I do not usually write on policy not directly related to education, but this blog is about education reform, and I have just become aware of some rather absurd funding restrictions that may be harming education.
This article discusses new Federal guidelines on how schools handle food. According to the article, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has started restricting food related school funding for schools that are not regulating not just food offered by the school but also food prepared for students by parents. Now, I do not want to focus on the rather blatant privacy and freedom concerns this brings up, but seriously, what free government thinks they have the right to force schools to regulate food that they have no control over?
There are still three concerns I want to discuss. The first, which has already had some press coverage, is that many students are either getting off of the school lunch program or refusing to eat the healthy food included in compliance with Federal mandate. According to a U.S.A. Today article, $3.8 million in produce is being thrown away annually by students who choose not to eat the mandatory fruit and vegetable servings. They say you can bring the horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. Well, the Federal government is forcing schools to waste $3.8 million bringing the metaphorical horses to water, when they know they are not going to drink it (or at least they could ask). No wonder our schools are having funding issues.
That brings up the second concern: Since when is it ethical to base school funding on nutrition? I thought the primary responsibility of schools was education. Admittedly, most of the funding that is restricted by this is funding paying for school lunch programs, but this is still absurd. Instead of wasting government time, effort, and money trying to force schools to worry about things that they really have no business worrying about, maybe the money could be spent teaching children about nutrition better. This makes far better sense, since teaching is what schools are supposed to be spending their effort on anyway.
The third is directly related to the first. Many of the students getting off of the school lunch program in response to this were participants in free lunch programs. These are students that have a difficult time getting sufficient nutrition in the first place. Likewise, students that are staying, but throwing away the less desirable but healthier foods are getting less to eat, because the healthy foods are displacing some of the other foods. This might just sound cruel, but it gets worse. Poorly fed students do not learn as well as students who are getting enough to eat. This Federal mandate is not only interfering with funding, it is interfering with students' ability to learn. I want to stress again, the primary responsibility of schools is education. Now schools are being manipulated into giving nutrition a higher priority than education. No wonder our education system is doing so poorly. Our government has given it so many extra responsibilities that it is surprising it functions at all.
In my opinion, the best way to solve this problem is to increase welfare benefits for families that qualify for free lunch programs, and then do away with school provided lunches altogether. Providing good nutrition is not the responsibility of the education system. Let parents deal with their own responsibilities, but make sure they have the funding to do it. The only role schools should play in nutrition is teaching it. Education is, after all, the reason they were created in this first place.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Active Learning
According to this article, education researcher Scott Freeman and others have found in a major study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, strong evidence that lecture based learning is far less effective than "active learning." Active learning is a learning model where students do most of the work to learn, instead of just listening to lectures and memorizing stuff. In Freeman's classroom, students spend their class time working in small groups, while TAs roam, answering questions as needed. The study found substantial reductions in failure and dropout rates in classes using active learning, compared to similar classes using lecture based learning. According to Carl Wieman, the statistics from the study are probably watered down by classes included in the study that spend most of the time lecturing, with occasional active learning, and the real effect of full active learning is likely far greater.
Looking through all of this stuff, what I see is further evidence supporting a milestone based system where a majority of learning occurs outside of the traditional classroom setting. I still hold to my claim that occasional lectures are a good thing. For instance, a student who does not know where to start or who may have gotten lost in a complex process may benefit dramatically by attending a lecture. In a forum setting it is easy to answer a very specific question that will help some students, without going over the details of a process that other students may find difficult to understand. In a forum setting, some students may feel embarrassed to ask a followup question that the original questioner clearly already understood. A step-by-step lecture will help those students more than an open forum. On the other side, an open forum may give students the opportunity to ask a question then leave, giving students an answer more quickly and giving them more time to learn outside the classroom. Forums also give students the opportunity to ask questions about topics that may not have been covered sufficiently in a lecture. Now, these are both still classroom settings, but the lack of mandatory attendance and separating the more formal lecture style learning from the less formal forum style learning give students far more flexibility in learning. This is important because different people learn better in different settings. The last setting is outside the formal classroom, but is equally important to effective learning.
The "active learning" taking place in Freeman's classroom is the third setting. This can happen inside or outside of the classroom. In my opinion, college age students should be taking responsibility for their own educations, and as such, active learning should not have to take place in a classroom to be effective. That aside, there are several benefits to Freeman's active learning. The first is group collaboration. While I learn extremely well solo, this is a rare gift (maybe sometimes a curse...). Group collaboration, which is not so common in U.S. schools, has been touted as one of the reasons oriental countries have such strong education systems. Students solve problems together, and at the same time teach each other. Also, weaker students can learn problem solving skills from stronger students. The result is students with better understanding of course material, better problem solving skills, and better team work skills (which may not be as important in school, but are essential in most workplaces). The second is working things out for themselves. Again, this is common in oriental schools, where students are often first asked to find the solution to a problem, then presented with the correct solution after struggling through the problem. Now, these are not problems that they have already learned the tools to solve. Imagine a class where the teacher broke the class into groups, then asked each group to figure out the solution to whatever the class was scheduled to learn that day. In Japanese schools, this is common. Students often spend half the class period trying to derive the solution themselves, in small groups. Then, each group shares its works, and the teacher points out mistakes where they exist. After all of the groups have shared, the teacher explains the correct solution and why it works. One major result of this approach is that students have spent enough time on the problem that they have a vested interest in the correct answer by the time it is provided. When the teacher finally provides the answer, the students are ready to learn it and have struggled enough with the problem that they are ready to understand it as well. This improves long term retention and helps students care more about learning. (Psychologically, there is probably also some work/reward chemistry going on in the brain that improves retention.) Third, the less structured approach tends to work better for students that may be slower learners.
The article also mentions several students that were about ready to drop out of their majors when they first took an active learning based class. One biology major even mentioned a time when a teacher asked him to stop asking questions, because they were confusing the other students. Evidently, many STEM classes (this category contains disciplines focused strongly on science, including technology) encourage memorization but discourage questions. They also tend to offer little explanation for the material students are required to memorize. The article points out that that this memorization only attitude that discourages questions seems to be rather anti-science and fits better into the teaching styles of oppressive religions (ok, I added the oppressive part...). It also mentioned that this teaching style pushes curious people, the people who would do best in those disciplines, away. Otherwise stated, the teaching style of most science and tech classes seems to exclude and push away the brightest and most well suited to working in those fields. Active learning might be part of the solution to increasing the labor pool of the industries with the highest demand for labor (these also happen to be the industries with the greatest potential for solving many or our worst problems).
Now, this active learning does not solve all of the problems by itself. The reduced classroom structure may help slower learners have a better chance to keep up, but it does not solve the problem. Some students just cannot gain sufficient understanding in some subjects in a single semester. A C might be a good enough grade to pass, but it does not bode well for the student if the subject becomes an important part of a career. Students that learn slowly need more time to learn. Note that being a slow learner in a subject does not mean the student will be inferior to faster learners once the subject is learned. In fact, slow learners sometimes learn more slowly because they have a higher comprehension, and it takes more time to understand the small details (I am a slower reader than many others I know, but I notice and remember details that very few others do). Likewise, Freeman's active learning approach does nothing for students that are faster learners in some subjects or students that are already proficient in a subject. Several semesters wasted taking classes that are not teaching anything new or that could have easily been completed in a month or two are a travesty. A student with a good grasp on a subject should not be forced to suffer through a semester long recap, just to prove he or she is proficient in that subject. School is for learning, and a school that forces a student to sit through and participate in a class where that student is not learning anything new is not doing its job (and further, if it is charging the student or the government money for the "privilege," it is cheating the student). Active learning is a major improvement on the current system, and it should definitely be part of the replacement, but it is not the final solution to the ideal education system.
Freeman hopes that the study will cause a similar reaction as the 1964 surgeon general's report stating that tobacco use causes cancer. Despite the overwhelming evidence, there are still many teachers and college professors that swear by the lecture teaching method. This study can almost be regarded as proof that lectures are not the idea way to learn. More research needs to be done, to determine the best way to apply active learning techniques, but it seems that the verdict is in for lecture based teaching, and it certainly does not look good. Like tobacco, lecture centered learning needs to be discarded in favor of something better.
Looking through all of this stuff, what I see is further evidence supporting a milestone based system where a majority of learning occurs outside of the traditional classroom setting. I still hold to my claim that occasional lectures are a good thing. For instance, a student who does not know where to start or who may have gotten lost in a complex process may benefit dramatically by attending a lecture. In a forum setting it is easy to answer a very specific question that will help some students, without going over the details of a process that other students may find difficult to understand. In a forum setting, some students may feel embarrassed to ask a followup question that the original questioner clearly already understood. A step-by-step lecture will help those students more than an open forum. On the other side, an open forum may give students the opportunity to ask a question then leave, giving students an answer more quickly and giving them more time to learn outside the classroom. Forums also give students the opportunity to ask questions about topics that may not have been covered sufficiently in a lecture. Now, these are both still classroom settings, but the lack of mandatory attendance and separating the more formal lecture style learning from the less formal forum style learning give students far more flexibility in learning. This is important because different people learn better in different settings. The last setting is outside the formal classroom, but is equally important to effective learning.
The "active learning" taking place in Freeman's classroom is the third setting. This can happen inside or outside of the classroom. In my opinion, college age students should be taking responsibility for their own educations, and as such, active learning should not have to take place in a classroom to be effective. That aside, there are several benefits to Freeman's active learning. The first is group collaboration. While I learn extremely well solo, this is a rare gift (maybe sometimes a curse...). Group collaboration, which is not so common in U.S. schools, has been touted as one of the reasons oriental countries have such strong education systems. Students solve problems together, and at the same time teach each other. Also, weaker students can learn problem solving skills from stronger students. The result is students with better understanding of course material, better problem solving skills, and better team work skills (which may not be as important in school, but are essential in most workplaces). The second is working things out for themselves. Again, this is common in oriental schools, where students are often first asked to find the solution to a problem, then presented with the correct solution after struggling through the problem. Now, these are not problems that they have already learned the tools to solve. Imagine a class where the teacher broke the class into groups, then asked each group to figure out the solution to whatever the class was scheduled to learn that day. In Japanese schools, this is common. Students often spend half the class period trying to derive the solution themselves, in small groups. Then, each group shares its works, and the teacher points out mistakes where they exist. After all of the groups have shared, the teacher explains the correct solution and why it works. One major result of this approach is that students have spent enough time on the problem that they have a vested interest in the correct answer by the time it is provided. When the teacher finally provides the answer, the students are ready to learn it and have struggled enough with the problem that they are ready to understand it as well. This improves long term retention and helps students care more about learning. (Psychologically, there is probably also some work/reward chemistry going on in the brain that improves retention.) Third, the less structured approach tends to work better for students that may be slower learners.
