Stressing the obvious

Here is another statement from a list in Brain-Based Learning: Possible Implications for Online Instruction Stephanie A. Clemons http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Sep_05/article03.htm

8. Threat, high anxiety, and a sense of helplessness impairs learning.

Well, yes. This was probably known long before there were psychologist. Even psychologists have known it for about 100 years. It is called the Yerkes-Dodson law. It applies to performance on any task. Low levels of threat or anxiety improve performance. With increasing levels, performance improves, reaches a maximum, then declines. The location of the optimum level depends on familiarity with the task. Well-practiced tasks can benefit from higher levels of threat or anxiety, especially if they require speed, strength, or quick reactions.

Learning, by definition, is not a well-practiced task and so will require a low level of threat or anxiety.

Now that we’ve figured that out, what do we do about it? In general, instructional design aims to produce small increments in performance and arrange for any “failures” to be unthreatening. That’s why you learn to fly a plane in a simulator first. The objective is manage the stress level. I don’t think any instructional designer sets out to create “threat, high anxiety, and a sense of helplessness.”

If some students experience these feelings, the condition probably results from a mismatch between the instructional design and the student. Presumably, online instruction can offer a wider range of instructional practice. But I don’t know of any systematic way to match students to instructional practice. There may be a market for a matchmaking service in this area.

I can see it now. Amazon.edu. “Students who liked the instructional style of this course also liked…” For the most part, the content of education in the US is the same at least up through the sophomore year of college. There will be some variation in grade level at which specific content is presented. I remember my high-school biology teacher explaining to that the demonstration manikins were not anatomically correct in high-school, but would be in college. We students would not have been disappointed by a more advanced level of instruction.

Another entrepreneurial call. Actually, three. First, design different instructional materials suitable for different learner types. “Algebra for Dummies” This already exists as a book, but I don’t know whether it would be an adequate preparation for the requirements of a high-school algebra course.

That uncertainty brings us to the second entrepreneurial call. Develop a way to certify instructional units as appropriate for equivalency at some grade level. That would require some kind of demonstration that people who complete the unit can pass advanced placement tests in the unit.

The third entrepreneurial challenge is to find a way to match student characteristics to instructional design characteristics.

Any of these would be difficult. To which I give the entrepreneurial retort. Of course, it’s difficult. If it were easy, it would have already been done.

For this solution, we will have to wait for the entrepreneurs. My next post will deal with the Godot question: “What shall we do while waiting?”

Your brain deals with your world

This title is an exercise in the obvious. It would not be worth mentioning except for the educational practice of ignoring the obvious. Here are two statements from a list in Brain-Based Learning: Possible Implications for Online Instruction Stephanie A. Clemons http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Sep_05/article03.htm

5. Multi-sensory input is desired by our brains.
6. Learning involves the whole body.

Both of these statements express the proposition in the title. (I have earlier mentioned the inelegant formulation of item five, so I won’t labor that point.) The reason we have to hear about multi-sensory input is that we have moved into the world of talk. Words compartmentalize the world. Words can analyze the brain inputs into various senses. But in the real world, your brain does not analyze its inputs into various senses. It synthesizes the inputs into a consistent world model.

And, by the way, how many senses are there in multi-sensory input? You would need to know that if you were designing multi-sensory input for brain-based learning. Conventional word-based learning would tell us that there are five senses. Experience-based learning tells us that this anatomically-derived count is just the surface appearance.

Out of the auditory sense, for example, your brain easily computes such things as the direction of the source and the size of the room. Did you think of those things when you read the abstract phrase “multi-sensory input?” You would think of those things if you suppress the education-based compartmentalization of senses and start thinking of your brain as building world models. You would think of them if you were dealing in sound effects for radio or video. Or perhaps even if you were a skilled writer of fiction.

Yes, storytellers know very well how to use brain-based presentations to build a world for their stories. And they demonstrate that skillful story-telling can build a world out of whatever tools are available. Including the single-sensory input of a book. To test that claim, try J. K. Rowling or Jack London. (Intellectuals may prefer Hemmingway.)

