Encourage Learning

The following are tidbits I pulled from Tom Kuhlmann's Blog post: 9 Ways to Encourage Adult E-Learning. I too have written about learning being an iterative process and that we need alternate ways of demonstrating learning.

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Recently I spent the day at the beach watching people learning to surf. One of the people learning to surf was a blind girl.  It was very inspiring as she learned to balance on the board.  She probably fell off of the surfboard a few dozen times before she successfully stood and balanced on it.  And when she finally succeeded she let out a cry of joy.

Learning is a funny thing.  It’s not something that can always be neatly packaged.  Real learning isn’t a one-time event (like many elearning courses) where it’s just a matter of getting new information.  Instead it’s an iterative process where you do something, get feedback to evaluate, make adjustments, and do it again.

Adult Learners Don’t Like to Fail

As learners, our culture conditions us to avoid failure.  Typically our grading systems reward successful test taking more than successful learning. Because of this, we’re motivated to pass tests and getting good scores and not always focused on the learning process.

Going back to the blind surfer, it takes a lot to fall down and continue getting up.  I saw plenty of other surfers give up after a few tries.  Few people like to fail and then do so publicly.  This is especially true of adult learners. The blind surfer was motivated to learn and willing to risk failure as she kept falling of the surf board.  She might not have been as inclined to do so if she was only allowed two attempts and then notified that she failed.

The main point in all of this is that elearning presents a unique opportunity to compress time and offer repeatable events where people can practice and get feedback.  But we need to craft an environment that encourages learning (which is not the same as exposure to information).

Seven Principles of Learning

Summary of Seven Principles of Learning
(Based on the Cognitive Science of How People Learn)
National Research Council

1.    Learning with understanding is facilitated when new and existing knowledge is structured around the major concepts and principles of the discipline. Knowing disconnected facts is insufficient to produce deep learning or develop expertise.  Expert strategies for thinking and problem-solving are linked to the expert’s understanding of important core concepts of “big ideas”.  This suggests that courses should be organized around helping students understand these big concepts and instructors should focus on helping students understand, explain, and apply these concepts rather than focusing on memorizing large amounts of content.

2.    Learners use what they already know to construct new understandings. Learners construct interpretations of new information and problems in ways that agree with their own prior knowledge and misunderstandings.  Effective teaching involves engaging what learners already know about a subject and finding ways to build on that knowledge.  It also involves detecting student misconceptions and addressing them. 

3.    Learning is facilitated through the use of metacognitive strategies that identify, monitor, and regulate cognitive processes. Metacognitive strategies include:  a) connecting new information to former knowledge, b) selecting thinking strategies deliberately; and c) planning, monitoring and evaluating one’s own thinking processes.  Students need to reflect on what they already know and what they need to know for situations.  They must consider both factual knowledge and strategic knowledge (how and when to use what procedures to solve the problem).  Instructors should provide explicit instruction in the use of such skills and opportunities for students to observe others solving problems (including experts) and by making their thinking available to observers.

4.    Learners have different strategies, approaches, patterns of abilities, and learning styles that are a function of the interaction between their heredity and their prior experiences. Useful concepts here include Gardner’s model of Multiple Intelligences, different learning styles, deep vs. surface approaches to learning, etc.  One size does not fit all.  Some students respond favorably to one approach, others to another.  Educators should be alert to these differences and match curricular material to students’ developing abilities, knowledge bases, preferences, and styles.  Students with different learning styles need a range of ways to demonstrate their knowledge and skills.  One form of assessment will advantage some students and disadvantage others; multiple measures of learning will provide a better picture of how well individual students are learning what is expected of them.

