All posts by Rochelle Diogenes

What’s a Seventeen-Year-Old to Do?

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Originally posted on Acrobatiq and cross-posted with permission.

When co-founder Larry Page recently announced Google’s reorganization, he referred to the company as ” still a teenager.”  Incorporated in 1998, Google is 17 years old, making Page and co-founder Sergey Brin 17-year-old businessmen.

Like 17-year-olds, they are tired of routine and want the flexibility to do things they like doing.  Restructuring Google frees them from the mundane tasks of running a large company. As Page writes, it allows them “to do things other people think are crazy but we are super excited about.”

While the Google founders are getting what they want, most 17-year-olds getting ready for college will not. According to Remediation—Higher Education’s Bridge to Nowhere, Complete College America’s study of public institutions in 33 states including Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Texas, over 50% of students starting college or community college test into remedial courses.  In California, 68% of students entering the state college system test into remediation.

These courses rehash high school material. To adapt a University of Chicago motto, this is where excitement and freedom come to die. The proof is in how many people don’t go on to graduate.  According to the study, about 40% of community college students don’t even complete their remedial courses. Less than 10% of community college students who finish remedial classes graduate within 3 years. Only about 35% who start in remedial courses in four-year colleges obtain a degree in 6 years.

Factor in the cost of remedial courses, courses that do not count towards a degree, and you have a formula for failure. To make things even worse, placement in remediation is often based on one test that researchers say is a poor indicator of student potential.

To address this situation, educators are calling for reforms. Some states are giving remedial students a choice of whether to take remedial courses or directly enroll in regular college courses. Others are eliminating remedial education as prerequisites for regular courses, allowing students to take them as co-requisites. Technology offers other ways to support students with weak skills in regular college courses.

Digital adaptive learning programs can be adopted for all students in college courses. They address individual student abilities at every level, in effect, containing what might be called “embedded co-requisites,” academic support where needed.

As students learn, these self-paced digital programs assess their abilities, tailoring the material so that they get the most out of their time in the course. For example, if a student shows non-mastery in identifying evidence for historical argument after reading a text section, the program might give them more explanation, activities, or video on that subject. On the other hand, if a student shows mastery after one text section, they can immediately move forward.

Adaptive programs also give instructors data on how each student is progressing in real time. Based on this data, instructors can reach out to students while they are learning instead of after they have failed a test.

As students succeed at their own pace in courses that count, they will have greater motivation to complete their degrees. They might even enjoy the experience.

Or Would You Rather Be a Fish?*

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In a recent Faculty Focus blog, The Power of Mindfulness, Jennifer Lorenzetti points out that the average attention span of humans is estimated at 8 seconds, down from 12 seconds in 2000, while that of goldfish is 9 seconds. She follows this with: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone in your class could manage to be mentally present for the entire class?” Should she also have asked “Wouldn’t it be great if everyone in your class were a goldfish?”

More questions: How do you measure the attention span of a goldfish? What does that have to do with human attention span? What do goldfish use their attention spans for? How can I have any self-esteem if I have a shorter attention span than a fish?

Perhaps the fact that I got stuck on the goldfish intro and didn’t go on to grasp the rest of the article proves that I have a short attention span. Nevertheless, rather than write about mindfulness, I decided to browse for information on the attention span of goldfish.

Almost immediately I discovered that I am not the first to do this. Among those who have, Ray Adams is very skeptical about Google searches and attention span research. He could not confirm the actual attention span of goldfish (or people for that matter). Back to goldfish. Ken McCall did an even more thorough search. He traced the statistic back to the Statistic Brain, but they don’t explain its source either. They define attention span as “the amount of concentrated time on a task without becoming distracted.”

A 2014 Ministry of Truth blog also can’t find a source for attention span in goldfish, likening it to another widely touted goldfish characteristic–that goldfish have a 3-second memory span (how long something is remembered). However, that assertion was debunked by scientists in two studies showing that goldfish memories could last for months.

Lorenzetti may have gotten her information from a recent publicized article by Microsoft Canada, Attention Spans, reporting research on human attention span in the digital age. They used the goldfish 9-second statistic.

The researchers found that Canadian attention spans are decreasing, but people are able “to do more with less,” making decisions based on little information. The Microsoft study’s goal was to advise advertisers on digital messaging. Their advice was to be concise, novel, and interactive where appropriate.

The Microsoft researchers didn’t study goldfish or give advice on how to get their attention. Should we just be amazed that we function as well as we do with such short attention spans?

