Skip to main content

Home/ Diigo In Education/ Group items tagged mastery

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder

CBI: Our education systems are not delivering - while average performance rises gently,... - 0 views

www.cbi.org.uk/...ion-systems-are-not-delivering

CBI report

shared by Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder on 22 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Spending on education accelerated still further after 1997, rising in real terms by 71% by 2010-11.
  • UK ranks among the highest spending OECD countries measured in terms of percentage of GDP on education.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • but we are being outperformed by nations which spend less.
  • the challenge lies not in what we spend, but in what we do.
  • explanation for the conveyor belt comes not from money, therefore, but from other incentives that schools face.
  • Schools have become used to governments setting blanket targets,
  • We should not be surprised that these drive behaviour – but not always the behaviour that the Department for Education wants.
  • The percentage of pupils gaining five ‘good’ A*-C GCSEs has increased by 50% over the last decade.
  • this should be an indicator of great success
  • has been questioned by many commentators.
  • When we look at whether the improvement on the GCSE metric is general or specific to those close to the grade boundary, it is clear that this measure is driving what is happening in schools.
  • intensive targeting of resources on pupils just below the C grade and/or an increase in teachers’ expertise in ‘teaching to the test’ has been behind  improvements.
  • Whatever the explanation, it doesn’t inspire confidence that the rise in exam grades for average ability candidates really reflects an increase across all groups in mastery of the subjects studied.
  • Narrowly-defined targets like these, based only on exam results subtly inhibit the overall education of young people.
    • Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder
      Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder on 22 Nov 12
       
      This is why Finland only has one national test....
  • If an acceptable level is reached, failure among a substantial minority is tolerated.
  • At earlier stages in the system, similar testing frameworks focus school accountability on achieving a certain percentage of pupils reaching a defined average, rather than a focus on absolute attainment.
  • it is possible to dramatically reduce attainment gaps in their primary school populations and raise standards on a broader basis than the UK has managed.
Andrew Spinali

Assessment of Learning with a Competency-Based System: How to Start | Connected Principals - 77 views

connectedprincipals.com/...6806

assessment grading learning

shared by Andrew Spinali on 10 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • In a sense, a formative assessment is practice and is, therefore, not heavily weighted in the grading system.” At Sanborn Regional High School, summative assignments must account for at least 90% of a final course grade.
  • We do not make use of averaging by quarters or trimesters to compute a student’s final course grade. Instead, our students know that their grade will be calculated based on all of their work for the entire course.  
  • Reassessment: Reassessment is an important part of any competency-based grading system. Students learn at different rates, and they need multiple chances to demonstrate mastery of a competency or skill.
Elizabeth Resnick

How Schools Can Teach Innovation - WSJ.com - 5 views

online.wsj.com/...lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwNTExNDUyWj.html

21stCenturyLearning project based learning innovation

shared by Elizabeth Resnick on 17 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • problems can never be understood or solved in the context of a single academic discipline
  • all courses are interdisciplinary and based on the exploration of a problem or new opportunity.
  • young innovators are intrinsically motivated. T
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The play is discovery-based learning that leads young people to find and pursue a passion, which evolves, over time, into a deeper sense of purpose.
  • Teachers need professional development to learn how to create hands-on, project-based, interdisciplinary courses.
  • Students should have
  • digital portfolios that demonstrate progressive mastery of the skills needed to innovate.
  • play, passion and purpose.
  • To succeed in the 21st-century economy, students must learn to analyze and solve problems, collaborate, persevere, take calculated risks and learn from failure.
  • Elizabeth Resnick on 17 Apr 12
     
    To succeed in the 21st-century economy, students must learn to analyze and solve problems, collaborate, persevere, take calculated risks and learn from failure. 
Dan Bench

Dan Pink's Drive: A Scholarly Book Review - 20 views

edurolearning.com/drive-scholarly-review

shared by Dan Bench on 12 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • we have a responsibility to ensure that our students develop skills to perform heuristic tasks in order to compete in the job market.
  • According to SDT the three basic psychological needs for motivation are competence, where one feels effective and efficacious; relatedness, where one feels close and connected to others; and autonomy, where one feels causation and ownership of one’s behavior
  • Starkey (2011) suggests that creativity is the penultimate learning experience and that sharing the knowledge is the ultimate goal (p. 25), a concept supported by Siemen’s (2004) connectivism learning theory, where learning and knowledge rests on a number of opinions that when connected allows us to know more (2004).
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Overall, promoting mastery through flow-friendly classrooms is certainly a reality and adds weight to the Motivation 3.0 model
  • So as Lent (2010) suggests, providing opportunities for students to be part of something larger than themselves is clearly a viable proposition where students pursue “purpose” goals that serve others as opposed to “profit” goals, such as good grades, that only serve themselves (Pink, 2011, p. 142).
Javier E

