Brain-Based Learning as a Problem to Be Solved

My task as I understood it was to create an activity that would incorporate active learning and include an educative assessment piece. This activity is not fully developed, but is suggestive. I will try to remove the rough edges in time. Let me begin with the resources I have in mind:

Resource 1: John Medina. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School.Seattle: Pear, 2008.

This is a superb book recommended by one of our librarians who until joining us recently was a librarian at Microsoft where this book and the accompanying videos are, apparently, all the rage. I'm selecting it as a resource because it has the business angle, the author has impeccable credentials, and the video material is dynamite. The DVD with one 3-5 minute clip for each of the 12 "rules" comes free with purchase of the book and the free web site at www.brainrules.net is also quite good.

Resource 2: "Brain based education: Fad or breakthrough?" YouTube.

Professor Daniel Willingham looks at when and how neuroscience can inform education. The professor also has very good credentials. Some may not particularly like his demeanor. But that is beside the point. "

The problem for the class to work out is "Who shall we believe? Or "Is Dr. Medina's work in the 95% group of publications that Willingham says is garbage?"

I'm tempted to stop right here and simply put these rich materials into the hands of creative teachers and let them make a significant learning experience out of this. I've got some ideas on how to proceed but I probably won't be able to post them for a while. Until then, feel free to extend this activity stem with comments...

John Gardner on The First Year Experience: Irving, Texas, Jan 27,2010

These are my "very rough" notes of the meeting with John Gardner. There were 12 or 13 of us. The Cool Ranch Restaurant was HUGE. The food was very good. And what John shared was most informative. At least in my humble opinion. GD

Anyway for what they're worth, here are the notes. Maybe they'll help jog the memories of those who were there ... and provide a small glimpse for those who were not.

I've also enjoyed reading Gardner's blog. Particularly the latter part of the tagline:

"He is alert to national and institutional policies that support or sabotage students’ progress through undergraduate education."

The Search for Practical Theory

Sometimes my mind busies itself during holiday with inscrutible questions. One that kept arising since late December was what those of us on the Learning Frameworks committee should put forward as OUR THEORY (for information literacy). As you know Learning Frameworks is supposed to be based on theory.

Those of us on both sides of the fence (faculty and librarian) are not particularly comfortable with such questions. We take pride in our practicality. But it's a task that must be done and the deadline is fast approaching. So what shall it be?

I don't think theory has to mean grand theory, but it should point to something other than mere practice. It's not about how to do something but rather about providing context for things done.

The one that has settled in my mind the longest has two interrelated parts:

(1) Information Cycles and (2) The Concept of Primary - Secondary - Tertiary sources. Here's a page in the University of Idaho Information Literacy Tutorial that combines both. There are, of course, many additional resources on the web that could support this. Like this interactive activity from The University of Washington or this audio powerpoint called 1-2-3 of Sources from a librarian in Minnesota.

I know it's not very satisfying. But if you can only teach one thing (the theory - the content) what would/should it be?

PS 1. For what it's worth here's another idea I've toyed with. Science teacher Greg Craven made a 10 minute viral YouTube video a few years back that was essentially an overview of how to think about Global Warming. He called it "The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See." There was a web site that followed the video and a book which I purchased ...What's the Worst That Could Happen? I purchased it because of Chapter 4 "A Beautiful Rainbow of Credibility: The Credibility Spectrum." It's 25 pages and could I think be translated into some kind of activity. I'll probably do another blog post that expands on this idea.

PS 2. I'm sitting here with a pile of information literacy texts trying to figure out what to do. It doesn't look promising.

My Top 10 List: Integrative Learning Conference: Atlanta, October 22-24, 2009

The American Association of Colleges and Universities knows its stuff. I shared breakfast (and a learning activity) with a psychology prof who's been coming to AAC&U conferences for years. He said he just noticed that everything they did was high caliber all the way.

It's true. Every session I attended was so good that one hardly knows where to start. In fact, I've been debating with myself how best to share what I received there. If you have a taste for drinking from a fire hydrant, here's the program (with green checkmarks for sessions I attended). And for the truly gluttonous, here are my (unedited) notes.

With my own work group, I've been sharing a little bit each week and plan on continuing that through next semester.

With the larger CORE group, I'm not so sure. I am inviting my colleagues who attended to also write something here. We'll see what materializes.

I'd hoped that some of the presentations would be available on the conference web site but, alas, that has not yet happened. (I'll post a link here when these become available).

For lack of any brighter ideas and in light of the upcoming CORE convention I've decided to provide a brief sampling of things that stood out for me.

