AY 375 - Fall 2013: Fourth Day Lesson Plan

Today we'll be talking about different learning styles (partly motivated by our discussion last week on the video lectures) and implementing effective group work.

1. Students learn material differently than you do. Incorporating various teaching styles (“modalities”) into your discussion sections can maximize not only learning but motivation as well.
2. Strive to teach the same material in various ways.
3. Group work creates an environment that encourages learning and is reflective of life after college. Making students comfortable with group work requires they are well informed about the benefits of group work and the instructions of the particular activity.
4. Some group activities are better suited to a particular student audience and particular course material than others.
5. It is always a good idea to think about the possible difficulties related to a particular type of group activity before you implement it and think about how to introduce it to the students.

First have students discuss in pairs how section went (5 min).

Open the floor up for general questions and sharing about how sections are going. Some questions include:

• What did you do?
• How did you implement your activities?
• What worked?
• What didn't work?
• What would you do differently?
• How did you assess learning?
• Did you receive any unexpected questions/reactions/etc.?
• Did anything unexpected happen?
• What were you thinking about while you were running section? Any moments of panic?

• Free writing exercise : Do one of the following exercises.
  1. (5 min) Close your eyes and shut out any sounds besides my voice. Using your imagination, create a clear scene in your mind of a large plane flying over you. You are looking up at it. It is very close as it passes over you. Write in 1 minute as much as you can about what you imagined. (Try to avoid identifying particular senses in the prompt or lead-in.)
     • Have members share what they wrote.
     • Are there different senses identified for particular individuals? For example, visual (“the plane was long an white”), auditory (“the plane roared above me”), or tactical (“the wind threw me backwards”). Did some focus on one particular sense or a mix of senses?
     • Did some focus on describing particular aspects in great detail, while some gave a wider view of the scene? (Presumably there will be at least two different viewpoints of the same scene.)
  2. (5 min) No need to close your eyes on this one. Write down the first item that comes to mind, be it a plot, equation, definition, idea, action, image: (1) Stellar spectra. (2) The Seasons. (3) The Moon. (4) Total Solar Eclipse. (5) Blackbodies.
     • Have members share what they wrote.
     • If you were teaching this subject, would this be something you would want your students to write/draw if they were asked this question?
     • Why did you write/draw that particular item? Does this reflect how you learned this material? (Presumably there will be at least two approaches to one of the subjects.)

• Discussion questions: What does this imply about how we interpret and learn material?
  • Different people learn and experience material differently. There is evidence that people have certain styles of learning.
• What sorts of learning styles do you have have or do you imagine your students could have?
  • ( Some popular taxonomies are below.)
• Does having a particular learning style imply that better learning will take place if the material is presented in that particular way?
  • Can a visual person learn music by studying sheet music? Can an auditory person learn how to design circuits by listening to an audio lecture?
  • Individuals have a range of styles. These styles can reflect how they prefer material is presented, how they interpret material, and how they remember material.
• What happens when you match or mismatch your teaching style with the learning styles of students?
  • When mismatches exist between learning styles of the students and the teaching style of the professor, the students may become bored and inattentive in class, do poorly on tests, and get discouraged about the material, the curriculum, and themselves.
  • When teaching styles match or appeal to particular learning styles, students show more motivation in learning, comfort in the classroom, etc.
• How can we change our teaching to accommodate these learning styles?
  • Material should be presented in a variety of ways, not just the way you learned the material.
  • Re-emphasized material should be told with alternative viewpoints. Asking students to explain concepts to the class may reveal new ways of viewing the material.
  • The material should also inform the presentation style.

Take aways: Perhaps we should move away from talking about learning “styles” and towards talking about teaching “modalities.” Here are four important points about modalities, drawn from cognitive science (adapted from this article):

1. Visual thinking tools help everyone. Visual teaching modalities lead to deeper, more conceptual learning since visuals can provide the “big picture” as to how concepts are related. Visuals also promote longer retention and easier retrieval of information.
2. Use the best modality or modalities for the content. While there’s little evidence that matching one’s teaching style to one’s students’ learning styles helps them learn, there’s much stronger evidence that matching one’s teaching style to one’s content is wise. Examples from the literature include using experiential learning for teaching students how to do something physical, using reading and auditory activities to teach poetry, and using a variety of modalities to teach recent history.
3. People learn new material best when they encounter it multiple times and through multiple modalities. Since different modalities activate different parts of the brain, when students encounter new material in many different ways, they’re in a better position to make more sense of the material.
4. Learners are different from each other, these differences affect their performance, and teachers should take these differences into account.

