The HG2S Training Blog

The Bandwagon

If you are thinking of using social media in a class to help build useful collaborative connections, retire the fears of shy students and introduce the same engagement you see in sites like Facebook, think again.  A recent study by the Lab for Social Computing at Rochester Institute of Technology suggests that the use of social media in classrooms might yield little effect in improved communications and enhanced connections between students. The study into the effects of social media was conducted as part of a course on the use of social media and tools. It included contributions from online learning and course management systems and discussion groups that were proposed to enhance instruction, improve communication and facilitate connections between the students and course content. The results indicate that poor social acumen in the face-to-face interactions might be mirrored in the (more) virtual social medium. What’s more, echoing teacher and educational social media researcher Michael Wesch, the RIT study suggests that the educational use of social media may have to be learned:

“…the educational use of social media may not counteract poor social connections that are seen in face-to-face communication or elicit the same impacts seen in the use of social media sites such as MySpace and FaceBook.”

Researcher and team leader Susan Barnes comments on the hopes and goals of social media in the educational environment relative to her team’s findings:

“Many social media advocates have argued that the use of these tools in classroom settings could greatly enhance interaction and learning and assist shyer, more reserved students in becoming more involved, as has been seen in other online environments. However, our findings show that the incorporation of social media had no measurable impact on social connections, to the point that students did not consider other members of the class to be part of their social network.”

The RIT research team plans to expand the study to consider different educational formats and additional social media applications in an effort to determine the effects and differences of social media from traditional classrooms. The intent is to help educational planners and instructional designers better use social media in course development and delivery.

“The issues surrounding poor social network construction within online educational environments points to greater opportunities to examine how technology and mediated software can be better designed to suit the types of communication and interactions desired by our students.”  – Christopher Egert, co-author

References.
Jacobs, Stephen, Egert, Christopher A., Barnes, Susan B., “Social Media Theory and Practice: Lessons Learned for a Pioneering Course,” 39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, T4J-1, October 18 – 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX.

Study Examines Use of Social Media in the Classroom

What’s the best way to teach math? It’s a big question, but research at Ohio State University’s Center for Cognitive Science challenges a commonly held (though perhaps informal) notion in instructional design that concrete examples aid the learning and application of mathematics more than abstract proofs and representations. The idea that mastery of abstract quantities and concepts actually provides the learner with a better, i.e., more practical, set of tools for problem solving seems counter-intuitive, but researcher Jennifer Kaminski and her team believe they have proof. Kaminski et al. looked at whether students who received instruction using concrete examples performed differently from those who were encouraged to master the concepts abstractly. What they found was that the group who were instructed in more concrete terms and examples were less able to apply the knowledge to new situations.

“These findings cast doubt on a long-standing belief in education…. The belief in using concrete examples is very deeply ingrained, and hasn’t been questioned or tested.” – Vladimir Sloutsky, co-author

Ohio State’s Research Communications quotes Kaminski as saying:

“Teachers often use real-world examples in math class, the researchers said.  In some classrooms, for example, teachers may explain probability by pulling a marble out of a bag of red and blue marbles and determining how likely it will be one color or the other.

But students may learn better if teachers explain the concept as the probability of choosing one of n things from a larger set of m things.”

This research might help explain why so many people find word problems (and the semantic or linguistic use of mathematics) so daunting in mathematics and physics. In Kaminski’s words:

“The issue can also be seen in the story problems that math students are often given. For example, there is the classic problem of two trains that leave different cities heading toward each other at different speeds.  Students are asked to figure out when the two trains will meet.

The danger with teaching using this example is that many students only learn how to solve the problem with the trains.

If students are later given a problem using the same mathematical principles, but about rising water levels instead of trains, that knowledge just doesn’t seem to transfer.”

Sloutsky sees a role for word problems, however, just not as an instructional aid:

“It is very difficult to extract mathematical principles from story problems. Story problems could be an incredible instrument for testing what was learned.  But they are bad instruments for teaching.”

Kaminski’s and Sloutsky’s study should provide useful insight for those looking at ways to better teach subjects like mathematics, physics, signal analysis, algorithm design, dynamics, logic or economics. It should be noted that Kaminski and Sloutsky worked with Andrew Heckler of Ohio State’s Physics Department on parts of the study.

