When I was in college (in the nineteen hundreds), one of my education classes explored Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. I was enamored with the idea. As a doe-eyed college senior, I was destined to enter the classroom and teach to all seven multiple intelligences - musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, intrapersonal, and visual-spatial (and later, the elusive eighth one, naturalistic). The classroom was my oyster. I was ready to take on every student, one learning style at a time.

And for a few decades the prevailing wisdom was to identify learning styles through a student inventory and then craft learning experiences targeting specific learning styles. But in 2008, four researchers (Hal Pashler, Doug Rohrer, Mark McDaniel - of Make it Stick fame, and Robert Bjork - of basically-every-study-ever-in-teaching-and-learning) investigated this in their study Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence. And the results were quite damning:

The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing. If classification of students’ learning styles has practical utility, it remains to be demonstrated (p.117).

They found that few studies into learning styles used the appropriate methodology, and those that did were not able to show that teaching to a particular learning style enhanced learning. This is a big deal. It needs more attention. There are at least two earth-shattering consequences of these findings. If educators are dedicating bandwidth towards specific learning styles, that is a Sisphyean task that consumes valuable time that should be allocated to other areas of teaching. More pernicious, though, is the consequence for the student; if students believe they can only learn one way and their teachers do not teach to that style then learning failures are externalized and the student may have difficulty succeeding.

But it wasn't just those four that came to this conclusion. In 2010, Catherine Scott concluded in her study The Enduring Appeal of 'Learning Styles' that:

Learning styles as an idea chimes well with the individualist value system of our culture and fits its dominant, entity, model of human attributes but there is no credible evidence that it is a valid basis for pedagogical decision-making... It has no place in education theory and practice that claim to be scientifically based (p.14).

If you need more convincing, in 2018 Adam Brown and Althea Need Kaminske (in our backyard at St. Bonaventure) pointed out in Five Teaching and Learning Myths Debunked:

As of 2017, "there has not been a single published study that shows evidence that tailor-made learning styles lesson plans improve a student's achievement. Not only is there no evidence that catering to learning styles helps students, there is good reason to think that it may be holding them back. By tailoring lesson plans to learning styles, presenting material only in students’ preferred mode, we are ignoring weaknesses that can be strengthened (p.56).

The authors also conclude with another damning statement, "Learning styles may be the biggest hoax played on teachers and educators in the past 50 years" (p.56).

Yet the myth persists. Why?

One explanation is that we want to believe this myth. It makes so much sense. Math is hard! I love learning in nature! I can't learn unless I'm pacing around the room! It's also easier for students to blame their challenges on the teacher - "my teacher doesn't teach the way I learn". Or it might have something to do with the fact that in 2012 there were more than 2,600 textbooks that promoted learning styles (Hughes, 2012). It is a cottage industry. Heck, even Howard Gardner - the father of Multiple Intelligences - admitted it was more of a psychological theory:

Gardner himself acknowledges that his is a psychological theory applied to education and did not originate in neuroscience, nor is the evidence to support his theory found in neuroscience (Tokuhama-Espinosa, Kindle Location 1645).

In 2014, Kristina Dandy and Karen Bedersky published a study that revealed alarming data - 64% of faculty surveyed believed that "teaching to a student's learning style enhances learning" (the number is higher in K12 educators). Even more alarming was that 88% of students believed that, too.

Despite there being no evidence to support learning styles, it is appropriate to talk with students about learning preferences. That is, how do students perceive that they learn best. This is a nice metacognitive exercise and level-sets your teaching. This is also a great opportunity to talk about the mountain of research disputing learning styles. As an aside, though I do have this conversation in class, it is also worth noting that humans are notoriously wrong when self-identifying learning strategies (see the lecture/active learning study, perceptions of multitasking, efficacy of interleaving, and even affinity for re-reading the textbook as a studying mechanism when we know it is, pound-for-pound, one of the worst ways to study). Which is also a good conversation to have with your students.

You may be asking yourself, "Self, what am I supposed to do with this?". The answer is fairly simple. Do it all. By that I mean teach using multiple "learning styles". Demonstrably, this is the best way to reach learners. Switch it up. Be aware of different preferences. In What the Best College Teachers Do, Ken Bain reminds us:

“The great contribution of the learning-styles stuff,” one teacher told us, “is that it called attention to the need to diversify. I don’t think there’s much evidence that most people have exclusive learning styles and can’t learn in any way but one, but I do think that we all benefit from variety” (p.116).

In the wake of the Wordle maelstrom during lockdown many similar games surfaced. Though my favorite is Quordle (where the player solves four Wordles at once), I'd like to tell you about my experience playing Worldle, the Wordle for geography.

Every day, the game displays the silhouette of a country and the player has six guesses to properly identify the country. Once a guess is made, the game will display the distance between the guess and the actual country - as well as the direction.

