metacognition / metacognitive skills

The Secret to Student Success? Teach Them How to Learn. [Bain]

On 12/27/2019, in education, education reform, homeschooling/homeschoolers, ideas, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, learning theories, metacognition / metacognitive skills, pedagogy, research, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, by Daniel Christian

The Secret to Student Success? Teach Them How to Learn. — from edsurge.com by Patrice Bain

Excerpt:

Abby’s story is hardly unique. I often teach students who react with surprise when they do well in my class. “But I’ve never done well in history,” they say. This is almost always followed by a common, heartbreaking confession. “I’m not smart.” Every time I hear this, I am faced with the gut-wrenching realization that the student has internalized failure by age eleven. Yet every year I see these same students soar and complete the class with high grades.

This raises two questions for me: How can we turn eleven-year-olds who have internalized failure into students like Abby who retain information for years? And how can we teach that poor grades don’t indicate failure, but rather that we haven’t found the correct learning strategy?

Enter research.

5 proven ways to make your good online course great [campustechnology.com]

On 12/11/2019, in adjunct faculty, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, consortiums, content development, aggregation, repositories, faculty/staff, instructional design, learning, learning ecosystem, metacognition / metacognitive skills, multimedia, pedagogy, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, universities, by Daniel Christian

5 proven ways to make your good online course great — from campustechnology.com

Excerpt:

Recent research uncovered just a handful of distinct elements that set great online teaching apart from the merely good. The findings came out of interviews with eight faculty members who have won awards for their online teaching from three professional associations: the Online Learning Consortium, the Association for Educational Communications & Technology and the United States Distance Learning Association.

Again, the report is here.

For those parts about being relevant and also taking some time for some reflection, also see this separate, somewhat related item:
Helping students develop metacognitive skills to understand the ‘why’ of learning

Free downloads to transform your teaching & unleash the science of learning! [RetrievalPractice.org]

On 12/04/2019, in assessment, learning, learning ecosystem, learning theories, memory, metacognition / metacognitive skills, pedagogy, psychology, research, science, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, tools, youth, by Daniel Christian

Per RetrievalPractice.org:

Download ALL our free guides, research, and resources!

We’re here to make your life easier. In order to unleash the science of learning, we strive to make it easy to access and quick to implement.

That’s why we really want you to download everything from our library, including free practice guides, book club resources, research, and more.

Want a quick way to access classroom research on #retrievalpractice? @RetrieveLearn has a database of 50 experiments! Sorted by grade level, content area, type of retrieval practice, and more. https://t.co/5ntKr0ZZ74 #powerfulteaching #edchat #highered

— Retrieval Practice (@RetrieveLearn) November 10, 2019

My Favorite Book about Teaching and Learning is…33 Books to Inspire You! — from linkedin.com by Barbi Honeycutt

Excerpt:

…I recently posted this fill-in-the-blank question to all of my social media pages:

My favorite book about teaching and learning is ______________.

The response has been fantastic! Professors, instructors, teachers, educators, and faculty development professionals from a variety of disciplines from around the world responded with their favorite book about teaching and learning.

I’ve compiled the list and here are the 33 books recommended by colleagues throughout my network (many books were recommended more than once).

A quick tip from RetrievalPractice.org’s e-newsletter today:

#1: Remember your lesson plan with a 1-minute reflection
Can’t remember how a lesson from last semester or last year went? On the bottom or back of a lesson plan, include two questions:

What went well? What should I do differently next time?

As soon as you’re done with the lesson, take just one minute to write down a note to your future self. Stuff all your lesson plans/reflections into a folder. The next time you teach the lesson, future-you will be glad that past-you retrieved!

