Backing up a bit, suppose you were asked to design and deliver a class or training session that had to maximize educational outcome – meaning, it had to work as a learning tool more to the benefit of the students than the teacher – no holds are barred, and you knew of a technique that resulted in an 80% improvement over the traditional lecture method. Would you use that method? More to the point, could you justify not using it? Well that is what Deslauriers, Schelew and Wieman found (see Science article below) when they compared the lecture with a more interactive class they designed to teach physics. All things being equal, if you supplant the lecture with a presentation that is designed to work more in accord with how most people learn, test scores go from 41% for the garden-variety lecture class to 74% for the interactive class. Pretty impressive stuff.

So what is the nature of the design of the interactive class? Put simply, research in cognitive psychology suggests that learners will get better results if they use what they have just been given right away. The theme: Deliver new information, play with it, use it to solve problems, evaluate mastery of the skills and concepts, repeat as needed. Deslauriers, Schelew and Wieman’s physics students were hit repeatedly with questions during class that they had to answer with clickers. Students frequently worked in groups where they were challenged to use their new knowledge to solve problems. Lastly, the students were evaluated in part using two class tests rather than the traditional single mid-term exam.

Let’s make it clear, pouring the old wine in a new bottle does not make it sweeter. Content matters. Doing homework in class and listening to lectures at night is not “flipping the classroom.” Recording lectures and putting them on YouTube or iTunes U is no solution:

“A University of Maryland study of undergraduates found that after a physics lecture by a well-regarded professor, almost no students could provide a specific answer to the question, ‘What was the lecture you just heard about?’ A Kansas State University study found that after watching a video of a highly rated physics lecture, most students still incorrectly answered questions on the material.” — David H. Freeman, Discover Magazine

Even in the best cases of well-thought-out well-designed interactive classes some likely criticisms remain. There is an issue with the Hawthorne Effect that needs to be retired, but personal experience suggests that these findings are not surprising or unusual, at least in kind. Another question that surfaces is whether this kind of interactive class lends itself to subjects like literature, philosophy, history or political science. What are the limits of the approach?

Finally, we have to ask why if there is so much evidence and personal experience against lectures do we persist in giving them? The answer might well be wrapped in four prominent qualities of the practice: 1) lecturing is easy and cheap to do; 2) we have been taught to accept bad lectures as normal (for well over a thousand years!); 3), they (certainly the live version) create an illusion of interactivity between the presenter and audience that is not supported in actual observation (see D. Clark below); and 4), they stand as proof by the presenter and/or the institution that the material has been covered and “delivered” to the audience.

Pragmatically, and for the reasons above, lectures inherently favor the presenter and the institution. Lectures originated in a time when books and information were both scarce and expensive and colleges needed to solve a problem of distribution. Closer to the modern era lectures appear to be supported by tacit agreement with the dubious notion that teaching and telling are the same thing:

“The problem is not with the lecture but with the idea that receiving information is the key part of learning.” — Dominik Lukeš

The notion that the lecture’s time has come is finally reaching the Academy. Educators like Graham Gibbs (see below) have been questioning its value for over thirty years. More recently university professors like Stanford University’s (formerly) Sebastian Thrun have had their own epiphanies on the matter:

“Mr. Thrun told the crowd his move [away from Stanford] was motivated in part by teaching practices that evolved too slowly to be effective. During the era when universities were born, ‘the lecture was the most effective way to convey information. We had the industrialization, we had the invention of celluloid, of digital media, and, miraculously, professors today teach exactly the same way they taught a thousand years ago,’ he said.” — Nick DeSantis, Wired Campus

Dr Wieman likewise has his own concerns about his colleagues and the future of the lecture in science instruction. As recorded by David Freeman of Discover Magazine:

“But scientists who teach have proven reluctant to toss out the lecture, never mind the evidence that it doesn’t work. ‘They say this is the way it’s always been done, and it was good enough for them, so it’s good enough for their students,’ Wieman says. Were this attitude to hold in medicine we would still be bloodletting, in physics we would be trying to reach the moon with very large rubber bands, and in economics we would still be suffering major worldwide financial crashes. (Well, physics and medicine are advancing, anyway.)” — David H. Freeman, Discover Magazine