Why Girls Tend to Get Better Grades Than Boys Do - The Atlantic - 40 views

www.theatlantic.com/...2

girls boys success conscientiousness habits self-control academic

shared by Javier E on 19 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Gone are the days when you could blow off a series of homework assignments throughout the semester but pull through with a respectable grade by cramming for and acing that all-important mid-term exam. Getting good grades today is far more about keeping up with and producing quality homework—not to mention handing it in on time.
  • girls succeed over boys in school because they tend to be more mastery-oriented in their schoolwork habits. They are more apt to plan ahead, set academic goals, and put effort into achieving those goals. They also are more likely than boys to feel intrinsically satisfied with the whole enterprise of organizing their work, and more invested in impressing themselves and their teachers with their efforts.
  • boys approach schoolwork differently. They are more performance-oriented. Studying for and taking tests taps into their competitive instincts. For many boys, tests are quests that get their hearts pounding. Doing well on them is a public demonstration of excellence
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • “The testing situation may underestimate girls’ abilities, but the classroom may underestimate boys’ abilities.”
  • It is easy to for boys to feel alienated in an environment where homework and organization skills account for so much of their grades.
  • it appears that the overwhelming trend among teachers is to assign zero points for late work. In one survey by Conni Campbell, associate dean of the School of Education at Point Loma Nazarene University, 84 percent of teachers did just that.
Dan Bench

Process vs Product in Maker-centered Learning - The Learner's Way - 42 views

thelearnersway.net/...uct-in-maker-centered-learning

creativity lifelong learning expansion instruction

shared by Dan Bench on 06 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • by ‘Making Thinking Visible’ (MTV) can help here. MTV strategies offer two advantages to teachers and learners. Importantly they provide structure to thinking and encourage a deeper engagement with concepts and ideas. They also allow the thinking that is occurring to be made visible and thus a part of the assessment process
  • mastery of the process that students are utilising as they solve the problems they encounter in their making. How do they deal with obstacles? How did they plan their solution? How effectively do they collaborate? What did they do to understand the problem and how did they monitor their progress?  
  • Students move through phases of thinking that include empathy, needs analysis, ideation, planning, prototyping and evaluation in patterns both linear and non-linear as needs require.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Failing is a part of the process and failing disrupts output based assessments. At the core of the maker philosophy is a process of ideation, iteration and emergence.
  • their Personal Passion Projects. Many of the projects fit neatly into the description of maker-centered learning. These are the projects where the students have identified a need and the solution is a product which they design and then prototype.
  • Nigel Coutts on 06 Nov 16
     
    The maker movement and with it maker-centered learning brings new possibilities and challenges into the classroom. It has spawned makerspaces and students are busy designing and making products. The danger with all this frenzied making is that it is very easy to miss the point, to focus on the product and not the journey.  
Maureen Greenbaum

How about no grades for classwork? It might happen in some North Texas classrooms this ... - 52 views

educationblog.dallasnews.com/...exas-classrooms-this-fall.html

wesch couros not yet grade

shared by Maureen Greenbaum on 31 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • One idea brought up by several speakers this year is a hybrid grades-free way of evaluating students. In each case, it included a high-bar pass/fail approach to class assignments, with a final, more regular grade for the entire semester. One of the speakers who presented what he called a “Not Yet” grade was “digital ethnographer” Michael Wesch, a professor at Kansas State University. That’s his photo at the top. He told the crowd that they had to inspire “wonder” in their students in order to get them to learn as much as possible. Some key quotes from him: “Low standards/high stakes are the opposite of what you want.”
  • “The new divide will be between those with wonder and curiosity and those without.”
  • Keynote speaker George Couros is a what’s called a “division principal” back home in Canada. He’s a blogger and author who is all about encouraging creativity and change in public education with an emphasis on taking advantage of digital tools. He told the conference that that it’s foolish to deny students use of their smartphones and other digital tools in the classroom — and even on exams. In 2015, being able to figure out what information is relevant is more important than memorization when most facts are a click away, he said.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • “The world only cares what you can do with what you know,” Couros said. He said he clashed with a teacher back home who complained that his approach would let students Google up the answers for her exams. His response: “If I can look up the answers to the questions on your test on Google, your questions suck.”
  • Students get assignments, of course. And they are expected to complete them. In fact, they are required to master them. So kids who might have been happy to get the equivalent of a C on an assignment in another classroom would be required to work at it until they hit the level defined as “mastery.” And the teachers keep track of whether the students have succeeded, whether they’re turning work in on time and whether they are responding to feedback.
  • Maureen Greenbaum on 31 Aug 15
     