Online learning does offer some advantages in this context. This may help educators who can’t write like Hemmingway. Perception improves with interaction. In the past, that aspect of learning was hard to provide outside of museums like the Exploratorium. Online instruction can easily let people interact with the subject. (Easily? That’s easy for me to say. I don’t have to write the code.)

I am still working on ways to use whole-body thinking into the Thinkerer. I recently added pages about semi-structured brainstorming. That includes the notion of brainstorming by walking around. Not only whole body, but whole room. What’s next? Whole earth brainstorming?

More discoveries about brain-based learning

4. Brains are poorly designed for rote learning.

From a list in Brain-Based Learning: Possible Implications for Online Instruction, Stephanie A. Clemons http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Sep_05/article03.htm)

This is one of my favorite discoveries. Not the statement about how brains are unsuited to rote learning. I discovered that by the third grade. My discovery is that some people apparently did not know this and needed brain-based research to find it out.

Actually, I am not sure what the author meant by “rote learning.” That is one of the problems with abstract statements. It is not a brain problem. It is a communication problem. Abstract terms are usually open to multiple interpretations. Of course, this is just a single line. The author may have given a thorough definition elsewhere.

But I prefer to speculate. That way, I will understand the concept. Then I won’t have to memorize the definition by rote learning.

Since the statement is in an educational context, I assume that it refers to something that happens in education. I wonder, however, whether many instructional plans actually specify “rote learning” as a learning objective. I think the add and multiply tables could reasonable have rote learning as an objective, but I think it may end there.

There are certainly instructional objectives that call for memorizing things. But objectives don’t specify methods. Students are assigned the task of memorizing a speech or a poem. I would not call this rote learning. They generally understand the flow of meaning and the rhythm. You can hear the difference between rote and understanding in the way they deliver the recitation.

The Thinkerer offers several suggestions for how to memorize things in ways that go beyond rote. See: Memorizers

My impression is that rote learning is not a moral imperative imposed by educators. I think it is a method chosen by students who don’t know any better method. You can argue that argue that if educators don’t teach other methods, they are indirectly imposing a method previously taught. I won’t dispute that.

But if something is not being done, it takes more than educators not to do it. It also takes parents not to do it. I suppose it even takes psychologists not to do it. So here is another opportunity for a book:

What they won’t tell you about memorizing. Maybe I’ll use that as a headline for a page in the Thinkerer. Not a book, of course. Much shorter. Much cheaper.

Emotions and the brain borers

Is boredom an emotion? Last time I was talking about an assertion:
3. Emotions are critical to successful learning.

(From a list in Brain-Based Learning: Possible Implications for Online Instruction Stephanie A. Clemons http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Sep_05/article03.htm)

So I looked back over my earlier discussion of the Brain Borers. If boredom is an emotion, then I take the statement above as a caution about the risks in casual use of abstraction. In logic, of course, people learn to deal formally with the difference between some and all.

I doubt that anyone believes that boredom is critical to successful learning. I don’t believe educators intentionally design instruction to be boring. It just seems to work out that way. Perhaps managing boredom is critical to successful learning.

As I suggested earlier, feeling bored is just your brain’s way of telling you that what you are doing is not important. And therefore, not worth remembering. Feeling emotional is your brain’s way of telling you that something is important. And your brain remembers what it identifies as important. Generally without any conscious effort on your part.

So one way to beat the Brain Borers is to get emotional about it. Last week I talked about the value of immediate reinforcement. That is an emotion often overlooked by educators. Never overlooked by retail marketers, game designers, or drug dealers. Maybe that’s why retail marketers, game designers, and drug dealers make more money than educators.

That leads me to another learning objective:
The student will learn this principle: “If you want something done to suit you, you have to do it yourself.”

Admittedly, I haven’t seen this cited as a learning objective. I inferred it from educational practices that I have observed.

The Thinkerer is about doing it yourself. So the section on studying carries a relevant page “Once more, with feeling.”