The article also mentions several students that were about ready to drop out of their majors when they first took an active learning based class. One biology major even mentioned a time when a teacher asked him to stop asking questions, because they were confusing the other students. Evidently, many STEM classes (this category contains disciplines focused strongly on science, including technology) encourage memorization but discourage questions. They also tend to offer little explanation for the material students are required to memorize. The article points out that that this memorization only attitude that discourages questions seems to be rather anti-science and fits better into the teaching styles of oppressive religions (ok, I added the oppressive part...). It also mentioned that this teaching style pushes curious people, the people who would do best in those disciplines, away. Otherwise stated, the teaching style of most science and tech classes seems to exclude and push away the brightest and most well suited to working in those fields. Active learning might be part of the solution to increasing the labor pool of the industries with the highest demand for labor (these also happen to be the industries with the greatest potential for solving many or our worst problems).
Now, this active learning does not solve all of the problems by itself. The reduced classroom structure may help slower learners have a better chance to keep up, but it does not solve the problem. Some students just cannot gain sufficient understanding in some subjects in a single semester. A C might be a good enough grade to pass, but it does not bode well for the student if the subject becomes an important part of a career. Students that learn slowly need more time to learn. Note that being a slow learner in a subject does not mean the student will be inferior to faster learners once the subject is learned. In fact, slow learners sometimes learn more slowly because they have a higher comprehension, and it takes more time to understand the small details (I am a slower reader than many others I know, but I notice and remember details that very few others do). Likewise, Freeman's active learning approach does nothing for students that are faster learners in some subjects or students that are already proficient in a subject. Several semesters wasted taking classes that are not teaching anything new or that could have easily been completed in a month or two are a travesty. A student with a good grasp on a subject should not be forced to suffer through a semester long recap, just to prove he or she is proficient in that subject. School is for learning, and a school that forces a student to sit through and participate in a class where that student is not learning anything new is not doing its job (and further, if it is charging the student or the government money for the "privilege," it is cheating the student). Active learning is a major improvement on the current system, and it should definitely be part of the replacement, but it is not the final solution to the ideal education system.
Freeman hopes that the study will cause a similar reaction as the 1964 surgeon general's report stating that tobacco use causes cancer. Despite the overwhelming evidence, there are still many teachers and college professors that swear by the lecture teaching method. This study can almost be regarded as proof that lectures are not the idea way to learn. More research needs to be done, to determine the best way to apply active learning techniques, but it seems that the verdict is in for lecture based teaching, and it certainly does not look good. Like tobacco, lecture centered learning needs to be discarded in favor of something better.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Compentency vs Compliance
This morning I was thinking about the single significant problem with milestone based education. The problem is that milestone based education allows students to work at their own pace and to do things in the order they want to. This is great for effective learning, but in the work place, it works very differently. Now, no one is going to convince me that the current education system is an accurate analog to the work place. Its scheduling system seems to be a lot closer though. (In fact, the workplace is more harsh: Most bosses will not accept late work, and one major mistake can result in being fired.) I can see that people might argue that traditional classroom learning will teach scheduling and responsibility better because of this. That is a lie! Formal classroom learning teaches students to prioritize their time, deciding which classes they should work harder on and which ones they can either afford poor grades in or retake. They also teach that you can just retake hard classes, with a load of easy classes to compensate. This is not any more like the work place than milestone based education, and it certainly does not teach students good time management skills.
So, here is the problem with either approach: In many industries (especially the highest paying ones, like engineering) tasks are handed out on short notice, with short deadlines, and little information. These are typically small tasks that are expected to take from a day to a week. The first problem is prioritization. How much are your current tasks worth, and how are you going to decide how to allocate your time between the tasks? This is exactly as far as classroom learning goes. The second part is, how are you going to get the new task done on time? Now, this is not taught by modern classroom learning, though some students force themselves to learn it. Most students, however, prioritize time over quality, because they can handle getting a B or even a C. In the work place, B level work may be acceptable (you won't be getting the big promotion though), but C level work is not usually acceptable. Milestone based education takes care of this problem. Instead of grading with letter grades, where knowing a measly 70% of the material is acceptable (most majors seem to require C- or better for major related classes), milestones grade pass or fail. The bar can be set at 90%, and because students can try again, all students can try as many times as necessary until they prove proficiency, without the high risk of classroom learning (instead of wasting an entire semester retaking the class, they can spend a week studying the part they missed). This teaches students that low quality work is not acceptable, instead of teaching that meeting deadlines is paramount even if the quality is horrible.
So, the problem is, how do we teach compliance (with deadlines and such) without undermining quality? We could use the oriental approach. In Japan, a C grade is equivalent to our A. To get better than a C, students have to go beyond what is taught. There are a few schools in the U.S. that use this system, but ultimately, it harms the students. Most scholarships are based on average grade. If I was getting a B average at one of these schools, I would be less eligible for scholarships than someone getting an A at another school (an A that is equivalent to a C at my school). This would have to be a global change of all schools in the U.S., and good luck getting even a small portion of U.S. schools to change their grading system. Ironically, a milestone based system can handle this problem quite gracefully.
A milestone based system allows students to study at their own pace. It also allows them to choose when they do milestone evaluations. Each milestone evaluation should be a fairly small assignment, designed to test the student's proficiency in one part of a subject. One milestone for basic math might be addition of one digit numbers. Another might be addition of multi-digit numbers. A milestone for English might be identification of simple word types, where a student would identify if a word is a noun, verb, or adjective. Another might be identifying tense of phrases. The catch is, if this is only as far as educators can see, they will miss one of the most important parts of milestone based education. Milestone tests should be designed to test a small element of the subject, but they do not have to be designed to be short. The smallness of a milestone test should reflect the element it is testing. If a milestone test is testing a student's ability to write an article in a journalism workplace setting, it should be designed to take several hours. Imagine the situation where a writer for a popular news outlet is asked to write an article about some breaking news. The assignment is given at 5 in the evening, it is required to be two pages (on normal paper, single spaced), and it must be done by midnight, so it is ready for the next morning's news. This is a fairly small assignment in the news world. This is not an assignment that is scheduled a month before it is due. It is given several hours before it is due. This is common in the work place. How can we teach students proficiency in this skill? A similar problem related to my major (computer science) is where the boss gives a small assignment that is expected to be finished in a week. Right, is that really small? Yes, in the work place, especially for computer science, a large assignment is one that takes 40 hours a week for at least three people and still takes over a year to complete. Small assignments are ones that take a few months or less, at 40 hours a week, for one person. Similarly, work place assignments are never scheduled so far in advance that it does not take significant work to get them finished on time.
The trick is recognizing the flexibility of milestone based education. While most milestone evaluations will take no more than a few hours, this is not a solid requirement. If a small assignment in journalism is a two page article on breaking news with only 6 hours notice, then this is reasonable for a milestone evaluation. Similarly, if writing a six page proposal for using a new technology in one week is a small assignment in industry for computer science, it is reasonable for a milestone evaluation. Now, the problem is that these assignments do not come when the employee requests them. They come when they are necessary. They also come when the student has had significant training in the field. Giving serious real life assignments in school in not appropriate when the students do not have significant training. In fact, in traditional education, they do not typically come at all until the student has graduated and found a job. This is something that cannot realistically be taught in a classroom setting, because no teacher can assume that students have the time to complete real work place assignments in the same time expected in the work place. The typical college student spends 60 to 80 hours a week on course work, and this is often lower than acceptable quality work for the work place. Assigning an activity that is as intense as a real work place assignment would be unethical. With a milestone based system, however, the student is not penalized for changing priorities on the fly. This means that a student can do a very intense evaluation, and put off study until the higher priority assignment is finished.
Here is how I suggest this be done: First, workplace simulation milestone evaluations should require that most of the major milestones for that evaluation be completed. So, the journalism one above should require that all English milestones for the major are complete, as well as most of the journalism reporting milestones. Second, the student should be able to schedule a range of time to do the evaluation but should not be able to schedule an exact time. Again, in the work place, the employee does not choose when a project will be assigned. So, the journalism assignment that is given only 6 or 8 hours to complete should be scheduled for a period of two weeks or more. Sometime during this period, a professor should contact the student, notifying them of the exact assignment and the deadline. On the side of the professor, it might look like this: The professor is notified when the student registers for the evaluation. The professor decides when the assignment will be given (this should be unpredictable). The timing should be realistic to what happens in industry. As the time approaches, the professor does a little research to find an appropriate event for the student to report on. When the time comes, the professor contacts the student via an appropriate medium (for this, probably email; some industries might assign something at unusual times, in which case, an employee might be sleeping, so phone would be more appropriate; think about med students). The student is given the topic to report on as well as the deadline. If the student misses the deadline, the evaluation is a failure, and it must be repeated. If the student meets the deadline and the work quality is acceptable, the milestone is completed. For the computer science evaluation mentioned above, the student might be required to schedule a month for the evaluation, since it is a week long assignment. When the time for the assignment comes, the professor would email the student with a very short email (as is common in industry) asking the student to research a technology and write up a proposal for implementing it in a specific application. For instance, the student might be asked to research an automated testing system for web sites and write a proposal for implementing such a system (this is an actual assignment I was given once). The student would be given a week to do the research and finish the proposal. Note that again, the professor would be responsible for finding an appropriate technology for the student to write the proposal on.