Some popular taxonomies:

Kolb (1984) identifies four types of learners:

• Convergers rely on abstract conceptualization and active experimentation; they prefer concrete answers and finding solutions.
• Divergers use concrete experience and reflective observations to generate a range of ideas.
• Assimilators rely on abstract concepts and reflective observation to assimilate a wide range of information and recast it into a concise logical form and plan.
• Accommodators are best at concrete experience and active experimentation and trial-and-error or intuitive strategies to solve problems.

Visual, aural, read/write, and kinesthetic (VARK) learning methods. The VARK model posits four principal modalities for taking in information: visual, aural, reading and writing, and kinesthetic. Individuals are assumed to have one predominant style for learning new information. They have later identified that the style may vary based on task or situation.

Multiple intelligences (Gardner 1999) identify eight types of intelligence: verbal-linguistic, mathematical-logical, musical, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, interpersonal, and naturalistic.

Thinking Styles (Sternberg 1997) relates thinking styles to intellectual self-government: legislative thinking is aimed at creating and formulating, executive thinking at implementation, and judicial thinking at evaluation and judgment. There are four types of thinkers: monarchic thinkers prefer to do one task at a time; hierarchic thinkers like to deal with many tasks but recognize some as more important than others; oligarchic thinkers are comfortable dealing with many tasks but have trouble setting priorities; and anarchic thinkers take a random approach to tasks and dislike constraints.

Felder-Silverman model. The model identifies four dimensions of cognitive processing: active vs. reflective, sensing vs. intuitive, visual vs. verbal, and sequential vs. global.  Knowing where a student falls on these dimensions can indeed help predict how students will engage with various learning activities. Show to have some predictability.

ACTIVE AND REFLECTIVE LEARNERS

1. Active learners tend to retain and understand information best by doing something active with it–discussing or applying it or explaining it to others. Reflective learners prefer to think about it quietly first.
2. “Let's try it out and see how it works” is an active learner's phrase; “Let's think it through first” is the reflective learner's response.
3. Active learners tend to like group work more than reflective learners, who prefer working alone.
4. Sitting through lectures without getting to do anything physical but take notes is hard for both learning types, but particularly hard for active learners.

Everybody is active sometimes and reflective sometimes. Your preference for one category or the other may be strong, moderate, or mild. A balance of the two is desirable. If you always act before reflecting you can jump into things prematurely and get into trouble, while if you spend too much time reflecting you may never get anything done.

SENSING AND INTUITIVE LEARNERS

1. Sensing learners tend to like learning facts, intuitive learners often prefer discovering possibilities and relationships.
2. Sensors often like solving problems by well-established methods and dislike complications and surprises; intuitors like innovation and dislike repetition. Sensors are more likely than intuitors to resent being tested on material that has not been explicitly covered in class.
3. Sensors tend to be patient with details and good at memorizing facts and doing hands-on (laboratory) work; intuitors may be better at grasping new concepts and are often more comfortable than sensors with abstractions and mathematical formulations.
4. Sensors tend to be more practical and careful than intuitors; intuitors tend to work faster and to be more innovative than sensors.
5. Sensors don't like courses that have no apparent connection to the real world; intuitors don't like “plug-and-chug” courses that involve a lot of memorization and routine calculations.

Everybody is sensing sometimes and intuitive sometimes. Your preference for one or the other may be strong, moderate, or mild. To be effective as a learner and problem solver, you need to be able to function both ways. If you overemphasize intuition, you may miss important details or make careless mistakes in calculations or hands-on work; if you overemphasize sensing, you may rely too much on memorization and familiar methods and not concentrate enough on understanding and innovative thinking.

VISUAL AND VERBAL LEARNERS

1. Visual learners remember best what they see–pictures, diagrams, flow charts, time lines, films, and demonstrations.
2. Verbal learners get more out of words–written and spoken explanations. Everyone learns more when information is presented both visually and verbally.

In most college classes very little visual information is presented: students mainly listen to lectures and read material written on chalkboards and in textbooks and handouts. Unfortunately, most people are visual learners, which means that most students do not get nearly as much as they would if more visual presentation were used in class. Good learners are capable of processing information presented either visually or verbally.