It's a very simple game. I play it to expand my woefully shallow grasp of geography (my current knowledge of geography is limited to what Carmen Sandiego taught me - by the way, you can now play an immersive version of Carmen Sandiego that uses Google Earth). When I first started playing I had one rule - don't cheat. Don't look at a map. As you might imagine, my accuracy was exceedingly low. I won maybe twice in three weeks. Part of the problem was that there are close to 200 countries in the world (I know maybe only 50 of them), I don't know what their borders look like, and I certainly have no concept of distance (is Africa 1,000 miles across, north to south? 2,000? 5,000?). Heck, I couldn't even tell you how many oceanic miles there are between Africa and South America. And to top it off, there is no scale for context (Vatican City is as big as Russia in the game).

My strategy was to guess one of the countries I know (Australia, Peru, France, Egypt) just to get in the ballpark. If I got lucky after the first or second guess, I'd be within 1,500 miles. From there it was shots in the dark. Let's say my guess was Egypt and the feedback I received was that the real country was southwest by 2,485 miles. This is where I would be derailed - I know maybe a handful of countries in Africa by name (there are 55, by the way!) and I honestly couldn't tell you how far any of them are from Egypt (partly because I don't know geography, partly because I don't know how Worldle measures distance - is it from the center of the country I guessed to the center of the proper country? Is it from border to border, because if so that makes a difference).

More often than not I'd wind up floundering about trying to name as many countries as I could in the general area. Happily Worldle provides the right answer after the player exhausts their guesses and even links to the country in Google Maps so I can see how awful I am at geography - but hopefully remember for next time.

Recently I realized that this isn't really the optimal strategy for learning and have since changed my algorithm. My first guess is still from a handful of strategic guesses (so I can approximate the continent) and then I'll open up Google Maps and use that as a guide. Now at first you might read this and accuse me of cheating (to that I say, "OK - you tell me how many miles there are between Eswatini and Suriname"), but the reality is that I was learning way more by using Google Maps. It has helped me contextualize where countries are, how big continents are, and relative geographic directions. I have a better appreciation of geography; I have learned way more in the past two weeks of me adopting this strategy than a few months of playing without looking at Google Maps.

I guess there are a few lessons here. It seems I prefer the "lean-in" mode of education. I like being involved in the discovery process. I'm not sure every student does, but I endeavor to give students that opportunity. I know there will be students who will be perfectly happy with the academic analog of guessing at silhouettes, but most crave the proverbial Google Maps to help them contextualize, discover, and build connections.

This exercise has also made me recognize the invisible structural uncertainty that students are destined to encounter. In the case of Worldle, I still don't know how distances between my guess and the actual answer are calculated. I'm honing in on it and getting more information with every guess. But now that I'm using my new method, it doesn't really matter what the structural black box is. I'm using tools that circumvent that knowledge deficit. And I'm learning along the way. And this experience has compelled me to try to identify invisible structural knowledge gaps that students are likely to experience. 

Lastly, I think context is necessary. Earlier I mentioned that in the game Vatican City is the same size as Russia (the image of the country in question fills up the screen). I know Russia extends across eleven time zones. It is gigantic. But I didn't guess properly the day Russia was the country because I don't know the shape of the country well enough. Had there been any indication of size I would have most certainly gotten it right. The same goes for countries that border the ocean - the game does not alert the player. If it did, I would be able to have more context for my guessing. My takeaway is that it is even more important to contextualize lessons with my students.

Thank you for playing in my geographically-impaired sandbox.

World map image by Grand Scient from Pixabay

In the book What the Best College Teachers Do, Ken Bain shares the results of a study he conducted of sixty five teachers across twenty-four institutions. He's organized his findings across seven chapters such as "How Do They Conduct Class?" and " How Do They Evaluate Their Students and Themselves?". In the chapter entitled "What Do They Know about How We Learn?", Bain asserts "Even when learners have acquired some conceptual understanding of a discipline or field, they are often unable to link that knowledge to real-world situations or problem-solving contexts."

That doesn't bode well for far transfer - the transfer of knowledge from one context to another, dissimilar context. Far transfer is the gold standard of education and seemingly even more elusive if educational experiences do not 

Bain dives into four beliefs that remarkable educators demonstrate when teaching:

1. Knowledge is constructed, not received
2. Mental models change slowly
3. Questions are crucial
4. Caring is crucial

The first one - constructing knowledge - is not a new idea in the realm of education. Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development led to the notion of constructivism is one of the prevailing theories of how learning works). Piaget posits that instead of acquiring knowledge through memorization, learners are much better off constructing their own knowledge and understanding by building on their previous knowledge. By mentally constructing their own schema. By assembling new input on the skeletal structure of what they already know. By interrogating what they have known, observed, and experienced as new knowledge is encountered.