What seems certain is that we are on the foothills of a major shift in what happens in the classroom. What develops in terms of the effects on corporate, college and military training remains to be seen. After all, it might not result in a single universal one-size-fits-all form. How this upheaval in teaching feeds into distance learning and web-based training is another discussion that almost certainly has to rear its head. The resultant form of the instructional process is anybody’s guess, but what is certain is that whatever it evolves into, whatever we see as the best fit for our instructional purpose, teaching well will remain hard work.

References.
Freeman, David, H., Impatient Futurist: Science Finds a Better Way to Teach Science

http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~jiayang/me1005/2011f/2011%20Science-%20Improved%20learning%20in%20a%20large-entrollment%20Physics%20class.pdf

Gibbs, G., “Twenty Terrible Reasons for Lecturing,” SCED Occasional Paper No. 8, Birmingham. 1981.

Clark, Donald, “Don’t Lecture Me” – ALT-C 2010.

Clark, Donald, “Lectures selling students short: evidence from ‘Science’ “

Lukeš, Dominik, “Putting lectures in their place with cautious optimism“

DeSantis, Nick, “Tenured Professor Departs Stanford U., Hoping to Teach 500,000 Students at Online Start-Up“

Deslauriers, Loius, Schelew, Ellen and Wieman, Carl, “Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics Class” Science 13 May 2011: Vol. 332 no. 6031 pp. 862-864

“E-learning experts argue that withholding computers at a young age could actually deprive children of modern communications skills. ‘One area of literacy that’s changing is the order in which things are presented – it isn’t linear, it’s organised spatially, and often some meaning is carried in the design, layout, images, sounds, movement, subtle changes in colour in a game – it’s all part of what literacy is in today’s world,’ says Flewitt. ‘These are fundamental changes to operational literacy, the biggest since the printing press.‘ ”

Naturally some question is left as to whether this effect is limited to young children as a group or if one can detect a tendency toward acoustic involvement among younger participants in college classrooms and corporate training centers. The main point, however, is that linearity might already be optional in the classroom, where new and different styles of presentation and involvement might be called for in order to better reach the audience.

To contrast Dr Flewitt’s comment on linear versus spatial literacy, consider this synopsis of McLuhan’s acoustic space by Library and Archives Canada:

“The key characteristic of acoustic space is that it engages multiple senses at the same time. It does not demand that objects be dissected to be understood; rather, the multiple parts co-exist simultaneously. To understand acoustic space, you must perceive all of it, not focus on one part. In other words, acoustic space demands that you apprehend figure and ground simultaneously, that the senses work together. McLuhan believed that oral cultures existed in acoustic space since their primary mode of communicating was speech.”

In this interview with Nina Sutton, Mcluhan explains the rise and dominance of visual space from the phonetic alphabet forward: McLuhan on Acoustic Space.

As a sidebar it is interesting to note that McLuhan eventually dropped the use of the term Global Village from his work preferring the term Global Theatre instead. Apparently Global Village goes back to the advent of radio while the notion of the Global Theatre is more a part of Sputnik, television and modern global communications.

References.

AllThingsD: Early Adopters

PCPro: How Much Tech Can Children Take?

Library and Archives Canada: Old Messengers, New Media: The Legacy of Innis and McLuhan

McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.

The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan, Playboy Magazine (©1969, 1994) by Playboy. Download here in PDF: (mcluhan-playboy).

Silentium - Latin for "Shut Up & Pay Attention"

A recent study from researchers Louis Deslauriers, Ellen Schelew and Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman suggests that the Methuselah of instructional technologies, the venerable broadcast lecture, might finally be showing signs of going the way of geocentricity and the four humors. Applying methods taken from the theory of “deliberate practice” by psychologist Anders Ericsson, the research team introduced a more interactive, discussion-based and assessment-oriented approach to a physics class that strongly implies major improvements to science and engineering instruction in general.

