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What’s the Best Timing for Collaborative Learning?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
September-05-2018

What’s the Best Timing for Collaborative Learning?

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Learning can be a lonely business.

Does collaborative learning help students? If yes, what guidelines should teachers follow?

Collaborative Learning: Benefits and Detriments

collaborative learning

Overall, we’ve got lots of research suggesting that collaboration helps students learn. And, happily, it doesn’t cost lots of extra dollars.

More specifically: the average score for students who learn in groups exceeds that of those who learn individually.

Unsurprisingly, students who struggle to learn benefit from practice with peers who understand better than they do.

At the same time, the highest scores tend to be lower in groups than among individual learners.

Working in groups, it seems, reduces the mental exploration necessary to find the best answers.

Given this background, we arrive at a really interesting question:

Can we get the benefits of group learning (higher average) AND the benefits of individual learning (highest scores).

It’s All in the Timing

Researchers at several Boston universities wondered if timing mattered. What would happen if students worked in groups at times and alone at other times?

The research team invited college students to work on a spatial puzzle. (It’s called the “Euclidean travelling salesperson problem.” I myself doubt that many of Euclid’s peers were travelling salespeople.)

Some of the students could always see their peers’ solutions. Some could never see those solutions. And some got to see every third solution.

Which groups progressed faster?

As they had hoped, the team found that the third group yielded both the highest average and the highest score.

In brief: teamwork helps most when team members also spend time working by themselves.

Classroom Implications for Collaborative Learning

This study offers a helpful suggestion. Teachers who use group work might ensure that group members work together at some times and solo at others.

At the same time, we should note some important caveats before we follow this guidance too strictly.

First: this study worked with college students. Its findings might apply to younger students. But, then again, they might not.

Second: this research is most easily described as “collaboration,” but that’s not exactly what the research team was studying. Notice: the participants never worked together on the travelling salesperson problem. Instead, they solved the problem on their own and then could (or could not) look at other students’ solutions.

That’s not typically how collaborative learning happens in schools.

More often, “collaborative learning” means that students work together on the project or problem. This study didn’t explore that approach.

(To be precise: the researchers focus on “collective intelligence,” not “collaborative learning.”)

Final Words

I myself think this research offers a helpful suggestion: occasional teamwork might lead to better results than constant (or absent) teamwork.

However, we should keep a sharp eye out for the actual results in our own classrooms. Unless you teach college students by having them look at each others’ correct answers, this study doesn’t explore your methodology precisely.

User mileage will vary.

The Surprising (Potential) Benefits of Stress
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
September-02-2018

The Surprising (Potential) Benefits of Stress

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How realistically do you process bad news?

stress helpsIf you’re like most people, the answer is: “not very.”

We’ve got lots of research showing that people change their beliefs when they hear good news. However, they don’t change their views much when they hear bad news.

For example: I might ask you, “what are the odds that — in your lifetime — your house will be burgled?”

You answer “40%.”

Later on, I inform you that the real number is 30%. Given your initial estimate, I just gave you good news! You’re safer than you thought.

When I ask you the same question later, you’re likely to update your answer. You might guess 32%. That number is still high, but much more accurate than it was.

However, if you initially guessed “20%,” then the real number “30%” is bad news. You’re in more danger than you thought!

When I ask you the same question later, you probably won’t update your answer much. You’re likely to say “21%.”

You just didn’t process the bad news.

Surprise! Stress Helps

Recently, researchers wondered if stress helps us process bad news more honestly.

To find out, they invited people to their lab and stressed out half of them.

(The stressed-out half heard they would have to give an impromptu speech in front of judges. And, they were given challenging math problems to solve.)

The researchers then asked them several questions like the one above: “how likely is it that your house will be burgled?”

How honestly did these participants process the correct information they got?

As before, the un-stressed participants learned from the good news, but not from the bad.

However, the research team found that stress helps. That is: the participants who worried about their upcoming public speaking gig processed the bad news as well as the good.

Next Steps

The research team double checked their results with fire fighters in Colorado. They got the same results. That’s helpful news.

However, all of this research focuses on adults. The average age in the first study was about 25 years. In the second study, 43 years.