So, it turns out that milestone based education can be used to teach things like time management, quality assurance, and quick response to assignments. In fact, it could even be used to teach good estimation skills. In computer science, it is very common for developers to underestimate cost and schedule for a project. Imagine a milestone evaluation deliberately designed to be difficult or impossible to complete in the time given. The student might be expected to notify the professor of the scheduling difficulty before a certain amount of time has elapsed in the project. This could be worked into one of the other longer milestone evaluations, randomly. Another common event in industry is for the requirements of an assignment to change partway through. An evaluation could easily simulate that, without requiring the professor to spend much extra time. It turns out that milestone based education is not just incredibly flexible for the students, but it is also extremely flexible for professors and for education in general. We can teach students things that traditional classroom methods are not capable of teaching and in fact typically teach wrong.
In engineering fields, most employers expect new graduates to take about two years of work experience to become profitable. The reason is that the students learn tons of theory, but almost no practical skills. The theory is very helpful in learning the practical skills, but it still takes about two years in the work place to become truly valuable. One reason for this is that most colleges focus on preparing students for graduate school. Graduate school does not require practical experience. The obvious problem is that new graduates often cost more money than they produce for their first two years. Is it possible to prepare students for industry and graduate school at the same time? At BYU-I, we are actually doing this. All of the computer science and electrical engineering professors have significant industry experience, so they know exactly how things work in industry and what students need to learn to be useful right off the bat. It turns out that application of knowledge really helps with understanding theory, so teaching applications in addition to theory helps the students understand theory at least as good as students from other colleges that teach theory exclusively. It is indeed possible to teach both theory and application in the same time most colleges teach only theory. For bonus points, BYU-I CS and EE graduates have a very easy time getting jobs, because they have portfolios of work done for class projects. Milestone based education can do one step better than this. Even BYU-I students have to learn what is expected in the work place. CS and EE professors frequently mention common expectations in industry, but students do not get to actually learn how to manage those expectations. Some of those can be taught to a limited degree, but with a milestone based education system, we can teach most, if not all, work place skills. Imagine how industry would view a school where the graduates came out capable of being profitable right off the bat. In fact, imagine what other schools would think of a school where graduates coming in for graduate school could produce high quality work on time, every time.
In theory, a well implemented milestone based education system can dramatically reduce the time most students require to become well educated. A well implemented milestone system will also put the burden of learning on the students, which in today's technology driven society is a very important skill for students to learn (the BYU-I CS program puts a lot of emphasis on learning to learn and even includes a mandatory senior project designed to evaluate this skill). These are two major benefits of a milestone based approach. It turns out even the apparent weaknesses of a milestone based approach are not actually weaknesses at all. While a formal classroom based system might appear to teach prioritization, it teaches incorrect prioritization for almost all professions. A milestone based system is flexible enough to allow it to teach any prioritization scheme. Not only is this not a weakness, it is a very valuable strength, because different industries expect different prioritization schemes, and a general milestone based system is flexible enough to teach the appropriate prioritization scheme for each major.
So what this comes down to is, are we trying to teach competency or compliance? The formal classroom education system used in the U.S. seems to be focusing almost entirely on compliance. The system teaches students that the most important skill is getting things done on time, not getting things done to a high degree of quality. In fact, even to get an A, it is permissible to have 7% of answers wrong. If McDonald's found this acceptable, they would have more than 1 in 15 orders incorrect. A 70% success rate (a C-) would result in more than 1 in 4 orders being incorrect. The typical idea people see when they hear of a milestone based education system is that it is totally focused on competency. The idea of a milestone based education system is indeed to focus on competency, but if we treat compliance as just another skill, we can use milestone based education to actually teach compliance. Not only that, but we can teach compliance based on what industry it is needed for. We cannot teach compliance in competency, but we can teach competency in compliance.
It is clear that classroom based learning does not teach compliance well, and by trying, it undermines the teaching of competence. Milestone based learning is a higher system of learning. Instead of trying to do the impossible, at the cost of the necessary, it puts things in the right roles and allows the teaching of skills that most educators do not even realize are skills. I believe it is possible for students to become sufficiently competent in their area of study before they graduate. I think that our schools have a moral obligation to provide education of the necessary quality to accomplish this (given what they charge). Unfortunately, the traditional formal classroom approach to learning is no longer sufficient. We need to switch to a learning model that can keep up with changing society and technology, and milestone based education seems to show more promise than any other option.
So, here is the problem with either approach: In many industries (especially the highest paying ones, like engineering) tasks are handed out on short notice, with short deadlines, and little information. These are typically small tasks that are expected to take from a day to a week. The first problem is prioritization. How much are your current tasks worth, and how are you going to decide how to allocate your time between the tasks? This is exactly as far as classroom learning goes. The second part is, how are you going to get the new task done on time? Now, this is not taught by modern classroom learning, though some students force themselves to learn it. Most students, however, prioritize time over quality, because they can handle getting a B or even a C. In the work place, B level work may be acceptable (you won't be getting the big promotion though), but C level work is not usually acceptable. Milestone based education takes care of this problem. Instead of grading with letter grades, where knowing a measly 70% of the material is acceptable (most majors seem to require C- or better for major related classes), milestones grade pass or fail. The bar can be set at 90%, and because students can try again, all students can try as many times as necessary until they prove proficiency, without the high risk of classroom learning (instead of wasting an entire semester retaking the class, they can spend a week studying the part they missed). This teaches students that low quality work is not acceptable, instead of teaching that meeting deadlines is paramount even if the quality is horrible.
So, the problem is, how do we teach compliance (with deadlines and such) without undermining quality? We could use the oriental approach. In Japan, a C grade is equivalent to our A. To get better than a C, students have to go beyond what is taught. There are a few schools in the U.S. that use this system, but ultimately, it harms the students. Most scholarships are based on average grade. If I was getting a B average at one of these schools, I would be less eligible for scholarships than someone getting an A at another school (an A that is equivalent to a C at my school). This would have to be a global change of all schools in the U.S., and good luck getting even a small portion of U.S. schools to change their grading system. Ironically, a milestone based system can handle this problem quite gracefully.
A milestone based system allows students to study at their own pace. It also allows them to choose when they do milestone evaluations. Each milestone evaluation should be a fairly small assignment, designed to test the student's proficiency in one part of a subject. One milestone for basic math might be addition of one digit numbers. Another might be addition of multi-digit numbers. A milestone for English might be identification of simple word types, where a student would identify if a word is a noun, verb, or adjective. Another might be identifying tense of phrases. The catch is, if this is only as far as educators can see, they will miss one of the most important parts of milestone based education. Milestone tests should be designed to test a small element of the subject, but they do not have to be designed to be short. The smallness of a milestone test should reflect the element it is testing. If a milestone test is testing a student's ability to write an article in a journalism workplace setting, it should be designed to take several hours. Imagine the situation where a writer for a popular news outlet is asked to write an article about some breaking news. The assignment is given at 5 in the evening, it is required to be two pages (on normal paper, single spaced), and it must be done by midnight, so it is ready for the next morning's news. This is a fairly small assignment in the news world. This is not an assignment that is scheduled a month before it is due. It is given several hours before it is due. This is common in the work place. How can we teach students proficiency in this skill? A similar problem related to my major (computer science) is where the boss gives a small assignment that is expected to be finished in a week. Right, is that really small? Yes, in the work place, especially for computer science, a large assignment is one that takes 40 hours a week for at least three people and still takes over a year to complete. Small assignments are ones that take a few months or less, at 40 hours a week, for one person. Similarly, work place assignments are never scheduled so far in advance that it does not take significant work to get them finished on time.
The trick is recognizing the flexibility of milestone based education. While most milestone evaluations will take no more than a few hours, this is not a solid requirement. If a small assignment in journalism is a two page article on breaking news with only 6 hours notice, then this is reasonable for a milestone evaluation. Similarly, if writing a six page proposal for using a new technology in one week is a small assignment in industry for computer science, it is reasonable for a milestone evaluation. Now, the problem is that these assignments do not come when the employee requests them. They come when they are necessary. They also come when the student has had significant training in the field. Giving serious real life assignments in school in not appropriate when the students do not have significant training. In fact, in traditional education, they do not typically come at all until the student has graduated and found a job. This is something that cannot realistically be taught in a classroom setting, because no teacher can assume that students have the time to complete real work place assignments in the same time expected in the work place. The typical college student spends 60 to 80 hours a week on course work, and this is often lower than acceptable quality work for the work place. Assigning an activity that is as intense as a real work place assignment would be unethical. With a milestone based system, however, the student is not penalized for changing priorities on the fly. This means that a student can do a very intense evaluation, and put off study until the higher priority assignment is finished.
Here is how I suggest this be done: First, workplace simulation milestone evaluations should require that most of the major milestones for that evaluation be completed. So, the journalism one above should require that all English milestones for the major are complete, as well as most of the journalism reporting milestones. Second, the student should be able to schedule a range of time to do the evaluation but should not be able to schedule an exact time. Again, in the work place, the employee does not choose when a project will be assigned. So, the journalism assignment that is given only 6 or 8 hours to complete should be scheduled for a period of two weeks or more. Sometime during this period, a professor should contact the student, notifying them of the exact assignment and the deadline. On the side of the professor, it might look like this: The professor is notified when the student registers for the evaluation. The professor decides when the assignment will be given (this should be unpredictable). The timing should be realistic to what happens in industry. As the time approaches, the professor does a little research to find an appropriate event for the student to report on. When the time comes, the professor contacts the student via an appropriate medium (for this, probably email; some industries might assign something at unusual times, in which case, an employee might be sleeping, so phone would be more appropriate; think about med students). The student is given the topic to report on as well as the deadline. If the student misses the deadline, the evaluation is a failure, and it must be repeated. If the student meets the deadline and the work quality is acceptable, the milestone is completed. For the computer science evaluation mentioned above, the student might be required to schedule a month for the evaluation, since it is a week long assignment. When the time for the assignment comes, the professor would email the student with a very short email (as is common in industry) asking the student to research a technology and write up a proposal for implementing it in a specific application. For instance, the student might be asked to research an automated testing system for web sites and write a proposal for implementing such a system (this is an actual assignment I was given once). The student would be given a week to do the research and finish the proposal. Note that again, the professor would be responsible for finding an appropriate technology for the student to write the proposal on.