The setting for the study involves two groups of electromagnetics students (control: 267; test: 271) wherein both were given the same learning objectives and enjoyed the same pedagogical approach (but not the same instructors) for the first 11 weeks of instruction. On week 12, Deslauriers and Schelew (both of whom have limited teaching experience) jumped into the fray and according to the BPS Research Digest lead the test group utilizing “…discussions in small groups, group tasks, quizzes on pre-class reading, clicker questions (each student answers questions using an electronic device that feeds their answers back to the teacher), and instructor feedback.” And, what is especially important to note here: there was no formal lecturing. According to the researchers the object of the game was:

“…to have the students spend all their time in class engaged in deliberate practice at ‘thinking scientifically’ in the form of making and testing predictions and arguments about the relevant topics, solving problems, and critiquing their own reasoning and that of others.”

In contrast to the test group, the control group went on learning the same material in the normal (typically passive) fashion epitomized by classroom lectures for probably the last 900 years. The students, however, apparently noticed a difference. As quoted in the BPS review:

“Student engagement (measured by trained observers) and attendance in the control group was unchanged in week 12 compared with earlier weeks. In the intervention group, attendance rose by 20 per cent and engagement nearly doubled.“

The critic or cynic might assert that the presenters were putting on a better show in the test case. What about student performance? On the first day of class after week 12 both groups were tested on what they had learned the previous week. In addition, as part of the preparation for the test, both groups were given all the materials used by the intervention group, i.e., the clicker questions, group activities and problem sets, and exercise solutions. The results are as striking as the jump in student engagement:

The non-lecture intervention group averaged 74 percent correct while the control group averaged 41 percent. Factoring out random guessing, the intervention group did twice as well as the traditional lecture students (the effect size being on the order of 2.5 standard deviations!). Not to be downplayed, student reviews rated the non-lecture approach very positively. Ninety percent said they enjoyed the process.

Jeffrey Mervis writing for the AAAS ScienceNow magazine quotes Wieman as saying:

“ ‘It’s almost certainly the case that lectures have been ineffective for centuries. But now we’ve figured out a better way to teach’ that makes students an active participant in the process, Wieman says. Cognitive scientists have found that ‘learning only happens when you have this intense engagement,’ he adds. ‘It seems to be a property of the human brain.’ ” – Jeffrey Mervis, A Better Way to Teach?

Given the novelty of the technique and the overt nature of the study there has been some criticism of the results based on the Hawthorne Effect. The research team discounts this criticism on the basis that the intervention only occupied a small percentage of the students’ overall daily learning activities. Drilling a little deeper, psychology professor Daniel Willingham (as recounted in Carey below) cautioned that the study might not have been designed well enough to discern which of the factors introduced in the new classroom style account for the gains in student performance and to what degree.

In what might be one of the clearest victories for proponents of the Inverted Classroom the research team is optimistic of the result and reckons it can be generalized to a wide range of post-secondary courses. No doubt further studies can be expected. The study in question is supported by a $12 million dollar program to investigate new methods to enhance science instruction using research-backed methods.

References.

Deslauriers, L., Schelew, E., and Wieman, C. (2011). Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics Class. Science, 332 (6031), 862-864 DOI: 10.1126/science.1201783

Carey, Benedict (2011). Less Talk, More Action: Improving Science Learning
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/science/13teach.html

Mervis, Jeffrey (2011). A Better Way to Teach?
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/05/a-better-way-to-teach.html

Dwyer, Liz (2011). Research Proves College Lectures Need to Go the Way of the Dinosaur
http://www.good.is/post/research-proves-college-lectures-need-to-go-the-way-of-the-dinosaur/

Expert Performance and Deliberate Practice
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html

The Inverted Classroom
http://www.hg2s.com/blog/2009/11/14/the-inverted-classroom/

What started as simple private tutorials in math for his cousins – utilizing what he describes as about $200.00 in computer accessories and shareware – Khan drew upon his innate interest in education (along with perhaps his own personal frustrations as a student) to craft a series of screen capture how-to guides for solving high school math problems. As word spread among friends and family members, viral interest forced Khan to move his homespun videos to YouTube to service his burgeoning audience, completely for free. The rest, as they say, is history.