We know that adolescents and children process emotions quite differently. So: we should cross our fingers and hope that the researchers try out their idea with school-aged children.

The more we understand the benefits as well as the detriments of stress, the better we can help our students navigate the appropriate challenges that school provides.

——————————————————————————————

For further thoughts on stress in schools, check out this earlier blog article by Rose Hendricks.

And, for fun, here’s a video of the lead researcher talking about some of his earlier work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1-1rbBarCk

Improve Your Syllabus & Lesson Plan With “Prior Knowledge”
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
August-30-2018

Improve Your Syllabus & Lesson Plan With “Prior Knowledge”

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When I talk with my English students about The Glass Menagerie, we always identify the protagonist and the antagonist. This discussion helps them understand useful literary terms. It also clarifies their understanding of the play.

prior knowledge

Of course, as they consider this question, I want them to recall a similar conversation we had about Macbeth. In that play as well, we can struggle to determine who the antagonist might be.

In psychology terminology, I want my students to “activate prior knowledge.” Their discussion of The Glass Menagerie will improve if they think about their prior knowledge of Macbeth.

Here’s the simplest teaching strategy in the world. If I want them to think about Macbeth‘s protagonist before they discuss TGM, I can start our class discussion with Shakespeare.

Rather than hope my students draw on their prior Macbeth knowledge, I can ensure that they do so.

This remarkably simple strategy has gotten recent research support. In this study, Dutch psychologists simply told students to recall prior learning before they undertook new learning. Those simple instructions boosted students’ scores.

Prior Knowledge: From Lesson Plan to Syllabus

This research advice might seem quite simple — even too simple. At the same time, I think it helps us understand less intuitive teaching advice.

You have probably heard about “the spacing effect.” When students spread practice out over time, they learn more than if they do all their practice at once.

To illustrate this idea, let’s look at a year-long plan in a blog by Mr. Benney:

Benney Syllabus 1

As you can see, Mr. Benney teaches his first science topic in September. He then includes topic-1 problems in his students’ October homework (“lag homework”). He reintroduces the subject in December. And returns to it one final time in April.

Clearly, he has spaced out his students’ interactions with this topic.

But, notice what happens when he does this with all eight topics:

Benney Syllabus 2

For many teachers, May looks quite scary indeed. Students are learning topic 8. They’re doing lag homework on topic 7. They’re being reintroduced to topics five and six. And they’re being re-re-introduced to topics 2 and 3.

Six topics all at the same time?

And yet, spacing requires interleaving. If Mr. Benney spreads out topic 1, then it will automatically interleave with the topics he’s teaching in October, December, and April. You can’t do one without the other.

Believe it or not, we have research that “interleaving,” like “spacing,” improves student learning.

Why would this be? After all, May’s syllabus looks really complicated.

Perhaps recent research on “prior knowledge” explains this result. If students are thinking about several topics at the same time, then their prior knowledge from previous months remains active.

Macbeth isn’t something we talked about 3 months ago. We have talked about it several times, including just last week.

Here’s the equation. Spacing automatically leads to interleaving. And, interleaving in turn keeps prior knowledge active. These three teaching strategies combine in multiple ways to help our students learn.

Play More Chess, Get More Smarts?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
August-23-2018

Play More Chess, Get More Smarts?

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As the school year begins, we all want our students to learn more stuff.

cognitive training

We want them to learn phonics rules, or multiplication tables, or Boyle’s law, or the importance of the 13th amendment.

We also might want them to learn more general skills.

We’d like them to learn how to learn. Or, how to manage their emotions. Or, how to focus on one thing at a time.

Must we accomplish our goals by teaching each of those topics specifically? Or, can we teach students one basic skill to help them learn everything else?

“Brain Fitness”? Cognitive Training?

For example: almost all athletes need to have a strong core and high levels of aerobic fitness. If, as a coach, I focus my work there, I help my players get better in almost all sports simultaneously.

Is there a brain analogue for “core strength and aerobic fitness”?

One popular answer to this question is: chess.

We’ve got lots of research showing that chess players score better on IQ and working memory tests than the general population.

Does it follow then that chess training increases general intelligence? If yes, then chess lessons would help students learn to read, and solve quadratic equations, and understand mitosis.