From retrievalpractice.org regarding the “Make it Stick” book, this link includes:

Discussion questions for each chapter
Sketchnotes for each chapter
Additional readings and research articles

Don't just have students focus on *what* they should be learning, but also *how.*

Great video from @edutopia to explain what that looks like: pic.twitter.com/iP3TAbh4Ez

— FourPoint Education Partners (@FourPoint_Ed) July 15, 2019

Knowing How to Study Can Mean the Difference Between Success and Failure for First-Generation Students. Here’s How Instructors Can Help. [McMurtrie]

On 07/15/2019, in chemistry, colleges, community colleges, higher education, ideas, law schools, memory, metacognition / metacognitive skills, pedagogy, productivity / tips and tricks, society, STEAM-related, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, universities, by Daniel Christian

Knowing How to Study Can Mean the Difference Between Success and Failure for First-Generation Students. Here’s How Instructors Can Help. — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Some of the mistakes first-gen students make are common to undergraduates: They focus on re-reading and memorizing to absorb what they’re learning, rather than summarizing material in their own words, or quizzing themselves, which are more effective techniques. But many also carry the burden of imposter syndrome – feeling like they don’t belong in college – or simply don’t know how college works. That, says Horowitz, discourages them from seeking out their professors during office hours or heading to the tutoring center for help. As a result they may spin their wheels even more furiously as they fall behind.
…
Horowitz, who now works at Bard High School Early College Newark as a faculty member in chemistry, reached out to me after I wrote about the importance of helping undergraduates develop the metacognitive skills necessary to become effective learners. It turns out, she’s written a book about some of those strategies, tailored to the needs of first-generation students.

Horowitz designed the book to appeal to a mass audience of STEM faculty. “The most effective person to tell students how to study for a particular course is the instructor,” she says. “They can easily put little pointers in their classroom about how students should be studying. I believe that could be revolutionary for first-generation college students.”

Horowitz suggests putting study tips into the syllabus and then reviewing them in class.
…
Explain how to use problem sets effectively.
…
In reading-oriented classes, she recommends that, after reading each chapter, students write a single paragraph that synthesizes and summarizes the material. And on tests she often lists the amount of time students should spend on each problem.
…
Reach out, she says. It will pay off for both of you.

“For most of them it’s a big sense of relief that they’re having a conversation with you,” she says. “Most have been suffering in silence for a long time.”

This is likely the No. 1 thing affecting your job performance [Markman]

On 06/15/2019, in career development, corporate / business world, generational differences, ideas, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning theories, lifelong learning, memory, metacognition / metacognitive skills, microlearning, training / L&D, workplace, by Daniel Christian

This is likely the No. 1 thing affecting your job performance — from fastcompany.com by Art Markman
Hint: It all starts with figuring out what you don’t know.

Excerpts:

Learning on the job is probably the single most important factor driving your performance at work. You won’t know everything you need to about your job when you’re hired, no matter how good your education is or how much experience you had in previous positions. The road to learning starts with a willingness to admit what you don’t know and an interest in learning new things.

The ability to know what you know and what you don’t know is called metacognition—that is, the process of thinking about your thinking. Your cognitive brain has a sophisticated ability to assess what you do and don’t know. You use several sources of information to make this judgment.
…
One important social aspect of the Dunning-Kruger effect is that it often leads to tension between younger employees and the firms they work for. People who don’t really understand what skills are required for success in a particular domain may overestimate their own abilities and minimize their perception of the gap between themselves and more senior members of a firm. As a result, they won’t understand why they aren’t being promoted faster and will quickly get frustrated in the early stages of their career. The more you appreciate everything involved in expert performance, the more patient you can be with your own development.

After you get the hang of a new position, be strategic about what you learn. You probably need a wider range of expertise than you think. Solving hard problems at work requires drawing not just on expertise from within the domain of your work, but also on knowledge about other areas that may not have seemed relevant at first.

Four research-based strategies every teacher should be using [Gonzalez]

On 06/10/2019, in adjunct faculty, assessment, colleges, community colleges, education, faculty/staff, higher education, ideas, learning theories, memory, metacognition / metacognitive skills, online learning, pedagogy, research, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, by Daniel Christian

Four research-based strategies every teacher should be using — from cultofpedagogy.com by Jennifer Gonzalez

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

[Per Jennifer] Cognitive scientist Pooja Agarwal and K-12 teacher Patrice Bain have collaborated on a new book, Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning. In the book, they go into detail about what it looks like when we actually apply four research-based “Power Tools” in the classroom: retrieval practice, spaced practice, interleaving, and feedback-driven metacognition—which is one we haven’t covered at all on this podcast. Today I’m going to talk with Pooja and Patrice about these strategies, the research behind why they work, and some ways you can start using them right away in your instruction.