At present the Khan Academy (a not-for-profit educational organization founded in 2006) has served over 51 million views from a library of over 2200 videos. In addition to math and physics, topics now embrace history and biology. School districts and major corporations are attempting to use and develop his methods for their own internal applications. Donations from private sources and the likes of Google and the Gates Foundation have subsequently allowed Salman Khan to quit his day job and devote his energies full-time to the development of his Academy and the distribution of educational programs worldwide (“providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere”).

Looking over Khan’s presentations on his methods you begin to wonder what makes the Khan Academy so successful. After all, this isn’t the result of a major educational research program, a sweeping government initiative, or a mass popular movement in educational reform. Further, what makes the Khan Academy even more interesting is that Khan’s tutorial method is not so much ingenious as it is ingenuous.

In several of his talks Khan is fairly straightforward in his assessment of what makes his method work. First and foremost, as Khan attests, each of the videos offers a lesson on a single concise topic (a “concept”) for no more than about 10 minutes. One key idea, cut in a bite-sized chunk, for a period not to exceed the boredom threshold of the average viewer. Given that the videos are recorded and stored online, the presentations can be played any time and repeated as needed by the student until he or she feels comfortable to move forward.

Another feature of the tutorials is the general tone they are given in. As Khan describes it, they feel like they are coming more from a friend than a teacher. You have a sense that Khan is there with you, sitting by your side, leading you through the problems with a pencil and paper. They are down-to-earth, enthusiastic and rigorous without a trace of giddiness, pomposity or pedantry. The student feels like “…there is an individual who cares about you,” Khan says. The student comes away with a sense that the instructor wants to help him or her over the obstacles in the landscape because he has been in the student’s place himself and sympathizes with the struggles that lay ahead.

Drilling down a layer into the Khan Academy’s unique style reveals even more about what makes the “secret sauce” special. Each of the bite-sized topics that are referred to previously are in fact carefully culled and curated learning objects. The trick, of course, is to first know the subject well enough to select which topics to present and in what order. Following that, the teacher must distill the concepts to their absolute essence.

This distillation process is, to all who have tried it, much harder than it looks. In fact, the ability to select and summarize complex material and ideas, rather than resorting to the indiscriminate slathering of a PowerPoint slide with bullets, might be one of the hallmarks of an educated mind. Clearly, Khan groks it.

Despite the thought and planning that goes into Khan’s presentations they can hardly be accused of being over produced. This is not Pixar doing technical training. If anything, the digital blackboard and colored chalk renderings show the human side of learning and mastery. The notes and diagrams often appear rough and awkward, but they are at the same time quite genuine, funny and sometimes – to the advantage of the learner – mistaken. As Khan explains it, he is often in the place of the learner and, in contrast to many schools and universities, has not rehearsed the solution beforehand, offering the student the patented procedure. Instead he lets the students witness his own thought processes as he wrestles with the problems and sometimes wanders down the wrong path from which he has to back out and start again – just like a real student.

Nowhere in Khan’s methods can be found any of the bells or whistles of modern post-industrial pedagogy. No Flash animation, interactivity, games, social networking tools, 3D graphics or monolithic learning management systems are to be found. In fact there is little beyond a virtual blackboard and some equally virtual colored chalk. You don’t even see Khan’s face.

The faceless almost tactile sketches and equations provide little distraction and promote focus on the material. This decidedly low-tech solution to training might harken back to ancient watch-me-do-it tribal methods but its effectiveness is not lost on Khan’s students, many of whom write to express thanks that they are not only mastering their classes for the first time but excited about the subjects as well.

Khan’s approach is to teach for academic competency. That is, he instructs in the methods and procedures that assist the student in passing standardized tests and formal exams. After the student completes a module, test problems are offered through a program that Khan designed himself that acts to monitor student progress and flag trouble areas for the teacher. The student is asked to correctly answer 10 problems in a row before moving to the next module. This final process closes the instruction, feedback and assessment loop in Khan’s method and further acts to eliminate the small voids in understanding that can multiply as the student moves forward. Interestingly YouTube assists in the process as well, offering statistics on usage and attention.