Bain uses phrases like "passively perceiving", "committing to memory", "absorbing knowledge", and "transmitting knowledge" when talking about rigid classrooms that demand memorization and don't offer a safe sandbox to poke, prod, and play in. Paulo Freire would likely add "banking" and "depositing" to Bain's list, too.

The best teachers don’t think of memory that way, and neither do a lot of learning scientists. Instead, they say that we construct our sense of reality out of all the sensory input we receive, and that process begins in the crib. We see, hear, feel, smell, and taste, and we begin connecting all those sensations in our brains to build patterns of the way we think the world works. So our brains are both storage and processing units. At some point, we begin using those existing patterns to understand new sensory input. By the time we reach college, we have thousands of mental models, or schemas, that we use to try to understand the lectures we hear, the texts we read, and so forth.

For example, I have a mental model of something called a classroom. When I enter a room and receive some sensory input through the lens in my eyes, I understand the input in terms of that previously existing model, and I know I’m not in a train station. But this enormously useful ability can also present problems for learners. When we encounter new material, we try to comprehend it in terms of something we think we already know. We use our existing mental models to shape the sensory inputs we receive. That means that when we talk to students, our thoughts do not travel seamlessly from our brains to theirs. The students bring paradigms to the class that shape how they construct meaning. Even if they know nothing about our subjects, they still use an existing mental model of something to build their knowledge of what we tell them, often leading to an understanding that is quite different from what we intend to convey (page 26).

Many learning scientists agree with the idea of constructivism. But there is another theory of learning that is less known that can potentiate student learning as well. In the late 1970's, Seymour Papert introduced the idea of constructionism that builds on Piaget's work. In Papert's model, students literally construct their knowledge. This might include a physical representation or a digital one. Says Papert:

The word constructionism is a mnemonic for two aspects of the theory of science education underlying this project. From constructivist theories of psychology we take a view of learning as a reconstruction rather than as a transmission of knowledge. Then we extend the idea of manipulative materials to the idea that learning is most effective when part of an activity the learner experiences as constructing a meaningful product.

Papert was famous for his early work with computers in the classroom - specifically Logo (perhaps you have used Turtle Graphics before). A simple example of constructionism can be demonstrated through use of Turtle Graphics (software that shows an overhead view of a turtle on a big canvas and the user can command the turtle to move, turn, etc.). Turtle graphics are a great way to learn computer programming because there is a visual and immediate feedback to the commands that are given. Here's an example of a turtle drawing a circle:

Imagine a student trying this for the first time. There might be a few commands the learner needs to learn before getting started, but pretty soon the learner can play around and figure out how to make the circle (and most likely encounter ways to make it bigger or smaller or a different color or in a different location). The tool is easy to use and dilates with the learner. Pretty soon the learner will undoubtedly stumble across ways to repeat making that circle, but in a different location. And at first they might copy and paste their code, but then they will ask if there's a better way and they'll stumble upon subroutines. It won't be long before the student is making sick art.

Note that there is a direct transfer of skills and concepts to programming. Adopting constructionism requires intentional alignment. For instance, making a model volcano out of chicken wire and papier-mâché that erupts with baking soda and vinegar is not a purely aligned constructionist project as the concept transfer is almost non-existent. Oother than the appearance there is very little similarity. Volcanoes are made out of rock and actual eruptions are not a chemical reaction.

The takeaway here is that learning experiences can be designed to allow for exploration, building on previous knowledge, and telescoping. Bain's book is not meant to be prescriptive; it's meant to be thought-provoking. Is there space in your class to hone your constructivist or constructionist skills?

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Author's note: As I was working on this post, I was texting with my nerdy brother about Turtle Graphics.

He sent me this piece he whipped up. Next time you see him, feel free to point out his nerdiness.

I’m wired as a change agent, and I enjoy playing the game of negotiation and influence that is required to change the way organizational systems behave. Being appointed Chief Innovation Officer of a Fortune 500 company was my dream role and I achieved it in 2012 at a large multinational insurer. What I learned in my first six months in that role surprised me. I learned quickly that the path to driving meaningful change, even from the top of an organizational hierarchy, would not suddenly appear before me unobstructed. The obstacles were as mighty as ever.

Thankfully, I was paired with a career coach who understood that the path lay within me, as much as before me. Over the course of the next two-plus years, I endeavored to change myself as a leader and influencer in order to unlock the broader change potential of the organization.

My coach pushed me first to check my ego. While confidence and pride had gotten me the high-ranking position, they were not the traits I needed to be successful in the role. I had to learn to look at the organization as a large system, in which I played only a small part. Systems Thinking became the approach I would use to better understand both what was expected of me, and the strategies I should use to promote change. My coach then pushed me to redesign my leadership style by developing Design Standards. We went through an exercise of identifying new rules and behaviors that would enable me to learn faster and grow in my role.

