Category: Week 5 – Engaging the Imaginations of Digital Learners

Before I found my way back to the academe, I worked as a programmer and systems analyst. One of the fond memories I have of that “era” was being invited to my daughter’s school for a sort of show-and-tell about what I did at work. At this time, I was rarely home; these kids barely knew who I was, and the last thing I wanted to do was to embarrass my daughter. But how do you explain COBOL programming, data processing, and If-Else structures to 8-year-olds?!?!

Needless to say, the days leading up to my talk were stressful. Suddenly, all the PowerPoint slides that I throw at the newcomers to my team were of no use to me. Thankfully, an idea finally came to me – how it managed to pop into my usually methodical and no-nonsense brain I cannot recall now, but I certainly am glad it came just in time.

I turned to what I though 8-year-olds will find more appealing: playing a game. We did a modified version of “Pass the message,” having the children form two groups and form a line, simulating a computer program. The “Message” is the data input that the child at the head of the line received, and passed on to the child behind him. The “Message” was “processed” by a group of two or three children, following “commands” that were given to them, before passing the processed data to the next group behind them. The “Output” was produced at the end of the line, and the children (thankfully!) had fun looking at how the initial message has changed, and how each group has contributed to that change. When the teacher facilitated a discussion afterwards, it seemed, at least to me, that the children did understand what was going on – and they had fun doing it. My daughter smiled proudly at me. I didn’t embarrass her! My day was complete.

This memory reminded me of how opportunities to learn are present in many different forms, and it does not necessarily mean sitting quietly for hours on end, listening to a teacher, reading books (or PowerPoint slides). Learning is not a solitary activity, and does not consist of receiving information, but constructing knowledge from experience. Which means that playing can give just as much – if not more – opportunities for learning as sitting in a classroom. Mark Carnes talked about active learning, and Jean Lacoste talked about giving students more autonomy and allowing them to take an active part in the learning process; all these point to a shift to a more student-centered paradigm that focuses on creating environments that produce learning, as opposed to simply transferring information.

Mark Carnes wrote an article where he talked about his learning concept called Reacting to the Past. Carnes description of Reacting to the Past is in alignment with the established descriptions of active learning. However, I have found the term –active learning–lacking clarity. So I have started to refer to [what would be] active learning as lived-learning…with the outcome of lived-knowledge. We are more likely to reach students if we can immerse them in the material. One way to do this is to move the stories we teach closer to their realities and their experiences. Let them touch history. Let them change the outcomes outlined in a lesson with contemporary tools. I purchase this approach.

Now, a slight left turn from active learning. Last semester I wrote a paper asking the question Is education the key to a better quality of life. In particular, I wanted to know if college completion would yield an improvement in the areas of labor and shelter. What I found was a significant difference in the success outcomes and these differences were based on race. After running a few comparisons between racial groups, I found that–even with an increasing rate of college completion–markers of success had not improved for Blacks since 1964.

Carnes is concerned with students completing college, and the anecdotes he provided are great examples of how we can re-engage students. In addition to Carnes’ concern, I am concerned about what happens after college. Keeping students interested and engaged is just one step towards preparing them for success in life. There are other hurdles our students will have to overcome, and we can help them by finding ways to address the aforementioned disparities.

I would love to hear your thoughts about lived-learning and success beyond college.

When digital learning and social media usage become new trends in higher education, we start to hear so many good things about digital learning, and we begin to get showed by “Big Data” about how powerful social media is. People start to use digital learning on line to deal with long distance. On-line courses are offered more and more frequently to give both teachers and students time and location flexibilities.

However, according to my personal experiences, on-line courses are not always so effective. I took two on-line courses among my two-year PhD study here. Both of them are offered by great teachers, and they both prepared a lot judging from what they offered on line. The way these two courses have been taught in is similar. Teachers offered video lectures on line with the slides and their voices, they assigned a lot of readings according to different topics, and they set up a weekly due day for the assignments.