One of Khan’s own revelations about his method is telling: it’s so simple and effective that he does not see why anyone needs to give live lectures anymore.

Although he does not refer to it by name, Khan points to (and his method directly parallels) the use of what is commonly called the Inverted Classroom. In an inverted classroom recorded presentations impart new information prior to class while class time is taken up with teachers and peers solving problems (or “doing homework”) quite in reverse to what is traditionally done in schools and training centers.

The results of this method have so far been compelling. Both teachers and students benefit. Teachers benefit because more of their time is spent in directed remediation (particularly if they use Khan’s monitoring software), problem solving and exploration of the material. Students like the inverted classroom because it potentially transforms class time into something useful and interesting. In Khan’s case the testimonials from parents, teachers and students are hard to ignore. His academy and tutorials do work.

More needs to be seen to ascertain whether the Khan Academy represents the future of education as some claim. But what is clear is that it stands as a forceful reminder of what can be done to improve the instruction of certain skills and particular subjects while simultaneously improving the classroom experience for everyone.

References.

Bill Gates’ Favorite Teacher

Salman Khan on Future Talk

YouTube Teaching as Guerrilla Public Service

Yes, the Khan Academy IS the Future of Education (video; singularityhub.com)

Yes, the Khan Academy is the Future of Education

Khan Academy Exercise Software

Khan Academy and the Effectiveness of Science Videos

The Khan academy is Not that Good

We are Khan Academy, You Will Be Assimilated!

Can the Khan Academy flip a classroom?

A team of physicians assisted the in the presentation by acting the roles emergency medical staff, nurses and even family members. A computerized Laerdal SimMan(tm) was programmed to represent the patient who displayed symptoms like nausea, mental confusion and vomiting. As reported in Heitz, et al. (2009) the students were immersed in a theatrical enactment of the medial crisis:

“A Laerdal SimManTM was transported from the simulation center to the medical school lecture hall where a prerecorded EMS radio call announced the arrival of the fully clothed simulation mannequin. Resident physician actors portrayed EMS provi- ders, nurses, and family members. Student volunteers ran the case as emergency physicians and patient management decisions were guided by class input. The clinical scenario was enhanced with group discussion of the relevant basic science mechanisms underlying the autonomic nervous system, neurotransmitters, receptors, and neuropharmacology.” – Heitz et al. (2009)

The authors note that one of the key differences in this trial was the size of the group – 112 students in two groups. The live simulation was based on a clinical scenario designed to bring out basic concepts in neuroscience already presented in a lecture several days earlier by a participant who was unaware of the study.

Results of the training were measured using four multiple-choice pre-tests and post-tests.

“The primary study outcome was this comparison of student performance on a pretest compared to a posttest administered immediately after the simulation session, and participants were significantly more likely to get all four posttest questions correct after experiencing the simulation.” Heitz et al. (2009)

A follow-up post-test was given to students eleven days later to assess retention. The researchers suspect that immersion in the simulation contributed to recall:

“The concepts presented during our simulation session improved student testing immediately and may have facilitated performance on an examination 11 days later.”  - Heitz et al. (2009)

The authors conclude that the use of simulations of this kind can be valuable in medical education:

“The students not only felt the simulation experience correlated well with basic science concepts, but also showed statistically significant improvement on the pre- and posttest examinations. Our results show that this type of learning exercise may provide an alternative for ‘‘typical’’ lecture-style education.” – Heitz et al. (2009)

References.

Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center (2009, July 14). “Simulating Medical Situations Helps Students Learn, Retain Basic Science Concepts”. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 22, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090714085822.htm

Heitz, Corey , Brown, Ashley , Johnson, James E. and Fitch, Michael T.(2009) “Large group high-fidelity simulation enhances medical student learning”, Medical Teacher, 31: 5, e206 — e210

Emergency Simulations at Wake Forest University School of Medicine

“Today’s students expect constant access to information—in the classroom and beyond. Which is why more and more faculty are using iTunes U to distribute digital lessons to their students. And now, with the 3.0 software update for iPhone and iPod touch, iTunes U is directly accessible over both cellular and Wi-Fi networks through the iTunes Store.”