After months of intentional work on reimagining the way I thought and led, the hard work began to pay off.

SYSTEMS THINKING

Popularized by MIT professor Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, systems thinking is an approach that rejects the notion that a leader must be an omniscient hero. Instead leaders should promote learning and harness collective intelligence to overcome obstacles to change in complex systems.

Among the most meaningful exercises I learned was to deliberately shift my attention away from myself. The approach we used was to shift focus next on others, then on the collective, and ultimately onto the broader system. This shift in attention from “I” to “You” to “We,” and ultimately to “It,” allowed me to ask (and answer) more profound questions than I’d been accustomed to.

For instance, when an employee trying to overcome an obstacle does not behave in the manner I hope they would, my first instinct is to assume I am right and to try to tell the employee in clearer terms what I expect of them (“I”). This is the confident pride that would not serve me well as a change agent in a complex organizational system. This approach does not change the system in any meaningful way, it only raises stress as I try to push “my way” on others.

A better approach is to shift my attention away from myself, and to have empathy for the employee (“You”). By better understanding their motivations and fears, I can develop new strategies to coach them through the situation as a peer rather than a boss. This approach, too, is limiting as it assumes that myself and the employee have more control over our team and environment than we may truly have.

The next level of attention focuses on the whole team to understand whether it is well-positioned to overcome obstacles. It is at this level (“We”) where I shift away from assuming I know what is right. This is instead a generative, inquiry-based approach, asking questions such as: What is my team dealing with today? What is the team’s potential? What can we do to improve the potential of the team? What strategies might we collectively employ? What can we do differently right now to test our assumptions?

Even this level of attention may not be sufficient to truly unlock the potential of the organization. Organizations contain interconnected networks and deeply held beliefs which create resistance to change. Attention must shift to the full system (“It”) in order to better understand the natural limits of myself, my employee, or my team in the broader system. This level of attention is even more inquiry-oriented than the We level, as the best questions to ask are not immediately apparent, varying based on the complexity of the system. The inquiry approach must be deeply reflective before it can be generative, utilizing questions such as: What happened? What continues to happen? Why is it happening? What is influencing the system?

In higher education, a similar example may play out as faculty try to change the behaviors of their students to improve educational outcomes. Their first instinct may be to direct the students’ actions by assuming that faculty (“I”) knows more than the students. Promoting to the next level of attention (“You”) a faculty member may try to understand what is standing in the way of a single student’s progress. Attention at the next level (“We”) begins to consider what behaviors could we shift inside of the classroom to improve educational outcomes. It’s only when attention shifts to the systems level (“It”) that we consider how broader system influences such as shifts in technology, shifts in human behavior, worsening mental health, changing economic conditions, and more, are contributing to the educational outcomes in this particular course at this particular point in time.

DESIGN STANDARDS

It is not enough to recognize all of the system influences and environmental changes around you. Leaders must meet organizations and people where they are. As the environment changes, so should you, as a leader, shift your beliefs and behavior to adapt to the new environment, intentionally designing your leadership style to achieve desired outcomes. 

The effort to design and redesign leadership style is not a superficial one. It should be a deliberate effort to change yourself, not just your appearance or approach. By leveraging systems thinking, you can begin to understand the role you must play, and the leader you must become, to achieve the outcomes you desire. If the change outcome is sufficiently aspirational, or has proven elusive, that’s an indicator that what got you to this point is not what’s going to take you the rest of the way. 

We all recognize that the pace of change in the world today is accelerating. Modern times demand more from us as leaders than traditional hierarchical notions of leadership can deliver. Assuming you know best in a world that is constantly changing around you is not a sustainable or scalable way to lead. Leaders must become learners who can shift rapidly when their approaches are ineffective or when new opportunities emerge.

Successful leaders design personal values systems that guide their growth. By identifying and nurturing qualities which will allow objectives to be achieved, leaders can affect the environment around them accordingly. This is a creative exercise applied to personal development. Consider the possibility set of how you might shift as a leader, and select a path to follow. Reflect along the way, and pivot when required. 

Once you identify your aspirational qualities, or values, the next step is to define the rules, or design standards that will manifest the environment you’re trying to nurture. Quite simply, design standards are the rules—both written and unwritten—that you will follow to reinforce your values and achieve new outcomes. 

The exercise of identifying design standards, sometimes called design principles, is to simply list the “must haves” and the “must not haves” associated with the environment you are trying to nurture. Do this, don’t do that. Say this, don’t say that. Etc.