So, it turns out that milestone based education can be used to teach things like time management, quality assurance, and quick response to assignments. In fact, it could even be used to teach good estimation skills. In computer science, it is very common for developers to underestimate cost and schedule for a project. Imagine a milestone evaluation deliberately designed to be difficult or impossible to complete in the time given. The student might be expected to notify the professor of the scheduling difficulty before a certain amount of time has elapsed in the project. This could be worked into one of the other longer milestone evaluations, randomly. Another common event in industry is for the requirements of an assignment to change partway through. An evaluation could easily simulate that, without requiring the professor to spend much extra time. It turns out that milestone based education is not just incredibly flexible for the students, but it is also extremely flexible for professors and for education in general. We can teach students things that traditional classroom methods are not capable of teaching and in fact typically teach wrong.
In engineering fields, most employers expect new graduates to take about two years of work experience to become profitable. The reason is that the students learn tons of theory, but almost no practical skills. The theory is very helpful in learning the practical skills, but it still takes about two years in the work place to become truly valuable. One reason for this is that most colleges focus on preparing students for graduate school. Graduate school does not require practical experience. The obvious problem is that new graduates often cost more money than they produce for their first two years. Is it possible to prepare students for industry and graduate school at the same time? At BYU-I, we are actually doing this. All of the computer science and electrical engineering professors have significant industry experience, so they know exactly how things work in industry and what students need to learn to be useful right off the bat. It turns out that application of knowledge really helps with understanding theory, so teaching applications in addition to theory helps the students understand theory at least as good as students from other colleges that teach theory exclusively. It is indeed possible to teach both theory and application in the same time most colleges teach only theory. For bonus points, BYU-I CS and EE graduates have a very easy time getting jobs, because they have portfolios of work done for class projects. Milestone based education can do one step better than this. Even BYU-I students have to learn what is expected in the work place. CS and EE professors frequently mention common expectations in industry, but students do not get to actually learn how to manage those expectations. Some of those can be taught to a limited degree, but with a milestone based education system, we can teach most, if not all, work place skills. Imagine how industry would view a school where the graduates came out capable of being profitable right off the bat. In fact, imagine what other schools would think of a school where graduates coming in for graduate school could produce high quality work on time, every time.
In theory, a well implemented milestone based education system can dramatically reduce the time most students require to become well educated. A well implemented milestone system will also put the burden of learning on the students, which in today's technology driven society is a very important skill for students to learn (the BYU-I CS program puts a lot of emphasis on learning to learn and even includes a mandatory senior project designed to evaluate this skill). These are two major benefits of a milestone based approach. It turns out even the apparent weaknesses of a milestone based approach are not actually weaknesses at all. While a formal classroom based system might appear to teach prioritization, it teaches incorrect prioritization for almost all professions. A milestone based system is flexible enough to allow it to teach any prioritization scheme. Not only is this not a weakness, it is a very valuable strength, because different industries expect different prioritization schemes, and a general milestone based system is flexible enough to teach the appropriate prioritization scheme for each major.
So what this comes down to is, are we trying to teach competency or compliance? The formal classroom education system used in the U.S. seems to be focusing almost entirely on compliance. The system teaches students that the most important skill is getting things done on time, not getting things done to a high degree of quality. In fact, even to get an A, it is permissible to have 7% of answers wrong. If McDonald's found this acceptable, they would have more than 1 in 15 orders incorrect. A 70% success rate (a C-) would result in more than 1 in 4 orders being incorrect. The typical idea people see when they hear of a milestone based education system is that it is totally focused on competency. The idea of a milestone based education system is indeed to focus on competency, but if we treat compliance as just another skill, we can use milestone based education to actually teach compliance. Not only that, but we can teach compliance based on what industry it is needed for. We cannot teach compliance in competency, but we can teach competency in compliance.
It is clear that classroom based learning does not teach compliance well, and by trying, it undermines the teaching of competence. Milestone based learning is a higher system of learning. Instead of trying to do the impossible, at the cost of the necessary, it puts things in the right roles and allows the teaching of skills that most educators do not even realize are skills. I believe it is possible for students to become sufficiently competent in their area of study before they graduate. I think that our schools have a moral obligation to provide education of the necessary quality to accomplish this (given what they charge). Unfortunately, the traditional formal classroom approach to learning is no longer sufficient. We need to switch to a learning model that can keep up with changing society and technology, and milestone based education seems to show more promise than any other option.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Learning Value in Video Games
I just published an article titled Video Games Rant on one of my other blogs. Most of the article is not directly related to education, otherwise I would have published it here instead. As I was writing the last few paragraphs of this rant, I considered some opposing viewpoints and had an interesting revelation about video games. That revelation is directly related to education, so I think it is appropriate to discuss it in a little more detail here.
I have asserted the value of video games in brain development many times. I have also done a lot of research on the subject, and so far I have found no explanation for why video games are so effective for learning, except that they tend to be more motivating that traditional teaching practices. While this is true, it is actually just one element of the brain science behind learning. It turns out that video games are more effective for learning because they conform better to the way the brain is designed to learn.
The question I asked in the other article is how ancient humans got by without the benefits of video games, if video games are so good for us. The answer was, "They lived them!" This might sound counter-intuitive, but it is true. Modern video games help develop mapping skills by including an element of risk with getting lost. In ancient times, humans learned mapping skills in a very similar way. Video games improve perception by including elements that are difficult to see, but which either offer benefits or reduce risks if discovered. In ancient times, missing small details, like a stalking predator, could result in serious injury or death. Video games improve quick decision making skills by putting players into situations where acting too slow has strong negative consequences. Similarly, ancient humans often had to deal with situations where quick action was necessary for survival. One of the biggest benefits of video games is developing good problem solving skills. Ancient humans learned problem solving skills by trying to find ways to make life less dangerous and difficult. Now, however, many humans have very poor mapping skills, decision making skills, perception, and problem solving skills. Unfortunately, successfully making life much less dangerous and far easier has not eliminated the need for these skills. The strong need for more engineers in the U.S. is evidence of this. In addition, mapping skills are important for getting around in big cities and even suburbs. Perception is extremely important in activities like driving. Problem solving skills are important in nearly every aspect of life. We still need these skills, and it turns out that video games are the most effective way to get them, if you do not count living with the constant threat of death.
The point of all of this is that thousands or more years of natural selection have produced human brains that are ideally suited to learning in exactly the way that video games teach (which explains the attraction). Video games have one additional benefit over real life experience: The penalty for failure is low. Failing in real life used to result in death, severe injury, or at least pain. Even in the most strict video games, the highest penalty for failure is having to start over from nothing. In most modern video games, the worst penalty is having to redo a little bit of work. This reduces fear of failure, which increases motivation to try new things. Trying new things is one very important way of learning. Failing is also a very good learning experience. When the cost of failure is low, the fear of failure is reduced, which encourages trying risky things that will likely end in failure, but which will sometimes result in awesome success. Even the failures themselves have value, because they will always teach what does not work. In short, reducing the cost of failure helps increase motivation to learn by experience. While natural selection may have suited our brains to learn by experience, we can use video games to make the consequences of failure acceptable. Video games are actually better for effective learning than the conditions that suited our brains to learn from video games so well.
We can take advantage of this knowledge. It is possible that there is no classroom teaching style that could be as effective as video games for teaching. If this is the case (and research aught to be conducted to discover if it is), then we should be spending a lot more effort figuring out how to effectively use video games as learning tools for real life subjects. People like Salman Khan and Ananth Pai have already started using game elements for learning with great success. Armed with a better understanding of why games work so well for learning though, we should be able to do much better. There are millions of people in the U.S. that spend inordinate amounts of time playing video games. If we can sneak some real education into video games, without reducing motivation to play them, we could educate the people of the U.S. at minimal cost. It is even possible that well engineered video games could dramatically reduce the need for a large public education system. The evidence is very strong that video games have huge potential as teaching tools. We need to put resources into learning how to use them most effectively.
I have asserted the value of video games in brain development many times. I have also done a lot of research on the subject, and so far I have found no explanation for why video games are so effective for learning, except that they tend to be more motivating that traditional teaching practices. While this is true, it is actually just one element of the brain science behind learning. It turns out that video games are more effective for learning because they conform better to the way the brain is designed to learn.
The question I asked in the other article is how ancient humans got by without the benefits of video games, if video games are so good for us. The answer was, "They lived them!" This might sound counter-intuitive, but it is true. Modern video games help develop mapping skills by including an element of risk with getting lost. In ancient times, humans learned mapping skills in a very similar way. Video games improve perception by including elements that are difficult to see, but which either offer benefits or reduce risks if discovered. In ancient times, missing small details, like a stalking predator, could result in serious injury or death. Video games improve quick decision making skills by putting players into situations where acting too slow has strong negative consequences. Similarly, ancient humans often had to deal with situations where quick action was necessary for survival. One of the biggest benefits of video games is developing good problem solving skills. Ancient humans learned problem solving skills by trying to find ways to make life less dangerous and difficult. Now, however, many humans have very poor mapping skills, decision making skills, perception, and problem solving skills. Unfortunately, successfully making life much less dangerous and far easier has not eliminated the need for these skills. The strong need for more engineers in the U.S. is evidence of this. In addition, mapping skills are important for getting around in big cities and even suburbs. Perception is extremely important in activities like driving. Problem solving skills are important in nearly every aspect of life. We still need these skills, and it turns out that video games are the most effective way to get them, if you do not count living with the constant threat of death.