    "The new divide will be between those with wonder and curiosity and those without." "The world only cares what you can do with what you know," Couros said. He said he clashed with a teacher back home who complained that his approach would let students Google up the answers for her exams. His response: "If I can look up the answers to the questions on your test on Google, your questions suck."
Michele Brown

Coursera.org - 12 views

www.coursera.org

education eLearning courseware

shared by Michele Brown on 22 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Jim Tiffin Jr on 17 May 12
     
    Coursera offers courses from the top universities, for free. Learn from world-class professors, watch high quality lectures, achieve mastery via interactive exercises, and collaborate with a global community of students.
  • Marc Patton on 09 Jul 12
     
    We offer high quality courses from the top universities, for free to everyone. We currently host courses from Princeton University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and University of Pennsylvania. We are changing the face of education globally, and we invite you to join us.
  • Michele Brown on 10 Jul 13
     
    Free online courses from around the world
Josh Flores

Trends in Education: How They Come and Go | Edutopia - 3 views

www.edutopia.org/educational-trends-bandwagons

shared by Josh Flores on 09 May 12 - No Cached
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 09 May 12
       
      List of bandwagons
  • mastery learning, portfolio assessment, cooperative classroom structures, technology integration, backward design, multimedia projects, personal learning paths, authentic task development and, most recently, differentiated instruction and integrated curriculum
maureen greenbaum

Digital Learning Leads to Deeper Learning - Getting Smart by Tom Vander Ark - deeper le... - 3 views

gettingsmart.com/...learning-leads-deeper-learning

shared by maureen greenbaum on 28 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Engagement: media that grabs attention Motivation: encouragement to go deeper Persistence: capturing more learning hours per day Production: ability to publish high quality work product Presentation: professional quality presentations Personalization: customized learning experiences Access: 24/7 access to great teachers and content Collaboration: instant interest and subject groups Acceleration: more and faster performance feedback Options: many new pathways to mastery We could add convenience—the ability to vary rate, time, and location
  • More writing More thinking More motivation More automaticity More time on higher order teaching More higher order practice (using games & sims) More publishing to wider audiences More investigating More collaborating More making, inventing, & creating
Sandy Dewey

Adaptive Curriculum - 0 views

www.youtube.com/...adaptivecurriculum

education adaptive curriculum resources

shared by Sandy Dewey on 09 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Sandy Dewey on 09 Sep 12
     
    Adaptive Curriculum's award winning instructional solution builds middle and high school Math and Science mastery through dynamic and interactive learning. Incorporating rich multimedia, real-world scenarios and proven research-based pedagogy, Adaptive Curriculum's digital lessons are created to engage today's 21st Century learners and prepare students for post-secondary pursuits. AC Math and AC Science complements existing curricula through state standards, Core, NCTM, NCTA and textbook alignments. It is easy and flexible for whole or small group or individual instruction, and provides real-time feedback, progress reporting and assessment.
Kate Pok

The trouble with Khan Academy - Casting Out Nines - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 2 views