In my corporate career, these design standards were often quips that set the tone for the environment we were trying to create, such as “Don’t wait for direction that will never come.” An educator might adopt standards such as “Teach students how to learn, not what to learn,” or “Take risks with technology solutions to improve collaboration and creativity.” 

The power of this approach is unlocked only when you go through the entire process to identify the values and the corresponding design standards that you will employ. If there is any lack of clarity, you are likely to fall back upon a bad habit or entrenched norm to guide your behavior rather than the aspirational standards.

A NEW LEADER EMERGES

It wasn’t until 2014, nearly two years after my appointment as Chief Innovation Officer, that I truly felt I was well-positioned to lead the changes that were required in my role. I had abandoned any sense that I knew anything better than others, and inserted new skills related to asking great questions and setting others up for success.

I had gained a new humble confidence, far less brittle than the prideful confidence I’d once held. As my foundation, I had the same expert skill set which had led others to promote me into higher positions. As I grew as a leader, I gained awareness and appreciation of the complex systems around me. One of the values I embraced was “continuous improvement,” which motivated me to get better everyday. I pursued excellence in my work, I expanded my network, I embraced new ways of thinking.

Through Systems Thinking and developing Design Standards, I had transformed my leadership approach to become the leader I always had hoped I would become. I focused on what was needed and what was possible much more than what was expected or likely.

What’s required of you as a leader today to create the environment that will propel you and those around you to reach what’s possible tomorrow?

We know multitasking isn't possible. We know distractions compete for attention, and failure to attend to learning completely derails any hope of future retrieval. In fact, as Michelle Miller states in her new book Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology: 

There's no backup tape, no way to rewind and retrieve something you weren't attending to--because once it's screend out, it's trashed by your cognitive systems and gone forever. (Miller, 2022, p. 138)

As we examine ways to combat distractions and task-switching, there are five specific strategies that Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen (The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World) propose we can encourage students to employ to minimize distractions. 

Improve metacognition

Merely being aware of the interference distractions cause can help mediate distractive behavior. One potent way to do this is to have students attempt to alternate between their ABCs and counting one through ten (as discussed last week). Making students aware of the overwhelming research about "multitasking" in the classroom also demonstrates the widespread reach of distractions.

One study divided students into three groups - one group simply studied, a second group answered a message and then studied, and a third group studied but was interrupted with a message. All three groups performed well on the quiz, but the third group took a substantially longer time (Bowman et. al., 2010).

There have been a few studies that also show multitasking during learning sessions increases stress levels in learners (Mark, 2014).

Another study tracked the number of text messages and social media posts during a learning session. Not surprisingly, the more texts and posts that were made during the session resulted in lower test scores. Interestingly, this was a linear trend - the more texts and posts, the lower the scores (Kuznekoff & Titsworth, 2010). 

Gazzaley & Rosen also found common predictors of a lower GPA (Gazzaley & Rosen, 2016, p. 123):

• Percentage of time on task
• Studying strategies
• Total media time during a typical day
• Preference for task-switching rather than working on a task until it was completed
• Facebook

Limit accessibility

Eliminating (or minimizing) distractors is paramount. Switching phones to silent (not vibrate) helps. Physically separating from phones is a good idea as well. There have been a few studies that show proximity to a cell phone - regardless of if the cell phone belongs to the subject - decreases performance on a task (Thornton, 2014).

There are apps that students can install on their devices - computers included - to minimize distractions. Even closing all applications on a computer that are not absolutely necessary for a session that requires focus can help.

Decrease bordedom

Notice that this heading is not titled "Removing boredom". That differentiation is a metacognitive signal that it is not always possible to eliminate boredom, but there are strategies to grapple with boredom. Simple changes like standing for a bit while working or listening to familiar music can help. A higher-level change includes structured time on task sessions (the Pomodoro Technique is easy to adopt. In the book The Distracted Mind, the authors suggest gradually increasing the focus session; "You control the breaks, rather than the breaks controlling you" (Gazzaley & Rosen, 2016, p. 228).

The authors also suggest excercise (even 12 minutes helps!), 20-20-20 rule (every 20 minutes, take a 20 second break and focus on objects 20 feet away), spend a few minutes in nature, take a ten-minute nap, talk to other people, grab a drink and snack.

Reduce anxiety

"Technolgoy has induced anxiety associated with FOMO, which then causes you to interrupt your work and reorient your attentional resources to the detriment of your performance on that all-important task" (Gazzaley & Rosen, 2016, p. 230). One solution to avoiding interruptions is to prevent interruptions. Use a calendar to block out focus time - and stick to it. Many calendar users only block off obligations (dinner plans, meetings, etc.) and fail to block out time for deep work. It is an easy practice to implement and has a high payoff.