SEQUENTIAL AND GLOBAL LEARNERS

1. Sequential learners tend to gain understanding in linear steps, with each step following logically from the previous one. Global learners tend to learn in large jumps, absorbing material almost randomly without seeing connections, and then suddenly “getting it.”
2. Sequential learners tend to follow logical stepwise paths in finding solutions; global learners may be able to solve complex problems quickly or put things together in novel ways once they have grasped the big picture, but they may have difficulty explaining how they did it.

Many people who read this description may conclude incorrectly that they are global, since everyone has experienced bewilderment followed by a sudden flash of understanding. What makes you global or not is what happens before the light bulb goes on. Sequential learners may not fully understand the material but they can nevertheless do something with it (like solve the homework problems or pass the test) since the pieces they have absorbed are logically connected. Strongly global learners who lack good sequential thinking abilities, on the other hand, may have serious difficulties until they have the big picture. Even after they have it, they may be fuzzy about the details of the subject, while sequential learners may know a lot about specific aspects of a subject but may have trouble relating them to different aspects of the same subject or to different subjects. Whether learning styles actually exist or not (article ; who argue these styles have little predictable value), there are some ideas we can learn from the ideas here.

Remind them of the assignment and give everyone some time to pair up with one another. Lab instructors and not-currently-GSIs will join a group of two and visit one of the members.

Today we want to talk about ways to implement group work, in terms of the types of activities you could try. Next time we'll talk in more detail about group dynamics, how to deal with students who are too quiet or too loud in group work.

Why group work? (5 min)

1. Group work appeals to many learning styles. Group work provides a sense of shared purpose that can increase motivation.
2. Group work introduces students to the insights and values of their peers.
3. Life after college will involve group work.
4. Listening to lecture and taking notes will carry the students only so far in their development. Learning cannot be passive. Group work engages students in the learning and thinking process.
5. We (as college instructors) should be encouraging and developing students' ability to do higher-order thinking.

(10-15 min) Discussion (keep notes on board): In your experiences as a student or as a GSI, what have been some of the problems/pitfalls with group work? What are some difficulties in implementing group work?

Some tips that address some difficulties of group work (mention some of these perhaps, refer to the wiki for the rest):

1. Be sure to introduce the activity with crystal clear instructions. Ambiguity leads to either poor group work or individuals going off and doing their thing.
2. The quality of the group work depends sensitively on the activity and questions asked. In this respect, I think all the worksheets on the EBRB need a considerable overhaul. We encourage more open-ended questions and questions that actually involve group discussion. The focus on problem solving results in individual working; new strategies are needed for this, like
   1. Only hand out one worksheet per group.
   2. Have the students write their answers on a large sheet of paper, work entirely at one of the whiteboards, or have some sort of whiteboard at each table.
   3. Anything else?
3. Good group work activities take time, often more time than just lecturing. However, the added work results in added gains for the students.
4. A “Q&A” part of section can involve a lot of peer learning, if you get good at enabling the students to answer each other's questions. This requires more sophistication than just asking the smartest student to say the right answer; you have to ask the question in a way such that all of the students have a chance to grapple with the question initially posed.
5. “I paid all this $$ to be taught by professors and graduate students, not listen to classmates who don't know as much.” Let students know that benefits of group work. They will resist at first, but proper use of group work will show the students they are learning just as much (usually more) than if you were lecturing.
6. “Students don't like working in groups.” Students are used to working individually. Or students might fear that some group members will not pull their weight. Again, explaining the rational for group work is key, as well as providing checks for students who do not contribute.
7. Get feedback often.

Suggestions to your students (adapted from McKeachie):

1. Be sure everyone contributes to discussions and to tasks. You each have something unique to contribute. Know that you both have something to learn from others and to teach others.
2. Don't jump to conclusions too quickly. Be sure that minority ideas are considered.
3. Don't assume consensus because no one has opposed an idea of offered an alternative. Check agreement with each group member verbally, not just by a vote.
4. Set goals—immediate, intermediate, and long-term—but don't be afraid to change them as you progress. (These should be obvious in sections.)
5. For bigger multi-part tasks: Allocate tasks to be done. Be sure that each person knows what he or she is to do. Check this before beginning.