But I went through so much trouble when I tried to learn from on-line courses. First, I find it is difficult to gain a clear knowledge structure or thought process after I watched the lecture videos. It was usually the case that I tried so hard to follow the content on each slide, but I couldn’t get a big picture after I watched the whole thing. I agree with Robert Talbert, “modeling thought processes” and “sharing cognitive structures” are two important things in-person lectures offered, which are hard to describe or pursue in the video lecture.

Second, it is hard to make deep impression of knowledge and create engagement using video lecture and discussion section. Lack of context and stories, video lectures can be kind of boring compared to in-person lectures. And the engagement of students dropped a lot when we can’t talk immediately face to face. Using the discussion section seems like a solution to the communication problem, but the talk lack of tone and expression tend to lose some of the original meanings.

Third, it is always unspeakable intension in the on-line course. Since the teachers would like to make sure students put enough effort to the courses, they give more readings and assignments to students comparing to in-person courses. The due time is very strict that students always need to submit a lot of materials at the same time every week. So that due time, that day every week suddenly become nightmares. At least for me, nervousness was always there since I took the due time and assignments as the only chances to prove that I learnt. Even after the submission, new kind of intension began because of the grading, and sometimes an unexpected low score came out and limited reasons would be offered on line. That would be so different if students could talk to teachers to see what happened and what could be improved.

Picture Source: https://meduza.io/feature/2016/05/02/net-tolko-ne-eto-ni-za-chto

In general, I feel that the knowledge gained from the video lectures is like being fed by a puzzle piece of other people’s brain set, which would make you so confusing and nauseous even if you try so hard to swallow it. And the communication difficulty and higher expectation of yourself always make you nervous and shaking, and did worse in on-line courses.

In addition, some students around me also hold weird thoughts that if you choose on-line courses, you are trying to take the easy cut to get credits. I would say that is not the case at all.

Call me old fashion, but I will say do not throw away the in-person lectures. New media can be used in the classroom to help with the in-person lectures, I think that should be a better solution to bring in the benefits of social medias and digital learning. Creative lectures, activities and interactions should always be the core of the course, I call that my “teaching innovation statement”.

 

References

Jean Lacoste. “Jean Lacoste’s Teaching Innovation Statement”. Retrieved from https://canvas.vt.edu/files/2741612/download?download_frd=1

Robert Talbert. (2012). “Four things lecture is good for”.  Retrieved from http://www.chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2012/02/13/four-things-lecture-is-good-for/

When you see a traffic light                                                                                                                                                           There is something you should know                                                                                                                                           Red means stop                                                                                                                                                                                     Yellow means get ready                                                                                                                                                                     Green means go, go, go and go

When I was in nursery, this is the rhyme I was taught. Considering the fact that we had no traffic lights in our town, this might have sounded ridiculous to our parents who could not stop us from reciting it back at home. When I turned 17 years and went to the city and saw the traffic light for the first time, I knew exactly what to do. Of course, I didn’t recite the poem out loud but you bet I recited it all the same. I wasn’t ready to let anyone know I was fresh in the city…Funny enough, when I came to the states where traffic lights are within 100 meters of each other (I hate the main street), I still do recite the poem whenever I get to one…just so you know why my lips are moving when you stop by my car in traffic.

In primary school, there were some subjects that everyone was bound to make an A in. Everyone got an A not because the classes were easy, we did well because the classes involved some form of activity. For Math for instance, every child will go around after school to collect Coca Cola bottle caps. We went in search of these bottle caps in groups and always had fun seeing who will get the most caps. After we have brought them all to the teacher, the teacher distributed the caps as evenly as possible among the students. These are what we used to learn our Addition and Subtraction problems. For instance if we were asked to solve ’13 +12’, we would just count 13 caps to one side, count 12 to another, and then add the two sets of caps to get an answer.