5.   Learners’ motivation to learn and sense of self affect what is learned, how much is learned, and how much effort will be put into the learning process. Internal and external factors motivate people to learn.  Learners’ level of motivation strongly affects their willingness to persist in learning difficult material or challenging assignments.  When students perceive learning tasks as interesting and personally meaningful, and presented at an appropriate level of learning, they develop intrinsic motivation.  Tasks too difficult are frustrating; tasks that are too easy are boring.  There are strong connections between learners’ beliefs about their own abilities in a subject area and their success in that area [attribution theory].  Instructional strategies should encourage conceptual understanding; this tends to increase students’ interest and enhance their confidence about their abilities to learn.

6.    The practices and activities in which people engage while learning shape what is learned. The way people learn a particular area of knowledge and skills and the context in which they learn it becomes a fundamental part of what is learned.  This means that when students learn a subject in a limited or narrow context, they often miss seeing the applicability of using that information to solve new problems encountered in other situations.  Course assignments and tasks that ask students to encounter the same concept in various situations, help students develop a deeper understanding of the material.  Coursework should engage students in learning experiences that draw on real-world applications or exercises that foster problem-solving skills and strategies that are used in real situations.  Two examples of this approach are problem-based and case-based learning strategies.

7.    Learning is enhanced through socially supported interactions. Learning is enhanced when students can interact and collaborate with others on learning tasks.  Learning environments that encourage collaboration, similar to those of real-world scientific, mathematical, clinical, or business work, gives students the chance to test their ideas and learn by observing others.  By providing opportunities for students to express their ideas to their peers and hear and discuss others’ ideas, learning can become particularly effective.  Social interaction is also critical to development of expertise, metacognitive skills, and enhancing the learner’s sense of self.


Summarized by the Utah Valley University Faculty Center from:
National Research Council (2003).  Evaluating and Improving Undergraduate Teaching:  In Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.  The National Academies Press:  Washington, DC.

Effective Professional Development and Assessment Using Digital Content and Web-Based Tools

Technology, Learning and Change: A Webinar Series

This webinar series, based on the new book Technology for Learning: A Guidebook for Change, provides information about the process of creating effective, robust technology initiatives based on real-life practitioners’ successes. The three webinars will focus on the issues that help educators to transform today’s schools into thriving digital learning environments. The goal is to help you to identify and plan for key success factors and strategies that will help you get started, expand your existing program, or take your program to the next level.

2nd in three-part series
Tuesday September 27, 2011 | 1 pm PST / 4 pm EST

Click here to register for this free webinar

Using digital media and web-based content has tremendous potential to transform teaching and learning. It offers students engaging learning opportunities that provide the right level of challenge. In order to get do this effectively, teachers need ongoing, collaborative, and integrated professional development that builds their capacity to transform classrooms, raise student achievement and create high performing schools. As part of the process, educators must assess student performance carefully and adjust instruction to meet learning needs. When all elements are in place, the result is a transformation in teaching and learning. This webinar will focus on using digital content and web-based tools, providing effective professional development, and assessing the impact of change. Leaders from districts that have shown success will discuss how they got to this point and where they intend to take their strategy in the future. 

Presenters 
Marianthe Williams, Director of Technology, River Dell Regional School District, NJ
Leslie Wilson, CEO, One-to-One Institute 

The Child-driven Education TED talk

In 1999, Sugata Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). What they saw was kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other.

In the following years they replicated the experiment in other parts of India, urban and rural, with similar results, challenging some of the key assumptions of formal education. The "Hole in the Wall" project demonstrates that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Mitra, who's now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University (UK), calls it "minimally invasive education."

"Education-as-usual assumes that kids are empty vessels who need to be sat down in a room and filled with curricular content. Dr. Mitra's experiments prove that wrong." Linux Journal

iPad as Educational Tool

Envision Schools founder Bob Lenz, fresh from a conference on innovation and technology in education, considers in this blog post the role the iPad and other new technology will play in the future of student learning. Lenz sees the iPad -- in perhaps its next generation -- as a low-cost way to expand student access to books, research and other media and envisions a time when teachers may create apps instead of paper handouts or assignments posted on the Web.