Interestingly, according to CNET, one of the most popular draws on iTunes University’s bandwidth is the much esteemed Open University (OU) in the UK that had earlier tried and failed to launch an American campus in the late 1990s. A brief report of the OU’s foray into the American educational market is provided here.

The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom but operates internationally. According to its web site the OU serves over 150,000 undergraduate and 30,000 postgraduate students. 25,000 are outside the UK. It is generally considered “the world’s first successful distance teaching university” and the United Kingdom’s only university dedicated to distance learning.

The iTunes University download service is popular among many other universities as well. Contributors include: Stanford University, Princeton, Yale, MIT, UC Berkeley, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. A partial (and growing) list of schools providing content can be found here. Given it s recent growth and overall wide acceptance, iTunes University appears to have become a standard tool for distribution of audio and video content among American colleges and universities.

I have always been an advocate for lots of hands-on activity in class, probably because it matches my own learning style but also because the majority of the attendees enjoy it. Not surprisingly, in the midst of teaching a class a few years ago, I started to wonder if I could get more time for discussion and activities, and lessen the burden we all felt in getting through the lecture pieces to the workshops. In this particular case the lecture was preparatory to the workshops and provided necessary background required to complete the labs and assignments. Fortunately, in addition to instructor-lead courses, I also work on web-based training and have done many voice over and narration tracks for online and computer-based presentations. Eureka! I found a way to off-load all the passive broadcasting of background material and recoup the time for projects, experiments, discussion and debate–the things that make class interesting and engaging. Although I didn’t have a name for it, I adopted the Inverted Classroom and have since learned that many others have had, either from desire or need, their own Eureka! experiences.

The “Inverted Classroom” as coined by professors Lage, Platt and Treglia in a paper presented to the Journal of Economic Education, Winter 2000, moves away from the traditional lecture. In it they describe how they saw a need to serve a wider variety of learning styles in class:

“Recent evidence has shown that a mismatch between an instructor’s teaching style and a student’s learning style can result in the student learning less and being less interested in the subject matter (Borg and Shapiro 1996; Ziegert forthcoming). This finding implies that either educational administrators should strive to ensure a good match between the instructor’s teaching style and the students’ learning styles (a difficult task) or that concerned instructors should use a portfolio of teaching styles so as to appeal to a variety of student learning types. Unfortunately, a majority of introductory economics courses are taught using only one teaching style–the traditional lecture format (Becker and Watts 1995).”

Lage, Platt and Treglia define the inverted classroom in simple terms:

“Inverting the classroom means that events that have traditionally taken place inside the classroom now take place outside the classroom and vice versa.”

What this means is that the class is designed in such a way that “passive” activities (such as listening to a lecture) are done outside class and what was lecture is replaced by workshops, discussion, and activities that require interaction. In theory this should increase the value of class time and provide more time for new and additional material. Educators are still unsure how to optimize the inverted classroom, but what seems clear is that inverted classes will use of a mix of technologies like podcasts, DVDs, PowerPoint, text, video and interactive media in conjunction with hands-on projects and group activities.

Researchers Gerald C. Gannod, Janet E. Burge and Michael T. Helmick of Ohio’s Miami University are carrying out a study to evaluate the design and delivery of inverted classes in computer engineering. In a work-in-progress report delivered to the ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, 2007, Gannod states:

“Based on the SGID analysis performed on the course, student acceptance of the inverted classroom process has been well-received. Over eighty-five-percent of the students (in a class of twenty) have responded favorably to the inverted classroom structure, while over ninety-percent prefer the short learning activities over more prolonged assignments. In regards to the use of podcasting as a lecturing medium, students have indicated that the ability to use the play, pause, reverse, and fast-forward capabilities of the podcasted videos beneficial to their ability to learn the material.”