References.
Concrete Examples Don’t Help Students Learn Math, Study Finds
Students Learn Better When the Numbers Don’t Talk and Dance
Kaminski et al., LEARNING THEORY: The Advantage of Abstract Examples in Learning Math, Science 25 April 2008: 454-455, DOI: 10.1126/science.1154659.

There is an entertaining (and on-going) discussion at Edward Tufte‘s blog on the rate at which the human eye (specifically the retina) transfers information to the brain. The implications of the discussion point to the design of displays but the discussion has necessarily taken a turn in the direction of the likely question “What is the maximum amount of information (or data) that can be transferred from a PowerPoint slide to the brain?”

Issues of memory, interest and higher cognitive processing aside, preliminary research at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University suggests that the retina transmits data to the brain at 10 million bits per second – the rate of a basic 10Base-T Ethernet connection. Tufte sets the stage for the discussion by noting that viewing a PowerPoint slide is vastly different from viewing the world:

“Looking around the world is easier than analyzing evidence displays, and there may also be within-brain impediments to handling vast amounts of abstract data, but at least the narrow-band choke point for information resolution should not be the display itself.

The average PP slide contains 40 words, which take less 10 seconds to read. Call that 1000 bits per second, which comes to 1/10,000 of the routine human retina-brain data capacity.

Also most of our evidence displays are in flatland, which is a easier than 3D perceptual tasks. On the other hand, many serious data displays are not in the familiar 4D space/time coordinate system that our eye-brain knows so well.

Memory problems can be partly handled by high-resolution displays, so that key comparisons are made adjacent in space within the common eyespan. Spatial adjacency greatly reduces the memory problems associated with making comparisons of small amounts of information stacked in time (PP slides, for example).

– Edward Tufte, July 26, 2006″

The process from world to retina to brain seems sufficiently complex and multivariate that I am inclined to side with Tufte’s correspondent Niels Olson when he points out:

“While PowerPoint is surely a horrid way to transmit information, I’m not sure we can inject very abstract information into people at ethernet rates. 40 words in 10 seconds doesn’t translate to 1000 bits per second transmitted over the optic nerve, which connects the retina to the banks of the calcarine sulcus in the occipital lobe, via the optic chiasm and the lateral geniculate nucleus. At a minimum the data being transmitted would require an analysis of the typography’s geometry (edge detection being a basic function of the retina), the amount of the visual field taken up by the display, the location of the display’s image on the retina relative to the fovea, and the rates of change in the display and surrounding motion (the speaker, other audience members, etc).”

Interestingly Olsen picks up on a decidedly (Eric) McLuhanesque point when he comments on the 240-words-per-minute rate, a figure that roughly corresponds to both the average reading speed of sighted readers today (McLuhan) and the rate at which words in audio form (like podcasts) are transferred [Olsen comments on this in more detail in a later post]:

“Your guesstimate of 40 words in 10 seconds leads to a 240 word-per-minute reading speed. Like normal readers, braille readers can read at 200 to 400 words per minute. Is there any evidence that a person with an aquired partial nerve blindness also aquires an impaired ability to reason spatially? My classmates at Tulane Med found they preferred listening to the lecture audio I recorded at one-and-a-half speed, which also pushes close to 200 words per minute. Most people found twice-speed to be uncomfortably fast. This 200, 240, 400 word-per-minute rate may be a more accurate definition of the rate at which the human mind can receive and abstract information in word form, and this is likely driven by communication between Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area via the arcuate tract. Keep in mind, reading is a highly abstract function.”

The discussion has far from petered out. Combining the eye and the ear, The New York Times reported on research conducted at the University of California, San Diego, which calculated the average daily intake of data for a North American at 34 Gigabytes plus 100,000 words. What this means is that if you believe the estimate, our eyes and ears are busy handling that much data via all channels in a 24-hour period. According to the New York Times and the San Diego study the eye is still hard at work in the new media:

“Print media has declined consistently, but if you add up the amount of time people spend surfing the Web, they are actually reading more than ever.”

I leave it as an assignment to the interested reader to calculate the rate of information in Mbits/second of 34 Gigabytes per 24-hour period.