Another strategy includes managing expectations of family and friends. Informing friends and family of a study plan and asking for no interruptions does two things - it reduces the interference from outside interruptions and it signals intent. A byproduct of that signalling oftentimes encourages a heightened awareness in the support network and bolsters encouragement and assistance.

Mindfulness

The benefits of mindfulness extend well beyond the domain of learning, though most of the benefits reaped from mindfulness translate well to learning. A Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis across 47 trials that investigated effects of mindfulness. There was moderate improvement in anxiety, depression, and stress (Goyal, et. al., 2014) which is great news for learners! Additionally, James Lang states:

Experiments have demonstrated the ability of mindfulness practice to lower blood pressure, reduce chronic pain, improve anxiety and depression, help people with addictions, and more. Other experiments have shown that regular practitioners of mindfulness have a better ability to control their attention and regulate their emotions (Lang, 2020, p.196).

There have been a few studies that show mindfulness has positive impact on quizzes. One such study had students engage in mindfulness activities up to three times a semester in one class; quiz grades were higher in students with mindfulness intervention. The research is still unclear whether mindfulness in classes boosts longer-term learning, though. Regardless, having regular mindfulness practices certainly increases performance and is a wonderful tool in the arsenal of tools to combat anxiety and wellbeing.

Media, technology, FOMO, the pandemic, and a host of other distractors are everpresent in the lives of students. While we as educators cannot eliminate the distractions that threaten attention and lead to "multitasking", we can help students regulate the threat.

If you found value in these tips, you may be interested in James Lang's book Distracted: Why Students Can't Focus and What You Can Do About It. One of the more involved ways Lang combats distraction is by building a culture of attention in the classroom. He acknowledges that distraction will always be present, but curating a healthy environment that values attention is a great mitigation.

Thank you for your attention. 

I had the luxurious experience of being at a conference in person last week. You know, with people. You know, with people not on a screen​. It was exhilarating. One of the presenters had everybody standing up and doing some icebreakers. After explaining the instructions he asked, "What questions do you have?"

Note that he didn't ask, "Are there any questions?"

This reminded me of other times when I've been inspired by the reframing of the overused, vaguely directed solicitation. And while the distinction between the two questions might superficially be minimal, the intentionality​has profound implications.

In the book Distracted: Why Students Can't Focus and What You Can Do About It, author James Lang says:

I’ve spent much of my career working with faculty to advocate for small changes that can make a positive difference to our teaching, and one of the best changes I’ve ever heard recommended was the simplest one you could possibly imagine. So many of us finish or pause in our presentation of material and say, “Any questions?”—a prompt that is usually met either with silence or with a question or two from your most vocal students, and that might be viewed by some as a quick opportunity to check their phones or hop online. This is unfortunate, because the formulation of questions has multiple learning benefits for students [page 126].

He goes on to justify the couching of the question by examining the intent. I suspect his inner-monologue says, "Hey folks - I know we just talked about some really complex stuff so of course you have questions. Let's talk about it. I really want to know what you're thinking." But it's not just the language (to be clear - language matters. A lot.), it's the design of the moment. Wait for ten or fifteen seconds. Or thirty. Or whatever it takes. Signal that it is important for you to invest the time and energy in making sure that your students feel secure.

Lang also suggests two other strategies to help students feel comfortable asking questions.

1. Distribute index cards at the beginning of classes that examine key content. ​Instruct every student to write down one question that they have about the lesson. Near the end of the class, collect them and go through each card reading aloud the question and hosting conversation around it. Not only does every student get an answer to their question, but two other things happen. Question-asking becomes normalized and students gain collateral knowledge. Said one student in a course evaluation, "I obtained crucial information I hadn't thought about based on the answers to other students' questions."
   
2. Use "The Minute Paper" exercise. Have the students submit responses to the three questions, "What was the most important thing you learned today?", "What are you still confused or uncertain about?", and "When it comes to this course material, what are you curious about?". Use these responses to inform the next class (as well as improving the current lesson for future semesters).

I love Lang's suggestions (actually, I find this book and Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning essential reads for educators) because they send implicit signals to the students that you have genuine concern for their learning. There is a humanity to the experience, and you're invested in your students just as your students should be invested in their own learning.

Jennifer Gonzalez (creator of the Cult of Pedagogy blog, podcast, and videos) also suggests using "What questions do you have?" In her blog post "Let's Give our Teaching Language a Makeover" Gonzalez suggests this rephrasing boosts academic safety:

In many classrooms, students feel hesitant to ask questions or take risks for fear of looking stupid. Choosing the right words when we invite student questions and respond to student ideas sends the message that learning is a messy process and that the classroom is a place where we can safely engage in that.