Moving on, I know for sure I’m not the only one who forgot an answer to a question in the examination room only to remember right after submission, sometimes, right outside the door. Whenever I got that happen to me, I will ask myself how I learned that particular thing or how I was taught. I realized that those questions are the ones that I never discussed with my friends. Prior to examinations, my friends and I formed study groups where we discussed questions and their answers. There was no way I missed any of those questions, I always got them right. But those I didn’t discuss, although I had learned them, were always hard to remember.

The point I am trying to make is, the normal straight forward lectures do not always produce the best results. It takes rather unconventional and creative ways to keep students interested in boring lectures. It also takes a lot of interaction between students and peers, and among peers in order to get information across to leaners. The onus lies on both teachers and students to make learning fun….

It’s interesting to know about the currently available schools that educate children differently than the traditional ways. Those students are educated in a way that gives them the opportunity to explore, and provides them with the tools they need to participate and reflect on their everyday life. They are challenged to become more innovative, re-invent, and create, which all requires a great deal of thought and creativity by us, the educators. This can be done by using technology, gaming softwares, social media, watching and uploading videos, hence allowing the students to do well in the global and diverse system. Even though those innovative ways of teaching are becoming more available in certain countries, but they remain a challenge.

The main 3 barriers to education in my opinion are:

1. Awareness

Young students are always using social media for texting, tweeting, posting, gaming, uploading videos, and more which defines who they are through those changes. There are different ways of education that allow students to become more engaged in the teaching and learning process, such as blogging what they learn, or interacting through online discussions. There are many institutions around the world (such as my previous employer) that are not aware of those innovative teaching techniques. They have rules to prevent the usage of technology in classrooms such as mobiles, laptops or other gadgets. They fully support the traditional method of learning which includes borrowing books from the library and taking notes in class. Therefore, awareness in and of itself is an issue that needs to be addressed in institutions worldwide.

2. Acceptance

Introducing different ways of learning does not mean we abandon formal learning techniques. In fact, it only means we diversify that different methods and give students the opportunity to express their opinions on what they believe benefits them the most. Parents have a large role in this perception. They need to understand that these digital media platforms are not distractions from studying anymore, in fact they can be an instant connection to the vast resources on the internet.3. Funding

Finally, funding could be another barrier especially in the poorer locations that cannot afford the technologies and skills required. This is the world we live in and we should accept that there are places where this is easy to achieve, and others that need more support than just continuous advice. From a worldwide perspective, this might not be achieved as fast as we want it to be.

Conclusion

A growing number of researchers and educators are excited about the opportunities facing the new generations, but as long as there are barriers it will be hard to see any improvements. More attention needs to be given to those barriers facing education before we continue to criticize the traditional methods of teaching and learning – it is a battle worth fighting for.

References

New Learners of the 21st Century

 

I really enjoyed all the reading assignments for this week and the video on Digital Media – New Learners of the 21st Century. They have given me a renewed energy on education and learning, a renewed interest in getting involved in the fight against standardization of the educational system towards a system that embraces change and is ultimately centered around the learner.

Through conversations with some of my colleagues, oftentimes what some express as the reasons not to go into academia involve the frustrations with the current state of education and how much it has been influenced by politics and a previous cultural setting to adopt an industrial model. But instead of feeling discouraged by the status quo, we should feel empowered and even more motivated to join “the fight worth fighting” as one educator referred to it in the video. It was very inspiring to see all the educators, from different parts of the country, come up with creative and engaging ways of teaching their subjects. I particularly liked the project Reacting to the Past presented in the article by Mark C. Carnes which teaches history through role playing and allows them to develop it and experience it by themselves. This would certainly equip students with a long-term understanding of the deeper issues instead of being asked to temporarily remember certain facts and dates. The article paid tribute to its title by setting my mind on fire. It got me thinking about how such a creative approach could be adopted in some of the subjects related to my field or even how I could better communicate what I do to a broad audience; I think that to this day, a few members of my family still do not quite understand what I do.