HMI Report/UC San Diego

References.

Penn researchers calculate how much the eye tells the brain

Kristin Koch, Judith McLean, Ronen Segev, Michael A. Freed, Michael J. Berry, Vijay Balasubramanian, Peter Sterling, “How Much the Eye Tells the Brain,” Current Biology 16 (July 25, 2006), 1428-1434.

The American Diet: 34 Gigabytes a Day

How Much Information?

Despite the fact that we are quick to assert that we live in The Information Age and are swimming in all kinds of media, data and sensory stimuli, it’s sobering to take a step back and reflect on the fact that information is not always where the focus of attention is. Marshall McLuhan was fond of saying that “We don’t know who discovered water, but we know it wasn’t the fish.” Information today is a little like that water and as teachers and instructional designers we have to pay attention to the differences between the medium and message if we want to be effective in what we do.

Right in keeping with this problem, the folks at MAYA Design have produced a really useful and (dare I say) informative animated short on the problem of distinguishing information from its presentational form. That is, in Gestalt terms, how to see the ground separate from the figure.

As an example of the problem of teasing information from its encapsulating medium, do you know what information is? Can you cite an example? What would you say if you were told that you can’t actually see or hear information? Would you be comfortable with the idea that neither the words on a page nor the numbers on a spreadsheet are information? In the words of MAYA Design, “Information has no form. It’s not made of atoms.”

So, what is information? In MAYA’s view:

“Information is what allows us to confidently make a selection from a set of given or implied alternatives.”

And what is our job then relative to information design? Our job is to give it form. We write it down, verbalize it, draw it and act it out. All with the intent of communicating it. Take a few minutes and look here or below and get reacquainted with the differences between medium and message.

Although distance and online learning have become staples in today’s colleges and corporate classrooms, they are not regarded as approaches without problems. Statistics for completion of online courses are typically quoted at around 30%, leading many to conclude that the means and methods of online instruction are unappealing to the learner and less than effective for the teacher. Furthering concerns about the overall effectiveness of online instruction, a 2007 study at the University of Missouri suggests that online learning (or e-learning) may not be a good match for some learners.

“Distance learning was designed to provide learners with more opportunity and flexibility for learning. Distance learning allows the learner to overcome traditional barriers to learning such as location, disabilities, time constraints, and familial obligations. However, not every learner will be successful in a distance learning environment.”

Comparing demographic (age, gender, ethnicity, employment) and affective (personality, motivation) issues that might form barriers to learning, researcher Shawna Strickland looked at what makes some people successful at online learning while others drop out. Strickland cites some common barriers to successful online learning as:

• Lack of institutional support
• Lack of free time
• Family constraints
• Financial limitations
• Poor time management skills
• Isolation
• Anxiety and stress
• Limited prior experience
• Previous academic failure

Although no correlation with learning style was found (p. 35), Strickland notes that individual motivation and the degree to which the student accepts personal responsibility for his/her learning act as a prime factors in distinguishing the successful from the unsuccessful learners.

“…the major difference between the distance and traditional learner is the motivational level of the distance learner. A possible reason for this increased motivational level is that the learner has accepted more responsibility for the educational experience. Although the authors [see Simonson et al.] have provided rationale for this key difference, they further state that, when comparing the individual attributes of the two types of learners, they are ‘not generally different from each other.’ “

Strickland also sees communication as key to a successful outcome:

“The success of distance learning is dependent on communication between the learner, his or her peers and instructor. To encourage success within distance learning, it is necessary to evaluate each individual’s needs on a case-by-case basis. While successful learners tend to display certain traits, any adult learner with the proper motivation and preparedness could be successful in a distance learning program.”

References.

Strickland, Shawna L., “Understanding Successful Characteristics of Adult Learners,” Respiratory Care Education Annual Volume 16, Fall 2007, pp. 31-38.

Furst-Bowe, J., Dittman W., “Identifying needs of adult women in distance learning programs,” Int J Instr Media (2001) 28(4), pp. 405-413.