Instead of assigning homework to give students practice with course material, give mini-quizzes at the start of each class that ask 3-5 questions about the prior day’s learning. These should either receive no grades or be given a very low point value, because the goal of these is to reinforce the learning, not measure or grade student work.

In her social studies classroom, Bain used to assign homework most nights, and found that not only was she spending up to two hours a night grading it, it also was doing nothing to help students retain information.

Recommended books from RetrievalPractice.org
Check out our recommended books and reports that describe research on the science of learning and provide practical tips for classroom teaching.

.

…plus several others

5 Research-Backed Studying Techniques — from edutopia.org by Edward Kang
Teachers can guide students to avoid ineffective studying habits in favor of ones that will increase their learning outcomes.

Excerpts:

Ineffective techniques include:

Studying for long periods of time
Studying a single subject for a long period of time and repeating phrases over and over to memorize them (known as massed practice)
Reviewing one topic repeatedly before moving onto another topic (blocked practice)
Reading and rereading a text
Highlighting or underlining important concepts in a text and then reviewing
Reviewing notes

The book Make It Stick identifies several research-proven studying techniques.

Pre-test
Spaced practice
Self-quizzing
Interleaving practice
Paraphrasing and reflecting

My mom, music, memory, and…Alzheimer’s Disease [Christian]

On 05/01/2019, in Daniel S. Christian, memory, metacognition / metacognitive skills, music, society, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Through the years, my mom was an incredible person — in a variety of ways. She was a wonderful mother to us, as well as a spouse to my dad. But she was also a wonderful daughter, aunt, grandma, friend, teacher, counselor, investor, and more. She was a philosophical, deep thinker and a person of action — often doing several things at a time (from the moment that she woke up until the time that she finally called it quits at the end of a long day). Amongst other things, she was an incredible musician. After graduating from college, my mom taught classical piano (to kindergarten through 12th graders) decade after decade…well into her 70’s.

But then, like her mom, she developed Alzheimer’s Disease and as things go with Alzheimer’s, things got progressively worse. Fast forward to today, and her short-term memory is now completely gone and the person who she once was continues to increasingly leave us. She lives with my dad in a memory care unit. (My dad has also experienced physical and cognitive decline…though not nearly as much as my mom.) My mom will ask you the same question many times over, as she can’t remember asking you the question before and she can’t recall your answer (for but a moment). She still recognizes us — though for how much longer that will be the case, we’re not sure. She doesn’t use our names nearly as much as she used to.

Below is a picture of my mom at her memory care unit…and, by the way, she didn’t recall that the piano that she was playing on was actually the exact same piano that she used for years to teach kids how to play classical piano.

Mom at the piano - 1

All that said — and as you can tell from watching the video below — she can STILL:

Sight read music (i.e., recognize notes, rhythms, dynamics, etc.)
Play songs she remembers from long ago
Sing along to songs/hymns from years ago
Recognize and/or recall many of the lyrics from songs that she once knew

Wow!

The human mind is absolutely incredible to me! Scary and tragic when it stops working as it once did — but incredible nevertheless.

Glory to GOD in the highest!

Also see:

Changing ‘the tragedy narrative’: Why a growing camp is promoting a more joyful approach to Alzheimer’s — from washingtonpost.com by Tara Bahrampour

Memory has some similarities to a Google search algorithm…

On 03/13/2019, in attention, Daniel S. Christian, education, Google, learning, learning theories, memory, metacognition / metacognitive skills, multimedia, research, by Daniel Christian

Learning Ecosystems

5 proven ways to make your good online course great [campustechnology.com]

This is likely the No. 1 thing affecting your job performance [Markman]

My mom, music, memory, and…Alzheimer’s Disease [Christian]

Memory has some similarities to a Google search algorithm…

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