Session 1

Introduction

Questions:

1. How is learning defined here? Does this definition differ from your own definition of learning? If so, how?
2. The authors identify seven principles of learning. Which of these do you find most surprising or intriguing? Do any strike you as counter-intuitive?

Chapter 1: How Does Students’ Prior Knowledge Affect Their Learning?

Questions:

1. Have you ever assessed students’ prior knowledge? If so, how? Was this information surprising? Useful? Did your teaching plan or approach change as a result of your findings?
2. The authors recognize that activating prior knowledge might reveal insufficient, inappropriate, or inaccurate prior knowledge. How have you addressed such problems when they have been revealed? What suggested strategies do you think might be most useful?

Chapter 1 addresses Learning Principle 1 – Students’ prior knowledge can help or hinder learning. It stresses the need for assessing students prior knowledge both as a way to activate it as well as a way to identify the challenges of accurate but insufficient prior knowledge, inaccurate prior knowledge, and inappropriate prior knowledge – that is, prior knowledge that is not inaccurate, but can “skew comprehension of new material” (p. 20), such as common definitions for terms with technical meanings in the learning context.

To address these concerns, the text suggests a number of strategies.

Methods to Gauge the Extent and Nature of Students’ Prior Knowledge:

1. Talk to colleagues who teach prerequisite courses
2. Administer a diagnostic assessment
3. Have students assess their own prior knowledge (most of us felt this would not be a good indicator)
4. Use brainstorming to reveal prior knowledge
5. Assign a concept map activity (we talked about this, took a look at Appendix B of the text, and also found a concept map software site
6. Look for patterns of error in student work

We additionally look at Student Engagement Technique 1 from Barkley’s Student Engagement Techniques – Background Knowledge Probe – where students are asked open-ended or short-answer questions on certain points to be taught and then share their answers in pairs or small groups. This might also be modified by having students share answers as a class, sort of blending suggestions 2 and 4 above.

Methods to Activate Accurate Prior Knowledge

1. Use exercises to generate students’ prior knowledge (this is essentially done through assessment)
2. Explicitly link new material to knowledge from previous courses
3. Explicitly link new material to prior knowledge from your own course
4. Use analogies and examples that connect to students’ everyday knowledge
5. Ask students to reason on the basis of relevant prior knowledge

Methods to Address Insufficient Prior Knowledge

1. Identify the prior knowledge you expect students to have
2. Remediate insufficient  prerequisite knowledge

Methods to Help Students Recognize Inappropriate Prior Knowledge

1. Highlight conditions of applicability
2. Provide heuristics to help students avoid inappropriate application of knowledge
3. Explicitly identify discipline-specific conventions
4. Show where analogies break down

Methods to Correct Inaccurate Knowledge

1. Ask students to make and test predictions
2. Ask students to justify their reasoning (though I just read an article in the NY Times that said explaining, and not justifying, reveals knowledge gaps – though the article was about politics!)
3. Provide multiple opportunities for students to use accurate knowledge
4. Allow sufficient time to use new knowledge

Next Steps

Try out a suggested strategy and report back to the group. We also ask faculty to please read Chapter 2 for next time.

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Session 2

Chapter 2: How Does the Way Students Organize Their Knowledge Affect Their Learning?

Questions:

• According to the authors, what methods can be used to reveal how students’ organize their knowledge?
• How does the knowledge organization of experts differ from that of novices?

In Chapter 2, Learning Principle 2 is addressed, i.e., that how student organize knowledge influences how they learn and apply what they know. When it comes to knowledge organization, form fits function and there is a wide gap between the ways in which experts and novices organize knowledge.

The text suggests “ways for instructors to assess their own knowledge organizations relative to students’ and help students develop more connected, meaningful, and flexible ways of organizing their knowledge” (59).

Strategies to Reveal and Enhance Knowledge Organizations

1. Create a concept map to organize your own knowledge organization (this reminded me of our winter workshop a while back with Joan Middendorf on Decoding the Disciplines)
2. Analyze tasks to identify the most appropriate knowledge organization
3. Provide students with the organizational structure of the course
4. Explicitly share the organization of each lecture, lab or discussion
5. Use contrasting and boundary cases to highlight organizing features
6. Explicitly highlight deep features
7. Make connections among concepts explicit
8. Encourage students to work with multiple organizing structures
9. Asks students to draw a concept map to expose their knowledge organizations
10. Use a sorting task to expose students’ knowledge organizations
11. Monitor students’ work for problems in their knowledge organization

We additionally look at Student Engagement Technique 8  – Classify – from Barkley’s Student Engagement Techniques, where students are asked to classify objects representative of a particular category of information.