The point of all of this is that thousands or more years of natural selection have produced human brains that are ideally suited to learning in exactly the way that video games teach (which explains the attraction). Video games have one additional benefit over real life experience: The penalty for failure is low. Failing in real life used to result in death, severe injury, or at least pain. Even in the most strict video games, the highest penalty for failure is having to start over from nothing. In most modern video games, the worst penalty is having to redo a little bit of work. This reduces fear of failure, which increases motivation to try new things. Trying new things is one very important way of learning. Failing is also a very good learning experience. When the cost of failure is low, the fear of failure is reduced, which encourages trying risky things that will likely end in failure, but which will sometimes result in awesome success. Even the failures themselves have value, because they will always teach what does not work. In short, reducing the cost of failure helps increase motivation to learn by experience. While natural selection may have suited our brains to learn by experience, we can use video games to make the consequences of failure acceptable. Video games are actually better for effective learning than the conditions that suited our brains to learn from video games so well.
We can take advantage of this knowledge. It is possible that there is no classroom teaching style that could be as effective as video games for teaching. If this is the case (and research aught to be conducted to discover if it is), then we should be spending a lot more effort figuring out how to effectively use video games as learning tools for real life subjects. People like Salman Khan and Ananth Pai have already started using game elements for learning with great success. Armed with a better understanding of why games work so well for learning though, we should be able to do much better. There are millions of people in the U.S. that spend inordinate amounts of time playing video games. If we can sneak some real education into video games, without reducing motivation to play them, we could educate the people of the U.S. at minimal cost. It is even possible that well engineered video games could dramatically reduce the need for a large public education system. The evidence is very strong that video games have huge potential as teaching tools. We need to put resources into learning how to use them most effectively.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Doing it right!
I just read this article. Evidently someone is setting up a new college called Minerva, which seems to follow some of the most important suggestions I have given on this blog. The part of the article that really caught my attention was this, "Though 21st-century technology links professors and students, they use a seminar format that hearkens back to Socrates’ ancient learning model." I have said this before, and I will say it again: One of the biggest problems with modern U.S. education is the strict classroom teaching style. In ancient universities, a lecture/forum model was followed (the article refers to the forum part as "seminar"). This model was very flexible, allowing students to learn at their own pace. It also did not grade students in a classroom style. A student became a master in a subject not by getting good grades and going through a highly structured degree program. A student became a master, by mastering the subject matter. If this took two years or ten years, it made no difference.
So, some differences (which I have also suggested) from ancient schools is that Minerva does not plan to have formal lectures. Instead, students must study materials on their own time. In the article it says that Minerva suggests that its students use resources like Khan Academy for lecture style learning. Professors will then teach in the form of online seminars, much like forums in ancient universities. This allows Minerva to offer a high quality education at about half the cost. In fact, their goal is to offer a Havard or better quality education, for half the cost of Harvard.
Something that bothered me in the article was a quote from MIT's Chris Peterson,
The reason this bothers me is that it is a lie. These "unproven" methods were used very successfully for many centuries before the modern classroom teaching method became common. Right, the lectures were taught by paid professors instead of found free on the internet, and likewise the forums (seminars) were live instead of online. I am sorry, but anyone who thinks this change in medium will make that big of a difference has not been paying attention to the last ten years (in fact, Khan Academy has shown that recorded lectures are far more effective than live ones, because students can rewind and view parts they did not understand as many times as it takes to understand). Further, while Minerva may frame it as founding the "next university," it is little more than going back to the well proven methods of the past, which modern classroom methods have repeatedly failed to match. Before calling something "unproven" please look at the evidence. If you really want to look poorly educated, make a general statement about something you know nothing about, that is wrong.
Now, I am not saying that Minerva will be successful. I am suggesting that if they fail it will not be due to their so-called "unproven educational methods." One place they could fail is learning materials. If they do not spend a good deal of effort making sure good supplemental materials are available online, students who are struggling may have a hard time finding help. For any classes that rely entirely on online materials, it is essential that they verify the availability of such materials. Another concern is availability of reliable internet services for students and professors. If professors are doing live seminars online and one student has connection difficulties, it could interfere with that student getting answers to important questions. Recording the seminars for later viewing could help, but if no one asked the question, it will still go unanswered. There are plenty of things that could go wrong, but most of them are manageable, if the school puts sufficient effort into it. If they fail, it will not be due to their unconventional learning model, it will be because they did not pay attention to something important.
Before concluding, I want to mention one other thing about Minerva that I think is awesome. Each year, students will live in a different international city. Now, I don't know how this will be handled if Minerva starts taking on students in areas where this is not a reasonable option, but for now, I think this is an excellent plan. I live in the U.S., and I have found that most Americans are pretty deluded about the state of the rest of the world (BYU Idaho, the college I am currently attending requires at least one class on a "global hotspot," which is a place with a lot of oppression, violence, and/or disasters; I learned about Pakistan, including local cultures, government, terrorism, history, and natural disasters). Americans do not understand that their culture is not the dominant world culture. Americans (and many Europeans, as I found when reading about plastic printable guns) also seem to think that a majority of people in the world live under free, democratic, unoppressive governments. While it is unlikely that Minerva will send students to countries with tyrannical governments, moving around will at least help them to understand different world cultures. Also, I have found that the media in each country seems to report slightly different information about conditions in 3rd world countries. Moving to a different country every year might help students to put together the pieces, so they eventually understand the real condition of the majority of world population.
I think Minerva has some extremely good ideas. I expect the learning model to be highly successful once students learn to teach themselves instead of relying on professors to babysit their learning. I sincerely hope that Minerva manages to avoid all of the potential pitfalls. While their goal is not to overturn the modern educational model, I think they could do it. While there are many other things they could be doing to improve their educational model, I still think this could be the start of a much more competitive education system in the U.S.
So, some differences (which I have also suggested) from ancient schools is that Minerva does not plan to have formal lectures. Instead, students must study materials on their own time. In the article it says that Minerva suggests that its students use resources like Khan Academy for lecture style learning. Professors will then teach in the form of online seminars, much like forums in ancient universities. This allows Minerva to offer a high quality education at about half the cost. In fact, their goal is to offer a Havard or better quality education, for half the cost of Harvard.
Something that bothered me in the article was a quote from MIT's Chris Peterson,
“They are looking to take some very unproven educational methods, still very much in the experimental stage and roll them out to a whole bunch of the most vulnerable people in the world,” Peterson said. “They frame this as founding the next university. They know that elite prestige sells better than anything else in the education world.”
The reason this bothers me is that it is a lie. These "unproven" methods were used very successfully for many centuries before the modern classroom teaching method became common. Right, the lectures were taught by paid professors instead of found free on the internet, and likewise the forums (seminars) were live instead of online. I am sorry, but anyone who thinks this change in medium will make that big of a difference has not been paying attention to the last ten years (in fact, Khan Academy has shown that recorded lectures are far more effective than live ones, because students can rewind and view parts they did not understand as many times as it takes to understand). Further, while Minerva may frame it as founding the "next university," it is little more than going back to the well proven methods of the past, which modern classroom methods have repeatedly failed to match. Before calling something "unproven" please look at the evidence. If you really want to look poorly educated, make a general statement about something you know nothing about, that is wrong.
Now, I am not saying that Minerva will be successful. I am suggesting that if they fail it will not be due to their so-called "unproven educational methods." One place they could fail is learning materials. If they do not spend a good deal of effort making sure good supplemental materials are available online, students who are struggling may have a hard time finding help. For any classes that rely entirely on online materials, it is essential that they verify the availability of such materials. Another concern is availability of reliable internet services for students and professors. If professors are doing live seminars online and one student has connection difficulties, it could interfere with that student getting answers to important questions. Recording the seminars for later viewing could help, but if no one asked the question, it will still go unanswered. There are plenty of things that could go wrong, but most of them are manageable, if the school puts sufficient effort into it. If they fail, it will not be due to their unconventional learning model, it will be because they did not pay attention to something important.
Before concluding, I want to mention one other thing about Minerva that I think is awesome. Each year, students will live in a different international city. Now, I don't know how this will be handled if Minerva starts taking on students in areas where this is not a reasonable option, but for now, I think this is an excellent plan. I live in the U.S., and I have found that most Americans are pretty deluded about the state of the rest of the world (BYU Idaho, the college I am currently attending requires at least one class on a "global hotspot," which is a place with a lot of oppression, violence, and/or disasters; I learned about Pakistan, including local cultures, government, terrorism, history, and natural disasters). Americans do not understand that their culture is not the dominant world culture. Americans (and many Europeans, as I found when reading about plastic printable guns) also seem to think that a majority of people in the world live under free, democratic, unoppressive governments. While it is unlikely that Minerva will send students to countries with tyrannical governments, moving around will at least help them to understand different world cultures. Also, I have found that the media in each country seems to report slightly different information about conditions in 3rd world countries. Moving to a different country every year might help students to put together the pieces, so they eventually understand the real condition of the majority of world population.
I think Minerva has some extremely good ideas. I expect the learning model to be highly successful once students learn to teach themselves instead of relying on professors to babysit their learning. I sincerely hope that Minerva manages to avoid all of the potential pitfalls. While their goal is not to overturn the modern educational model, I think they could do it. While there are many other things they could be doing to improve their educational model, I still think this could be the start of a much more competitive education system in the U.S.
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Brainworks
The human brain shares many similarities with muscles. On a cellular basis, brain tissue and muscle tissue are very different. In their reactions to certain types of stress, however, they are very similar. I recently read a few articles on the brain that confirmed a theory I have long wondered about.
