgment were, in fact, nothing more than a coincidence, memory span is still essential to course design.

Thanks for listening to my musings

The teaching cyborg

Why I Use Models

On August 9, 2018August 9, 2018 By teachingcyborgIn Pedagogy1 Comment

“We all have mental models: the lens through which we see the world that drive our responses to everything we experience. Being aware of your mental models is key to being objective.”
Elizabeth Thornton

I like using models when designing courses and instructional interventions. When I say models, I mean a structured guide that help you build or develop components of a class. In general, I just like models, I generally believe the ability to create a model is strong evidence that not only do you have a deep understanding of the subject, but you can tell a complete story. Educational models have been around for a long time, The Socratic Method anyone? You could even say the Rosetta Stone was a model for teaching language. We might not have ever translated some writing without it.

One of the problems with educational models is that there are so many of them and they can be controversial. For example, the number of things written in favor of and opposition to learning styles fills more space than the learning styles themselves. Additionally, there are a lot of learning styles according to Coffield et al. 2004 there are more than 70 learning styles just a partial list is

Neil Fleming’s Visual, Aural, Reading/Writing and Kinesthetics (VARK)
Felder and Silverman’s Index of Learning Styles
David Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory (LSI)
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
Allinson and Hayes Cognitive Style Index (CSI)

I have in fact taught and used the Kolb learning style, and I think it can be helpful if used correctly, “i.e., the way I use it :)” but that is a discussion for another time.

So, with all the mind-numbing options why do I like models? It’s not because I believe there is a single silver bullet model. I don’t believe in the silver bullet, the idea that one thing can solve all our problems. That there is no one-size-fits-all solution to everything in education? Why? The process of teaching and learning is not one discrete whole it is tens, hundreds, thousands of little interacting pieces. Each of these pieces has their own specific needs requirements and issues. Therefore, I use different models for different things, some of the models I use are:

For Rubrics
- Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment in College, 2nd Edition
  Barbara E. Walvoord, Virginia Johnson Anderson
  Nov 2009, Jossey-Bass
Question Design
- Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Handbook I: The Cognitive Domain
  Benjamin Bloom, M.D. Englehart, E.J. Furst, W.H. Hill, David Krathwohl
  1956 Longmans, New York, NY, USA
Syllabus Design
- The Course Syllabus: A Learning-Centered Approach
  Judith Grunert O’Brien and Barbara J. Millis
  March 2008, Jossey-Bass
Per-Per Instruction and Student Response System
- Clickers in the Classroom: How to Enhance Science Teaching Using Classroom Response Systems
  Douglas Duncan
  September 2004, Pearson
Course Design
- Understanding by Design
  Grant P. Wiggins and Jay McTighe
  January 2005, Heinle ELT

I chose these models because they work with my internal model of education. Even when I am working with groups that have different focuses I still like using models. The first thing I like about models is that I am often working on courses that will be taught at multiple locations or by various instructors. Models allow for a consistency that can be reinforced by existing materials.

Consistency across courses, both from year to year and across multiple sections within the same year. Consistency can be especially useful if you have courses with different instructors. Consistency is also helpful internally in a class. Internal consistency frees up working memory for the students. The less students must focus on structure or course layout the more they can focus on content.

Models are also a great way to introduce new instructors to the art and craft of teaching. Models give them guides to follow. Having models for things like syllabi, rubrics, and question writing helps new instructors focus their time and energy on lesson planning and content.

Another advantage of remaining consistent over time is to improve your teaching. When you encounter a problem with your teaching, more specifically your students learning, you’ll want to try and find a way to solve the problem. Even if you’re only doing this for your class, this is educational research which means human research. One of the most challenging things with human research is controlling all the variables. In fact, many people will tell you it’s impossible to control for every single variable. Using models to support the design of your course means that your courses are going to be consistent from year to year and you can have a greater belief that the interventions you created made the difference in the student learning.

What do you think about models? Do you use models? What models do you use?

Thanks for listening to my musings

The Teaching Cyborg