In recent years I've learned that one of the best things that comes out of conference attendance for me is new language. Thus equipped with new search words, I can then shift into research mode and find all sorts of wonderful resources.

So: In classic quick-to-read web form, here's my bullet list of highlights: buzzwords and soundbites with definitions where appropriate and (hopefully) enlightening links.

1. Powerful Ideas. Melissa Peet from The University of Michigan was the last speaker on the program. For me she was the most exciting. I spoke with her afterwards and she told me she was most motivated by powerful ideas which inspired me to include this bullet, even organize this blog post around a series of what I believe to be powerful ideas. Peet oversees the Generative Knowledge and ePortfolio Program at The University of Michigan and talks so fast you can hardly keep up with her. It's impossible to convey the full effect of what she spoke about but maybe this powerpoint can suggest some of the integrative depth that is possible. Some of the "new language" she gave included: three forms of knowledge (generative, tacit, and embodied), the generative interviewing process (whose purpose is to ask questions that draw out tacit strengths, capacities, potentials and possibilities),

2. Authentic Evidence. This is the AAC&U term for "assessments that focus both student and faculty attention on the essential aims and outcomes of a college education. The AAC&U resists — and works to provide alternatives to the use of multiple-choice tests as the primary index of the quality of institutions’ or student’s achievement" (From their mission statement). Toward this end, much of their work centers around advancing the use of e-portfolios.

3.VALUE Rubrics. If authentic student work is to be the evidence for achievement, simple grading systems will not suffice, despite their convenience. Thus the need for rubrics. Again AAC&U has sponsored field testing of 15 rubrics: ten covering the practical and intellectual skills, four personal and social responsibility and one specifically for integrative learning.

4. E-portfolios. "Last spring, Kathleen Blake Yancey suggested that e-portfolios were a leading element in a “tectonic shift” in higher education. Yancey, the Kellogg Hunt Professor of English at Florida State University and former president of the National Council of Teachers of English, spoke to hundreds of e-portfolio practitioners gathered at a landmark e-portfolio conference held at LaGuardia Community College in 2008. She argued that e-portfolios radically alter how students learn, how faculty teach, and how institutions assess the value of their educations—that e-portfolios are literally remaking the landscape of higher education"(From Elizabeth Clarks's article in the AACU journal Peer Review). Another rousing roundtable discussion that captures some of the electricity (and challenge) around e-portfolios can be found on The Academic Commons. And for more on the "tectonic shift" see Kathleen Yancey's "Writing in the 21st Century." Among other things the e-portfolio provides a platform for reflection.

5. Reflection. This is an old, old word that takes on more and more significance the closer you look. The term kept popping up at the conference. John Dewey said that knowledge and experience are different things and we learn from processing experience (reflecting on it). Sometimes referred to as a form of "meaning making", reflection is a key component in e-portfolios. But it's not just for students. Reflective practice is what distinguishes the professional who grows and changes based on experience that is continually being reflected upon. The Consortium for Innovative Environments in Learning has produced an fine, exhaustive bibliography on the subject. Or browse through a thick tome, Metacognition in Learning and Instruction, courtesy of Google Books. Half the book is devoted to student metacognition and half to teacher metacognition. Chapter 8 "Teaching Metacognitively" is mostly available with only a few pages blocked. Reflection has many purposes but I've come to believe that its most important one for our purposes is to serve as a strategy for facilitating integrative learning.

6. Integrative Learning. My favorite approach to integrative learning is from Dee Fink who, of course, provided the inspiration and the title for this blog. He was at the conference and I met him, although I wasn't able to attend his session because it was beyond standing room only. I did manage to get in on one he moderated where he distributed a handout on the multiple meanings of Integrative Learning (easy to understand and easy to use in an activity for broader understanding of the concept). I'm pretty sure that activity will be a part of the upcoming CORE conference on January 14. By the way, Fink's new book Designing Significant Learning Experiences brings us up to date with some real world experiences of people trying to implement his ideas on their campuses. They whimsically referred to themselves as "educators who've been finked."

7. Assessing Integrative Assignments. One of the very best sessions I attended was imaginatively entitled "You Get What You Ask For: Connecting Assessment of Integrative Thinking to Improvement of Assignment Design." Janine Graziano-King and colleagues conducted it in classic active learning style. (This is where I worked with the psychology prof who's made a career of attending AAC&U conferences.) Using a superb decision tree that Kingsborough Center for Teaching and Learning developed especially for assessing integration between two content courses, we met in groups to assess a piece of student work from one of the learning community classes. After a bit, the facilitators showed us the prompt that had been used to introduce the assignment. It didn't take much examination at all to recognize that a good portion of the poor results from the student had been "set up" by the poor assignment prompt. Wow! Talk about a powerful learning experience.