Many years ago (maybe 10), I began to wonder if my high degree of intelligence was due to some natural luck, or if it was maybe the result of a strong desire to be intelligent. When I was 14, I took an electronic IQ test, and I scored 136 on it (100 is average, 136 is very high). Discussing the results with others, I learned that most electronic IQ tests only go up to 140, which means that the closer to 140 a person tests, the more likely their IQ is to be far over 140. I have not taken an IQ test since, though I managed to pass a Mensa entry practice test (I do not plan on joining, because I am unwilling to pay dues just to be part of a "smart club"). Anyhow, this experience got me thinking about intelligence. When I was very young, I was extremely curious. My parents, instead of discouraging curiosity or blowing it off, encouraged me to be curious, and they often taught me about things I was curious about. My mom also taught me many things I was not as curious about, as a sort of game. By I was 5, I knew the technical names of nearly all of the major bones in the body. When we moved back to the U.S. (we were in Germany because my dad was in the military), we lived with my grandparents for a while and visited them fairly often after moving out. My grandparents encouraged my curiosity even more. As a present once (maybe for a birthday, I forget), by grandfather bought me some wire, a bolt, and a lantern battery and showed me how to make an electromagnet. For Christmas, they often gave me Technic Legos or other toy sets that could be used to build mechanical devices. In short, I grew up in an environment where learning and curiosity were encouraged. This has given me a lot of motivation to learn. As such, I have spent a great deal of effort on learning new things that I find interesting.
Thinking about all of this has led me to the question above. Am I smart because I was born that way, or am I smart because I want to be smart and have put effort into becoming smart? The more I learn, the more I believe the correct answer is the second. Even my extremely good memory can be attributed to things like my mom playing memory with me starting at a very young age. Recently, in conjunction with a pair of college classes, I have learned even more supporting my theory. For my math class (linear algebra), we were required to read and comment on a pair of articles about brain function. These articles discussed studies that showed that intelligence is a learned trait. One discussed a study done where the students in a poorly performing highschool math class were separated into two randomly selected groups. One was given a short course on study skills, while the other was given a short course on brain neurology. The brain neurology course focused primarily on how the brain forms new connections while learning, and it asserted that by expending some effort, even people who are "bad at math" can teach their brains to be good at math through practice. The grades of the two groups were compared at the end of the semester, and it was discovered that the group who attended the brain course did significantly better in the math class than those who attended the study skills course. Why? The study attributed the success to motivation. Common wisdom (in the U.S.) tells us that if we are bad at math, we can never improve. The students who were taught study skills still believed that no matter how hard they worked, they could not improve, because they were born bad at math, so they had no motivation to apply the newly learned skills. The students who were taught about the brain learned that the common wisdom is wrong and realized that hard work would not be wasted. So, they were more motivated to work harder, because they could see a clear benefit.
Now, there is a second thing I learned, from a computer science class. The textbook, a book for learning the Java programming language (called "Head First Java"), begins by discussing how the brain works and how the book takes advantage of this knowledge to improve the pace of learning. Note that all of the information presented is considered common knowledge in neurology and psychology. The strongest focus is that the brain craves novelty. This is far more complex than it sounds. A better way of putting it is that the brain is not built to focus on one thing for long periods of time. In ancient hunter/gatherer societies, survival depends on awareness, and awareness depends on being able to rapidly switch focus between different things. If you miss the predator following you, you will become lunch. Likewise, if you miss the berry bush off to your left, halfway hidden behind a tree, you might starve. In modern society, we do not need such a high level of awareness, but our brain is still wired to notice and focus on new or unusual things. What this means is, we are easily distracted. The textbook tries to take advantage of this knowledge by using multiple learning techniques and by providing novel distractions that still teach Java. It does this by using more natural language than typical text books, including images with captions, and having a lot of asides with interesting but pertinent information. Put together, not only do these help retain focus, but they also teach using multiple methods, which has also been found to improve learning retention.
What is the use of all of this brain information? I have frequently asserted that there is little real research on education and that the research that exists is summarily ignored by both our education system and our government. The above is some of the research that exists, but is ignored. Why is it ignored? I do not have a clue, except maybe because it supports the idea that the formal classroom model is a poor teaching method (though it can be applied effectively even in a classroom model). How can we take advantage of the above information? Well, there are many ways of doing this.
First lets look at a corollary to the above that is rather important. We have discussed how the right kind of stress can help the brain grow, much like exercise and muscles. We have not discussed that the brain can be injured by excessive stress, again much like muscles. Injuries to the brain due to over stress can be found all over the U.S. In fact, our current educational system is the primary cause of such injuries. Studies in New Zealand (I'll write more on this later) have determined that the optimum age to learn reading varies between 4 years old and 9 years old. This is a huge range. The U.S. educational system tries to force all children to learn to read by 5 or 6 years old. Different rates of brain development result in different receptions to this. Children who do not yet have the necessary brain development find learning to read at this age difficult or impossible. This results in two related effects. The first is a subconscious reaction causing the brain to reject learning to read even after sufficient development has occurred. The second is that the child hates reading, even after finally learning to do it. This hatred of reading is the result of the subconscious reaction, not something that the child consciously decides to do and is thus extremely difficult to overcome. This also happens with math and nearly every other school subject. The end result is that children learn to hate any kind of academic learning, and their brains reject learning in academic environments. This leads to a hatred of learning that extends outside of academic environments. The result is that the typical American claims that they cannot do math (consider how you would react if a supposedly educated American told you, "Oh, I just can't read"; math is no less important or valuable than reading in modern American society). Our education system is awful, in a large degree, because it destroys motivation. Using the knowledge gained from the research I have discussed, the U.S. education system could overcome a lot of other shortcomings just by increasing motivation to learn. We can do better though.
First, we need to get over the misconception that if you are not good at something, it is genetic and there is nothing you can do about it. Many Americans have difficulty reading, due to genetic conditions like dyslexia. Most of them find some way of getting around it. Even dyslexics who have great difficulty reading learn to read and put the effort into doing it when absolutely necessary. In our society, it is nearly impossible to get by without some reading ability. That said, most people who have difficulty reading can blame poor schooling. It is not uncommon in many areas of the U.S. for students to graduate from high school with poor reading skills. Many of these students slowly improve their reading skills through necessary reading in everyday life (though they typically never overcome their dislike for reading). From this, it is clear that through effort ability can be improved. It should be pretty obvious that the problem is not capacity for learning but rather how the subject is taught. There are occasional people with actual disabilities that affect reading, but there is no evidence that this is a significant percentage of the population. If we can teach students that they are capable of learning and overcoming difficulties (even people with dyslexia can learn to read, with enough effort), then we can destroy the common misconceptions that often lead to lack of motivation.
Second, we need to quit trying for force learning down children's throats before they have had sufficient brain development. As I mentioned, this causes psychological injury that ultimately makes learning more difficult and often leads to dislike of learning. Now, I am not saying that we should increase the age at which we teach things. There seems to be an optimum level of brain development for learning different things. For reading this is typically between 4 and 9 years old. If we wait too long, the subject will become less interesting, and the lack of novelty will reduce motivation, making it harder to learn. This is where my problem with the classroom model of teaching comes in. For reading, there is a 5 year range where sufficient development may occur. So, which grade year do we teach it in? Common wisdom in the field of teaching would probably say the middle year, 6 or 7 years old, because that is the average. Unfortunately, this is too early or too late for a majority of students. In other words, this is unlikely to improve the situation at all. Ideally, we would teach each child to read right at the time when they have achieved sufficient brain development. The U.S. education system will tell you that this is impossible, because there are too many students to effectively teach each one separately. The system used in New Zealand is evidence that this is a lie. This is a shortcoming of the traditional classroom learning system used in the U.S., not a generally impossible task. In New Zealand, most of elementary school is spent with the same teacher. Classrooms have many age groups. Subjects are taught in a less formal way, especially reading. Reading is taught primarily through motivation. Each school day, a significant amount of time is spent on reading but not necessarily on teaching reading. As students become interested in and ready to learn to read, they are taught by specialists. The result is that students enjoy reading when they get out of elementary school. They also tend to have far better reading skills that the typical American. Most other subjects are similar in many ways. For instance, math is often easier to learn at older ages than U.S. schools start at. The result here is that many students feel that they are just "not good at math," when the real problem is lack of sufficient brain development. The problem this poses is that once they think they are genetically predisposed to be bad at math, they loose motivation to try to learn it. As with reading, the more informal classroom setting has clear benefits, as students can be allowed to work at a pace that fits their brain development.
My third solution to this problem is based on the idea presented in the Java textbook: the brain craves novelty. The human brain is designed to adapt quickly, which poses a problem in a society where adaptation is not as necessary as during less prosperous times. Our brains are very well suited to learning many new but unrelated things, in quick succession. This does not mean that several short classes a day is the optimum way of learning, however. The problem is this: when we learn something small, then immediately learn something totally unrelated, we have a very high probability of forgetting the first thing. Our brains do this to avoid wasting space. If we learn something, and then use it, the brain recognizes it as important, and it is more likely to store some of that information in long term memory. Still, one record in long term memory will still not last very long, especially when we are presented with something totally unrelated directly after. So this problem is this: Our brains retain information best when we immediately use that information, a lot. So, for best retention, we should focus on one thing for an extended period of time. This is the best way to permanently store information in long term memory. Now, on the other side, the brain gets bored with this strategy. Too much study of a single subject typically becomes rather mind numbing. The brain begins to see no point in remembering the information, because it is constantly available. The lack of novelty results in a lack of sufficient stimulation, which can actually cause you to fall asleep while studying. Studying one thing constantly often becomes extremely difficult in a fairly short period of time. In short, to keep the brain interested, we need to vary what we are learning, but to retain what we are learning, we need to study a specific subject for an extended period. These seem to be diametrically opposed. How do we study one subject without interruption but still have enough interruption to keep the brain focused? The answer is actually not that complicated: use different teaching techniques. My Java book uses conversational language, because the brain is more stimulated from conversational language syntax than formal text book language syntax. It also intersperses interesting images throughout the text, with captions attached. It includes asides with useful information that also provide a short break. The result is that the brain has the opportunity to regularly change focus, but the subject being learned remains the same. Also, in the different things, overlapping information is presented, which helps to reinforce important points. Learning using multiple different styles helps to ingrain information in long term memory better. Varying learning techniques not only helps improve focus, but it also improves retention.
