Brainstorming Education Reform

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Comment by Hal Portner on October 21, 2009 at 4:58pm

Getting It Wrong: Surprising Tips on How to Learn

New research makes the case for hard tests, and suggests an unusual technique that anyone can use to learn
By Henry L. Roediger and Bridgid Finn

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=getting-it-wrong
Scientific American, Oct.20, 2009.

For years, many educators have championed “errorless learning," advising teachers (and students) to create study conditions that do not permit errors. For example, a classroom teacher might drill students repeatedly on the same multiplication problem, with very little delay between the first and second presentations of the problem, ensuring that the student gets the answer correct each time.

The idea embedded in this approach is that if students make errors, they will learn the errors and be prevented (or slowed) in learning the correct information. But research by Nate Kornell, Matthew Hays and Robert Bjork at U.C.L.A. that recently appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition reveals that this worry is misplaced. In fact, they found, learning becomes better if conditions are arranged so that students make errors.

People remember things better, longer, if they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail. In a series of experiments, they showed that if students make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before receiving an answer, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information. Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning. It’s an idea that has obvious applications for education, but could be useful for anyone who is trying to learn new material of any kind.

In one of their experiments, students were required to learn pairs of “weak associates,” words that are loosely related such as star-night or factory-plant. (If students are given the first word and asked to generate an associate, the probability of generating the target word is only 2 or 3 percent.) In the pretest condition, students were given the first word of the pair (star- ???) and told to try to generate the second member that they would have to later remember. They had 8 seconds to do so. Of course, almost by definition, they nearly always failed to generate the correct answer. They might generate bright in the case of star-???. At that point they were given the target pair (star–night) for 5 seconds. In the control condition, students were given the pair to study for 13 seconds, so in both conditions there were a total of 13 seconds of study time for the pair.

The team found that students remembered the pairs much better when they first tried to retrieve the answer before it was shown to them. In a way this pretesting effect is counterintuitive: Studying a pair for 13 seconds produces worse recall than studying the pair for 5 seconds, if students in the latter condition spent the previous 8 seconds trying to retrieve or guess the answer. But the effect averaged about 10 percent better recall, and occurred both immediately after study and after a delay averaging 38 hours.

Some readers may look askance at the use of word pairs, even though it is a favorite tactic of psychologists. In another article, in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Lindsey Richland, Nate Kornell and Liche Kao asked the same question, but they used more educationally relevant text material (an essay on vision). Students were asked to read the essay and prepare for a test on it. However, in the pretest condition they were asked questions about the passage before reading it such as “What is total color blindness caused by brain damage called?” Asking these kinds of question before reading the passage obviously focuses students’ attention on the critical concepts. To control this “direction of attention” issue, in the control condition students were either given additional time to study, or the researchers focused their attention on the critical passages in one of several ways: by italicizing the critical section, by bolding the key term that would be tested, or by a combination of strategies. However, in all the experiments they found an advantage in having students first guess the answers. The effect was about the same magnitude, around 10 percent, as in the previous set of experiments.

This work has implications beyond the classroom. By challenging ourselves to retrieve or generate answers we can improve our recall. Keep that in mind next time you turn to Google for an answer, and give yourself a little more time to come up with the answer on your own.
Students might consider taking the questions in the back of the textbook chapter and try to answer them before reading the chapter. (If there are no questions, convert the section headings to questions. If the heading is Pavlovian Conditioning, ask yourself What is Pavlovian conditioning?). Then read the chapter and answer the questions while reading it. When the chapter is finished, go back to the questions and try answering them again. For any you miss, restudy that section of the chapter. Then wait a few days and try to answer the questions again (restudying when you need to). Keep this practice up on all the chapters you read before the exam and you will be have learned the material in a durable manner and be able to retrieve it long after you have left the course.

Of course, these are general-purpose strategies and work for any type of material, not just textbooks. And remember, even if you get the questions wrong as you self-test yourself during study the process is still useful, indeed much more useful than just studying. Getting the answer wrong is a great way to learn.

Comment by Rachel Pickett on October 10, 2009 at 11:07pm

Hi everyone,

Lately I'm curious about the parallels between classrooms and businesses. Maybe there are structures to management and inspiring innovation that can be applied and adapted to both worlds?

