We can all agree that many of our students struggle with how to best prepare for assessment. Many of them seem to "trust their gut" and go with the tried and true rereading of the entire chapter or pulling an all-nighter. Science proves that neither of those methods work very well. So I was interested to read an article that explains how Colorado State is using science and technology in a new course that helps students become better learners. My curiosity was piqued because of the College Success Skills course we offer (and I teach) but also because I am fascinated by how our brain really works. The article notes that, "Learning is not intuitive. Research shows a disconnect between what people think are the best ways to learn and the habits that actually lead to true understanding and retention." In my experience, that is true but how can we make learning more intuitive or is that even possible? The article goes on to say, "To that end, students study the research behind different learning strategies. Take cramming, for example. Students learn that, while people estimate they learn better studying all at once versus spacing out their learning, studies show the opposite. Similarly, people perform better when they test themselves on what they know while they are studying, as opposed to reading the same material over and over." That is reassuring as we based our Study Group Program administered by the Academic Learning Center on those very notions (garnered from research in the near past). You can read the entire article here and I encourage you (as you continue to prep for spring 2019) to apply the lessons learned by CSU to your own teaching.

"A couple of weeks ago, I did something that I have never done before in my classroom: I sacrificed invested a week of instruction to hold a one-on-one conversation with each one of my students. I had always made the excuse that it took up too many instructional minutes, and that I couldn’t sacrifice the time. And after that long-winded week the only regret that I have is that I did not start doing this much, much earlier in my career. That week, was an absolute revelation!" That is how Jeffrey Frieden starts his fascinating blog that explores what his students really think. What he did was simple. He asked them. Continue reading here.

Most people who have tried using virtual reality think it’s cool -- if at first a little nausea-inducing. Augmented reality and 3-D printing and scanning at their best elicit awestruck expressions. Can these tools help students learn? Can institutions with limited budgets pull off ambitious projects? Can skeptical faculty members be convinced to experiment with unfamiliar technology? At their core, three-dimensional technologies allow students to “go places they couldn’t otherwise go or do things they wouldn’t otherwise do,” said D. Christopher Brooks, director of research at Educause. Virtual reality environments transport users to space or inside microscopic cells; augmented reality gives students superpowers of object manipulation. These experiences don’t spring up overnight, though. They require structured collaborations between instructors, instructional designers and IT units. Read the entire Inside Higher Ed article here.

HOW THE BRAIN DECIDES WHAT TO LEARN
In order to learn about the world, an animal needs to do more than just pay attention to its surroundings. It also needs to learn which sights, sounds and sensations in its environment are the most important and monitor how the importance of those details change over time. Yet how humans and other animals track those details has remained a mystery. Now, Stanford biologists report October 26 in Science, they think they've figured out how animals sort through the details. A part of the brain called the paraventricular thalamus, or PVT, serves as a kind of gatekeeper, making sure that the brain identifies and tracks the most salient details of a situation. Although the research, funded in part by the Wu Tsai Neuroscience Institute's Neurochoice Initiative, is confined to mice for now, the results could one day help researchers better understand how humans learn or even help treat drug addiction, said senior author Xiaoke Chen, an assistant professor of biology. In its most basic form, learning comes down to feedback. For example, if you have a headache and take a drug, you expect the drug will make your headache go away. If you're right, you'll take that drug the next time you have a headache. If you're wrong, you'll try something else. Psychologists and neuroscientists have studied this aspect of learning extensively and even traced it to specific parts of the brain that process feedback and drive learning.

DOES A BAD GRADE MOTIVATE OUR STUDENTS?
David Gooblar wrote a terrific post a while back that is filled with great information specifically about grades and motivation. He wrote, "In an exhaustive review of the literature on formative assessment, two researchers at King's College drew on a number of sources who have documented a phenomenon familiar to many faculty — that is, students’ reluctance to be drawn into a more serious engagement with learning work. Such students, for a variety of reasons, do not primarily aspire to learn as much as possible. Rather, they want to get by with minimal effort, avoiding any disasters along the way. For those students (and it's fair to say my student who wrote a poor essay falls into this category), a properly bad grade might be just such a disaster. A bad grade might be the jolt that lets those students know their current approach is not working. But if we acknowledge that grades might be able to help in our efforts to motivate students, we also have to understand that we can't rely on grades alone." Keep reading here.