The research giveth…

In the short term, the answer is: “just maybe yes!”

When researchers crunched lots of data in a “meta-analysis,” they might have been optimistic that such cognitive training works.

That optimism, alas, lasted only briefly:

These results may be considered “cautiously promising.” In fact, they are not. The size of the effects was inversely related to the quality of the experimental design. Specifically, when the experimental groups were compared with active control groups — … to rule out possible placebo effects… [or] the excitement induced by a novel activity — the overall effect sizes were minimal or null.

In other words: the better the research, the less likely it was to show any benefit. Almost certainly, general cognitive training led to improvement only because participants believed it would.

Practical Implications

The bad news: we just don’t have good evidence that chess, or working memory training, or music lessons improve other cognitive abilities.

(Of course, chess lessons make people better at chess. Oboe lessons make people better at playing the oboe.)

The good news: school works. When we want our students to learn how to analyze a poem, we can teach them to do so: one beautiful poem at a time.

Resources to Get Started with “Embodied Cognition”:
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
August-15-2018

Resources to Get Started with “Embodied Cognition”:

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The field of embodied cognition has gotten increasing attention in recent years.

The short version is: because our brains are attached to our bodies — in fact, our brains are a part of our bodies — bodies can help brains learn.

embodied cognition

The right kind of gesture, for example, can increase math learning.

Recent Reseach

Susan Goldin-Meadow has written thoughtfully about the importance of gestures for learning.

Frederic Vallee-Tourangeau has shown how that the use of physical objects can lead students to flashes of insight.

Sian Beilock–one of my favorite researchers–has written an introductory book called How the Body Knows Its Mind.

Most recently, the Learning Scientists have put together a collection of helpful resources to investigate this topic.

If you’re looking for new ways to help your students learn, you’ll find lots to love there.

Let’s Get Practical: When Should Students Self-Test?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
August-08-2018

Let’s Get Practical: When Should Students Self-Test?

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Psychology can offer advice to teachers, but sometimes that advice is frustratingly vague.

We know, for example, that attention is important.

We know that it results from a combination of three neural processes: alertness, orienting, and executive attention.

But: what do teachers DO with that knowledge? How do we teach any differently?

Retrieval Practice Timing

retrieval practice timingFor example, we’ve seen lots of research showing that retrieval practice helps students learn.

That is: rather than simply looking back over material, students should somehow quiz themselves on it.

They might use flash cards.

They might try a “brain dump”: just writing down everything they remember on a topic.

They can use quizlet to review key points.

Given that lots of student learning happens with textbooks, teachers have a very practical question: when should they do that retrieval?

Textbooks often include practice questions. Should students try to answer them as they go along? Or, should they wait until they have read the full chapter?

Happily, this question can be studied quite straightforwardly.

Uner & Roediger had three groups of students read a chapter from a science textbook.

One group did nothing to review.

A second group reread key passages from the book.

A third group answered the self-study questions in the textbook. Some of those questions appeared at the end of a section. Some appeared at the end of the chapter. And some appeared in both places.

Which group remembered this information better two days later?

Retrieval Practice Timing, and Beyond

Unsurprisingly, the students who reread the information remembered a bit more than those who did not. The rereaders averaged a 44.8 on the quiz, whereas the one-time readers averaged a 34.2.

The self-testers? They averaged a 61.5.

As we’ve seen before, self-testing is a HUGE help.

(By the way, you might think “61.5 is a terrible score. That’s almost failing!” However, this isn’t a class test; it’s a relative measurement. The point isn’t what the students scored, but how the groups scored compared to each other. The self-testers remembered much more.)

What about the timing? Is it better to answer questions at the end of the section, or the end of the chapter.

As it turned out, both times worked equally well. As long as students do the retrieval practice, it doesn’t particularly matter at what point in the chapter they do so.

Here’s the intriguing finding: questions answered twice — both at the end of the section and and the end of the chapter — led to even higher learning.

That might not sound surprising, but other researchers have found that one retrieval practice exercise produces as much benefit as two.

Keepin’ It Real

Psychology researchers could easily get focused on studies in the lab. They can control variables better; they’re faster to run.

