{"id":7664,"date":"2024-06-16T08:00:27","date_gmt":"2024-06-16T13:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=7664"},"modified":"2024-06-11T09:26:56","modified_gmt":"2024-06-11T14:26:56","slug":"the-best-ways-to-use-one-pagers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/the-best-ways-to-use-one-pagers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Ways to Use ‘One-Pagers’"},"content":{"rendered":"

In recent years, our field has seen a great increase in ‘one-pagers’: handy summaries of research topics and suggestions — complete with headings and friendly graphics.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Given their rising popularity, I thought it would be helpful to offer guidance on using them well.<\/p>\n

So: what strategies will help you (and through you, your students) benefit the most from one pagers?<\/p>\n

Strategy #1: Make Your Own<\/h2>\n

No, seriously.<\/p>\n

The person who learns the most <\/em>from a one-pager is the person who makes the one pager<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

For instance: to make a 1-pager on retrieval practice, you first need to …<\/p>\n

… learn a lot about retrieval practice;<\/p>\n

… organize all your findings, preferably with lively and helpful graphics;<\/p>\n

… understand its boundary conditions and best uses;<\/p>\n

… summarize your findings in clear, consistent, understandable language;<\/p>\n

… decide what information to include, and what to leave out…<\/p>\n

In other words, you need to do all those generative learning activities that are most likely to ensure that you learn and remember new ideas. (Click here<\/a> for a brisk review of the Ensers’ excellent book on generative learning.)<\/p>\n

So, my most emphatic recommendation for 1-pagers: make ’em.<\/p>\n

Strategy #2: Edit a 1-Pager<\/h2>\n

Let’s say I find a 1-pager on taking good classroom notes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Because I know this research pool fairly well, I can both read the 1-pager and\u00a0have a conversation with it<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That is: I can comment on the passages where I agree (“I’m so glad someone else has found this study helpful!”) and also note those passages where I don’t (“No, the Mueller and Oppenheimer study really does not support\u00a0that claim<\/a>.”).<\/p>\n

I could re-prioritize its suggestions, reword a sentence or two, even sketch in a quick graphic that better encapsulates the ideas.<\/p>\n

In effect, this editing strategy simply riffs on the first one above (“Make Your Own 1-Pager”). By collaborating or arguing with another 1-pager, I’m getting many of the same cognitive benefits.<\/p>\n

Notice one key point here:<\/p>\n

To succeed at strategies 1 and 2, I need to know a fair amount about the topic<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That is, relatively speaking I’m an expert<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

If I were a novice<\/strong> on the topics of retrieval practice and note-taking, I couldn’t really create or respond to a 1-pager very substantively.<\/p>\n

Strategy #3: Use a Single 1-Pager Intensively Over Time<\/h2>\n

A few recent books have focused on 1-pager summaries of cognitive science in the classroom.<\/p>\n

For instance,\u00a0consider\u00a0Walkthrus<\/a>\u00a0by Tom Sherrington and Oliver Caviglioli.\u00a0This book\u00a0chooses several dozen specific classroom topics — cold calling, seating charts — and offers precise 5-step guidelines for examining, honing, and reviewing our practice.<\/p>\n

Each of these Walkthrus is, in effect, a 1-pager; each one invites us to\u00a0spend several days steeping in its advice.<\/em><\/p>\n

So, if you choose the Walkthru on … say … “scaffolding,”\u00a0you’ll start by reviewing all five steps. Then you’ll focus on step one: “map out the components of a task”.<\/p>\n

This step will take at least a day or two, and during those 48 hours you’ll spend a lot of time thinking about that step.<\/p>\n

So too with step 2 (“provide supports at a detailed level”), and then again with step 3 (“provide supports at an overview level”).<\/p>\n

As you can easily see, this strategy means you’ll spend a lot of time — days and days! — thinking about the information, ideas, and suggestions on this particular 1-pager. The result: you’ll learn a lot about this topic.<\/p>\n

Notice\u00a0the key here: focused work over time<\/em>. We don’t get the benefit of walkthrus by reading\u00a0Walkthrus<\/em>. We get the benefit by choosing one<\/strong> of them and dwelling<\/strong> on it for meaningful periods of time.<\/p>\n

Less Productive 1-pager Strategies<\/h2>\n

I’m offering the list above because I worry that the<\/em>\u00a0most common<\/em> use of a 1-pager is also\u00a0 the least effective<\/em> use.<\/p>\n

Here’s the commom, ineffective use:<\/p>\n

Step 1:\u00a0I don’t know much about (for example) worked examples<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Step 2: I come across a 1-pager on worked examples.<\/p>\n

Step 3: I read it, and think “wow, that makes so much sense!”<\/p>\n

Step 4: I go on about my day.<\/p>\n

This process creates the illusion of understanding; I believe<\/em> that I have learned something about worked examples.<\/p>\n

Alas, as we well know, learning almost never happens this way<\/strong>. I don’t learn about worked examples by reading a 1-pager about them, but by grappling substantively with the concept over time.<\/p>\n

In other words, I fear a 1-pager paradox:<\/p>\n

They DO benefit the people who create them (strategy #1);<\/p>\n

They DO benefit people who already know a great deal about a topic (strategy #2);<\/p>\n

They DO benefit novices who devote days to intensive study and practice (strategy #3);<\/p>\n

But they DON’T benefit beginners who use them as their form invites us to use them<\/em>: a quick read.<\/p>\n

If teachers wants to learn about any meaningful educational topic (working memory, entry routines, growth mindset, turn-n-talk, spacing and interleaving) we can’t do so simply by reading a 1-pager. We have to read a book, attend a workshop, take a class…and then think and practice and fail and start over.<\/p>\n

We know that students<\/em> learn by this interative process of engaging, grappling, struggling, and transforming. Teachers<\/em> learn this way too.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Adam Boxer (on ex\/Twitter @AdamBoxer1) is one of the few people who also worries about this trend in public. Here’s a brief recent thread<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In recent years, our field has seen a great increase in ‘one-pagers’: handy summaries of research topics and suggestions — complete with headings and friendly graphics. Given their rising popularity, I thought it would be helpful to offer guidance on using them well. So: what strategies will help you (and through you, your students) benefit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":7673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7664"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7666,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7664\/revisions\/7666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}