Lastly, the book by James Paul Gee on “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy” sparked my interest not only to read the rest of the book beyond the introduction chapter provided, but also to play some video games again. I used to play video games in different consoles growing up (I shared one with my sister, and we used to play at our friends’ and cousins’ as well) and some of the best memories of spending time together with friends and family involved video games. Now that I have read all the positive effects it can have on mental agility and how maybe one day doctors will prescribe video games instead of pills to treat certain disorders, it makes me even more inclined to play them again. Dr. Adam Gazzaley has given a few talks and interviews on his research using video games to improve brain health which seems pretty compelling.

Close your eyes and imagine the typical classroom. Chances are that you imagined a middle-aged man, standing at a lectern, droning on about f/p/s electron orbitals or the civil war’s status quo antebellum socio-economic effect on the primarily agrarian communities of the southern United States.

Drone Professor Droning on about Drones

It is no surprise then that the neo-liberal educational model that has been around for quite some time has lost it’s effect as of late, and has been subject to several experiments on its improvement. Some of these experiments we read about in past weeks, some we read about this week, and some I have experienced and participated in as a part of my tenure as a perpetual student.

Khaled Adjerid PhD graduation, circa 2045

Jean Lacoste conducted one of his own experiments with his classroom of, from what I can surmise, can only be 100’s of students, by individualizing the content, making all of it available and allowing the students to pick and choose both how they consume the information and how they assess themselves. Unsurprisingly, the students all did well, had many fewer questions for him, and everyone was happy.

“I want each student to feel important…I want to reach every single student in the class….I decided to individualize the entire course…I developed numerous formative assessments so students could accurately evaluate their progress throughout the semester…Even my heavy email load was improved as nuisance policy/special consideration requests were replaced by thoughtful questions about course content. I haven’t had this much fun since I left the small classroom.”

-JEAN LACOSTE

What?

How is this even a real thing? First off, this solution doesn’t work for 2 reasons. The first is that it requires the instructor to develop a wider array of content that the students are free to pick and choose from. The instructor spends time developing in class, online, digital, video, handouts, etc. content that the students then get to pick from at their leisure for a more personalized experience, as if it were a Starbucks menus.

“I’ll have the grande online lecture with a venti homework and a skim final exam please”

Secondly, it doesn’t solve the problem that the author outlines in the introduction where he says that he doesn’t feel that he can connect personally with the students and the students don’t feel the professor can give enough feedback to each student or learn their names. This can only be solved by getting to know each student, spending time with their assessments, meeting them in office hours, and having quality interactions with them. This is piled on top of all of the other duties they may have, thus promptly killing the professor.

“RIP in Peace Professor Lacoste, at least you knew our names”

-His Students

I don’t want to be a negative Narendra, so I do want to point out that there are some of his methods that do contribute to a positive learning environment and a more personalized education. This does tend to give a sense of ownership to the learning and the material which can be a positive outcome, I just don’t feel that the entire learning, lesson plan, and assessment should be left to the students.

On a final note, there was a statement from the Carnes reading that stood out to me and I wanted to make a note of:

“No one can say that the future president of the Harvard Law Review (and of these United States) was not college material.”

– Mark C. Carnes

I  disagree. The famous quote from Einstein that says about judging a fish’s worth by assessing it’s ability to fly always comes to mind. Not everyone is ‘cut out’ for every field and should be assessed by the same measure nor should they all be required to attend colleges. I have seen many  engineering students who WERE NOT ENGINEERING MATERIAL. They tried at it many times, eventually, they found their home in AgSci, Business, or Psych; something ‘easier’ they admitted to me, to which I correct, “not easier, but more suited to their style of thinking and skill set”.

Others perhaps are not suited for college at all, rather for trade schools or apprenticeships, which were common and led to well paying careers up until the 70’s and 80’s before colleges became profit centers, not learning centers. These professions are now derided and looked down upon as being for the uneducated lower class, despite the fact that one who is successful in these trades can make well into the six figures, especially with an entrepreneurial mindset.