Discussion: What are some types of group activities you have in mind? (If no response, provide a couple examples). Then go over any of the following that were not brought up: (10-15 min)

1. The Interactive Lecture
   • The “biggest” form of group work, where the whole class works as one big group (and you're a group member).
   • Can be used with worksheets and/or demos.
   • Continuously call on a variety of students to explain answers. If you don't want to call on individual students (cold calling), you might call on particular groups (“This group, what do you think?”)
   • This style tends to keep all students engaged and on task.
2. Concept Mapping
   • A concept map illustrates the connection between terms, ideas, or concepts, which creates higher-level learning. Concepts and terms are written in bubbles and lines are drawn connecting related concepts. With each line, the relation is identified.
   • Students in groups can be given a partially completed concept map and a list of terms that they need to fill in the blanks with. Alternatively, students can work at filling in the relations between various concepts.
3. Jigsaw Projects
   • Each group contributes to a specific part of the assignment. When members have completed their task, all groups shuffle so that one person from each original group is in each new group. Each person then shares their answer and explanation with the rest of the group.
   • Requires EVERY person in section to be responsible for knowing why the answer is what it is.
   • Good way of covering an entire worksheet worth of questions in a short amount of time.
   • Make sure you assess that groups understand why their answer is what it is.
4. KWL
   • Stands for “what I Know, what I Want to know, and what I Learned. It happens in three parts.
     • (Part 1) To introduce a new topic, have the students list what they know about the topic before you start discussion. Collect these lists or have them share.
     • (Part 2) Using these lists, you can modify the remainder of the section to address misconceptions and erroneous understanding. Run section employing whatever demos, activities, etc. you want to use.
     • (Part 3) At the end of the unit, have students list what they have learned. You might ask them to identify the three most important concepts, answer some questions, or just free-write. Collect these lists or have them share.
5. Choreographed Group Tasks
   • Example: Suppose you hand out a worksheet that has six questions. Go through the first two questions of a worksheet on the board (with varying amounts of feedback from students). Then have students work on the next two questions (which are similar but different to the earlier questions) in groups. Then have the class explain to you how to solve question 5 (and do so on the board). Ask for a volunteer to do question 6.
   • Students learn in different ways, so variety is a good thing.
6. Activity Stations
   • Break the class into a few stations (3 is ideal), where one station deals with one aspect of what you want to cover in section that day.
   • Have the class break into groups of three, one for each station.
   • Each group spends 15 minutes at each station, then rotates.
   • Each station could be either a demo, hands-on activity, some worksheet questions.
   • Instructor must be very careful with timing so they can make it around to each group every 15 minutes to assess.
7. Open-ended Questions / Case Studies (e.g., Think Like an Astronomer)
   • One thing that makes discussion difficult in science courses is that most of our questions have a single “correct” answer. Asking open-ended questions can encourage students to think about how concepts fit together.
   • Requires that the question is at the appropriate level of the class. Takes more time to prepare.
   • Anything that allows for interpretation is ripe for discussion.
   • e.g., You have a sealed box (of doughnuts) in the front of the class. Have students in groups device experiments to determine what is in the box (without opening it). Then tie this into how astronomers might detect dark matter, etc.
   • e.g., Give each group a budget and a catalog that includes costs of telescopes, mirrors, equipment, launching into space, etc. Have them come up with a plan to build a telescope at some particular wavelength (having to weigh whether it is in space, what resolution it will have, etc.).
   • e.g., Have students reproduce the thought process of famous astronomers and scientists (e.g., Hubble's discover of other galaxies and the realization of the size of the universe).
8. Send-A-Problem
   • Have each group try to solve a different problem related to material covered in section/lecture.
   • Each group them gives their problem and suggested solution to a different group, which then evaluates the solution and offers corrections.
   • That group then gives their altered solution to another group, who provides the final evaluation.
   • Good for lengthy 7a/7b type problems or problems involving multiple steps. Has groups practice group thinking and comparing/discriminating among multiple solutions.

Group Activity (10 - 15 min) : Take a moment and think about two of three of these that you would like to implement. Why are those appropriate for your course and the material (i.e., different audiences, level of material covered)? What are the possible difficulties with this type of activity (structured activities might feel forced, how do you get all the students on board)?

1. Read “Six Ways to Discourage Learning” by Duncan (can be found under Suggested Readings - Active Learning)
2. Next week, your first extended logs are due. 10 GSIs and GSIs not teaching can have an extra week.
3. Bring in a lesson plan you have used or plan to use next week.