Mupinga, D. M., Nora, R. T., Yaw, D. C., “The learning styles, expectations and needs of on-line students,” College Teaching (2006) 54(1), pp. 185-189.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education 2nd ed., Merrill Prentice Hall (2003)

Weighing in on the side of blended learning, Dr. Caroline Haythornthwaite of the Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, states that e-Learning may be at its best when used as a tonic to the traditional classroom.

“Compared to the more traditional educational paradigm – the broadcast model, where knowledge is delivered from professor to student from on-high – e-learning turns teaching and learning into a shared endeavor.”

Citing a shift in dynamics between her online and brick-and-mortar classes, Haythornthwaite sees that online teaching offers more immediate and engaging interactions with the students:

“With the online classes, I interact with my students more frequently, dropping into asynchronous discussion daily for a half-hour or an hour. With my traditional classes, I might see them once a week for three hours. If there’s a news article I want my online students to read, I can post it and discussion can begin right away. With my classroom students, if I e-mail them an article on Tuesday and we meet for class on Friday, that’s one of many things we might discuss. The impact isn’t quite as immediate.”

In online instruction the roles of student and teacher are modified. The teacher moves from pundit to facilitator and the student is urged to assume a greater active role in his or her tuition.

“Since there’s an emphasis on more learner-centric activities than traditional lecture-based classroom learning, the teacher is more of a facilitator in an online classroom. Not only does that enhance the collaborative nature of online learning, it also motivates students to be much more engaged and to take more responsibility for what they’re learning.”

Haythornthwaite doubts that e-Learning will (or should) replace traditional classroom instruction, asserting instead that it is best used as a complement to lecture and demonstration. Noting the move to open source course materials at places like MIT, Haythornthwaite says:

“No one stopped going to class when all that material was posted. It simply changed the delivery method and broadened the scope of knowledge available.”

References.

Haythornthwaite’s Blog (includes many research papers)

E-Learning can have positive effect on classroom learning, scholar says

Cutting Class – Online vs. Classroom Learning

When should simulations be used in class? Do they matter or are they eye candy, empty demonstrations and a waste of time? A recent study published in Medical Teacher suggests that medical students benefit significantly in both learning and retention when high fidelity simulations are used in training. Authors Corey Heitz, Ashley Brown, James E. Johnson & Michael T. Fitch of Wright State University and Wake Forest University School of Medicine, compared the educational effects of a 90-minute live simulation to a traditional lecture.

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

THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, March 5, 2010:

“President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts

Edward Tufte, Appointee for Member, Recovery Independent Advisory Panel
Edward Tufte is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Statistics, and Computer Science at Yale University. He wrote, designed, and self-published The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations, and Beautiful Evidence, which have received 40 awards for content and design. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Society for Technical Communication, and the American Statistical Association. He received his PhD in political Science from Yale University and BS and MS in statistics from Stanford University.”

From ET:

“I will be serving on the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel. This Panel advises The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, whose job is to track and explain $787 billion in recovery stimulus funds:

‘The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board was created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 with two goals:To provide transparency in relation to the use of Recovery-related funds.
To prevent and detect fraud, waste, and mismanagement.
Earl E. Devaney was appointed by President Obama to serve as chairman of the Recovery Board. Twelve Inspectors General from various federal agencies serve with Chairman Devaney. The Board issues quarterly and annual reports to the President and Congress and, if necessary, “flash reports” on matters that require immediate attention. In addition, the Board maintains the Recovery.gov website so the American people can see how Recovery money is being distributed by federal agencies and how the funds are being used by the recipients.

Mission statement: To promote accountability by coordinating and conducting oversight of Recovery funds to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse and to foster transparency on Recovery spending by providing the public with accurate, user-friendly information.’

I’m doing this because I like accountability and transparency, and I believe in public service. And it is the complete opposite of everything else I do. Maybe I’ll learn something. The practical consequence is that I will probably go to Washington several days each month, in addition to whatever homework and phone meetings are necessary.”

http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0003e0&topic_id=1#

(c) 2009 Jeff Parker, Florida Today.