She suggests that asking "Are there any questions?" is a yes or no question. Students are not specifically invited to ask questions and might feel that it is safer to not ask. In her post "When You Get Nothing But Crickets", Gonzalez posits that students might not answer "Are there any questions?" because they think you are asking a vague question to a vague target. They think everyone else gets it. There might be someone in the room (even you!) that is intimidating. Instead of asking the question and waiting for an answer, you might ask everyone to write down a response first. Or explain what type of response you want.

The biggest takeaway is, "What questions do you have?" is an easy and free way to potentiate student engagement. Try it today!

We are in a perfect storm. The confluence of Open Education Week, a pivot to a new LMS, and FLCC's commitment to free and low-cost materials (backed by financial incentives for faculty who develop these courses) is here. Since we'll all be spending time tweaking our courses and preparing for the fall's move to Brightspace, you might consider the opportunity to introduce open materials into your courses.

There is a misconception that OER (open educational resources) content is solely to save the student money; the notion of open extends deep into pedagogy, student motivation, and access.

Sure, a free textbook is better for the students. Not only can students save money but they can have the course materials on the first day of the semester (Barnes & Noble says 85% of students delay purchasing required course materials and 50% of students report that this negatively impacted their grades). And the Chronicle of Higher Ed reports that 70% of students have skipped buying a textbook because of the cost. And OER courses benefit retention efforts. And courses with OER tend to have fewer failure and withdrawal rates. And using OER in place of traditional textbooks helps create more equitable and inclusive learning experiences for marginalized students. And courses with OER - at their worst - show that student performance does not decrease; they do no harm.

But OER is so much more! OER potentiates our classes. One of the problems with traditional textbooks is the pedagogical limitations. Sure, we can teach a course with a textbook that is strictly aligned with our methods, but what happens when there is a cavernous dissonance with the book and how we teach? Maybe the order of the chapters doesn't match the progression we use. Maybe their examples (or worse yet, their sole example) isn't as good as what we can dream up. Or maybe there are typos. Or maybe their test banks have errors.

One of the promises of using OER is the ability to modify content. You don't like something in the book? Change it! Put your own stuff in there. Make the book yours. Soften the language. Make it more approachable. Add content that the book doesn't cover.

And this goes for entire courses. Endeavors from Lumen Learning, CMU's Open Learning Initiative and SUNY make high-quality courses available - in most cases, for free - to us. And they plug right into Brightspace!

Another piece of the OER puzzle is open pedagogy​. This is an idea that students in the course engage in curating and creating content for the course. Faculty Focus ran a piece in February 2022 (Empowering College Students to be OER Creators and Curators) promoting the pedagogical implications of educators leverage content creation by the students as learning experiences. The idea that students discover open content and synthesize it to the guardrails of the course is known as open pedagogy, though that is not a strict definition (for more information, consult your friendly librarian).
While the Faculty Focus article focused on open pedagogy, there are smaller steps you might consider that have high payouts. Note that these experiences don't rely on open pedagogy but they do share DNA with the idea:

• Have your students share a "TL;DR" for each section of the textbook. "Too Long, Didn't Read" is internet speak for a brief and meaningful summary. Now they are providing valuable takes on content they've read. Perhaps as an exercise the class shares all their TL;DRs and they intentionally craft a succinct TL;DR for each section (this can be read by students in future classes). If you're using an OER textbook, you could add those TL;DRs into the book. Did someone say media literacy?

• Ask students to author questions for each section of reading or each unit of study. Sure, you might have to front load a lesson or two on crafting good questions, but the payoff is incredible. You get bigger question banks. You get targeted question banks. You get novel questions that won't appear in Course Hero or Chegg. You get to see what information students think is important. And the best part - you don't have to write any questions!

• Perhaps you have an OER textbook (or you are starting to compile one based off all the content you've generated after decades of teaching). You could establish a framework (chapters, some intro text, sections, some framing text) and assign small passages to each student. Sure, you might have to clean it up and sure, you might have to change the voice a bit, but you could wind up with an approachable textbook for future students.
• Ask students to be on the lookout for improvements as they wade through the experiences you've designed for them. Award "bug bounties" for any factual errors (or grammatical errors) they find.

If you have time, be sure to read the short piece at Faculty Focus. Even if you aren't in the market for some OER solutions, you might want to peruse some of the sites listed below and check out their resources - there is inspiration in everything.

In 2009, Daniel Pink wrote Drive - a book that interrogated what we know about motivation and challenged the world with a reframing of what makes us tick. In 1949, Harry Marlow explored what we knew (and didn't know) about motivation. Dogma at the time proclaimed two motivational systems. The first system was intrinsic and biological (eating and drinking for survival) and the second was extrinsic and environmental (rewards and punishment). But neither of those explained why people (and, in his experiments, monkeys) solved puzzles.