Now, let's look at some ways of implementing these ideas. Getting over the misconception that learning ability is entirely genetic is fairly easy. This misconception is often spread by the actions of teachers and parents. For the math class in the study, the misconception was effectively destroyed with a simple two week course on the neurology of learning. For younger students, teachers could easily just tell them that learning is determined more by motivation than genetics. The other two can be most easily handled by using a less formal classroom system. The less formal classroom allows for learning paced for the student. It also happens to be more conducive to increasing novelty. If there are many students studying at different levels, students will be exposed to more parts of a subject at one time, allowing them to learn and focus on the things that they find most interesting at the moment. This will produce an environment that encourages motivated and effective learning.
There are some additional things that could be used to increase novelty, even in a traditional formal classroom setting. These are things like alternate forms of teaching media. For instance, in 5th grade (before I started homeschooling), I had a teacher who would occasionally do a Jeopardy-like game, covering the subjects we were learning. Well designed games provide a break from traditional learning and are also very engaging. If the subject of study can be worked into the game, then it will also facilitate learning. Students that are engaged in learning are much more likely to retain what they learn. In addition, things like videos, pictures, and even audio clips can be used to provide breaks and add variety to the learning methods. Music can also provide a break, and music has been shown to improve learning, giving another extra boost to retention.
One last thing I want to look at improving is the problem of rapidly switching subjects. Going through four to six one hour long classes per day, with totally unrelated subjects, is a recipe for learning a bunch of stuff that you will forget by the end of the day. Instead, it would probably be better to stick to two or three two hour long classes per day, or even just two three hour classes. Instead of having the same class schedule every day, each day of the week would cover one or two different subjects. So, on Monday, there might be three hours of math and three hours of science. On Tuesday, the first three hours could be English and the next three hours might be history. The rest of the week would be similar. For a subject as important as reading, there might be three days with a three hour block of reading, or reading might even be an everyday thing. Note that for long class periods, there should be breaks or times during class where students can leave their seats and wander a bit (blood clots in the legs are most likely to develop during long periods of sitting). During breaks may be a good time to play music or watch an entertaining video. Short distractions like this will not interfere with retention but will still give the brain a needed break. Breaks may also be a good time to answer students' questions in an informal setting (and when a student is curious about something is often the best time to learn that thing).
I am not saying that the above will work for everyone or even that it will work. I expect it to work, based on the scientific knowledge behind it. Like I have said many times, there is not much we could do to make our education system worse, so the odds that this will improve it are pretty good. Some of the techniques I have mentioned have been used with great success in other countries. In New Zealand, the less formal classroom setting has been very successful. In most oriental countries, the culture encourages the idea that learning capacity is based on motivation and not genetics, and we have clearly seen the positive results of this (in fact, it has resulted in a stereotype that all Asians are extremely smart). While the novelty thing has hardly been used in serious education, presenters have been using it for years to keep their audience interested. Similarly novelty is one of the biggest driving factors of the video game industry. People will go to great effort to learn the mechanics of games like World of WarCraft (Wow) and Minecraft, because the games are engaging and motivating. Nobody learns to play a video game in a formal classroom setting. The games are so motivating that the players seek out the knowledge for themselves. Wow contains more knowledge than the average college class and covers at least as many subjects as the typical elementary school (you can even find books in the game about the history of the imaginary world the game takes place in). People learn this information for fun, using resources like the internet to find it. If we could make school this motivating and engaging, students would begin to allocate part of their free time to studying school subjects, possibly instead of playing games (nothing against games...). We have the knowledge to do this, now we just need to apply it.
Many years ago (maybe 10), I began to wonder if my high degree of intelligence was due to some natural luck, or if it was maybe the result of a strong desire to be intelligent. When I was 14, I took an electronic IQ test, and I scored 136 on it (100 is average, 136 is very high). Discussing the results with others, I learned that most electronic IQ tests only go up to 140, which means that the closer to 140 a person tests, the more likely their IQ is to be far over 140. I have not taken an IQ test since, though I managed to pass a Mensa entry practice test (I do not plan on joining, because I am unwilling to pay dues just to be part of a "smart club"). Anyhow, this experience got me thinking about intelligence. When I was very young, I was extremely curious. My parents, instead of discouraging curiosity or blowing it off, encouraged me to be curious, and they often taught me about things I was curious about. My mom also taught me many things I was not as curious about, as a sort of game. By I was 5, I knew the technical names of nearly all of the major bones in the body. When we moved back to the U.S. (we were in Germany because my dad was in the military), we lived with my grandparents for a while and visited them fairly often after moving out. My grandparents encouraged my curiosity even more. As a present once (maybe for a birthday, I forget), by grandfather bought me some wire, a bolt, and a lantern battery and showed me how to make an electromagnet. For Christmas, they often gave me Technic Legos or other toy sets that could be used to build mechanical devices. In short, I grew up in an environment where learning and curiosity were encouraged. This has given me a lot of motivation to learn. As such, I have spent a great deal of effort on learning new things that I find interesting.
Thinking about all of this has led me to the question above. Am I smart because I was born that way, or am I smart because I want to be smart and have put effort into becoming smart? The more I learn, the more I believe the correct answer is the second. Even my extremely good memory can be attributed to things like my mom playing memory with me starting at a very young age. Recently, in conjunction with a pair of college classes, I have learned even more supporting my theory. For my math class (linear algebra), we were required to read and comment on a pair of articles about brain function. These articles discussed studies that showed that intelligence is a learned trait. One discussed a study done where the students in a poorly performing highschool math class were separated into two randomly selected groups. One was given a short course on study skills, while the other was given a short course on brain neurology. The brain neurology course focused primarily on how the brain forms new connections while learning, and it asserted that by expending some effort, even people who are "bad at math" can teach their brains to be good at math through practice. The grades of the two groups were compared at the end of the semester, and it was discovered that the group who attended the brain course did significantly better in the math class than those who attended the study skills course. Why? The study attributed the success to motivation. Common wisdom (in the U.S.) tells us that if we are bad at math, we can never improve. The students who were taught study skills still believed that no matter how hard they worked, they could not improve, because they were born bad at math, so they had no motivation to apply the newly learned skills. The students who were taught about the brain learned that the common wisdom is wrong and realized that hard work would not be wasted. So, they were more motivated to work harder, because they could see a clear benefit.
Now, there is a second thing I learned, from a computer science class. The textbook, a book for learning the Java programming language (called "Head First Java"), begins by discussing how the brain works and how the book takes advantage of this knowledge to improve the pace of learning. Note that all of the information presented is considered common knowledge in neurology and psychology. The strongest focus is that the brain craves novelty. This is far more complex than it sounds. A better way of putting it is that the brain is not built to focus on one thing for long periods of time. In ancient hunter/gatherer societies, survival depends on awareness, and awareness depends on being able to rapidly switch focus between different things. If you miss the predator following you, you will become lunch. Likewise, if you miss the berry bush off to your left, halfway hidden behind a tree, you might starve. In modern society, we do not need such a high level of awareness, but our brain is still wired to notice and focus on new or unusual things. What this means is, we are easily distracted. The textbook tries to take advantage of this knowledge by using multiple learning techniques and by providing novel distractions that still teach Java. It does this by using more natural language than typical text books, including images with captions, and having a lot of asides with interesting but pertinent information. Put together, not only do these help retain focus, but they also teach using multiple methods, which has also been found to improve learning retention.
What is the use of all of this brain information? I have frequently asserted that there is little real research on education and that the research that exists is summarily ignored by both our education system and our government. The above is some of the research that exists, but is ignored. Why is it ignored? I do not have a clue, except maybe because it supports the idea that the formal classroom model is a poor teaching method (though it can be applied effectively even in a classroom model). How can we take advantage of the above information? Well, there are many ways of doing this.
First lets look at a corollary to the above that is rather important. We have discussed how the right kind of stress can help the brain grow, much like exercise and muscles. We have not discussed that the brain can be injured by excessive stress, again much like muscles. Injuries to the brain due to over stress can be found all over the U.S. In fact, our current educational system is the primary cause of such injuries. Studies in New Zealand (I'll write more on this later) have determined that the optimum age to learn reading varies between 4 years old and 9 years old. This is a huge range. The U.S. educational system tries to force all children to learn to read by 5 or 6 years old. Different rates of brain development result in different receptions to this. Children who do not yet have the necessary brain development find learning to read at this age difficult or impossible. This results in two related effects. The first is a subconscious reaction causing the brain to reject learning to read even after sufficient development has occurred. The second is that the child hates reading, even after finally learning to do it. This hatred of reading is the result of the subconscious reaction, not something that the child consciously decides to do and is thus extremely difficult to overcome. This also happens with math and nearly every other school subject. The end result is that children learn to hate any kind of academic learning, and their brains reject learning in academic environments. This leads to a hatred of learning that extends outside of academic environments. The result is that the typical American claims that they cannot do math (consider how you would react if a supposedly educated American told you, "Oh, I just can't read"; math is no less important or valuable than reading in modern American society). Our education system is awful, in a large degree, because it destroys motivation. Using the knowledge gained from the research I have discussed, the U.S. education system could overcome a lot of other shortcomings just by increasing motivation to learn. We can do better though.
First, we need to get over the misconception that if you are not good at something, it is genetic and there is nothing you can do about it. Many Americans have difficulty reading, due to genetic conditions like dyslexia. Most of them find some way of getting around it. Even dyslexics who have great difficulty reading learn to read and put the effort into doing it when absolutely necessary. In our society, it is nearly impossible to get by without some reading ability. That said, most people who have difficulty reading can blame poor schooling. It is not uncommon in many areas of the U.S. for students to graduate from high school with poor reading skills. Many of these students slowly improve their reading skills through necessary reading in everyday life (though they typically never overcome their dislike for reading). From this, it is clear that through effort ability can be improved. It should be pretty obvious that the problem is not capacity for learning but rather how the subject is taught. There are occasional people with actual disabilities that affect reading, but there is no evidence that this is a significant percentage of the population. If we can teach students that they are capable of learning and overcoming difficulties (even people with dyslexia can learn to read, with enough effort), then we can destroy the common misconceptions that often lead to lack of motivation.
