Teaching & Learning Day 2019

Jim Lang

PART ONE

"Teaching Distracted Minds"

Book to be released in 2020

Small Teaching: Everyday lessons from the science of learning (2016)

Distraction has existed for years:

-External--distractions like at a coffee house, or any interruption

-Internal--trains of thought that just goes on and on

All distraction is not equal, our ability to establish high level goals is the pinnacle of our brain evolution (or the way we were created)

Why do we crave distraction?  We are information-seeking creatures, at the very core of our being

3 principles:

1. A human mind is easily distracted.
2. Our current technolog intensifies a pre-existing condition.
3. Cultivating and sustaining attention requires deliberate effort.

Need to create FLOW

1. Goal is clear.
2. Feedback relevant.
3. Challenges and skills are balanced (feel that they can do it).
4. Collaborative social nature, so that they need to pay attention.  (Without goals and without others to interact with, students lose motivation and concentration, a wandering mind goes to unresolvable problems, even anxiety. 

How do we cultivate curiosity? (enjoyable)
-We tend to pay attention when we are curious, puzzle or mystery

How to do this:

1. Articulate the problem.
2. Explain significance or relevance.
3. Give students opportunity to answer.
4. Provide answer (could be the whole course or just a part of it).
5. Conclude with a problem or question.

Multi-tasking-- can't do it, mentioned the same study from last year (See previous blog post.)  it degrades our performance in each thing we are working on.

--Other students are distracted by your multi-tasking.

***The pathway of creativity looks a lot like the pathway to distraction.

Books he mentioned:
What the best college teachers go by Ken Bain

The ecology of attention  by Yves Citton  (information overload can turn to astonishment when confronted by the excedence of curiosity that occupies the human mind.

Make it stick: The science of successful learning by Brown, et al

PART TWO

"Using prediction to increase comprehension"

Small teaching interventions

--brief (5-15 min.) interventions into individual learning sessions

--limited number of interventions or activities over the entire course

--minor changes to course design, assessment structure or communication with students

Activate prior learning:

--prompt them to write essay or presentation on learning from prior courses

--definitions or explanations

--discipline-based autobiographical reflections

e.g. for me: What have you learned so far about research for this subject?

Best way to learn/study:

Low utility

--summarization

--highlighting

--underlining

Medium utitility

--elaborate interrogation

--interleaved practice

--self-explanation (students explain it to their neighbor)

High Utility

--practice testing (!)

--distributed testing

PART THREE
"Giving Feedback that builds motivation"

Growth Mindset

What is the best way to encourage your child/student?

A. Praise for their natural ability

B. Praise for their effort and strategies 

Answer is B

A fixed mindset means that we think our IQ was stamped on our forehead.

A growth mindset means we believe we are capable of getting smarter.

We tend to have both, especially in different areas.

Our attitude toward learning greatly influences our actual learning.

Mindsets can be changed.

Normalize help-seeking behaviors (important for librarians, encourage students to ask for help with research, etc.)

Promote active study strategies.

His column is in the Chronicle of Higher Education

Small changes in teaching