chronicle.com/...the-trouble-with-khan-academy

shared by Kate Pok on 25 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Let’s start with what Khan Academy is. Khan Academy is a collection of video lectures that give demonstrations of mechanical processes. When it comes to this purpose, KA videos are, on the average, pretty good. Sal Khan is the main reason; he is approachable and has a knack for making mechanical processes seem understandable. Of course, his videos are not perfect. He tends to ramble a lot and get sidetracked; he doesn’t use visuals as effectively as he could; he’s often sloppy and sometimes downright wrong with his math; and he sometimes omits topics from his subjects that really need to be there (LU decomposition in linear algebra, for example). But on balance, KA is a great resource for the niche in which it was designed to work: giving demonstrations of mechanical processes.
  • But let’s also be honest about what Khan Academy is not. Khan Academy is not a substitute for an actual course of study in mathematics. It is not a substitute for a live teacher. And it is not a coherent curriculum of study that engages students at all the cognitive levels at which they need to be engaged. It’s OK that it’s not these things. We don’t walk into a Mexican restaurant and fault it for not serving spaghetti. I don’t fault Khan Academy for not being a complete educational resource, because it wasn’t designed for that purpose. Again, Khan Academy is a great resource for the niche in which it was designed to work. But when you try to extend it out of that niche — as Bill Gates and others would very much like to do — all kinds of things go wrong.
  • When we say that someone has “learned” a subject, we typically mean that they have shown evidence of mastery not only of basic cognitive processes like factual recall and working mechanical exercises but also higher-level tasks like applying concepts to new problems and judging between two equivalent concepts. A student learning calculus, for instance, needs to demonstrate that s/he can do things like take derivatives of polynomials and use the Chain Rule. But if this is all they can demonstrate, then it’s stretching it to say that the student has “learned calculus”, because calculus is a lot more than just executing mechanical processes correctly and quickly. To say that it is not — that knowledge of calculus consists in the ability to perform algorithmic processes quickly and accurately — is to adopt an impoverished definition of the subject that renders a great intellectual pursuit into a collection of party tricks.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Even if the student can solve optimization or related rates problems just like the ones in the book and in the lecture — but doesn’t know how to start if the optimization or related rates problem does not match their template — then the student hasn’t really learned calculus. At that point, those “applied” problems are just more mechanical processes.
  • Khan Academy is great for learning about lots of different subjects. But it’s not really adequate for learning those subjects on a level that really makes a difference in the world. Learning at these levels requires more than watching videos (or lectures) and doing exercises. It takes hard work (by both the learner and the instructor), difficult assignments that get students to work at these higher levels, open channels of communication that do not just go one way, and above all a relationship between learner and instructor that engenders trust.
  • Kate Pok on 25 Jul 12
     
    All the reasons I like and don't like Khan Academy videos....
BalancEd Tech

Atul Gawande: Failure and Rescue : The New Yorker - 15 views

www.newyorker.com/...awande-failure-and-rescue.html

Failure RiskTaking

shared by BalancEd Tech on 22 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • So you will take risks, and you will have failures. But it’s what happens afterward that is defining. A failure often does not have to be a failure at all. However, you have to be ready for it—will you admit when things go wrong? Will you take steps to set them right?—because the difference between triumph and defeat, you’ll find, isn’t about willingness to take risks. It’s about mastery of rescue.
  • BalancEd Tech on 22 Jun 12
     
    Less (teaching) Is More (learning) http://balancedtech.wikispaces.com/Problem-Solving
Tracy Tuten

How to Fix the Schools - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...ra-how-to-fix-the-schools.html

how to nytimes schools education pedagogy higher ed

shared by Tracy Tuten on 20 Sep 12 - Cached
  • Teachers — many of them — will continue to resent efforts to use standardized tests to measure their ability to teach.
  • Tucker, 72, a former senior education official in Washington, is the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, which he founded in 1988. Since then he has focused much of his research on comparing public education in the United States with that of places that have far better results than we do — places like Finland, Japan, Shanghai and Ontario, Canada. His essential conclusion is that the best education systems share common traits — almost none of which are embodied in either the current American system or in the reform ideas that have gained sway over the last decade or so.
  • His starting point is not the public schools themselves but the universities that educate teachers. Teacher education in America is vastly inferior to many other countries; we neither emphasize pedagogy — i.e., how to teach — nor demand mastery of the subject matter. Both are a given in the top-performing countries. (Indeed, it is striking how many nonprofit education programs in the U.S. are aimed at helping working teachers do a better job — because they’ve never learned the right techniques.)
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Tucker believes that teachers should be paid more — though not exorbitantly. But making teacher education more rigorous — and imbuing the profession with more status — is just as important. “Other countries have raised their standards for getting into teachers’ colleges,” he told me. “We need to do the same.”
  • High-performing countries don’t abandon teacher standards. On the contrary. Teachers who feel part of a collaborative effort are far more willing to be evaluated for their job performance — just like any other professional. It should also be noted that none of the best-performing countries rely as heavily as the U.S. does on the blunt instrument of standardized tests. That is yet another lesson we have failed to learn.
  • Tracy Tuten on 20 Sep 12
     
