February 15, 2011

Consider differences between experts and novices when creating teaching activities

After years of graduate school and academic teaching, we may no longer recall the experience of being a first year student enrolled in the introductory course for our discipline.  The difference between the expert knowledge of faculty and the novice understanding of students (and in some cases, the naïve and erroneous assumptions novice learners bring to a discipline) can create challenges to effective communication between experts and students.  Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (2000) identify several important characteristics of the knowledge and processing skills that distinguish experts from novices.  

Differences between Experts and Novices
(Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000)

• Experts notice features and meaningful patterns of information that are not noticed by novices. 
• Experts have acquired a great deal of content knowledge that is organized in ways that reflect a deep understanding of their subject matter. 
• Experts’ knowledge cannot be reduced to sets of isolated facts or propositions but, instead reflects contexts of applicability: that is, the knowledge is conditionalized on a set of circumstances. 
• Experts are able to flexibly retrieve important aspects of their knowledge with little attentional effort.   
• Though experts know their disciplines thoroughly, this does not guarantee that they are able to teach others. 
• Experts have varying levels of flexibility in their approach to new situations.

 

These differences have important implications for teaching and learning: 

• If students aspire to become experts in a discipline, they must not only acquire relevant content knowledge, but they must learn how the components of this knowledge relate to one another and organize their new knowledge in appropriate ways.  Mere repetition and memorization will not ensure that students create meaningful organizations for their new knowledge.  Learning activities should encourage students to identify meaningful relationships between newly-learned content (including material learned in multiple classes) and build an organized representation. 
• When students acquire and use new information using a variety of modalities, they increase the number of strategies and cues that will enable them to successfully retrieve this information.  Testing situations that simulate the disciplinary work contexts and situations in which students will use information provide opportunities to practice successful retrieval that will be more likely to transfer to future contexts. 
• The fluid and rapid disciplinary thought processes that characterize expert skill may lead experts to omit intermediary steps from their explanations.  Group work can be a helpful teaching strategy because more knowledgeable students may discover these intermediary steps on their own and will include these steps in their explanations to other students.  These students can “translate” and explain difficult material in ways that might make more sense to other students than the sparer explanations given by experts. 

 

Based in part on a teaching tip submitted by Barbara Millis, Director, Teaching and Learning Center, University of Texas at San Antonio

Resources
 
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education National Research Council. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

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January 25, 2011

Improving student skill in critical evaluation of media
 
Media literacy has been defined as a framework to guide the access, analysis, evaluation and creation of messages in a variety of forms, including print, video, images, and web-based media.  Media literacy entails articulating the role of media in society and developing the inquiry and communication skills necessary for functioning effectively as citizens of a democracy (Center for Media Literacy). 

The core concepts of media literacy include the following:

1. All media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules.
2. Different people experience the same media message differently.
3. Media have embedded values and points of view.
4. Most media messages are organized to gain profit, power, or exert influence over others.

The following activities can be assigned to help students develop media literacy skills:

Each student should select an example of a message delivered through visual media and answer each of the following questions:

• Who created this message?
• What creative techniques were used to attract attention to this message?
• What values, lifestyles and points of view are represented in (or omitted from) this message?
• Why is this message being sent?  What is the purpose of this message?

Illustrate the way a complex media message functions with discussion of a short film clip or short video.

• Present the message to one group of students with access to the visual image only.
• Present the message to a second group of students with access to the dialogue only.
• Create pairs of students (one person in each pair saw the image, one heard the dialog).  Ask each student to react to their media piece individually. 
• Have students in each pair compare their reactions to each piece and then to their reaction to the full message (audio and visual).  How does the complex media message differ from each component in isolation? 
• Share the comments of student pairs with the class in a report-out discussion.

Based on a teaching tip submitted by Taimi Olsen, Ph.D., Assistant Director, Tennessee Teaching and Learning Center, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
http://tenntlc.utk.edu/
 
Resources

MediaLitKit.  Center for Media Literacy.
http://www.medialit.org/cml-medialit-kit

Visual Thinking.  Center for Teaching, Vanderbilt University.
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/cft/resources/teaching_resources/activities/vizthink.htm#stories

International Visual Literacy Association http://www.ivla.org/org_what_vis_lit.htm

Film Vocabulary Flashcards.  Quizlet. 2010.
http://quizlet.com/168298/film-vocabulary-flash-cards/

Potter, J. (2004). Theory of media literacy:  a cognitive approach. Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage.
 
Davis, B.  (2009). Tools for Teaching ( 2nd  Ed.).  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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March 16, 2010

Engaging Students through Problem-Based and Collaborative Learning Activities

Activities that actively engage students with course content, provide opportunities to practice and apply discipline-based skills, and enable students to collaborate with one another to encourage peer instruction are effective methods for improving student learning and connecting students with one another and their institution.

The Center for Teaching & Learning at Brigham Young University hosts a web page on collaborative learning in which 5 faculty members describe collaborative learning activities they use in their courses, discuss their rationale for using these strategies, and share their observations of the benefits for student learning.  Individual videos are short (the longest is about 7 minutes long) and include videos of students engaged in the activities described.

Topics discussed in these videos include:

William Baker, Management Communication
Video describes collaborative learning strategies in a Business Communication course, including the use of teams, peer instruction, peer review, and a capstone project.

Deborah Hines, Nursing
Video describes problem-based learning activities with peer coaching in a clinical setting.

Matthew Mason, History
Video describes active learning strategies that engage students with primary resources and develop communication skills.

Janet Young
Video describes the use of a short writing activity at the beginning of class to promote student preparation for class and support in-class discussion.

Center for Teaching & Learning, Brigham Young University
Videos of faculty discussing their use of a collaborative learning strategy
http://ctl.byu.edu/collaborative-learning/

 

Updated 02/1/11