A new study conducted by Dr Clare Wood, of Coventry University, and the British Academy has addressed whether “texting” has a pathological effect on learning to read and write. Dr Wood, who is a specialist in reading development, looked at a group of 8–12 years olds over the course of the school year and has concluded that far from eroding basic reading and writing skills, the activity may be a sign of their mastery. The results come as a surprise to many who assume the practice to be a clear sign of the decay of basic literacy. From the university report on the research:

“We began studying in this area initially to see if there was any evidence of association between text abbreviation use and literacy skills at all, after such a negative portrayal of the activity in the media. We were surprised to learn that not only was the association strong, but that textism use was actually driving the development of phonological awareness and reading skill in children.  Texting also appears to be a valuable form of contact with written English for many children, which enables them to practice reading and spelling on a daily basis.”

The study goes further to suggest that the degree to which a user has mastered texting may be indicative of his or her overall reading ability:

“The research, carried out on a sample of 8-12 year olds over an academic year, revealed that levels of ‘textism’ use could even be used to predict reading ability and phonological awareness in each pupil by the end of the year.”

Dr Wood is hoping that the results of the study change the way people look at texting in relation to phonetic literacy:

“In short, we suggest that children’s use of textisms is far from problematic. If we are seeing a decline in literacy standards among young children, it is in spite of text messaging, not because of it.”

For those unfamiliar with texting, this post is re-written in Lingo below:

A nu stdy conducted by Dr Clare w%d, of Coventry uni, n d brit Academy hs adressed whether “texting” hs a pathological effct on lerning 2 read n wrt. Dr w%d, who’s a specialist n readN dvlopmnt, lOkd @ a grp of 8–12 yrs olds ovr d corZ of d skool yr n hs ended dat fr frm eroding basic readN n ritN skilz, d activity may B a cYn of their mastery. d rslts cum as a surpriz 2 mnE hu aSume d prctic 2B a clr cYn of d DK of basic literacy. frm d uni rprt on d rsrch:

“We began swating n dis area initialy 2C f der wz Ny evidnce of asociatn btw txt abbr uz n literacy skilz @ ll, aftr sucha neg portrayal of d activity n d media. We wr surprisd 2 lern dat nt 1ly wz d asociatn strong, bt dat textism uz wz actuly drivN d dvlopmnt of phonological awareness n readN skill n kids. txtN also appears 2B a valuable 4m of contct W ritN en 4 mnE children, wich enables em 2 prctic readN n sp on a daily basis.”

d stdy goes furthA 2 sugest dat d Dgre 2 wich a user hs mastered txtN may B indicative of hs or her O’all readN ability:

“d rsrch, carried ot on a sampL of 8-12 yr olds ovr an academic yr, revealed dat lvls of ‘textism’ uz cUd evn B uzd 2 4tell readN ability n phonological awareness n ea pUpl by d Nd of d yr.”

Dr w%d S hopin dat d rslts of d stdy chng d wA ppl l%k @ txtN n relation 2 fonetic literacy:

“n short, we sugest dat children’s uz of textisms S fr frm problematic. f w’r seein a ebb n literacy stdz among yung children, itz n spite of txt msgN, nt coz of it.”

References.

Text Messaging Chat Abbreviations

Is texting valuable or vandalism?

For more information about the research, or an interview with Dr Clare Wood, please contact:
Kate Turnbull, Press and PR Manager:  0207 969 5263 / k.turnbull@britac.ac.uk or Ali Bushnell, External Press and Media Relations Officer, Coventry University on 024 7688 8245

According to technology blog CNET, the educational content wing of Apple’s iTunes Music site, iTunes University,  passed a milestone of over 100 million downloads this week. iTunes University is part of a mobile learning and content distribution service available through Apple’s iTunes application. As stated by Apple on their mobile learning site:

“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’m tired of talking. Let me explain. One of the basic rules of thumb for adult learning says that a class should be a little more than half practical application and workshop material to appeal to the audience. That aside, classroom (or instructor-lead) training has become expensive, and managers and consumers have become vocal in letting us know that they want to make sure it’s worth their time and money. To be plain, are we doing all we can to make the trip worthwhile?

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.

MERLOT: Putting Educational Innovations Into Practice

Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching

As far as I know this is a unique web site and resource.

“MERLOT is a leading edge, user-centered, searchable collection of peer reviewed and selected higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services. MERLOT’s vision is to be a premiere online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy.”

“Find peer reviewed online teaching and learning materials. Share advice and expertise about education with expert colleagues. Be recognized for your contributions to quality education.”