From the standpoint of instructor overhead, questions remain concerning the difficulty in designing, deploying and maintaining an inverted class. Certainly, the initial chore of creating podcasts (if they are used) may be considerable. Further, a sufficient number of high-quality projects and activities are required (vapid “busy work” may be less tolerated than boring lectures). Finally, the students must rise to the new class format and, to use an expression from the past, “come to class prepared.” Gannod plans to address issues of faculty overhead, podcast production and course maintenance in an upcoming report.

References.

Lage, Maureen, J., Platt, Glenn, J., and Treglia, Michael, “Inverting the Classroom: A Gateway to Creating  an Inclusive Learning Environment”, Jnl of Economic Education, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Winter 2000), pp. 30-43.

Gannod, Gerald, C., Burge, Janet, E., Helmick, Michael, T., “Using the Inverted Classroom to Teach Software Engineering”, Technical Report MU-SEAS-CSA-2007-001, Miami University, Department of Computer Science and Systems Analysis, School of Engineering and Applied Science, 2007.

Gannod, Gerald, C., “Work in Progress – Using Podcasting in an Inverted Classroom”, 37th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, October 10-13, 2007.

In a note that could have been taken from one of Maria Montessori’s books, researchers in neuroscience, machine learning, education and psychology have convened to show that findings from a joint study suggest that “the prepared environment” might be supported by new scientific data.

“The ‘prepared environment‘ is Maria Montessori’s concept that the environment can be designed to facilitate maximum independent learning and exploration by the child.”

Terrence J. Sejnowski, Ph.D, researcher at the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and co-director of the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center (TDLC) at the University of California, San Diego, echoes Montessori in his team’s findings. As quoted in Science Daily:

“To understand how children learn and improve our educational system, we need to understand what all of these fields [neurobiology, psychology, education, machine learning] can contribute. Our brains have evolved to learn and adapt to new environments; if we can create the right environment for a child, magic happens.”

The cross-disciplinary research points to a new science of learning that might influence the way classrooms are organized and run in the future. In particular, three guiding principles (or concurrent processes) emerge from the study:

1. Learning is computational
2. Learning is social
3. Learning is supported by neurological (perception-action) circuits

Research in machine learning and developmental psychology illuminate the computational complexity employed by learners who use statistical patterns and probabilistic models to infer rules of logic, relationships between words, syntax, and causal dependence between objects in the physical world.

Evidence that the three component processes happen concurrently is supported by the fact that learners do not calculate and compile statistical models of the environment indiscriminately but throttle the process using social cues from the people around them. Further, animal studies point to the presence of certain neurosteroids secreted during social interaction that promote learning.

Imitation also comes into play as a key factor:

“Imitation [presumably from others in the environment] accelerates learning and multiplies learning opportunities. It is faster than individual discovery and safer than trial-and-error learning.”

In essence, a social context fosters learning.

Brain circuits that support both actions and perceptions are directly involved with learning. As seen in language learning, for example, there is a complex mix of imitative, computational and articulatory processes that come into play as learning proceeds that might be further facilitated or enhanced at specific developmental periods. In general, neuroscientists have determined that there is considerable overlap in the systems brought into play during learning that support both perception and action. From Science:

“For example, in human adults there is neuronal activation when observing articulatory movements in the cortical areas responsible for producing those articulations. Social learning, imitation, and sensorimotor experience may initially generate, as well as modify and refine, shared neural circuitry for perception and action.”

Finally, experts in machine learning and artificial intelligence are taking advantage of the recent findings in social learning, computational modeling and the plasticity of the brain to design software that monitors and uses social cues and environmental factors to enhance learning. In the future this software may be used in tutorial programs or embedded in instructional robots that are specifically “tuned” to enhance teaching practices in classrooms.

References.

