Recap: in part two we briefly introduced the advantages offered by technology based "flipped classroom" methods learning methods. In this post we'll think about the opposite end of the flipped classroom stick: the role of the classroom in learning.
So if learning is greatly facilitated by the use of individualized technological methods, what role should the traditional classroom setting play in education? Why should we hire teachers, construct schools, and require attendance at all?
Because learning is about more than memorization, and education more than than just learning.
I like the Wikipedia definition of education: "the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits." Thus learning also by extension defined as the acquisition of not only knowledge, but skills, values, beliefs, and habits. While Duolingo teaches me vocabulary and basic grammar, the skill of fluency comes with much deeper practice. It teaches me nothing of values, beliefs or habits. However, these components are an essential part of an successful education because knowledge must be applied in social settings to the benefit of society if the learning is to be considered successful.
It follows then, that education must be a social experience, in order to prepare pupils for the future. However, sociality is necessary to education for the same reason that it is necessary for future endeavors. That is, every person has a unique viewpoint, unique ideas, and unique talents to share. This diversity is not only beautiful, but facilitates the learning experience.
Many students know the feeling of an "epiphany moment," when they suddenly understood a concept or idea. These moments revolve around understanding not memorization. One of Merriam-Webseter's definitions for the verb "understand" is "to achieve a grasp of the nature, significance or explanation of something." That is, not only do I understand that 2 + 2 = 4, I can visualize that in multiple ways, explain it to others, and, perhaps most importantly, tell you why that's significant. This type of understanding involves making connections between different disciplines, different pieces of information and from different points of view. This is why learning understanding as a social process can be so effective: every participant is different. The students in a team learning environment don't have to have all the points of the connect the dots, but a few, which shared among the students, create a larger web of understanding than any one student alone could have created.
Of course, not everyone learns in the same way. Perhaps some people are good at memorizing things when they are doing it with other people (a little competitive spirit or moral support can surely go a long ways). Some individuals prefer to reason and make connections on their own, rather than with other people. However, I believe that in general, the personalized nature of a distraction-less memorization environment and the sharing of ideas, perspectives and brainpower during understanding is the ideal pattern for most peoples' learning process. I think that most readers, remembering their own "epiphanies" will remember moments not of solitude and memorization, but of engaging conversation in a group.
So, the role of the "traditional classroom setting" is not for students to absorb information, but to put it into place. To understand it. If students come to the classroom knowing that 2 + 2 = 4, but perhaps not understanding why this is so, or how exactly to apply that knowledge to the world around them then the social environment of the classroom will allow them to "achieve that grasp" together. Each student will have some piece of understanding which he or she will be able to "teach" to the other students, allowing them to "learn" it and (just as importantly) more firmly solidifying that understanding in his or her own mind. Every person has something to contribute.
The role of the instructor? To facilitate this conversation, organize students so that these activities are effective, ensure that proper memorization has taken place, and provide directions toward solutions without preventing the students' understanding enhancing interactions.
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Thursday, November 24, 2016
10. Effectiveness in a Blended Learning Environment - Part II: Advantages of machine aided adaptive learning
Recap: in part one we briefly introduced the disadvantages inherent to the memorization process in a traditional schooling environment. In this post we will discuss the topic from a different point of view: why individualized, technology based learning has unique advantages.
In our previous examples, one important question was left unanswered: how can we determine when a student actually has mastered the memorization of a certain subject? This is an important question, because if we don't know when a student has memorized sufficiently, we don't know when to move on, which means we must estimate, further exacerbating the inefficiency of the system (it is highly unlikely that we move on at exactly the right moment if we are estimating).
Thus, a more effective appraisal of the students' readiness leads to a more effective teaching environment.
We really have two options for appraising students' progress: self-reporting or observation reporting (a role we assign to the teacher, for the sake of simplicity). In a traditional environment, both are costly activities.
If a pupil must determine his or her own state of readiness, there are two main problems. First, they don't know the material - that's why they're learning it! If they don't know what they're supposed to be learning, they must be provided with and understand a clear expectation of learning. Second, once they have this expectation, they must engage in self-evaluation during the the learning process. This self-evaluation is a distraction to the memorization phase (imagine our students making tally marks on correct/incorrect answers as they try and drill times tables). A main draw back to this method, though, is a lack of consistency and reliability among students. Some students will pass themselves too easily. Some will not be diligent in self-observation. Accuracy is hoped for, but not improbable. Thus, self-reporting is not feasible.