    On what's wrong with our education system 
Joshua Williams

What We Learn From School Tests - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com - 1 views

roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/...hat-we-learn-from-school-tests

achievement gap reform testing learning

shared by Joshua Williams on 29 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The relentless gaze on high-stakes tests and the culture spawned by No Child Left Behind is blinding us to the educational demands of the 21st century.
  • But first we need a national conversation on what the 21st century will require of our ever more diverse student population. There’s no doubt that an education that promotes life-long cognitive, behavioral and relational engagement with a complex and interconnected world is key. This means we’ll need intellectually curious and cognitively flexible workers comfortable with ambiguity, able to synthesize knowledge within and across disciplines and work collaboratively in diverse groups.
  • Moving forward, we need to go beyond the mastery of facts and rules. Instead, we should nurture interpersonal sensibilities in children and teenagers so that they learn to work in groups, within and across disciplines and cultures. In short, we need to educate, not test.
Marc Safran

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants - 1 views

www.twitchspeed.com/...l%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.htm

digitalnatives web2.0 pedagogy prensky article pd professionaldevelopment integration

shared by Marc Safran on 30 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.
  • today's students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors
  • we can say with certainty that their thinking patterns have changed
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • The importance of the distinction is this: As Digital Immigrants learn - like all immigrants, some better than others - to adapt to their environment, they always retain, to some degree, their "accent," that is, their foot in the past.
  • There are hundreds of examples of the digital immigrant accent. 
  • our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language
  • Digital Immigrant teachers assume that learners are the same as they have always been, and that the same methods that worked for the teachers when they were students will work for their students now. But that assumption is no longer valid. Today's learners are different.
  • So what should happen?  Should the Digital Native students learn the old ways, or should their Digital Immigrant educators learn the new? 
  • methodology
  • learn to communicate in the language and style of their students
  • it does mean going faster, less step-by step, more in parallel, with more random access, among other thing
  • kinds of content
  • As educators, we need to be thinking about how to teach both Legacy and Future content in the language of the Digital Natives.
  • Adapting materials to the language of Digital Natives has already been done successfully.  My own preference for teaching Digital Natives is to invent computer games to do the job, even for the most serious content.
  • "Why not make the learning into a video game!
  • But while the game was easy for my Digital Native staff to invent, creating the content turned out to be more difficult for the professors, who were used to teaching courses that started with "Lesson 1 – the Interface."  We asked them instead to create a series of graded tasks into which the skills to be learned were embedded. The professors had made 5-10 minute movies to illustrate key concepts; we asked them to cut them to under 30 seconds. The professors insisted that the learners to do all the tasks in order; we asked them to allow random access. They wanted a slow academic pace, we wanted speed and urgency (we hired a Hollywood script writer to provide this.)   They wanted written instructions; we wanted computer movies. They wanted the traditional pedagogical language of "learning objectives," "mastery", etc. (e.g. "in this exercise you will learn"); our goal was to completely eliminate any language that even smacked of education.
  • large mind-shift required
  • We need to invent Digital Native methodologies for all subjects, at all levels, using our students to guide us.
  • Marc Safran on 30 Jul 09
     
    Our students have changed radically. Today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.
Javier E

Few Students Show Proficiency in Science, Tests Show - NYTimes.com - 18 views

www.nytimes.com/...26test.html

shared by Javier E on 25 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Only one or two students out of every 100 displayed the level of science mastery that the department defines as advanced
  • a smaller proportion of American 12th graders demonstrated proficiency in science than in any other subject that the federal government has tested since 2005 — except history
  • Twenty-one percent of the nation’s 12th graders scored at or above the proficient level in science on the 2009 tests, compared with 42 percent who demonstrated proficiency on the most recent economics exam, and 38 percent and 26 percent, respectively, on the most recent nationwide reading and math tests.
D. S. Koelling