I always feel especially happy to find researchers who keep their gaze on practical classroom applications.

In this case, we’ve learned: a) that retrieval practice helps students learn from textbooks, b) that students can answer relevant questions at any time and still get this benefit, and c) that two attempts to answer the question are (or, at least, might be) better than one.

Nope: Brain Training Doesn’t Work, Volume 262…
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
July-31-2018

Nope: Brain Training Doesn’t Work, Volume 262…

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This kind of story crops up often. But, given the popularity of “brain training games,” it merits repetition: “brain training” doesn’t work.

Of course, school works. We can train our brains to know new things: the history of the Silk Road, pre-calculus, geology, good pottery-wheel technique. We can’t, however, train up working memory or general intelligence in some artificial way.

Here’s the essential summary:

“We hypothesized that if you get really, really good at one [working memory] test by training for a very long time, maybe then you’ll get improvement on tests that are quite similar. Unfortunately, we found no evidence to support that claim,” says Bobby Stojanoski, a research scientist in the Owen Lab at Western’s world renowned Brain and Mind Institute and lead author of the paper. “Despite hours of brain training on that one game, participants were no better at the second game than people who tested on the second game, but hadn’t trained on the first one.”

To be clear: I hope that some day we figure out a brain training technique that works.

If we could increase our students’ working memory capacity, that would — I think — revolutionize human cognition. But, we just don’t know how to do so yet.

Here’s a link to the underlying paper. And here’s a link to more thoughts on brain-training flim flam.

Fresh News on your Laptop Ban
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
July-29-2018

Fresh News on your Laptop Ban

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We all want to know if technology benefits learning.

divided attention

And yet, that question is far too large to answer sensibly. We need to focus.

Do laptops help learning. (There, that’s narrower.)

Do laptops help students take notes?

Do laptops help college students take notes during a lecture?

Now we’ve arrived at a question precise enough research.

Divided Attention?

In a recently-published study, Glass and Kang asked just such a precise question:

In college lecture halls, do technology distractions — especially laptops and cellphones — harm short-term learning? Do they harm long-term retention?

Because Glass teaches college lecture classes, he had the perfect opportunity to investigate this question.

The study design is straightforward. During half of the classes, his students were allowed to use technology. In the other half, they weren’t.

(The study design is a bit more complicated than that. Unless you’re really into research methodology, that’s the essential part.)

Did the absence of technology improve learning?

Divided Attention!

No. And, yes.

In the short term, the technology ban made no difference. Students did equally well on in-class quizzes whether or not they were distracted by their cellphones.

In the long term, however, the ban made a big difference. On the final exam, students scored higher on information they learned during distraction-free classes than on information they learned during classes where laptops were allowed.

How much better? About 7 points better. A jump from an 80 to an 87 is a lot of extra learning.

And here’s an essential point: students scored worse in classes where technology was allowed whether or not they themselves used technology.

As other researchers have found, technology distracts both the users and those around them. Divided attention interferes with retention, no matter whose cell phone does the dividing.

Practical Implications

This study shows, persuasively, that technology interferes with learning when it distracts college students from lectures.

However, it does NOT show that technology is bad for learning, or even that laptops and cellphones are bad during lectures.

In fact, the professor required students use their laptops and cellphones to answer retrieval-practice questions during class.

On “no technology days,” Glass had a proctor stand at the back of the lecture hall to ensure that no one used technology inappropriately. But: all Glass’s students used technology to help them learn. And they all used that technology during the lecture.

That is: technology wasn’t the problem. Misuse of technology was the problem.

To help our students learn, in other words, we needn’t ban technology. Instead, we should ensure that they use it correctly.

We might even share Glass’s research with them, and explain why we’re being so strict. They might not notice a problem in the short term. But in the long run, they’ll learn better with undivided attention.

Helping Today’s Students Have More Open Minds
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
July-26-2018

Helping Today’s Students Have More Open Minds

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I’m always right.

Perhaps you too are always right.

intellectual humility

And yet, if we disagree with each other, then one of us must be wrong.

Researchers Tenelle Porter and Karina Schumann wonder: how can we help those who disagree learn from each other?

In a recent study, they explore the topic of intellectual humility.