Observation reporting in a traditional environment is also unfortunately inefficient. The teacher theoretically is more free to conduct the evaluation, as he or she already understands the relevant material and is free to dedicate some mental processing power observing the students. However, the teacher doesn't have just one student to evaluate - they have an entire class full of them! Thus the observation step distracts less from students' thought processes, but it takes far too much time: if the teacher attempts to ascertain each students' progress between every question, the class will probably spend more time evaluating than learning. It is therefore impractical for a continual evaluation phase, and this is why evaluation often comes after longer intervals in the forms of quizzes, tests, and homework.
With the aide of technology, however, memorization can be highly adaptive, individualized, instantaneous, and in real time.
A prime example of this concept is found in one of my favorite learning platforms: Duolingo.
Duolingo is a fantastic and free resource for learning foreign languages. At the time of writing, Duolingo offers 66 courses between 23 different languages to 120 million users around the world. And Duolingo acts as both teacher and evaluator for all 120 million in real time on an individual basis.
When you initially begin using Duolingo, you have the option of taking a placement exam, to determine your proficiency. During the exam Duolingo is already adapting to you much as a personal evaluator would: it begins with easier questions, and continually progresses until you struggle, honing in on your real proficiency. Once it knows this information the real learning begins, but the evaluation does not. Your teacher keeps track of every question you've ever answered and how well you did. It remembers which words you "peeked" at, or spelled wrong. It remembers when you learned that word, and the last time you saw it, and feeds that information into an algorithm which estimates how likely you are to remember that word still, and drills you on words you probably struggle with more.
Here's a picture of some of the Spanish words Duolingo has taught me, together with their part of speech, the last time I saw it, and their "word strength:"
Does it have its drawbacks? Sure. For example, Duolingo isn't my only Spanish learning resource. Despite the fact that Duolingo believes I'm 2/4 on my word strength of "libro," I think that's one of the words I'm least likely to forget. Which means I'm going to drill it more than I probably should. Duolingo can't take that into account though, because it knows nothing of my "extracurricular activities." And of course, the algorithms can always be improved. But on the whole, the system works quite well for ensuring that I drill what I need to drill, when I need to drill it. This is one reason why a 2012 study found that 34 hours of Duolingo may be equal to a semester of college Spanish.
This method can and should be used in all learning environments. Though its application to language is quite simple, it can also be applied to the arts, reading and mathematics. There are already numerous platforms with this aim: Memrise, Newsela, and Khanacademy, to name a few.
Not only are these resources more effective than endless drills and exercises from textbooks to notebooks, these resources are free - an important point considering that collegeboard.com puts the average annual spending on books and supplies at universities at around $1,300 per student.
The teacher, of course has incentive to use such services: these are digital TAs who grade thousands of questions instantly without any wages.
So again, the question is: why do we continue to enroll thousands of students in an educational facility with an ineffective evaluation method when there are low cost, high benefit alternatives available?
In our previous examples, one important question was left unanswered: how can we determine when a student actually has mastered the memorization of a certain subject? This is an important question, because if we don't know when a student has memorized sufficiently, we don't know when to move on, which means we must estimate, further exacerbating the inefficiency of the system (it is highly unlikely that we move on at exactly the right moment if we are estimating).
Thus, a more effective appraisal of the students' readiness leads to a more effective teaching environment.
We really have two options for appraising students' progress: self-reporting or observation reporting (a role we assign to the teacher, for the sake of simplicity). In a traditional environment, both are costly activities.
If a pupil must determine his or her own state of readiness, there are two main problems. First, they don't know the material - that's why they're learning it! If they don't know what they're supposed to be learning, they must be provided with and understand a clear expectation of learning. Second, once they have this expectation, they must engage in self-evaluation during the the learning process. This self-evaluation is a distraction to the memorization phase (imagine our students making tally marks on correct/incorrect answers as they try and drill times tables). A main draw back to this method, though, is a lack of consistency and reliability among students. Some students will pass themselves too easily. Some will not be diligent in self-observation. Accuracy is hoped for, but not improbable. Thus, self-reporting is not feasible.