I've started brainstorming a list of structures that could promote innovation and engagement with kids... and I'm wondering about ideas anyone might have that add to this brainstorm.

And, I haven't gotten this far yet, but I'm wondering what criteria can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of implementing these structures? Student engagement is one, building a motivated environment, effective learning, supporting student creativity, building trust and healthy relationships, supporting student problem-solving...

So here's a brainstorm of effective structures so far...

- 'top ten' lists for content, and for moments in the classroom community

- wall of fame (students liked an 'Inquiry Wall of Fame' where they wrote very thoughtful questions and posted them on a section of the classroom wall)

- masters (they publicly sign their name under 'masters' when they've mastered a learning objective... they liked this lots)

- appreciations (where they appreciate each other for certain character traits. I've seen one teacher where every Friday students nominated each other for 'Red Badge of Courage,' 'Heart of Gold,' and 'Sharp Shooter' -- they couldn't nominate friends, but someone in the class who demonstrated these characteristics over the week)

- Olympics (for learning/creativity/innovation?)

- Students give their class a name

- 'Throwdowns' where one student challenges another student at things like making crossword puzzles, spelling words correctly, using the most vocab words in a sentence...)

- Monday check-ins about the weekend

- Student of the week

- 'Coffee' cards that students get signed for demonstrating positive character traits

- Shout-Outs for academic excellence/creativity

- Blinging (students give each other mardi gras beads (the bling) as a form of recognition for something)

- Wall space labeled "This is why my students rock"

- Clear/organized binder structure for their work

- Blind 'taste tests' -- or blind evaluation of their work by other students, with a prize for work exhibiting innovation, excellence...

- Suggestion box

- Out-of-the-box idea Awards

- Iguana Awards (when a students brings up a problem in class they also bring up a solution to that problem)

- Class money system... students can earn 'bucks'

- 'Highlights' of content before going more deeply into it

- 'Up Next' -- what's coming up next in the class content

- Relaunches -- for students who are falling behind, or for a system in class that isn't working

- Documenting a project through video and then showing the video at the end of the project

- Using music for transitions

- End of the week/month celebrations (often involving food...)

- Holding a title for something (like 'best innovator, most improved, master of most objectives, best communicator...), and your title can be challenged by other students

- Setting records (like 'used most vocabulary words in a paragraph', 'solved the most difficult conflict' ...)

- Nobel Peace Prize

- Holding trophies for records (like a light bulb for 'most innovative solution)

- Creating and taking surveys

Thanks,
Rachel

Comment by Rachel Pickett on October 6, 2009 at 8:52am

Hi Hal,

Using failure in that way is very exciting :)

Reese's Pieces cookies... yum.

I'm thinking that forming criteria for classroom creativity could be a good way to go. At least for me, right now, as a researcher. Management is also a great place to develop creativity. When I think of innovative organizations I'd like to work for, they're clean, honor new ideas, build environments of trust, celebrate, inspire, and reward innovation. A classroom could be managed in the same ways?

The Food Network (shows like Throwdown with Bobby Flay...) are great management teachers at the moment because they're engaging/creative, have competition, build a friendly atmosphere. I'm wondering how to build games in a classroom like "games" they build shows around.

- r

Comment by Hal Portner on October 4, 2009 at 7:51pm

Hey, Rachel, isn't it exciting how failure can lead to success when it forces you to create new ways to identify and then approach a problem! I especially like the way you set criteria for how to find the latitude and longitude methodology, and came up with the BINGO L and L game. Also, bravo for using cell phones and texting the way you did rather than, as too many teachers insist, "keep those distractions out of the classroom."

BTW, my vote for Friday are Reese's Pieces cookies.

Hal

Comment by Rachel Pickett on October 4, 2009 at 1:13am

I just spent 4 weeks teaching geography to 7th graders, and it was wonderful. I really bonded with those kids, and there are two stories which may be of interest to you...

In an attempt to creatively teach latitude and longitude to them, I let them know that if they had a cell phone, they needed to bring it to class the next day. They then had to text people they knew and find cities/countries they'd been to outside of the U.S. This part was great and super engaging! Then they had to find the coordinates of 10 of those cities and plot them on a map... ugh... not so engaging, not well structured, not particularly helpful, not well-managed. I felt awful after that day, so I took it to a personal problem-solving session and brainstormed ideas for an effective assignment (for the following day). I came up with criteria to define what I was looking for in an effective assignment. The criteria...