Collections in:

• Arts
• Business
• Education
• Humanities
• Mathematics
• Science & Technology
• Social Sciences

Explore MERLOT to find:

• Learning Materials
• Colleagues
• Personal Collections
• Learning Exercises
• Guest Experts

How to get involved:

“In MERLOT, there are many benefits available. Find out about each.

Become a Member

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Dean José Bowen of Southern Methodist University is not only advocating an outrageous pedagogical overhaul that many see as dangerous and ill-conceived, he is in the throes of implementing it as well. His professors at the Meadows School of the Arts are now required to teach primarily without computers or, more precisely, without PowerPoint slides. An short interview with Professor Bowen can be viewed here.

As reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Professor Bowen’s technological denuding of the classroom is motivated by several forces he sees eroding the quality of education in American classrooms:

• Lectures are boring and are usually done badly.
• PowerPoint is a terrible educational tool.
• Lectures are not interactive and can be done just as well online.

In Bowen’s impassioned view there is little reason for students to pay extra for the privilege of residential college tuition given the deplorable state of the antiquated lecture system. Bowen suggests that it can be done cheaper and perhaps better by the online colleges.  Secondly, students have the option of going to open courseware educational sites (like MIT and Stanford) to see lectures delivered in a way that are “really top notch.” In essence, as Bowen sees it, students will vote with their fingers as it were and take their lectures at a cheaper and better online resource if things do not change. “They will pay less for better.”

Bowen’s call to reform the lecture hall starts by asking what role the class meeting serves in light of modern media like podcasts and online presentations? His answer, make the lecture worth attending by using it as a venue for exploration of ideas, spontaneous questions and answers, group projects and debates. Use technology outside the classroom to prepare for the classroom.

Not surprisingly the Chronicle sites problems from both sides of the lecture hall:

“The biggest resistance to Mr. Bowen’s ideas has come from students, some of whom have groused about taking a more active role during those 50-minute class periods. The lecture model is pretty comfortable for both students and professors, after all, and so fundamental change may be even harder than it initially seems, whether or not laptops, iPods, or other cool gadgets are thrown into the mix.”

A previous foray into “inverting the classroom” at Miami University in Ohio evoked similar reactions from the students:

“‘Initial response is generally negative until students start to understand and see how they learn under this new system,’ says Glenn Platt, a professor of marketing at Miami who has published academic papers about the approach, which he calls the ‘inverted classroom.”’The first response from students is typically, ‘I paid for a college education and you’re not going to lecture?””

Both Bowen’s and Platt’s views converge on one nagging conclusion: We have to create good reasons for students to come to lectures. If not they will tune out, turn off, and probably go elsewhere. It seems ironic that in an age of mobile computing, electronic media and information at the speed of light that the lecture hall may only survive if it returns as a low-tech 21st Century edition of the classical academy. Time will tell which particular approaches favor this revitalization of the classroom but it is hard to deny that it is desperately needed.

Further Information.

Teach Naked: Dean Urges Tech-Free Classes (NPR)

Teaching Naked: Why Removing Technology from your Classroom Will Improve Student Learning

In an article that reads surprisingly like a case study from a course on McLuhans’ Laws of Media, T. X. Hammes writes in the Armed Forces Journal on the pernicious effects of pushing PowerPoint too far in the presentation culture of the Pentagon. Apparently keenly aware of the implicit bias of media, Hammes observes:

“Every year, the services spend millions of dollars teaching our people how to think. We invest in everything from war colleges to noncommissioned officer schools. Our senior schools in particular expose our leaders to broad issues and historical insights in an attempt to expose the complex and interactive nature of many of the decisions they will make.

Unfortunately, as soon as they graduate, our people return to a world driven by a tool that is the antithesis of thinking: PowerPoint. Make no mistake, PowerPoint is not a neutral tool — it is actively hostile to thoughtful decision-making. It has fundamentally changed our culture by altering the expectations of who makes decisions, what decisions they make and how they make them. While this may seem to be a sweeping generalization, I think a brief examination of the impact of PowerPoint will support this statement.”