Second, we need to quit trying for force learning down children's throats before they have had sufficient brain development. As I mentioned, this causes psychological injury that ultimately makes learning more difficult and often leads to dislike of learning. Now, I am not saying that we should increase the age at which we teach things. There seems to be an optimum level of brain development for learning different things. For reading this is typically between 4 and 9 years old. If we wait too long, the subject will become less interesting, and the lack of novelty will reduce motivation, making it harder to learn. This is where my problem with the classroom model of teaching comes in. For reading, there is a 5 year range where sufficient development may occur. So, which grade year do we teach it in? Common wisdom in the field of teaching would probably say the middle year, 6 or 7 years old, because that is the average. Unfortunately, this is too early or too late for a majority of students. In other words, this is unlikely to improve the situation at all. Ideally, we would teach each child to read right at the time when they have achieved sufficient brain development. The U.S. education system will tell you that this is impossible, because there are too many students to effectively teach each one separately. The system used in New Zealand is evidence that this is a lie. This is a shortcoming of the traditional classroom learning system used in the U.S., not a generally impossible task. In New Zealand, most of elementary school is spent with the same teacher. Classrooms have many age groups. Subjects are taught in a less formal way, especially reading. Reading is taught primarily through motivation. Each school day, a significant amount of time is spent on reading but not necessarily on teaching reading. As students become interested in and ready to learn to read, they are taught by specialists. The result is that students enjoy reading when they get out of elementary school. They also tend to have far better reading skills that the typical American. Most other subjects are similar in many ways. For instance, math is often easier to learn at older ages than U.S. schools start at. The result here is that many students feel that they are just "not good at math," when the real problem is lack of sufficient brain development. The problem this poses is that once they think they are genetically predisposed to be bad at math, they loose motivation to try to learn it. As with reading, the more informal classroom setting has clear benefits, as students can be allowed to work at a pace that fits their brain development.
My third solution to this problem is based on the idea presented in the Java textbook: the brain craves novelty. The human brain is designed to adapt quickly, which poses a problem in a society where adaptation is not as necessary as during less prosperous times. Our brains are very well suited to learning many new but unrelated things, in quick succession. This does not mean that several short classes a day is the optimum way of learning, however. The problem is this: when we learn something small, then immediately learn something totally unrelated, we have a very high probability of forgetting the first thing. Our brains do this to avoid wasting space. If we learn something, and then use it, the brain recognizes it as important, and it is more likely to store some of that information in long term memory. Still, one record in long term memory will still not last very long, especially when we are presented with something totally unrelated directly after. So this problem is this: Our brains retain information best when we immediately use that information, a lot. So, for best retention, we should focus on one thing for an extended period of time. This is the best way to permanently store information in long term memory. Now, on the other side, the brain gets bored with this strategy. Too much study of a single subject typically becomes rather mind numbing. The brain begins to see no point in remembering the information, because it is constantly available. The lack of novelty results in a lack of sufficient stimulation, which can actually cause you to fall asleep while studying. Studying one thing constantly often becomes extremely difficult in a fairly short period of time. In short, to keep the brain interested, we need to vary what we are learning, but to retain what we are learning, we need to study a specific subject for an extended period. These seem to be diametrically opposed. How do we study one subject without interruption but still have enough interruption to keep the brain focused? The answer is actually not that complicated: use different teaching techniques. My Java book uses conversational language, because the brain is more stimulated from conversational language syntax than formal text book language syntax. It also intersperses interesting images throughout the text, with captions attached. It includes asides with useful information that also provide a short break. The result is that the brain has the opportunity to regularly change focus, but the subject being learned remains the same. Also, in the different things, overlapping information is presented, which helps to reinforce important points. Learning using multiple different styles helps to ingrain information in long term memory better. Varying learning techniques not only helps improve focus, but it also improves retention.
Now, let's look at some ways of implementing these ideas. Getting over the misconception that learning ability is entirely genetic is fairly easy. This misconception is often spread by the actions of teachers and parents. For the math class in the study, the misconception was effectively destroyed with a simple two week course on the neurology of learning. For younger students, teachers could easily just tell them that learning is determined more by motivation than genetics. The other two can be most easily handled by using a less formal classroom system. The less formal classroom allows for learning paced for the student. It also happens to be more conducive to increasing novelty. If there are many students studying at different levels, students will be exposed to more parts of a subject at one time, allowing them to learn and focus on the things that they find most interesting at the moment. This will produce an environment that encourages motivated and effective learning.
There are some additional things that could be used to increase novelty, even in a traditional formal classroom setting. These are things like alternate forms of teaching media. For instance, in 5th grade (before I started homeschooling), I had a teacher who would occasionally do a Jeopardy-like game, covering the subjects we were learning. Well designed games provide a break from traditional learning and are also very engaging. If the subject of study can be worked into the game, then it will also facilitate learning. Students that are engaged in learning are much more likely to retain what they learn. In addition, things like videos, pictures, and even audio clips can be used to provide breaks and add variety to the learning methods. Music can also provide a break, and music has been shown to improve learning, giving another extra boost to retention.
One last thing I want to look at improving is the problem of rapidly switching subjects. Going through four to six one hour long classes per day, with totally unrelated subjects, is a recipe for learning a bunch of stuff that you will forget by the end of the day. Instead, it would probably be better to stick to two or three two hour long classes per day, or even just two three hour classes. Instead of having the same class schedule every day, each day of the week would cover one or two different subjects. So, on Monday, there might be three hours of math and three hours of science. On Tuesday, the first three hours could be English and the next three hours might be history. The rest of the week would be similar. For a subject as important as reading, there might be three days with a three hour block of reading, or reading might even be an everyday thing. Note that for long class periods, there should be breaks or times during class where students can leave their seats and wander a bit (blood clots in the legs are most likely to develop during long periods of sitting). During breaks may be a good time to play music or watch an entertaining video. Short distractions like this will not interfere with retention but will still give the brain a needed break. Breaks may also be a good time to answer students' questions in an informal setting (and when a student is curious about something is often the best time to learn that thing).
I am not saying that the above will work for everyone or even that it will work. I expect it to work, based on the scientific knowledge behind it. Like I have said many times, there is not much we could do to make our education system worse, so the odds that this will improve it are pretty good. Some of the techniques I have mentioned have been used with great success in other countries. In New Zealand, the less formal classroom setting has been very successful. In most oriental countries, the culture encourages the idea that learning capacity is based on motivation and not genetics, and we have clearly seen the positive results of this (in fact, it has resulted in a stereotype that all Asians are extremely smart). While the novelty thing has hardly been used in serious education, presenters have been using it for years to keep their audience interested. Similarly novelty is one of the biggest driving factors of the video game industry. People will go to great effort to learn the mechanics of games like World of WarCraft (Wow) and Minecraft, because the games are engaging and motivating. Nobody learns to play a video game in a formal classroom setting. The games are so motivating that the players seek out the knowledge for themselves. Wow contains more knowledge than the average college class and covers at least as many subjects as the typical elementary school (you can even find books in the game about the history of the imaginary world the game takes place in). People learn this information for fun, using resources like the internet to find it. If we could make school this motivating and engaging, students would begin to allocate part of their free time to studying school subjects, possibly instead of playing games (nothing against games...). We have the knowledge to do this, now we just need to apply it.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Child-proof Touchscreens
We are using a tablet computer for education for our 3 year old daughter. Mostly right now, she is learning simple stuff, like numbers and names of objects. One nice thing about touchscreen devices is that they have a much shallower learning curve for people with poor coordination than other computer devices. This makes them ideal for children. Our daughter's experience confirms this.
I just finished reading this article: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865580442/Touchscreens-and-toddlers-The-research-is-mostly-good-news.html It discusses using touchscreen devices for children. It also references some good studies on the subject of how touchscreen devices affect children. One surprising thing I learned from the article is that many parents allow their children to play with their smart phones or tablets when they need to be free from distractions (while shopping for instance). It talks briefly about a child who figured out how to unlock a smart phone at 8 months old. Studies have shown that touchscreen time for young children, even this young, can have positive effects. The article says that studies suggest that limited time with close supervision is best, and it can be especially effective if the parents are directly involved. Evidently (and as I have suspected and observed) touchscreen devices are excellent learning tools for children that are too young to have enough coordination to use traditional computers.
This article got me thinking about more widespread use of touchscreen devices as learning tools. Even the cheapest tablet computers available are powerful enough to run most learning applications. The problem is that they are fragile. Near the end of the article, one parent is quoted as saying that one reason they limit the time their child spends on the tablet or smart phone is that it tedious to have to clean the drool off of the expensive device. (Note that limiting time is a good thing, but drool on the device is probably not.) This is the same thing I am worried about with our daughter. She does not drool on it, but the device cost several hundred dollars, and she does not understand that it is fragile and needs to be kept clean. At this point, she is just too young to understand this, and it can be assumed that other children her age or younger will also not understand this. So, do we just keep risking it, hoping that we get lucky, or do we deny our daughter the opportunity for very good early brain development to potentially save a few hundred dollars?
I would like to suggest that someone needs to start making small (somewhere between 4 and 7 inch) tablets designed with children in mind. These would be water tight (not just water resistant; kids like to drop things in bathtubs and toilets), with impact resistant screens. The shell would also need to be impact resistant, because children often drop things, or worse, I have a brother who had a fetish with stepping on things when he was very young (I am lucky he did not break my laptop screen). I am not suggesting that they need to be military combat grade materials, but I think that current designs could be improved on a bit to make more child safe designs. Given the potential benefits these devices have for learning, I think that a small, lower performance, cheap tablet that can handle common educational games would be a good seller. These devices could even be marketed to schools (some of which are already spending over half a grand a pop on IPads). If these could be produced cheaply enough, some schools might even consider buying every student one. I am certain that many parents would buy at least one, if not one for each of their children.
Anyhow, these studies that show benefits for judicious use of touchscreen computers for educating young children make a very good marketing platform for these devices, but if they are not child safe, many people will shy away because of the risk of expensive damage. I sincerely hope that someone with some influence reads this and makes it happen, because we are homeschooling our children, and having a few damage resistant devices like this would really help.
Lord Rybec
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