Research will continue on human attention span in the digital age because it affects how we learn and communicate. But is attention span the same no matter what we are involved in? While my attention span for Lorenzetti’s article was short, it was quite substantial for researching goldfish and writing this blog.

So, I’m not convinced that we are losing out to goldfish. Now, if we could measure goldfish attention span while they’re surfing the Internet or playing Grand Theft Auto….

*From Swinging on a Star by Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen

Flipping the Curriculum

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When I realized I was a technology immigrant trying to learn Technology As A Second Language℠ (see previous blog TSL℠: Do You Speak It?), I hadn’t yet read Marc Prensky’s two amazing articles,  Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants and Do They Really Think Differently? Part II.

Turns out we are on the same wavelength. In 2001, Prensky had already defined digital natives as those who have grown up with technology and digital immigrants as those who did not. While my focus has been on how to educate digital immigrants, his focus has been on how to educate digital natives.

According to Prensky, what makes this digital immigrants/digital natives situation unique is that while traditional immigrants learn the prevailing culture from natives, in education the situation is reversed. Digital immigrants are trying to teach digital natives how to succeed in an increasingly digital world, one that students have a better grasp of than teachers.  Prensky believes that this is “the single biggest problem facing education today.”

There is only a slim, slow chance of solving this problem if digital immigrants continue to obsess about “negative” effects of technology.  Steven Pinker describes the hysteria:

Media critics write as if the brain takes on the qualities of whatever it consumes, the informational equivalent of “you are what you eat.” As with primitive peoples who believe that eating fierce animals will make them fierce, they assume that watching quick cuts in rock videos turns your mental life into quick cuts or that reading bullet points and Twitter postings turns your thoughts into bullet points and Twitter postings.

Even if this were true, we would still have to deal with it. If we are going to help next generations, we need to stop wasting time lamenting basic truths:

  1. Technology has changed everything and will continue to do so.
  2. Using technology rewires the brain and changes the way people think just as driving cars and working in offices changed the brains and thinking of people who rode in buggies and farmed.
  3. Technology means we don’t have to remember as much information as we used to.

Prensky accepts these premises. In his 2014 article, The World Needs a New Curriculum, he explains that the core subjects, math, science, language arts, and history are just “proxies” for teaching what most agree is needed to succeed such as informed thinking, acting, and communicating. We expect students to learn the latter even though they are rarely taught directly.

According to Prensky, modern times require flipping the curriculum to teach what we value most upfront, using subject matter where it fits. He proposes four basic subjects: Effective Thinking such as critical thinking, mathematical thinking, design thinking, and problem solving. Effective Actions such as mindset, grit, and entrepreneurship. Effective Relationships such as communication, collaboration, ethics, and politics. And, Effective Accomplishment which requires students to work on real-world projects. Technology is included as digital natives include it–integrated into whatever is happening.

Prensky doesn’t have all the answers, but his proposals change the focus of the reforming education conversation from how to use technology to teach to how to teach the meaningful thinking that will help students navigate the challenges of a technology world. I think he’s on the right track.

Multiple Choice Questions

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A multiple choice question begins with a stem or lead-in that is addressed by a correct response chosen from a list of alternatives. Writing a good multiple choice question that elicits an answer based on knowledge, not guessing or misunderstanding, is an art. For example:

Who was the twentieth president of the United States?

  1. Rutherford B. Hayes
  2. James A. Garfield
  3. Chester A. Arthur
  4. Grover Cleveland

This question tests recall of the twentieth president. The stem is parsimonious, including only the ideas and words necessary to answer the question. The “distractors” are parallel, possible answers–all presidents from around the same time. Compare to this question:

Choosing the first president of the United States was a tremendous responsibility. He would set precedents for subsequent office holders. The Electoral College unanimously elected George Washington who had led the colonies to victory against the British. James Madison, who was married to Dolly, was the fourth president. Who was the twentieth?

  1. James Brown
  2. LeBron James
  3. James Garfield
  4. James Bond

In this question, the stem is overwritten with information you don’t need to answer the question correctly. Irrelevant information may be testing your reading comprehension more than your twentieth president knowledge. Even if you know the correct answer, you may get it wrong because you can’t get through the reading.

The distractors are implausible. If the correct answer is embedded in a group of possibilities that are totally outlandish, you will get the right answer not because you’ve learned it, but because you can use general knowledge to eliminate the others. That’s a bad question.