- simple and easy to understand

- interactive/engaging/vibrant

- students will feel successful

- structure of the assignment is clear and easy to follow

- not much prep time for me (since it was for the next day...)

Of all my brainstorming ideas, bingo won out when put up against the criteria. We played latitude/longitude bingo the next day, and kids LOVED it. Very engaged class! And an effective class. Amazing how well this process worked :)

Story two...

I want to find ways to connect motivation, incentive, innovation, success, and a sense of creativity into the classroom atmosphere. I had a dreadful time with classroom management last year, and have been studying how not to repeat that ever again... how to develop good classroom management. I started the 4 weeks by saying that I believe in celebrating their learning, and that if behavior was good and they were meeting learning objectives, I'd bake them cookies on Friday. This was really fun, and grew creatively each week thereafter. The next week each class voted on what they wanted to work towards for the end of the week (votes included rootbeer floats, pound cake (of all things!)). The next week I tried turning it into a game giving them specific criteria they could earn points for each day (ex: 2 points if I could get there attention in under 7 seconds for the whole class, 5 points if they came in quietly and got right to work on their warm-up, etc). They could earn up to 25 points a day, and had to earn 110 points by Friday to have worked for their goal. The next week we had bar graphs up in the back of the room, and at the end of class each day a student shaded in how many points the class had earned that day. They loved it... it did begin creating an atmosphere of fun and creativity, and success, and it was a great management tool.

These feel like rudimentary ideas, fledgling ones, in a desire to build creative, innovative classrooms.

Maybe we can brainstorm about how else creativity and innovation can be build into classroom management and structure?

Or, before that we could perhaps brainstorm itches about classroom management/structure...

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Rachel

Comment by Hal Portner on August 7, 2009 at 12:08pm

"To fix what is wrong with American learning," said Miocrosoft's Bill Gates to a group of state legislators, "will require new ways of looking at its problems. We don't know the answers because we are not asking the right questions"

Isn't it refreshing to see someone with his clout laying it on the line to folks responsible for making ploicy!

Comment by Hal Portner on August 6, 2009 at 11:00pm

Hey, Laurent. Thanks for nudging my currently dormant sense of creative play (redundant terms?). The "Jackson Pollackish" approach you describe may be just the tickle in the ribs needed to get the juices bubbling and streaming onto the this blank design-problem canvas.
Merci,
Hal

Comment by Laurent Sauerwein on August 5, 2009 at 12:10pm

re: "how to structure and communicate problem-solving/solution-finding"

Hi Rachel, Hal and other friends.

Design problems are increasingly complex systemic problems, but I'd like to defend the right to crazy, messy, NON-SYSTEMATIC, profoundly unsctructured approaches. In other words, no method, no blueprint, no step-by-step procedure, *at least to begin with*. If there's a problem, ignore it, laugh it out, then jump into it by surprise, inadvertently, diagonally, attack it from all angles, caress it gently, fly through it, kick it, kick it again, throw a bucket of water at it. Ponder. Talk to it. Talk it over, talk it out and play, tickle, sketch, sculpt, carve, cook. Steam it. Let it rest. Sleep on it.

How long should this idiotic, perfectly irresponsible approach last? As long as it has to, because if it sounds wild, it is no joke.

Then there will always be plenty of time left to try more systematic and cautious step by step, less impatient, less passionate methods. But you can be sure that the first wild approach will at some point bear its fruits. Well maybe. Maybe not. Crazy, isn't it?

Comment by Hal Portner on August 4, 2009 at 4:22pm

Rachael,
I'd love to see your master's "It Takes a Village ..." paper and/or PowerPoint. Would you be willing/able to send it/them as attachment to my email: hportner@comcast.net ?

Also, I'd like to share with you the draft of a chapter from a book I am working on. It deals with standards, rubrics and targeted components for student learning. I'll need your email address in order to send it.

Best,
Hal

Comment by Hal Portner on August 3, 2009 at 11:26am

Rachael.
How about applying Tim's problem solving model to the problem you/we are facing? Is there a way a few of us can go through this process in real time via the internet?
Hal

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