Mary Dawson suggested that we check out POGIL: Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning.

Next Steps

Try out a suggested strategy and report back to the group. We also ask faculty to please read Chapter 3 for next time.

Session 3

Chapter 3: What Factors Motivate Students to Learn?

Questions:

• Chapter 3 discusses motivation and Figure 3.2 on p. 80 displays the interactive effects of environment, efficacy, and value on motivation.  What conclusion(s) can you make as a result of considering this figure?
• How does the information in this chapter speak to or help you better interpret your own students’ behaviors?
• What suggested strategies for increasing motivation do you think you might be willing to implement and why?

Learning Principle 3 states that “students’ motivation generates, directs, and sustains what they do to learn” and defines motivation as “the personal investment an individual has in reaching a desired state or outcome” (68-69).

Motivation is seen as being fed by students’ subjective value of a goal and their expectancies of achievement.

A number of types of goals were identified: performance, learning, work avoidant, social, and affective, with the most effective being learning goals. Research also should that multiple goals contribute to motivation, although goals may sometimes be conflicting – in which case values help resolve goal conflicts. Three types of values were discussed: attainment, intrinsic, and instrumental, and a combination of values can be potentially reinforcing.

Expectancies of achievement that contribute to motivation include positive outcome and efficacy expectancies, and these are determined by prior experience, but an even more powerful influence on motivation than prior success is the reasons for success. That is, internal reasons for success are more motivating that external reasons for success.  In addition, if expectancies are low, the problem may be viewed as fixed, and not malleable.

Motivation also depends upon a supportive environment, though if value is low, environment and even expectancies have little impact.

Strategies to Establish Value

1. Connect the material to students’ interests
2. Provide authentic, real-world tasks
3. Show relevance to students’ current academic lives
4. Demonstrate the relevance of higher-level skills to students’ professional lives
5. Identify and reward what you value
6. Show your own passion and enthusiasm for the discipline

Strategies That Help Students Build Positive Expectancies

1. Ensure alignment of objectives, assessments, and instructional strategies
2. Identify an appropriate level of challenge
3. Create assignments that provide the appropriate level of challenge
4. Provide early success opportunities
5. Articular your expectations
6. Provide rubrics
7. Provide targeted feedback
8. Be fair
9. Educate students about the ways we explain success and failure
10. Describe effective study strategies

Strategies That Address Value and Expectancies

1. Provide flexibility and control
2. Give students an opportunity to reflect

Next Steps

Carol Dweck talks about students notions of “fixed” mindsets as decreasing motivation in “Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets (thanks to Mary Dawson for contributing this!). Here is the PERTS Growth Mindset Syllabus with embedded links. Again, please try out some strategies and report back to the group. And please read Chapter 4 for Session 4.

Session 4

Chapter 4: How Do Students Develop Mastery?

Questions:

• The acquisition of key component skills
• Practice in integrating them effectively
• Knowledge of when to apply what they have learned

Strategies to Expose and Reinforce Component Skills

1. Push past your own expert blind spot. (Again Decoding the Disciplines comes to mind – see video on Decoding the Disciplines and Threshold Concepts.)
2. Enlist a teaching assistant to help with task decomposition
3. Talk to your colleagues
4. Enlist the help of someone outside your discipline
5. Explore available educational materials
6. Focus students’ attention on key aspects of the task
7. Diagnose weak or missing component skills
8. provide isolated practice of weak or missing skills

Strategies to Facilitate Transfer

1. Discuss conditions of applicability
2. Give students opportunities to apply skills or knowledge in diverse contexts
3. Ask students to generalize to larger principles
4. Use comparisons to help students identify deep features
5. Specify context and ask students to identify relevant skills or knowledge
6. Specify skills or knowledge and ask students to identify contexts in which they apply
7. Provide prompts of relevant knowledge

In the Spring we will talk about strategies for helping students achieve mastery that you have tried out, and we will discuss Chapters 5-7 and the Conclusion.