Others have voiced concern over the nature and limitations of this tool and its ilk. Edward Tufte for example penned the monograph “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within” in an attempt to illustrate the common problems with the medium and offer suggestions on how to rectify them. Designers, illustrators and even cognitive scientists join the chorus in an effort to stem the plague of needlessly ineffective slide shows.

PowerPoint and its cousins have their genetic roots in presentation packages designed for selling, which is why PowerPoint still has a strong tendency to reduce everything it touches to a sales pitch. Hammes lights on this when he mentions how language and communication are bent to that of the Ad Man:

“Let’s start by examining the impact on staff work. Rather than the intellectually demanding work of condensing a complex issue to two pages of clear text, the staff instead works to create 20 to 60 slides. Time is wasted on which pictures to put on the slides, how to build complex illustrations and what bullets should be included. I have even heard conversations about what font to use and what colors. Most damaging is the reduction of complex issues to bullet points. Obviously, bullets are not the same as complete sentences, which require developing coherent thoughts. Instead of forcing officers to learn the art of summarizing complex issues into coherent arguments, staff work now places a premium on slide building. Slide-ology has become an art in itself, while thinking is often relegated to producing bullets.”

In PowerPoint language is reduced to a staccato burst of one-liners. Complete sentences are not at home in the medium. Language and rhetoric are reduced to a fractured mosaic of bullets, images and partial thoughts that serve as placeholders for information and ideas. The inherent bandwidth limitation of the medium is fine for sales presentations but falls flat when content and depth are required. Users struggle, perhaps unknowingly, to compensate for the inherent bias of the medium:

“Our personnel clearly understand the lack of clarity and depth inherent in the half-formed thoughts of the bullet format. In an apparent effort to overcome the obvious deficiency of bullets, some briefers put entire paragraphs on each briefing slide. (Of course, they still include the bullet point in front of each paragraph.) Some briefs consist of a series of slides with paragraphs on them. In short, people are attempting to provide the audience with complete, coherent thoughts while adhering to the PowerPoint format. While writing full paragraphs does force the briefer to think through his position more clearly, this effort is doomed to failure.”

Compounding the problem, (post-literate) reading speeds and the need to digest detailed and complex data fly in the face of the easy sales pitch proffered by the slide deck:

“People need time to think about, even perhaps reread, material about complex issues. Instead, they are under pressure to finish reading the slides before the boss apparently does. Compounding the problem, the briefer often reads these slides aloud while the audience is trying to read the other information on the slide. Since most people read at least twice as fast as most people can talk, he is wasting half of his listeners’ time and simultaneously reducing comprehension of the material. The alternative, letting the audience read the slide themselves, is also ineffective. Instead of reading for comprehension, everyone races through the slide to be sure they are finished before the senior person at the brief. Thus even presenting full paragraphs on each slide cannot overcome the fundamental weakness of PowerPoint as a tool for presenting complex issues.”

Hammes notes other signs of users’ struggle against the flow of the medium in mentioning the “quad chart” and slides crammed with so much information they cannot be processed by the viewer’s visual system, let alone addressed by the speaker. This is simply a low-bandwidth medium with rigid boundaries.

An Example Quad Chart

“The next major impact of slide-ology has been the pernicious growth in the amount of information portrayed on each slide. A friend with multiple tours in the Pentagon said a good rule of thumb in preparing a brief is to assume one slide per minute of briefing. Surprisingly, it seems to be true. Yet, even before the onslaught of the dreaded quad chart, I saw slides with up to 90 pieces of information. Presumably, some thought went into the bullets, charts, pictures and emblems portrayed on that slide, yet the vast majority of the information was completely wasted. The briefer never spoke about most of the information, and the slide was on screen for a little more than a minute. While this slide was an aberration, charts with 20 items of information portrayed in complex graphics are all too common. This gives the audience an average of three seconds to see and absorb each item of information. As if this weren’t sufficient to block the transfer of information, some PowerPoint Ranger invented quad charts. For those unfamiliar with a quad chart, it is simply a Power Point slide divided into four equal quadrants and then a full slide is placed in each quadrant. If the briefer clicks on any of the four slides, it can become a full-sized slide. Why this is a good idea escapes me.”