And as to immediate reinforcement, the Thinkerer cites a counterproductive practice, Vagoaling. With this practice, people (including students) deny themselves to satisfaction of immediate success by failing to know what they mean by immediate success.

There another trick I use. I have a set of pet peeves. I notice when a writer triggers them and I react. You saw one such reaction at the start of this page. I call it lazy logic. “Emotions are critical…” All emotions? Some emotions? If some, which? A blurred abstraction saves the writer a lot of effort in specification. Leaving the learner to figure out what the statement means.

Another of my pet peeves is the passive evasive voice. Here are several examples:
Brains are designed for fluctuations rather than constant attention. Designed? By whom? And how did anybody get access to the design specs.

Brains are poorly designed for rote learning.

Multi-sensory input is desired by our brains. The desire of brains? What your brain really wants? What is the evidence about brain desires?

Brains are considered “plastic”… By whom? Sure, you can buy brain models for educational demonstrations. They do seem to be made of plastic. But that’s not what this sentence is about. By using the passive evasive and putting plastic in quotes, the author avoids citing any authority and avoids stating the authoritative conclusion.

Mental meringue. It looks like something good, but when you bite into it, there is noting there.

The emotional side of learning

The theme I have been working on for the last month started in the pose on Brain-Based Learning. I started with a set of statements described as findings from brain research (Stevens and Goldberg, 2001) with possible implications for online instruction . I concluded that these might be worth a little study and that in studying them, I could create an example of how a person might deal with abstract content.

That study led me to the questions of how I would use the information. Focusing specifically on the assertion that brains are specialized and unique, I considered the implications it would have for instructional design. After three posts on that, I think I have a good idea how I would use the information. If I actually had to study the material, I would go on to read the details and compare them to my ideas of what to expect.

Since I don’t have to study the material, I will go on to look for some ideas that I have used or might use in the Thinkerer. This time I’ll take them in order of importance (another element of self-directed learning).

3. Emotions are critical to successful learning.
I think this is a generally accepted principle. But the denotation of emotions is tricky. The satisfaction you get from success is an emotion, but often overlooked in the term. Psychologists use the term reinforcement and may not always regard it as an emotion.

One thing often overlooked in instruction is the value of immediate reinforcement. People will work on a puzzle they think they can solve. They will play a game they think they can win. Theses efforts are supported entirely by the immediate reinforcement of (frequent) success.

Perhaps when instruction depended on lectures and books, it was difficult to design for immediate reinforcement. Online instruction may offer greater potential. Here is an example I found recently.

Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) is a free open-source audio editor. I installed it recently to try out some audio things on the Thinkerer. I then found a tutorial (http://www.edhsonline.org/other/audacity/) which provided a step-by-step introduction to the basics of editing a .wav file. I could easily open the instructions and the program in separated windows. I could follow the steps of the instructions and get immediate feedback.

I would recommend that anyone interested in online instructional design should try the Audacity demonstration. Even if you don’t need to do audio, you will learn something about instruction. Besides, who can resist a program called Audacity?

“Anchor Boots” and instructional design

Don’t you hate it when people drop clues and don’t tell you what you are supposed to know? Strange. People never want the answer to a mystery story in the first chapter.

I was talking about instructional design and suddenly I stuck in this short story written by a high school student. It was an assignment, of course. So I guess it derives from some kind of instructional design. And, come to think of it, writing a short story does connect with the general idea of self-directed learning. In this particular case, the student integrated the assignment with the topics of gravity and friction. I don’t think that was part of the assignment. More like self-direction.

Before I wandered off into fiction, I mentioned two implications for online instruction:
1. Design to guide toward self-directed learning.
2. Design for cafeteria-style instruction.

The assignment to write a story could be a way to guide toward self-directed learning. And it could be one of the steam trays in that cafeteria-style instruction. Not at all like learning a computer language, of course. But then, that’s the point, isn’t it. Computer languages are on a different tray.

The shadow across the face of this idyllic scene comes from that other criterion I mentioned: Self-directed learning requires prompt and objective measures of performance. These condition are hard to satisfy in the case of fiction. And doubly hard in the case of fiction drawing on an understanding of physics.