8. Assignment Scaffolding. Speaking of assignment design, another practical strategy that impressed me was the notion of assignment scaffolding. This was one of those that came not as a featured session but as an aside that for whatever reason caught my attention. I find it mostly useful as a metaphor/criteria for developing well constructed assignments. If you're a fan of George Lakoff's ideas on the centrality of metaphor, you'll notice we've just jumped into a building and construction metaphor. We can speak about our foundation, about creating something solid that lasts, and much more. The metaphor is generative. You've probably already figured out what assignment scaffolding is. A learning activity begins small by giving a student place to stand, then from that new higher position, a second activity proceeds that builds on the skills acquired at level one. This can be done within a single class but the more interesting challenge for we CORE people is how to create assignment scaffolding that works across courses and through semesters. For a good example from Canada, see this one from an accounting instructor.

9. Shared Pedagogies.There was no special session but the term shared pedagogies came up several times over the course of the three day conference.Apparently, benefits multiply for student and teachers when the same approaches to learning are encountered in different classes. I'd say cooperative learning is a shared pedagogy in several of our colleges.

10. Powerful Keynotes. There isn't time to develop their ideas here, but take my word for it. Veronica Boix Mansilla (Pedagogy of the Contemporary) and Bruce Hutton (The Daniels Compass) are definitely worth a price of admission. I'll post their presentation materials here as soon as they become available.

On Deciding What to Teach and Learn

I noticed that the keynote speaker on Thursday night for the upcoming AACU Conference on Integrative Learning is Veronica Boix Mansilla.

Mansilla is Lecturer, Graduate School of Education, and Principal Investigator with Project Zero, Harvard University.

Upon seeing her name in the program and realizing she was part of Project Zero I was reminded of the respect I've held for Project Zero for many years. I've always thought it a shame that not more educators know who they are or what they do.

Howard Gardner, who wrote Five Minds for the Future (which one of the CORE committees is reading) is also part of Project Zero. As is my hero, David Perkins, from whom you shall hear more in a moment.

In case you are curious, the reason Project Zero has the zero in its name is it's founder believed that "... learning should be studied as a serious cognitive activity, but that "zero" had been firmly established about the field."

Their mission, then is "to understand and enhance learning, thinking, and creativity in the arts, as well as humanistic and scientific disciplines, at the individual and institutional levels."

But I digress.

In Smart Schools which was published in 1992, Perkins included a section he called Theory One.

As we embark on the task of deciding what this much ballyhooed Learning Framework/s? course ought to be, I thought it might be helpful to review what he said.

So here it is straight from page 45: Theory One.

A rather good theory of teaching and learning can be stated in a single sentence.The theory is not terribly sophisticated. It does not require elaborate laboratory research to test and justify. But pursuing its implications can take us a long way toward a much improved vision of classroom practice. So simple is this theory, so much a rough-hewn, first-order approximation to the conditions that foster learning, that we will call it Theory One, saving higher numbers for fancier theories.

Theory One says this:

People learn much of what they have a reasonable opportunity and motivation to learn.

How could so outrageously bland a statement about teaching possibly imply anything about better classroom practice? Admittedly, Theory One seems entirely too mousy for the job. But this is the Mouse That Roared. To see its power, we need to elaborate somewhat on the implications of the one-sentence version of Theory One. What is "reasonable opportunity and motivation to learn."? Without resorting to any technical knowledge about learning, one might commonsensically put down the following conditions:

--Clear information. Descriptions and examples of the goals, knowledge needed, and the performances expected.

-- Thoughtful practice. Opportunity for learners to engage actively and reflectively whatever is to be learned -- adding numbers, solving word problems, writing essays.

-- Informative feedback. Clear, thorough counsel to learners about their performance, helping them to proceed more effectively.

-- Strong intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. Activities that are amply rewarded, either because they are very interesting and engaging in themselves or because they feed into other achievements that concern the learner.

So there it is, Theory One, a commonsense conception of a good teaching practice. Theory One aims simply to establish a baseline. For any performance we want to teach, if we supply clear information about the performance by way of examples and descriptions, offer learners time to practice the performance and think about how they are handling it, provide informative feedback, and work from a platform of strong intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, we are likely to have considerably success with the teaching.


Perkins, David. Smart Schools: From Training Memories to Educating Minds. New York: Free Press-Macmillan, 1992.

Their Characteristics, Our Perceptions

Step 1 in Fink's course design process calls for us to "Identify Important Situational Factors." Question no. 4 on the worksheet asks for us to characterize the learners.