A plumber is one job they can’t outsource to China

 

I believe that one of the most important issues surrounding the development and implementation of great teaching strategies is trust. As Robert Talbert stated in “Four Things Lecture is Good For,” there is a place for lecture  in the classroom. However, people learn by doing, not by watching and listening. When planning a teaching unit, I think that it is good to start with standards and objectives (statements of what your students should know and be able to do), then find and create activities which will help them attain the objectives. Lecture is used to explain and discuss how particular knowledge is structured and to model ways of thinking or processes. Freeing students to learn by doing projects such as those shown in the Digital Media video requires trust on the part of the teacher. The teacher must trust the students to learn knowledge and skills that are not explicitly presented to them. While the teacher can create a project that requires mastery of a given set of objectives to complete well, the teacher cannot guarantee that all students will see the material that she would have presented were she lecturing. Instead, the teacher must trust that the students will learn what is needed. This is difficult for most teachers to do. One solution is to combine student-centered learning with frequent and brief formative assessments which provide feedback about what students understand and misunderstand. The results of these assessments could be used to guide students when necessary.

Standards- and objectives-based projects that result in student learning are difficult to design and exhilarating to facilitate. Fortunately, there are many examples to be found online. For instance, one year I had my IB Physics students launch a space balloon (idea stolen from MIT). I proposed the project and my students (mostly aspiring engineers) loved it! I provided materials and got FAA approval. They did the rest. Even 6 years later, they talk about it on Facebook. I have also had students keep Galilean-inspired skywatch notebooks, lead star parties, create scale models of the solar system, and design and build egg launching devices. Given students that struggle on state-required tests makes this type of teaching more difficult and much scarier, but not impossible. If teachers trust their students to learn from small projects, then measure what they have learned and adjust instruction accordingly, they can build greater trust over time. Greater trust can lead to greater student autonomy (more room to fly or crash and recover!). Over time, teachers and students (and in the case of K-12, parents, and administrators) can build a system that is rewarding for both teachers and learners—a system with autonomy, creativity, and trust.

I think that lectures are a critical part of the learning process for students. It is a superb starting point for learning a new skill from an “expert”. Robert Talbert explains what lectures are ideal for in his article, “Four things lecture is good for.” I have to agree that when I am new to learning something, I would like to have someone to show me the ropes. It allows me to try and understand the perspective of an expert, and eventually develop my own perspective.

There have been times when I try to get ahead in my classes by reading the textbook to cover the information. However, most of those attempts have been unsuccessful because I have a very hard time understanding the material and relating it back to the real world. The best lecture based courses that I have taken are course that are taught by professors that has real world experiences. They are able to take the engineering theory that they are teaching and correlates it to how they themselves have applied it to various problems. They shared their insights on when it is applicable to use certain theories, assumptions, and techniques to solve certain problem. In a sense, they are sharing their expertise on recognizing what type of problem are at hand and what tools are the most effective at developing a solution.

Once the fundamental knowledge is transferred to the student, the learning structure has to change in order to allow the student to continue developing the skill. There is a balance between learning from an expert and practicing the skills to become better at it. Here is an interesting video about how develop a skill in 20 hours.

This video gives a prime example of how if a person wants to learn to throw a football, they would first have to learn the basic techniques. They will have to learn about the football size, grip positions, body position, and etc.  This information would be most effectively covered in a lecture environment. Once an individual has a good understanding of the fundamental, then they have to apply and practice that skills. As the person is gaining more experience, more questions began to arise. As the questions arise, it is time to revert back to consulting the experts.

I personally feel that there has to be a balance between the difference styles of teaching. For me personally, I learn the best by struggling and experiencing what I have learned. Once I struggle to a certain point I began developing questions to seek mentorship from others. But I find it very hard to understand what others tell me if I have not personally experience it.