New Science Of Learning Offers Preview Of Tomorrow’s Classroom

Foundations for a New Science of Learning

New science of learning offers preview of tomorrow

From baby scientists to a science of social learning

Julie Evans of Project Tomorrow delivered a talk at The Future of Education web site on the findings of Speak Up, an annual national research project sponsored by her organization. Titled Top Ten Things We Learned from K-12 Students About Educational Technology in 2008, the report is a real eye-opener and should be of great interest not only to high school and college instructors but also corporate, government and military trainers who need to prepare for the educational tsunami that is forming. A table of findings from the survey are presented below. Many of the issues reported in the summary are already being seen in adult training venues. Others, no doubt, are just over the horizon and will certainly become standard topics of sundry research reports, conference talks, and blogs like this in the near future.

A Word file of the top ten findings can be downloaded here.

A PowerPoint file of Julie Evans’ talk at the Future of Education web site can be gotten here.

An audio recording of Ms. Evans’ talk can be found here.

Recent talks and presentations by Google engineers on Google Wave stirred up quite a bit of anxious chatter in training and education circles. Google Wave is a novel and thought-provoking development project that addresses the question “what would email be if it were invented today?” Naturally, the Google answer is a web-based application that (maybe not so naturally) resembles a chat server on caffeinated steroids. Its strengths at threaded media-rich multi-user communication is so impressive that comments on education sites started popping almost immediately on whether the LMS is doomed and if Blackboard and Moodle have finally met their matches.

Frankly, not being a big fan of the LMS, I proffer a view more like that of Godrey Parkin:

“To corporate decision-makers, the treasure map of e-learning has an island in the centre, seductively illuminated by those clever marketing folks of the learning software industry, with a big X over the Learning Management System (LMS) right in the middle. Outside of that island is blank space populated only by ‘here be dragons’ warnings.”

And Parkin continues:

“… an LMS, as available today, is not a universal solution for a corporation’s e-learning problems. In fact, an LMS is often the albatross around the neck of progress in technology-enhanced learning.”

Indeed, the biggest problem confronted by many teachers, instructional designers and trainers is how to work within the confines of the LMS. It’s a classic tale of man serving technology rather than the other way around. Parkin feels the pain as well:

“When your concept of learning is LMS-centric, you look for opportunities to implement ‘a solution’ that conforms to that concept, and ignore or marginalize all else. An LMS is, of course, a relevant tool for certain applications. If you want to track learner activities, you need some kind of system. And if you want to make use of much of the available e-course content, you have no choice but to use an LMS – not because the learning requires it, but because the established architecture of the ‘learning supply chain’ requires it.”

When all you have is a hammer, you treat everything like it’s a nail.

George Siemens at elearnspace.org puts it another way:

“Learning Management Systems (LMS) are often viewed as being the starting point (or critical component) of any elearning or blended learning program. This perspective is valid from a management and control standpoint, but antithetical to the way in which most people learn today.”

I would add that not only is it “antithetical to the way in which most people learn today” but also antithetical to the way in which most people teach. Neither side of the educational equation is true.

Meanwhile back at the issue, it takes quite a bit of effort to slog your way through the one hour twenty minute presentation on Wave and its features. It is impressive nonetheless. As noted on bavatuesdays:

“In fact, it goes a step further and makes online conference/meeting tools like Eluminate, Adobe Connect, etc. all but irrelevant, for live video and voice can’t be far behind the instantaneous chat, document editing, map embedding, video watching, presentation sharing, and on and on and on.”

Is Google to be the next international online University? Maybe. The problem though is that this is all being orchestrated by an advertising agency. The open web, with it potential for open learning, might very well be the Google version of the open web. Jim Groom at bavatuesdays goes on:

“I still have no doubt that David Wiley’s assessment is right on, especially given the API will soon be unleashed upon an open web full of developers. I know that Google didn’t re-invent the LMS quite as I joked, but what they did is actually make it all but irrelevant by re-imagining email and integrating just about every functionality you could possibly need to communicate and manage a series of course conversations through an application as familiar and intimate as email. Genius, horrifying, but genius.”

A glimmer of hope remains however. Google promises to release the software into the public domain so that anyone will be able to operate their own Wave server. The API will also be published for developers to expand upon. And, hopefully, someone will attend to the matter of content which is where all too often the process breaks down anyway.