Original Publish Date: September 22, 2016
By Patrik Hultberg

The speaker for this year’s Fall Colloquium on Teaching and Learning was Dr. Geoffrey Cohen. Dr. Cohen gave a talk titled “Powerful but Invisible: Social Psychological Factors that Shape Student Success.” A brief recap of his talk can be found on the Fall Colloquium page, but here are seven reactions to the talk from K College faculty members.

Elizabeth Manwell (Classics):

Here is what I really liked about the colloquium. I’ve been reading and thinking about the research over the past few years about “grit” (and the controversies about the work), and my question was always, “well, how do we encourage or develop grit? Or is it just innate?” I thought his talk really spoke to ways that we can develop those capacities in our students.

So, first was taking the time to get to know your students, instead of jumping into the work. The notion that the high-performing tutors could achieve more because students felt they knew and trusted the tutors was really powerful.

I also liked the idea of scaffolding and then presenting a difficult problem—not praising, but demonstrating your confidence in their ability to take on a challenge.

I also liked the idea of setting out the criteria of evaluation before you look at candidates. It seemed that this is the kind of thing that I could do even more explicitly in paper assignments and the like, so that I don’t read a paper and think, “oh I like this topic” or “oh, this is really nicely written” and give it a good grade, when it might not be measuring up in other ways (e.g., responding to the assignment, building a sophisticated argument, etc.).

Andrew Koehler (Music)

One thing that really struck me is the impact of letting students know why they’re getting feedback, and to authentically find a way to show them that you are holding them to a high standard you believe them capable of achieving. In my own teaching, I’ve thought a lot about making sure I show why the things I teach matter to me (instead of taking for granted that they are important to everyone), and my sense is these are at some level related, and that my work on this can be profitably expanded.

Chuck Stull (Economics/Business)

A few of my takeaways were:

1. Small actions can have outsized impacts on student performance.
2. Actions that reinforce stereotypes hurt the performance of that group while actively counteracting the stereotype can help.
3. Details matter.
4. How feedback is framed makes a big difference.
5. Encouraging a “growth mindset” (you can develop your abilities) is much more successful than allowing a “fixed mindset” (you have a fixed ability) to persist.

Lanny Potts (Theatre Arts):

As a teacher of creative content that is melded with the practical necessity of its execution, my project philosophy has often been that of a sink-or-swim approach (with full knowledge that pool noodles, floaty wings, and life vests are necessary for those that are having a hard time swimming). I feel that with Geoff’s “a little valuation can go a long way” that to continue to focus upon the positive (which I try to do regularly and consistently – but, HIS positive valuation reminded me of HOW IMPORTANT this work is…), that is: that in reframing, and by explaining the why with subtlety both will continue to go a long way in helping students who struggle with both the “how do I do it” of creative content AND the execution “I know this needs to be good” of their project based work.

Thus, upon reflection, my takeaway was twofold.

First, I am reminded of the importance. GREAT importance. Of how valuable and valued positive reinforcement – timely, adroitly, and appropriately applied – can be for creative content and execution of extremely challenging projects. It re-ignited a fire to strive to continually seek ways to provide profoundly thoughtful – and insightful – comments to student work.

Second, I was reminded of the great gift (and awesome responsibility) we have as teachers. If great teaching genuinely is not “teaching” but inspiring learning, I think Geoff’s lessons should give all of us a great tool to aspire to be, and inspire our students, to pursue lifelong learning.

Jan Tobochnik (Physics)

Here are new things I learned or relearned:

1. I liked the idea of little nudges such as the growth mindset comments on papers and perhaps better ways of framing tests so that students don’t judge them as a measure of some fixed ability that cannot be changed.
2. I don’t know if I can implement this, but the idea of creating experts in student experts so that the students see the need to collaborate.
3. The nudges in (1) are probably better given individually rather than as some kind of announcement to the class. Thus, personalized comments are best.

Reid Gomez (Critical Ethnic Studies)

At our colloquium I appreciated the focus on “good tutoring.” When I’m lost I go back to the skills I learned and used as a tutor. The one on one delivery and co-exploration of content continues to be the foundation of my classroom practice. I’ve changed. The students have changed. But one thing remains the same: we have to know each other to work well with each other.

I believe our relationship as learners and leaders in the classroom is what shapes the class and their engagement with the material. I hope the class process (framework) gives them a method (theory) to approach evaluating materials, stretching their minds, and developing analytical abilities for whatever content, in whatever field, they encounter. Co-producing knowledge also makes them better teachers themselves—demystifying the process.

Amy MacMillan (Economics/Business)

1. Validation of what I currently do: continue to use first class of each course to establish rapport with students, set expectations. Tempting to want to race into the material, but this time up front pays dividends later.
2. Tweak what I do: spend even more time explaining why I write so many comments on the students’ papers, using this as a chance to convey how much I believe in their potential. Ditto for explaining my somewhat tough grading assessments overall, including the intentional ambiguity in some assignments (versus being spoon fed with a detailed rubric).
3. Make a significant change: stop telling students when I think an assignment is easy. Instead, spend more time telling them when it’s hard and why. Set them up for a challenge. Then, let them come to their own conclusions that they’ve done a good job, rather than simply having this message come from me.