An approximation of these conditions might be available in group study. If students first discussed a scenario for a story, they would get prompt feedback from each other. But not objective? That depends on your viewpoint. If I read something you wrote and say I don’t understand it, that is a subjective evaluation from my viewpoint. But from your viewpoint, my reaction is an objective fact. As a writer, your only reasonable course of action is to find out why I failed to understand what you wrote and repair what you wrote.

For a look into group study, check: http://www.psy.tcu.edu/acr/collaboration.htm

In the context of online support, there are greater possibilities for group work. People no longer have to be in the same place. IM services by Yahoo and Microsoft will probably support audio meetings (now or soon). Or even video if needed. There are probably already online services that bring together high-school students with common interests in some academically relevant area. Such students could work together to produce stories, to publish a blog, or both.

I think I will look to see what is available now. Some entrepreneurs must have noticed this opportunity.

Anchor Boots

Following is a short story written as a high school assignment. The student was studying gravity at the same time and chose to integrate that topic into the story.
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It has been a rough year. For my own sanity, I need to get away. I could always go up to mother’s cabin in the woods. She is in town for the year, the emptiness would be nice. I need some time away from all the incompetent fools at work, who feel I have the answers to everything all the time.

Yes, a vacation would be nice, after all, I do deserve one. These circuitous roads bring back fond memories of my yester years, back when I was alive. Ah, what a refreshing scene, birds chirping, squirrels scurrying, and the vegetation, a breathtaking assortment of greens. The house looks good, lonely, but that is part of its charm. I have spent many hours down at the lake as a girl constantly trying to break the latest rock skipping record, set by me of course. “There’s a good one”, almost a perfect pancake shape, “My, that went far”, I felt as if I had barely tossed it.

I make my way back to the gate. I prepare myself to pick up the large rock. That acts as the door stop, the latch has been broken for year. Surprisingly, it takes little to no effort at all to lift. I am beat, a nap would be great. I walk through the house, there seems to be an extra bounce in my step for what ever reason. I fall, in what feels like slow motion, onto the bed. It seems stiff, naturally with the lack of human contact it has endured. I awake in what seems no time at all, refreshed and energized.

Dinner time is right about now. I haven’t eaten all day. I prepare a sandwich and tomato soup, and went to enjoy it on the porch. I watch two squirrels participate in a tag-like same, quite entertaining. They wrestle their way up the tree when one squirrel has enough, he leaps an amazing distance, virtually weightless, and looks confused as he slams into the roof. For some reason, witnessing this feat, gives me an eerie feeling. I continue my day but I just cannot get this feeling out of the back of my head. The rocks, the squirrels, my own lightness, do not seem normal.

I cozy up by the fire with a book and begin to unwind. Until there is a snap outside the window, I cautiously peer into the dark, when I see, what seems to be a branch, it slowly made its way down, hovering over the ground as if there is no reason for it to land. My palms begin to sweat, my breaths grow shorter, and my knees buckle beneath me. I run out of the house my strides begin to cover a lot of distance I felt nothing, weightless.

I jump in my car, and speed through the wilderness. I realize in my state of panic that I have to be overreacting, this is all in my head. It has to be all the stress from work and daily pressures releasing in a very odd way. As I begin to calm down a deer leaps out in front of me, once again in the slow creepy manner as before. I slam on my brakes to find they are useless, the road seems to separate itself from any friction at all. I manage to swerve away from the deer and soar into another, far more intense, state of panic.

I drive straight into the side of the first building I spotted. Luckily it is after hours and no one is inside. Through the broken glass I notice a sign that reads “Anchor boots sold here.” The ambulances and fire trucks approach, almost floating, I notice all of them are wearing these “Anchor boots”. I ask the fire chief just what they are for and he looks at me strangely and explains the state of our planet. The gravitational pull is weakening and the federal government is in a state of alert. I breathe a sigh of relief that I am not insane after all, but a bigger fear immediately engulfed me as I realize our beloved world is coming apart at the seams. -- Amanda Gilley, School: Fort Worth Christian