It seems that we derive gratification merely through the performance of task. That is, the engaging part of the experience is the experience itself. Some people like jigsaw puzzles (or playing video games or writing poetry or volunteering at a library or picking up trash on the highway or contributing to Wikipedia or developing code for Linux). Humans have plenty of hobbies and interests that transcend monetary reward (and oftentimes notoriety). In fact, Pink asserts:

“When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity,” he wrote. Rewards can deliver a short-term boost—just as a jolt of caffeine can keep you cranking for a few more hours. But the effect wears off—and, worse, can reduce a person’s longer-term motivation to continue the project.

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Pink claims that extrinsic motivation is actually damaging in the long run. He quotes Jonmarshall Reeve's Understanding Motivation and Emotion:

“People use rewards expecting to gain the benefit of increasing another person’s motivation and behavior, but in so doing, they often incur the unintentional and hidden cost of undermining that person’s intrinsic motivation toward the activity.”

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One of the other pernicious byproducts of extrinsic motivation is that it just isn't durable; the behavior change is temporary and the link to the external reward overtakes the internal drive.

Several studies show that paying people to exercise, stop smoking, or take their medicines produces terrific results at first—but the healthy behavior disappears once the incentives are removed. However, when contingent rewards aren’t involved, or when incentives are used with the proper deftness, performance improves and understanding deepens. Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible. Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one’s sights and pushing toward the horizon.

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One last quote from Drive - and this is a shout-out to Rochester. Edward Deci and Roger Ryan proposed self-determination theory (way to go, University of Rochester!) as an explanation for why​ we extract pleasure out of some of the things we do:

Self-determination theory begins with a notion of universal human needs. It argues that we have three innate psychological needs—competence, autonomy, and relatedness. When those needs are satisfied, we’re motivated, productive, and happy. When they’re thwarted, our motivation, productivity, and happiness plummet.

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Note that this is not necessarily an indictment on grades. There are systemic issues that might prevent abolishing grades anyhow - though work from Jesse Stommel and Susan Blum are very promising and attractive. But the fact remains that as educators we need to be mindful to balance extrinsic motivation.

Another approach to designing learning experiences involves two relatively new theories of learning - heutagogy and generative learning. Both of these were discussed at the SUNY Online Summit (it was this week and had fascinating sessions with national and international speakers - you can watch. A fascinating presentation by Dr. Jeff Borden, Chief Academic Officer at D2L, focused on learning science. He discussed generative learning (you can watch the presentation here) and offered as an example an anatomy class. If you skip ahead to the 25 minute mark and watch for four minutes, you'll see him talking about two different methods of teaching the anatomy of a human heart. One is a media-rich, three-dimensional model of the heart and the other is a low-fidelity method that asked students to draw a diagram of a human heart. Here's what he said:

"and the students drew - before they even had any sort of text or reading or information given to them about a heart - she said, 'Just draw one. Draw a heart as best as you can from what you know.' Now that process is called generative learning. Super powerful to ask students to do things they can't do yet. To ask them to do things that they are incapable of so that it motivates them, they understand they need the information, etc."

Note that this dovetails perfectly with James Lang's Small Teaching, specifically chapter 2 that deals with prediction as a method of learning.

Making predictions about material that you wish to learn increases your ability to understand that material and retrieve it later.

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The link between intrinsic motivation and generative learning starts to emerge as we consider that learning experiences can be intentionally designed as immersive, engaging experiences. They don't need to be puzzles (although digital escape rooms are a thing - see the College of Charleston or BreakoutEDU), though they should take inspiration from heutagogy. Unlike pedagogy (children's learning or andragogy (adults learning), heutagogy is self-directed learning. It's not a prescribed teaching philosophy, but it does share exciting, energizing underpinnings.

A heutagogical learning experience is non-linear; the learner might view a few YouTube videos, then get some online tutoring from a provider, read some blogs, read a textbook, take a class, engage with a teacher or mentor, join an online community, and share their own work and get feedback. Higher education does play a role in this life-long learning journey and the nature of web 2.0 and web 3.0 help curate a constructivist playground.

The University of Illinois, Springfield has a tremendous matrix that clearly articulates the differences between these three. Consider this sample from the matrix that interrogates the different dimensions of motivation:

• PEDAGOGY: ​Motivation comes from external sources — usually parents, teachers, and a sense of competition.
• ANDRAGOGY: Motivation stems from internal sources — the increased self-esteem, confidence and recognition that come from successful performance.
• HEUTAGOGY: ​Self-efficacy, knowing how to learn, creativity, ability to use these qualities in novel as well as situations, and working with others.

What does all this mean? How can we construct a philosophy that is designed to invoke intrinsic motivation, engage students, address the diverse cravings of learners, and provide a meaningful experience? We don't know the answers to that (yet), but it does seem like a brilliant thread to pull.