Synopsis
This workshop presented material based on research by cognitive psychologists Robert Bjork, Kelli Taylor, Harold Pashler and others. The fundamental idea behind all of the desirable difficulties is that slowing down learning, forcing students to pay attention and work harder to learn consistently has two results. First, it improves students learning in the long run, not necessarily immediately. And second, it routinely causes those facing the desirable difficulties to feel like they are less successful. The types of desirable difficulties discussed were threefold: changing the environment, multimodal learning, and interleaving.
Reflection
We and the participants learned a great deal through the workshop. Parts of the content were well received and other parts were more challenging, especially when it came time to convey the information in a manner that was directly relevant and accessible to the participants. The best received aspect was the notion of the “myth” of learning styles. Participants knew about learning styles--e.g. learning auditorily, visually, linguistically, mathematically/logically, and kinesthetically--as a way to reach students. In our workshop we discussed how cornering ourselves into one teaching or learning style is actually detrimental to students, and it is often the case that a blended approach to learning styles is more effective.
We had a lively discussion of how these desirable difficulties can be applied on an individual and discipline-specific basis. Participants asked how the process of “interleaving” could be applied to different disciplines. What is interleaving? True to this concept, we held off on giving away a solid definition (although we gave hints) until the end. This process, characterized by giving students information in small chunks rather than all at once, has been shown to be highly effective, but seemed limited by the kinds of disciplines it has been applied to in research.
We encourage participants to use research databases at their disposal to look up research done on interleaving and education in their fields. Furthermore, as TAs and AIs, now is the perfect time to “experiment” with your students, to give lessons in innovative ways, and to reach beyond our comfort zones as future professors. It is a common argument that one discipline is more suited for one kind of teaching approach, and it is rare--if not outright inexistent--that this is actually true for most pedagogical approaches.
This workshop presented material based on research by cognitive psychologists Robert Bjork, Kelli Taylor, Harold Pashler and others. The fundamental idea behind all of the desirable difficulties is that slowing down learning, forcing students to pay attention and work harder to learn consistently has two results. First, it improves students learning in the long run, not necessarily immediately. And second, it routinely causes those facing the desirable difficulties to feel like they are less successful. The types of desirable difficulties discussed were threefold: changing the environment, multimodal learning, and interleaving.
Reflection
We and the participants learned a great deal through the workshop. Parts of the content were well received and other parts were more challenging, especially when it came time to convey the information in a manner that was directly relevant and accessible to the participants. The best received aspect was the notion of the “myth” of learning styles. Participants knew about learning styles--e.g. learning auditorily, visually, linguistically, mathematically/logically, and kinesthetically--as a way to reach students. In our workshop we discussed how cornering ourselves into one teaching or learning style is actually detrimental to students, and it is often the case that a blended approach to learning styles is more effective.
We had a lively discussion of how these desirable difficulties can be applied on an individual and discipline-specific basis. Participants asked how the process of “interleaving” could be applied to different disciplines. What is interleaving? True to this concept, we held off on giving away a solid definition (although we gave hints) until the end. This process, characterized by giving students information in small chunks rather than all at once, has been shown to be highly effective, but seemed limited by the kinds of disciplines it has been applied to in research.
We encourage participants to use research databases at their disposal to look up research done on interleaving and education in their fields. Furthermore, as TAs and AIs, now is the perfect time to “experiment” with your students, to give lessons in innovative ways, and to reach beyond our comfort zones as future professors. It is a common argument that one discipline is more suited for one kind of teaching approach, and it is rare--if not outright inexistent--that this is actually true for most pedagogical approaches.
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