In trying to think about this, I remembered the campus wide e-mail I had sent in June 2009 just as the Learning Frameworks Committee was getting started. I read through all the responses, of course, when I first received them, but I wanted to present them in a way that might reveal the larger picture and maybe facilitate some sort of analysis.

So I re-sent them to this address: http://dcccdstudents.blogspot.com.

I lightly edited the results and applied labels as best I could. The right hand column shows those labels sorted so that the issues mentioned most often are at the top of the list. Of course, this is not a scientific survey (as they say) but I thought the responses did provide a rich overview of our students (and, incidentally, of our perceptions.

What do you see? (Don't forget you can look up a particular word with the search box in the upper left corner of the screen.)

I don't think there are many surprises here but perhaps seeing all the perceptions organized this way will help us think through the material better and also to give proper attention to the most imposing factors.

Here's the text of my original e-mail...

The Question: NEW TO RICHLAND STUDENT - What does she look like?

The answer is not blonde and 5 ' 2". Well, I guess it sometimes is, but that's not the point of the question.

I'm on the district committee that is charged with developing a new required course for students who enter college with less than 12 credits. This was one of the recommendations of the DCCCD Core Curriculum Group headed by Becki
Williams last year. It's currently called the LEARNING FRAMEWORKS course and is scheduled to begin in Fall 2010..

Our first assignment is to come to the next meeting and tell the committee what the "new to college student" looks like at Richland.

Since that covers a lot of territory I thought I'd get some help. From YOU. If you're game.

The idea, of course, is to build a profile so we'll KNOW who we're going to be teaching. So we can tailor the course to their real needs.

Feel free to contribute just a little piece or an extended dissertation. Thanks in advance :)

Gary Duke, 6/4/2009

Other opinions can be added by sending an e-mail to: garyduke.dcccdstudents@blogger.com. The subject line will become the heading for the blog post.

Opportunities for Learning and Change

In July I visited a friend in Boston who is in her last year at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Being both the nosy type and a book lover, I did my usual routine -- I browsed her book shelf. My eyes fell upon a thin green book, The New Taxonomy of Educational Objectives by Robert Marzano and John Kendall (2nd ed).

Of course, this isn't exactly bed side reading material -- but it immediately caught my interest because of my involvement with the Learning Frameworks Committee.

My friend explained that this was her professor's choice as the best update of Bloom's work. The original publication came out in 1956 and I knew that there have been many attempts to correct and revise Bloom. But given the prestige of this recommendation, I decided to spend some time with Marzano and Kendall.

To make a long story short, I was incredibly impressed.

And I instantly saw an application for Frameworks since I knew that Bloom was one of the theories included in the Russ Hodges material.

I make no claim to have absorbed the whole book. But just reading the first chapter (which is conveniently available in Google Books) was enough for me. Actually pages 10-12 were enough. The authors call it the Model of Behavior that undergirds the New Taxonomy.




I can't say for sure why it resonated so perfectly for me. It's probably because of the way that it brings motivation and metacognition into the forefront. Learning and change begin with the self-system and a decision whether or not to engage. The strength of that engagement determines the extent to which a metacognitive system is employeed, and finally the cognitive system does its work. Each of the three "mental systems" works on and with the individual's store of knowledge.

I'm an intuitive so perhaps I'm making too much of a leap here. But what I saw in this was a compelling way to organize the material in the Learning Frameworks course. Begin with the self-system, then move through the other components. There's a logic to this if Marzano is correct when he says these are steps and represent "how information is processed once a decision to engage has been made. (11)

Here's what he says about the primacy of self-system thinking.

"The self-system consists of an interrelated arrangement of attitudes, beliefs, and emotions. It is the interaction of thee attitudes, beliefs, and emotions that determines both motivation and attention. The self-system determines whether an individual will engage in or disengage in a given task; it also determines how much energy the individual will bring to the task. Once the self-system has determined what will be be attended to, the functioning of all other elements of thought (i.e., the metacognitive system, the cognitive system, and the knowledge domains) are, to a certain extent, dedicated or determined. This is why the act of the self-system's selecting a task has been referred to as 'crossing the Rubicon.' " (55)

Once the Rubicon is crossed, the next system falls naturally into place. The metacognitive system is the system of goals, strategy, and self monitoring that provides the structure which enables the cognitive functions (retrieval, comprehension, analysis, and utilization) to succeed.

Knowledge is a whole other thing probably deserving it's own separate blog post. And that's convenient because I've run out of writing steam and I expect you're probably nearing your supply of reading steam as well. :)