If written correctly, a multiple choice question can be very effective at proving mastery in Bloom’s elementary cognitive categories of remembering and understanding, and to a lesser extent in the third category, applying (see previous blog Learning Objectives in Higher Education).

According to Cathy Davidson, educator Frederick J. Kelly introduced multiple choice tests in 1914.  They were intended to improve the equality of grading. Teacher bias as well as individual differences such as wealth or poverty would not prevent a student from being graded correctly. Multiple choice questions also made grading less time-consuming for teachers, freeing them to do more instruction. Incorporated in standardized tests, multiple choice questions allowed us to compare student proficiency in different areas of the country. Good goals, right?

Don’t we share these goals today: To evaluate students without bias. To give them equal opportunity to learn despite where they live or learn. To free instructors to have more time to teach and interact with students. So why are multiple choice questions criticized so much?

Davidson says it’s because we try to use multiple choice questions in areas where they don’t work such as

….problem solving, collaborative thinking,  interdisciplinary thinking, complex analysis, the ability to apply learning to other problems, complexity…creativity, imagination, originality…

Demonstration of these types of learning, Bloom’s applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating, requires more than picking out the right answer if there even is a “right” answer. Kelly created multiple choice questions to measure basic skills important to twentieth century American work and citizenship. He admitted that they only tested “lower-order” thinking.

Extending the multiple choice format to measure higher-order thinking results in many flawed questions. Piled one on top of the other in repetitive quizzes or long tests, these ill-conceived items become anxiety-provoking, deadening experiences for students. In this context, they are weak indicators of student learning achievement.

Through digital programming we have the potential to create robust profiles of students showing how they process, retain, and apply information. This gives us the opportunity to approach the challenge of assessing student performance from a fresh perspective, one that may even use testing rarely. Let’s start by identifying the problem we want to solve: How do we make sure that students have learned what they need to learn to be successful in the world?

Now to test your understanding:

Which statement best describes this blog writer’s point of view?

  1. Multiple choice questions are easy to write.
  2. Multiple choice questions test critical thinking.
  3. We should rethink how we assess learning.
  4. We should never use multiple choice questions.

I Say Sitzfleisch, You Say Grit

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With all due respect to my education professors in graduate school, most of what I know about learning and teaching came from my mother who never went to college. She told me that the key to success is sitzfleisch. Sitzfleisch is a word that comes from the German, literally, sitting on your ass.

In English, sitzfleisch is the ability to focus on a task whether or not it is engaging for the amount of time needed to master or complete it which is not necessarily the amount of time you want to spend on it. Yes, all of that. According to Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, 

Sitzfleisch is sort of the opposite of Ants In Your Pants. The amount of sitzfleisch you’ve got will directly influence how much work you can produce. How long can you stand it, to sit there and push through? Inspiration is beautiful, imagination divine, and we all love soaring dreams. But sitzfleisch? Ass meat? THAT’S how you write your novel. That’s how you compose your symphony. That’s how you paint your masterpiece.

Nowadays, a great deal of research is being done on sitzfleisch only it’s called grit and self-control. Psychologist Angela Duckworth, leads the research in this area. This is how she defines these terms:

Self-control entails aligning actions with any valued goal despite momentarily more-alluring alternatives; grit, in contrast, entails having and working assiduously toward a single challenging superordinate goal through thick and thin, on a timescale of years or even decades.

Duckworth’s work is ongoing. She is proving in study after study that self-control or grit or a combination of both, is more highly correlated to success in school and life than IQ and talent. So, of course, now everyone wants grit and self-control especially for their children. How do we teach them grit?

Duckworth admits she doesn’t know–yet. She says that Carol Dweck’s growth mindset (see previous blog post, Failing is for Everyone) may be one of the ways to get there. In growth mindset, when the process of learning is explained to children, when they are told that success means hard work and pushing through failure, they stay the course.

Being aware of the learning process helps prepare us for its challenges. People who are gritty not only know that they can “push through,” they have strategies to shore up their staying power. Next time you have “ants in your pants” try one of these actions:

  • Look at how much you have accomplished and how much further you have to go. Then, make realistic goals for yourself.
  • Give yourself a moment to think about what pushing through now will get you in the immediate future (time for dinner with your significant other? freedom to kick back and relax?) or in the long run (a condo in the city? worldwide recognition?)
  • Call a friend to complain to for a few minutes. Make sure it’s a friend who empathizes with you and values your succeeding. (Not the friend who says, “I hear ya, screw it, come party with us!”)

The more you practice grit and self-control, the easier it will get, and the more successful you will be.