Original Publish Date: September 19, 2016
By Patrik Hultberg

I was recently asked the question, “How do today’s students learn?” It is an important question, but my initial answer was “the same way as students have always learned.” My cavalier response was influenced by my recent reading of books on cognitive psychology and learning. Clearly the brains of today’s students are identical to the brains of students in the past and therefore, strictly speaking, students today learn the same way as previous generations of students. To learn something students must still use their brains to receive and process sensory input; in fact, learning equals a change in the learner’s brain (Zull, 2002). Although my colleague was probably hoping for more practical advice, I actually think these thoughts contain the beginning of a more careful answer.

The brains of today’s students might be the same, but available technology and our knowledge of learning and pedagogy have changed drastically. These changes influence what students do, and what they should do, inside and outside of the classroom. Technology is very important; new technology has changed how students access and consume information. New technology may even change the interaction between students and the teacher, as well as interactions between students, in the classroom. However, changes in our understanding of the brain may be even more important for improved student learning.

Today we know that passively listening to a lecture, reading a textbook chapter, googling for an answer to a homework problem is not conducive to deep and lasting learning. These three common examples of student “learning” have one thing in common: they make learning easy. Students don’t have to engage their brains in these activities; instead students become familiar with information, which in turn creates an illusion of fluency, an illusion of knowledge. What we, as teachers, are beginning to understand is that “learning is deeper and more durable when it’s effortful” (Brown et al, 2014).

What should students do to make learning, in effect, more difficult? Cognitive psychology has many suggestions, let’s briefly review some practices that students can engage in to learn more in less time. Learning implies that a student will be able to store and in the future retrieve knowledge or skills from memory and deeper and better learning implies a greater ability to do so. Retrieval practice is therefore an important tool for deeper levels of learning. Effortful retrieval makes for deeper learning and greater retention (Brown et al, 2014). Two strategies that can be used to make retrieval more effortful, and therefore learning more durable, are spacing and interleaving.

Spacing, or distributive practice, is the act of distributing retrieval practice over time thus encouraging a student to schedule shorter study sessions over say a week (say days 1, 3, and 7), rather than spending the same amount of time cramming the night before an assessment event. It is an application of the Forget To Learn theory (Carey, 2014); that is, learning is strengthened when a student has time to partially forget the material before recall. Distributed practice (spacing) disrupts memory loss and improves long-term retention. Interleaving is the practice of mixing related but distinct material during learning sessions, forcing students to discriminate between problems and selecting the correct solution method given the context (Brown et al, 2014). This approach also facilitates forgetting and results in spacing, which leads to greater storage and retrieval strengths (deeper learning). Combining spacing and interleaving with self-testing allows students to further practice retrieval and such tests prevent any illusion of knowledge. These techniques all make learning more difficult as they force students to “think” (retrieve knowledge); they also compel students to notice how much they don’t know.

Three additional practices greatly enhance student learning: generation, elaboration, and reflection (Brown et al, 2014). Students practice generation by attempting to solve a problem or answer a question before being given the answers. By seeking answers, students explore alternatives and make possible connections. Generation makes the student’s brain more receptive to new learning (Brown et al, 2014). Students practice elaboration when they attempt to find additional layers of meaning in the material learned. Reflection is a combination of both retrieval of knowledge and elaboration of such knowledge. Reflection powerfully makes additional connections which allow students to strengthen their learning and skills.

Clearly these learning techniques are very different from students’ common approach to studying. They are also more difficult and mentally painful, so it is perhaps unrealistic to assume that every student will use these strategies voluntarily. If so, are there some things we as teachers can do to help? Well, yes, we can structure our courses in ways that encourages students to engage in behaviors that foster deep and durable learning.

There are certainly activities we should avoid doing; e.g. providing a steady stream of lectures only briefly interrupted by exams does not foster deep student learning. Perhaps we can use technology to make content delivery more efficient and thereby open up space in our face-to-face interactions with students for more meaningful activities. We can possibly pursue active learning activities that require students to generate and retrieve information and skills, as well as asking students to elaborate and reflect on the material. We can use various formative assessment techniques to encourage students to increase their brain’s storage and retrieval strengths (learning), as well as motivate them to read texts or watch videos. We can even structure our courses so that spacing and interleaving is an integral part of the student experience. In short, there are many ways we can encourage students to unwittingly use the many lessons about learning that cognitive psychology provides.

Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L., and M. A. McDaniel, Make It Stick: the Science of Successful Learning, Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2014.

Carey, Benedict. How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens, New York, Random House, 2014

Zull, James E. The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning, Virginia: Stylus Publishing, 2002.