A lot of what Dr. Duke
talked about had to do with idea that many of the tasks and techniques used in
most classrooms are ineffective, yet we do them because we think we have to. This
really resonates with me, and I have heard this comment in various teaching
workshops, from faculty and teaching assistants alike.
Dr. Duke described a writing exercise he used with a colleague who was struggling with her professional writing. He asked her to start over and just write a letter to her mother about the subject. When she came back, she had a clearly written document. This is probably the problem with a lot of student writing. When you write home to mom, you know your audience, and you have a pretty good idea how much your mom knows about the subject, so you know how much background to give, and use much less jargon. When students are assigned papers, they think they are writing to a superior who knows much more about the subject, so they try to tell you everything they come across, rather than construct the deep and well thought out argument we were hoping for. The lesson here may be to give your students a clear idea of the audience they should be writing for, the level of detail and focus expected, etc (a rubric would most likely help with a lot of this!).
Dr. Duke had us do a simple group exercise. As we first filtered into the lecture hall, there were directions on the projector screen asking us to sit by someone we did not know. Some of us had not followed instructions, so there was some moving around. I wasn't seated next to anyone, but thankfully a woman I was not acquainted with came and sat by me so we could participate in the exercise. Dr. Duke then had us simply write down two interesting tidbits about our area of study, share those with the person next to us, listen to their story, and ask at least two questions. As expected, he had to cut us off because we enjoyed this time of being able to chat while in 'class'. He then asked a really poignant question- why did we find this exercise and talking to the stranger next to us so engaging? He surmises it is because you don’t often get to do it! Instead of passively sitting in our seats and listening to a lecture, we had to generate something of our own, even if it was just a few thoughts on our work and a conversation with a new person. Additionally, meeting someone outside your normal realm probably lead to some questions being asked that you had not before considered. Simple discussions like this, geared toward the subject matter of the class, can help break the doldrums of class and engage your students.
We settled back in again to talk about our classrooms. One controversial suggestion Dr. Duke made was to scrap 2/3rds of what we have in our syllabus, think about what is critical for students to leave the classroom with, and spend the rest of your time delving deep into that. This was met by nervous laughter and lots of incredulous glancing at each other by members of the audience. Dr. Duke explained that a common comment he hears from faculty is that they cannot take the time to make the changes, and that they have to cover all the material, or the student won’t be ready to move on to the next class in the curriculum, and that would in turn reflect poorly on the previous instructor. Dr. Duke made the point that this is already happening- with cramming in all that information, the student is already losing the majority of what they 'learned' when they leave class, so why not accept that and teach less, but better? This point was hammered home with the showing of an excerpt from the film “Minds of our Own”. The clip contained graduates of Massachusetts Institute of Technology on their convocation day, in robes and all, being asked if they could light up a light bulb with a wire and a battery. There were many failed attempts. These are the brightest people of the nation, and undoubtedly could solve some really complicated equations and design some really cool experiments, and yet they had lost the basics, or never had them at all. So, are we really teaching our students what we think we are teaching them? We did a small version of this in the lecture hall when we were asked to solve the equation (3/4) / (1/2). The majority of us could solve this, and did it the same way (multiply by the reciprocal), but none of us could explain WHY this is the method for solving the equation, and thus cast some doubts as to whether, at least with me, I could correctly apply this method of solving to another type of problem.
The concluding point was this, without dissonance, there is no memory. This is the cost of learning. In other words, what we are covering in the classroom has to be different from what we already know and have stored, otherwise there is no need to expend the energy and resources (the costs) to save the new information!
Dr. Duke described a writing exercise he used with a colleague who was struggling with her professional writing. He asked her to start over and just write a letter to her mother about the subject. When she came back, she had a clearly written document. This is probably the problem with a lot of student writing. When you write home to mom, you know your audience, and you have a pretty good idea how much your mom knows about the subject, so you know how much background to give, and use much less jargon. When students are assigned papers, they think they are writing to a superior who knows much more about the subject, so they try to tell you everything they come across, rather than construct the deep and well thought out argument we were hoping for. The lesson here may be to give your students a clear idea of the audience they should be writing for, the level of detail and focus expected, etc (a rubric would most likely help with a lot of this!).
Dr. Duke had us do a simple group exercise. As we first filtered into the lecture hall, there were directions on the projector screen asking us to sit by someone we did not know. Some of us had not followed instructions, so there was some moving around. I wasn't seated next to anyone, but thankfully a woman I was not acquainted with came and sat by me so we could participate in the exercise. Dr. Duke then had us simply write down two interesting tidbits about our area of study, share those with the person next to us, listen to their story, and ask at least two questions. As expected, he had to cut us off because we enjoyed this time of being able to chat while in 'class'. He then asked a really poignant question- why did we find this exercise and talking to the stranger next to us so engaging? He surmises it is because you don’t often get to do it! Instead of passively sitting in our seats and listening to a lecture, we had to generate something of our own, even if it was just a few thoughts on our work and a conversation with a new person. Additionally, meeting someone outside your normal realm probably lead to some questions being asked that you had not before considered. Simple discussions like this, geared toward the subject matter of the class, can help break the doldrums of class and engage your students.
We settled back in again to talk about our classrooms. One controversial suggestion Dr. Duke made was to scrap 2/3rds of what we have in our syllabus, think about what is critical for students to leave the classroom with, and spend the rest of your time delving deep into that. This was met by nervous laughter and lots of incredulous glancing at each other by members of the audience. Dr. Duke explained that a common comment he hears from faculty is that they cannot take the time to make the changes, and that they have to cover all the material, or the student won’t be ready to move on to the next class in the curriculum, and that would in turn reflect poorly on the previous instructor. Dr. Duke made the point that this is already happening- with cramming in all that information, the student is already losing the majority of what they 'learned' when they leave class, so why not accept that and teach less, but better? This point was hammered home with the showing of an excerpt from the film “Minds of our Own”. The clip contained graduates of Massachusetts Institute of Technology on their convocation day, in robes and all, being asked if they could light up a light bulb with a wire and a battery. There were many failed attempts. These are the brightest people of the nation, and undoubtedly could solve some really complicated equations and design some really cool experiments, and yet they had lost the basics, or never had them at all. So, are we really teaching our students what we think we are teaching them? We did a small version of this in the lecture hall when we were asked to solve the equation (3/4) / (1/2). The majority of us could solve this, and did it the same way (multiply by the reciprocal), but none of us could explain WHY this is the method for solving the equation, and thus cast some doubts as to whether, at least with me, I could correctly apply this method of solving to another type of problem.
The concluding point was this, without dissonance, there is no memory. This is the cost of learning. In other words, what we are covering in the classroom has to be different from what we already know and have stored, otherwise there is no need to expend the energy and resources (the costs) to save the new information!