Observation reporting in a traditional environment is also unfortunately inefficient. The teacher theoretically is more free to conduct the evaluation, as he or she already understands the relevant material and is free to dedicate some mental processing power observing the students. However, the teacher doesn't have just one student to evaluate - they have an entire class full of them! Thus the observation step distracts less from students' thought processes, but it takes far too much time: if the teacher attempts to ascertain each students' progress between every question, the class will probably spend more time evaluating than learning. It is therefore impractical for a continual evaluation phase, and this is why evaluation often comes after longer intervals in the forms of quizzes, tests, and homework.
With the aide of technology, however, memorization can be highly adaptive, individualized, instantaneous, and in real time.
A prime example of this concept is found in one of my favorite learning platforms: Duolingo.
Duolingo is a fantastic and free resource for learning foreign languages. At the time of writing, Duolingo offers 66 courses between 23 different languages to 120 million users around the world. And Duolingo acts as both teacher and evaluator for all 120 million in real time on an individual basis.
When you initially begin using Duolingo, you have the option of taking a placement exam, to determine your proficiency. During the exam Duolingo is already adapting to you much as a personal evaluator would: it begins with easier questions, and continually progresses until you struggle, honing in on your real proficiency. Once it knows this information the real learning begins, but the evaluation does not. Your teacher keeps track of every question you've ever answered and how well you did. It remembers which words you "peeked" at, or spelled wrong. It remembers when you learned that word, and the last time you saw it, and feeds that information into an algorithm which estimates how likely you are to remember that word still, and drills you on words you probably struggle with more.
Here's a picture of some of the Spanish words Duolingo has taught me, together with their part of speech, the last time I saw it, and their "word strength:"
Does it have its drawbacks? Sure. For example, Duolingo isn't my only Spanish learning resource. Despite the fact that Duolingo believes I'm 2/4 on my word strength of "libro," I think that's one of the words I'm least likely to forget. Which means I'm going to drill it more than I probably should. Duolingo can't take that into account though, because it knows nothing of my "extracurricular activities." And of course, the algorithms can always be improved. But on the whole, the system works quite well for ensuring that I drill what I need to drill, when I need to drill it. This is one reason why a 2012 study found that 34 hours of Duolingo may be equal to a semester of college Spanish.
This method can and should be used in all learning environments. Though its application to language is quite simple, it can also be applied to the arts, reading and mathematics. There are already numerous platforms with this aim: Memrise, Newsela, and Khanacademy, to name a few.
Not only are these resources more effective than endless drills and exercises from textbooks to notebooks, these resources are free - an important point considering that collegeboard.com puts the average annual spending on books and supplies at universities at around $1,300 per student.
The teacher, of course has incentive to use such services: these are digital TAs who grade thousands of questions instantly without any wages.
So again, the question is: why do we continue to enroll thousands of students in an educational facility with an ineffective evaluation method when there are low cost, high benefit alternatives available?
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
8. Effectiveness in a Blended Learning Environment - Part I: Wastes in the memorization phase
With the advent of modern technology and the resulting increase in the average person's standard of living, information has become ubiquitous. If I'm holding my smartphone in my hand, I can call its attention by simply uttering "OK, Google" (iPhone users will recognize "Hey, Siri"), then ask any question I want. Assuming there's a relatively good answer to the question somewhere on the internet, Google will respond in kind, voicing a brief explanation. Otherwise, she'll at least google it and give me a starting place for my own search (why Google's female, I don't know. She is).
The possibilities for learning go much deeper than this though.
Let us consider "education" as the product of two factors: memorization (the assimilation of information - numbers, rules, dates, names, whatever) and understanding (a deeper comprehension of a system or theory, signaled by the ability to make predictions about its implications and utilize the knowledge to solve problems and create solutions). That is, it's one thing to be able to say "adverbs modify verbs," but quite another to be able to label all of the adverbs in a paragraph of text, or craft a rich Italian sentence using them correctly. The first is quite useless; the second, theoretically better, but still not terribly helpful in real life; the last alone is education profitably put to good use.