Hammes further notes that PowerPoint, like every technology, creates or alters the environment of the user. Interestingly, Hammes cites the effect PowerPoint has on time and events:

“PowerPoint has clearly decreased the quality of the information provided to the decision-maker, but the damage doesn’t end there. It has also changed the culture of decision-making. In my experience, pre-PowerPoint staffs prepared two to four decision papers a day because that’s as many as most bosses would accept. These would be prepared and sent home with the decision-maker and each staff member that would participate in the subsequent discussion. Because of the tempo, most decision-makers did not take on more than three or four a day simply because of the requirement to read, absorb, think about and then be prepared to discuss the issue the following day. As an added benefit for most important decisions, they ‘slept on it.’

PowerPoint has changed that. Key decision-makers’ days are now broken down into one-hour and even 30-minute segments that are allocated for briefs. Of particular concern, many of these briefs are decision briefs. Thus senior decision-makers are making more decisions with less preparation and less time for thought. Why we press for quick decisions when those decisions will take weeks or even months to simply work their way through the bureaucracy at the top puzzles me.”

Hammes does not miss the effect the indiscriminate use of the tool has on understanding and thought processes (“We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” – McLuhan):

“Unfortunately, by using PowerPoint inappropriately, we have created a thought process centered on bullets and complex charts. This has a number of impacts. First, it reduces clarity since a bullet is essentially an outline for a sentence and a series of bullets outline a paragraph. They fail to provide the details essential to understanding the ideas being expressed. While this helps immensely with compromise, since the readers can create their own narrative paragraphs from the bullets, it creates problems when people discover what they agreed to is not what they thought they had agreed to. Worse, it creates a belief that complex issues can, and should, be reduced to bullets. It has reached the point where some decision-makers actually refuse to read a two-page briefing paper and instead insist PowerPoint be used.”

In closing Hammes concedes that there are appropriate uses for PowerPoint but these tend to be presentations that are closer to its origin: “primarily, information briefs rather than decision briefs.” As depth and complexity increase, the appropriateness of PowerPoint falls away. As Hammes says, “There is a reason students cannot submit a thesis in PowerPoint format.”

iPods in School - Here They Come, Ready or Not!

Although there has been a notion floating around for several years that iPods can be used effectively as instructional tools, psychologists at SUNY Fredonia have only recently completed a study to quantify the value of the iPod in a lecture course. Professors Dani McKinney, Jennifer Dyck, and student Elise Luber (’08) have compared the effectiveness of podcasts to live lectures.

McKinney et al. divided a group of 64 students into two groups, one of which received a podcast lecture complete with podcast-formatted slides and printed hand-outs of the instructor’s presentation. The control group received the same hand-outs but attended the lecture. Test results indicate that the podcast group did considerably better than the live lecture group, especially if they treated the podcast as a live lecture.

“The podcast group averaged nine points (out of 100) higher on the test than those in the live audience. Moreover, those who took notes during the podcast scored even higher, averaging 15 points higher than their live-lecture counterparts.”

Commenting on the results, McKinney explains:

“If they listened to the podcast just one time, they didn’t do any better than the people who came to the lecture. However, the people who treated it like a live lecture, and took notes or replayed certain sections… they did significantly better.”

The research suggests that active involvement with the podcast combined with taking advantage of the inherent properties of the technology paid off. According to McKinney:

“If you treated it like a live lecture, you did better. But if you just listened to it passively, you didn’t get any benefit. One student watched the podcast at the gym, and his score reflected that. One person watched the podcast seven times, and her score reflected that.”

McKinney is quick to point out that this study is preliminary and hardly conclusive. She plans to extend the study to other subjects like biology, chemistry, sociology and history. A one semester study is also planned to assess the effect of longer time frames on the effectiveness of the iPod as an educational technology.

Although few educators believe the podcast is radically different from earlier approaches that used recording technology such as audio cassettes, McKinney does believe there is a general lesson to be gleaned for the study:

“Learning doesn’t change, regardless of the medium.” If you want to perform well on exams, you need to leave yourself usable ‘breadcrumbs,’ visual and mental cues. Study, take notes, listen and take more notes. That’s how you learn, regardless of whether you’re watching a professor in a class or an iPod in your hand.”

Further information on the study can be found here.