Online Courses Should Always Include Proctored Finals, Economist Warns - Wired Campus -... - 34 views

chronicle.com/...31287

education students courses online

shared by D. S. Koelling on 11 May 11 - No Cached
  • Online economics students do not absorb much material from homework and chapter tests during the semester—perhaps because they expect to be able to cheat their way through the final exam.
  • she has noticed that her online students perform much worse than their classroom-taught counterparts when they are required to take a proctored, closed-book exam at the end of the semester.
  • Ms. Wachenheim’s findings parallel those of a 2008 study in the Journal of Economic Education. That study found indirect evidence that students cheat on unproctored online tests, because their performance on proctored exams was much more consistent with predictions based on their class ranks and their overall grade-point averages.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Those include insisting on a proctored final exam and reminding students of that exam “early, often, and broadly, so students are ever-conscious that they will be responsible for the material in an unaided environment.”
  • Jason Finley on 12 May 11
     
    "In self-paced courses, many students appeared to cram most of the homework and chapter exams into the final week of the semester. Few of them bothered to do the ungraded practice problems offered by the online publisher." First, where is the teaching? It sounds more like a case of poorly designed instruction...or a complete lack of instruction. Of course these students are not learning...they are not being taught. Also, if they are in classes which are actively taught by a teacher, then where are the formative assessments by the instructors? That teacher should know long before the final exam if the students know the material or not. A good teacher and a well developed online course would have a number of ways to determine this which do not allow for "cut and paste" or cheating. Finally, does this department test a student's memorization of material or the mastery of the concepts and and understanding of how to apply those concepts? Perhaps, there is also a need to reevaluate the assessments. Good teaching is good teaching. If a student is not learning the material, who is really to blame?
D. S. Koelling

Font Size May Not Aid Learning, but Its Style Can, Researchers Find - NYTimes.com - 110 views

www.nytimes.com/...19mind.html

education undergraduate Learning font

shared by D. S. Koelling on 19 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Is it easier to remember a new fact if it appears in normal type, like this, or in big, bold letters, like this?
  • Font size has no effect on memory, even though most people assume that bigger is better. But font style does.
  • New research finds that people retain significantly more material — whether science, history or language — when they study it in a font that is not only unfamiliar but also hard to read.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • “So much of the learning that we do now is unsupervised, on our own,” said Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, “that it’s crucial to be able to monitor that learning accurately; that is, to know how well we know what we know, so that we avoid fooling ourselves.”
  • “Studying something in the presence of an answer, whether it’s conscious or not, influences how you interpret the question,” Dr. Bjork said. “You don’t appreciate all of the other things that would have come to mind if the answer weren’t there. “Let’s say you’re studying capitals and you see that Australia’s is Canberra. O.K., that seems easy enough. But when the exam question appears, you think: ‘Uh oh, was it Sydney? Melbourne? Adelaide?’ ” That’s why some experts are leery of students’ increasing use of online sites like Cramster, Course Hero, Koofers and others that offer summaries, step-by-step problem solving and copies of previous exams. The extra help may provide a valuable supplement to a difficult or crowded course, but it could also leave students with a false sense of mastery. Even course outlines provided by a teacher, a textbook or other outside source can create a false sense of security, some research suggests. In one experiment, researchers found that participants studying a difficult chapter on the industrial uses of microbes remembered more when they were given a poor outline — which they had to rework to match the material — than a more accurate one.
  • a cognitive quality known as fluency, a measure of how easy a piece of information is to process.
  • On real tests, font size made no difference and practice paid off, the study found.
  • And so it goes, researchers say, with most study sessions: difficulty builds mental muscle, while ease often builds only confidence.
  • To test the approach in the classroom, the researchers conducted a large experiment involving 222 students at a public school in Chesterland, Ohio. One group had all its supplementary study materials, in English, history and science courses, reset in an unusual font, like Monotype Corsiva. The others studied as before. After the lessons were completed, the researchers evaluated the classes’ relevant tests and found that those students who’d been squinting at the stranger typefaces did significantly better than the others in all the classes — particularly in physics. “The reason that the unusual fonts are effective is that it causes us to think more deeply about the material,” a co-author of the study, Daniel M. Oppenheimer, a psychologist at Princeton, wrote in an e-mail. “But we are capable of thinking deeply without being subjected to unusual fonts. Think of it this way, you can’t skim material in a hard to read font, so putting text in a hard-to-read font will force you to read more carefully.” Then again, so will raw effort, he and other researchers said. Concentrating harder. Making outlines from scratch. Working through problem sets without glancing at the answers. And studying with classmates who test one another.
  • D. S. Koelling on 19 Apr 11
     
    Students' raw effort improves learning [No surprise there, huh?]
‹ Previous 21 - 40 of 48 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page