The problem is that different people have different aptitudes for different subjects or learning phases, and certain individuals seem to learn faster than others across all subjects and learning phases.
Traditionally, this disparity led to huge wastes of potential. Let's consider the most extreme example.
Before the invention of the printing press, books were hard to come by. The average person didn't have access to learning materials. If they wanted to learn, they listened, memorized and understood through repetition of the same. Think of pupils sitting at the feet of Plato, absorbing his every word and seeking to memorize and understand. Some were pretty good at it; the average person obviously wasn't, because they stayed in their fields tending their crops.
Imagine a modern math class learning times tables through this method. A teacher stands in front of a dozen students, holding the only copy of the twelve times tables chart up for all to see, and they repeat them all, over and over again, in an effort to memorize and understand.
Assuming that they are all beginners, they all are learning in the beginning, and all are profiting at least in some part from the experience. At a certain point though, those students who are good at the memorization of numbers, sequences, or words will master the chart. The moment that that student has mastered the chart, his utility of being in class is greatly diminished, and the utility of the less to the class collectively is likewise lessened. So what are the options?
The possibilities for learning go much deeper than this though.
Let us consider "education" as the product of two factors: memorization (the assimilation of information - numbers, rules, dates, names, whatever) and understanding (a deeper comprehension of a system or theory, signaled by the ability to make predictions about its implications and utilize the knowledge to solve problems and create solutions). That is, it's one thing to be able to say "adverbs modify verbs," but quite another to be able to label all of the adverbs in a paragraph of text, or craft a rich Italian sentence using them correctly. The first is quite useless; the second, theoretically better, but still not terribly helpful in real life; the last alone is education profitably put to good use.
The problem is that different people have different aptitudes for different subjects or learning phases, and certain individuals seem to learn faster than others across all subjects and learning phases.
Traditionally, this disparity led to huge wastes of potential. Let's consider the most extreme example.
Before the invention of the printing press, books were hard to come by. The average person didn't have access to learning materials. If they wanted to learn, they listened, memorized and understood through repetition of the same. Think of pupils sitting at the feet of Plato, absorbing his every word and seeking to memorize and understand. Some were pretty good at it; the average person obviously wasn't, because they stayed in their fields tending their crops.
Imagine a modern math class learning times tables through this method. A teacher stands in front of a dozen students, holding the only copy of the twelve times tables chart up for all to see, and they repeat them all, over and over again, in an effort to memorize and understand.
Assuming that they are all beginners, they all are learning in the beginning, and all are profiting at least in some part from the experience. At a certain point though, those students who are good at the memorization of numbers, sequences, or words will master the chart. The moment that that student has mastered the chart, his utility of being in class is greatly diminished, and the utility of the less to the class collectively is likewise lessened. So what are the options?
- The class can continue to drill the same thing, because the rest of the students still need it. The student(s) who have it down are basically wasting their time. They could leave, they could stay. Either way, their educational experience is stagnating. These individuals are wasting time in their education as long as they are relearning what they already know, assuming the increase in understanding is negligible from the repeated drilling.
- The class can move on to properties of multiplication. The student who was ready to move on continues to profit; the other students may or may not. They will struggle, because the more advanced principles build on the ones they don't have fully memorized nor understood. Some will manage to stay afloat; others will drown and stop learning. The potential of the drowned is wasted.
Sure, it's an imperfect picture with logical holes, but the basic logical model remains. Seems like a lose-lose situation for the education institution.
Fast forward from Plato's time to the present day. A quick Google search of "learn times tables" yields 6.2 million results. The first result is "http://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/7-11-years/times-tables," let's hit that. Wow, it's a site with 9 different gamified methods for learning times tables.
Each student in our math classroom now has their own digital "teacher and book" (which is far more effective then the "teacher and book" method, but that's outside the scope of this topic). Now, each student works independently, and each is allowed to allocate just enough of their valuable time to learning the topic to not waste time in over learning, but no one runs out of time, either.
No time lost for the fast, no potential lost for the slow.
So, the question is, why do we continue to enroll thousands of students in an educational facility where we do group drilling activities where everyone is forced to spend the same amount of time on learning the same thing? Unless all of our students are exactly the same - and they're not - we're knowing accepting an educational institution which creates waste.
To be continued.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)