MAYBE A NUDGE CAN HELP YOUR STUDENTS

A few years ago, Dr. Zoë Cohen noticed a troubling sign in her “Physiology of the Immune System” course: A larger number of students than usual had failed the first exam. Cohen had changed up the way she taught the course that year, part of a broader push toward active learning at the University of Arizona, where she is an assistant professor. The different style was probably a big adjustment for her upper-level students after years of taking lecture-based courses, she thought. Cohen wanted to help those students. But the course is a large one, with between 160 and 200 students, and she didn’t want to increase her workload. So she came up with a low-touch way to intervene: sending a personalized, supportive email. For a small investment of time, Cohen was able to signal to students that she cared. And she thinks the move even boosted recipients’ performance in the course. Read the entire post here.

HOW TO TEACH TO ALL YOUR STUDENTS
Dr. Matthew Wright has posted an article that is full of aha-moments. He writes, "Faculty members are generally happy to select out a few elite students who they are confident can make it all the way to the top. For these few bright and gifted students, the college experience becomes almost otherworldly. They do research projects with their professors, network with superstars in their field, travel to exotic locations, and give papers at major conferences. Their professors become role models and mentors who help them transition to greatness. But remember, most of the professors are elite folks themselves. You have to be to make it through the maze that a typical professor endures to get to the coveted tenure-track positions. So, essentially, you end up with the top five percent of educated elites teaching to the top five percent of elite students. That’s messed up." Keep reading here.

ARE OUR BRAINS TO BLAME FOR OUR INACTIVITY?
Researchers at the University of British Columbia have published a report indicating that our brains may be wired towards laziness. They note, "Our brains may be innately attracted to sedentary behavior. Electroencephalograms showed that test subjects had to summon extra brain resources when trying to avoid physical inactivity. The research findings, published recently in Neuropsychologia, suggest that our brains may simply be wired to prefer lying on the couch. "Conserving energy has been essential for humans' survival, as it allowed us to be more efficient in searching for food and shelter, competing for sexual partners, and avoiding predators,"said Dr. Matthieu Boisgontie.

HOW TO BUILD RAPPORT WITH YOUR STUDENTS
How do we get the best out of our students? By building a rapport with them. We hear that over and over again, but do we really know what that looks like or what that means? It’s not about preaching to them or trying to make them better people. It’s about learning who they are, accepting and celebrating their uniqueness, and really listening to them. Helen Boyd offers her suggestions for strategies to build trust.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE STUDENTS GONE?

Jill Barshay’s reflections on what the declining birthrate means for colleges and the students who hope to get a college degree a decade from now may be a wakeup call for us in higher education. She cites research provided by Nathan Grawe, an economist at Carleton College in Minnesota, who predicts that the college-going population will drop by 15 percent between 2025 and 2029 and continue to decline by another percentage point or two thereafter. Grawe’s forecasts for the number of students at two-year community colleges and four-year institutions are published in his book, Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education, with updates on his website. He breaks the numbers down not only by type of school, and how selective it is, but also by geographic region and race/ethnicity. “Students are going to be a hot commodity, a scarce resource,” said Grawe. “It’s going to be harder during this period for institutions to aggressively increase tuition. It may be a time period when it’s a little easier on parents and students who are negotiating over the financial aid package.”

CAN I DO THIS?

David Gooblar writes, “No matter how much students value your course, or how supportive your classroom environment, they won’t be motivated to do the work if they don’t think they can succeed at it. And of course the solution is not about making things easy for them. As a new academic year gets underway, I’ve been thinking a lot about student motivation. Specifically I’ve been rereading a 2010 book How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, which offers a compelling chapter on the three main pillars that underlie student motivation. Continue reading here.

 

WHAT GOOD LEARNING LOOKS LIKE

This blog post by Anya Kamenetz for NPR has some pretty useful information. So print it out; get out your highlighter and take off the cap. Ready? Now throw it away, because highlighters don't really help people learn. We all want for our kids to have optimal learning experiences and, for ourselves, to stay competitive with lifelong learning. But how well do you think you understand what good learning looks like? Ulrich Boser says, probably not very well. His new research on learning shows that the public is largely ignorant of, well, research on learning. Boser runs the science of learning initiative at the left-leaning thinktank the Center for American Progress. He has a new book out, also about the science of learning, titled Learn Better.