Intellectual humility starts with a “non-threatening awareness of one’s intellectual fallibility.” Porter and Schumann also focus on a “willingness to appreciate others’ intellectual strengths.”

In brief, I will benefit more from our disagreement if

a) I know I might have something to learn, and

b) I think you might have something to teach me.

How can we help our students think this way?

Familiar Paths, New Destinations

To promote intellectual humility, Porter and Schumann turned to Dweck’s theory of Mindset.

As you know, people with a growth mindset tend to believe they can get smarter if they do the right kind of mental work.

P&S reasoned that such folks might be more open to rethinking their opinions.

To test this idea, they turned to a familiar Mindset research technique.

They gave about 50 students an article “proving” that intelligence can be developed. Another 50 got a similar article “proving” that intelligence doesn’t change.

In other words: they encouraged the first group to adopt a growth mindset perspective. The second group, having seen that intelligence can’t change, would more likely adopt a fixed mindset perspective.

Sure enough, students in the growth mindset reading group more readily admitted mistakes that they made. They more often complimented others for being smart. They more actively sought out critical feedback. And they more quickly rejected the idea that people who disagreed with them must be wrong.

Put simply, a growth mindset promoted intellectual humility.

Important Reminders

First, whenever we return to mindset research, we should remember that fixed and growth mindsets are NOT set parts of our personality. They are responses to particular conditions.

All of us have a fixed mindset responses at some times, and growth mindset responses at others.

In this case, as you recall, the researchers caused students to adopt one perspective or the other simply by reading a brief article.

We can easily fall into the trap of dividing people into two enduring mindset groups. However, we all belong to both groups.

Second: the topic of “intellectual humility” is quite new. Although this early research sounds quite intriguing, we should expect to discover complexity — even contradiction — as the field develops further.

In the meanwhile, we can be glad to know that — in addition to all the other good things it does — a growth mindset helps students enter life’s inevitable disagreements with a greater likelihood of learning.

Do Stress, Age, or Stereotypes Harm Your Working Memory?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
July-24-2018

Do Stress, Age, or Stereotypes Harm Your Working Memory?

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We write a lot about working memory here on the blog, and so I was intrigued to see a review article summarizing 21 factors that might influence our WM performance.

Several of this article’s conclusions jumped out at me. Some reconfirm important points. Others just might surprise you. Certainly they surprised me.

Some headlines…

Gender

Debates about gender and learning, it seems, extend into the world of working memory research.

“No general consensus in the field exists when it comes to the relationship between gender and WM performance. Several researchers report that men have an advantage on spatial WM tasks and that women have an advantage on verbal WM tasks, some researchers report only a spatial advantage for men, and others report no differences at all between genders.”

Age

Unsurprisingly, working memory increases during adolescence — up until our early twenties.

To my surprise, Blasiman and Was report that declines in WM begin in our twenties. This decline is “constant and continuous.” That is: our working memory gets smaller gradually over time; it doesn’t drop off suddenly later in life.

Stress, and Beyond

I’m not surprised to see that stress interferes with WM. If I’m preoccupied with my bills, I won’t have as much WM left over to solve logic puzzles.

I am a bit surprised to read that dieting hampers WM. The authors suggest that my efforts to resist that Snickers distract me from the cognitive task at hand.

(Alas: even ineffective dieting produces this result. That is: I might have a lower WM score even if I’m not losing weight.)

By the way: we have lots of research connecting diet (not dieting) to WM. However, the review’s authors want further research to be persuaded. They currently consider evidence in this area to be “insufficient.”

Stereotypes

Many scholars have explored Claude Steele’s theory on Stereotype Threat.

Several researchers show that ST reduces working memory. Others have demonstrated that strategies to counteract ST help restore WM.

That is: once we identify the problem, we do have ways to fix it.

This conclusion strikes me as particularly interesting, given the recent skepticism about Steele’s theory. It is, of course, harder to argue that Stereotype Threat doesn’t exist if it has an effect on our working memory capacity.

We’ve Only Just Begun

Are you curious about the effect of mindfulness on WM?

Or, sleep?

How about temperature, or bilingualism?

Check out Blasiman and Was’s research here.

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