Facilitating Learning: Delivering Course Content

Introducing Ways of Learning  

The following information comes from James R. Davis and Bridget D. Arend's book Facilitating Seven Ways of Learning. 

The book covers seven approaches to organizing our teaching and learning facilitation:

1. Building Skills: Behavioral Learning
2. Acquiring Knowledge: Cognitive Learning
3. Developing Critical, Creative, and Dialogical Thinking: Learning through Inquiry
4. Cultivating Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Abilities: Learning with Mental Models
5. Exploring Attitudes, Feelings and Perspectives: Learning through Groups and Teams
6. Practicing Professional Judgement: Learning through Virtual Realities
7. Reflecting on Experience: Experiential Learning

Please note that these are not learning styles (visual, auditory, etc.). Those have little evidence of effectiveness in student learning. The learning approaches that Davis and Arend identify are about organizing and presenting learning opportunities. They are facilitation patterns or structures - ways to deliver course content, consider assessments, and engage with students in a variety of ways.

Moving Away from Lectures

In particular, these approaches are alternatives to the traditional college learning paradigm of lectures. Six of the seven organize and design learning with an emphasis on individual and or group efforts, application and discussion. But, we will start with the most traditional form first. 

Because the hope is to avoid this from happening:

“A lecture is a process by which the notes of the professor become the notes of the students without passing through the minds of either.” 

(Davis and Arend 72)  

 

Selecting a Pattern of Learning

The approaches or patterns are not created equal. But, many can be used in most disciplines in the same quarter. The best way to choose a method is to consider the course outcome and review a series of questions. 

• Is this learning that involves a procedural or physical skill? Is it something observable and concrete?
• Is this learning that involves information acquisition?
• Is this learning that involves criticizing information, evaluating arguments and evidence, or reasoning to arrive at something?
• Is this learning that involves solving problems or making decisions?
• Is this learning that involves changing opinions, attitudes, or beliefs?
• Is this learning that requires the development of judgement be practiced in a safe environment?
• Is this a kind of learning that occurs when immersed in real-life work, service or travel experience?

Each bullet point there references a different kind of learning, and while some of the questions could probably be answered "yes" for a variety of course outcomes, others cannot. Remembering that variety is the spice of life, I hope you will consider creating an effective and interesting class based on a combination of approaches. 

#1: Building Skills: Behavioral Learning

If the skill that you are trying to teach is one that you can answer "yes" to the following questions, you may consider using behavorial learning appraoches: 

• Is this learning that involves a procedural or physical skill?
• Is this something concrete and observable that a student performs?
• Is it a routine (though not necessarily easy) set of mental or physical operations that can be broken into steps and easily observed? Is there one best way to perform this skill? Is this a task or student attempts and through feedback can get better at it? 

Useful for a variety of skills, behavioral learning can range from simple to complex. It is best used for tasks or processes that have a right and a wrong way to do them. If efficiently performing tasks with a high level of accuracy is the goal, then behavioral learning is a good choice.

 

What Students Learn	Origins and Theory	Common Methods/What the Teacher Provides	Benefits
Physical and procedural skills where accuracy, precision, and efficiency are important	Behavioral psychology, and operant conditioning	Tasks and procedures; practice exercises	Improved psychomotor skills for routine to complex tasks

Many faculty are familiar with Bloom’s taxonomy Links to an external site. Often, the emphasis on higher-order skills - like analysis and evaluation - creates a perception that lower-order skills are unnecessary or unimportant. WHile high-level skills may be the ultimate goal, starting at the beginning - at the bottom of bloom’s list with remembering and understanding - may be best. Remind yourself and your students that it is okay to be beginners. 

A couple of examples of important behavioral skills from two classes are :

• Foreign language teachers encouraging students to pronounce new words over and over again while providing feedback on pronunciation
• Nursing students learning to draw blood refine their techniques through small improvements - like changing the angle of the needle or adjusting the tightness of the tourniquet (46)

Different from cognitive knowledge, behavioral knowledge is about actions. This process is often seen in animal behavior studies. If you can train a pigeon to peck a button with a specific symbol on it, you can train a student to perform a specific action that can build into complex tasks. The background on this is called operant conditioning.

Authors of the book suggest that the best approach for sharing behavior is a four-step process:

1. A clear, agreed-upon observable objective (skill) is established. 
2. A measure of existing skill or present performance is established. 
3. The skill is broken into steps of appropriate size and difficulty. 
4. Successive approximations of the goal are reinforced, providing incentive and feedback until the skill has been shaped.

For the first step is to make sure that they express precise and observable objectives for our students. These are not necessarily the same as course outcomes, but they should be closely related. Additionally, we must ensure that our expectations for student performace is appropriate for the course level. We ask: What is the appropriate level to expect for your students? Are those expectations appropriate for novices? Where/when else might this skill be taught and assessed in the program?

For the second step, it's key to undertand the complexities. Students arrive with a variety of skills, and skill level varies across a classroom. Make sure to start at the beginning in terms of your expectations, and don't measure skills not taught in your classes. It's easy to confuse connected skills with target one. Connected skills are knowledge or behaviors that are connected to the outcomes that you are hoping to measure but not actually the goals. For example, maybe you plan to measure a specific skill through technology. But, if students have to master another skill (perhaps writing, or test taking, or even tecnology) to demonstrate course content mastery, it's possible you are not measuring the target. For example, if you teach math, but you have students submit their solutions through Canvas, techincal skills might get in the way of stuedents showing their true math skills. 

Step three is breaking down the steps. Task analysis is breaking down the many, complex steps that are part of any behavioral skill. Because we are experts, we often suffer from expert blindspots that make it more difficult to communicate with novices. For example, culinary instructor might tell students that a sauce should be thick, but what does thick mean to a novice cook? It's key to communicate all parts of any task. One additional way that faculty can support behavioral learning is to model actions. Watching alone does not mean mastery for most people, but it shows clear learning gains. Some of it is simply helping students overcome fear about performance. 

The final step is reinforcing learning. Faculty can provide positive or negative reinforcement, and the most important aspect is connecting behaviors with the objective. Through behavioral learning, students connect certain actions with reinforcement (praise, self confidence, points, moving onto the next step, etc.). Reinforcement may be external - good grades, compliments - but it also might be intrinsic - pride in a job well done. Negative reinforcement can be repetition of missed skills, low grades, critical remarks, failing a class, or even critical remarks. Extinction is the withholding of reinforcement selectively, in the hopes that specific behavior goes away. Rather than saying something negative about a specific unwanted or incorrect behavior, a teacher will say nothing positive or negative until (HOPEFULLY) the student learns through the lack of feedback that the behavior is not useful. Essentially, it is the absence of reinforcement. Research shows that punishment is good for stopping behavior but not good for establishing it. To learn something, students benefit from positive reinforcement. But, if students are struggling, punishment of unwanted behaviors can teach them something. Overused, it has a seriously detrimental effect on learning, so it has to be used sparingly. 

In general, students need MORE feedback for behavioral learning than other types, and the more specific (not just good or bad, right or wrong) and timely (just in time feedback) the better.

Whatever skills you are trying to teach to students, make sure that you have intentionally designed the learning target, the instruction that supports it, and the assessment carefully.   

 

#2: Cognitive Learning 

Acquiring knowledge through cognitive learning is one of the more traditional ways that students learn. Often connected with lecturing - which has gotten a bad reputation lately - it is still one of the most straightforward and effective ways for students to learn IF DONE WELL. Of course, it is not always done well, so it is important to pause and think about what is required for learning to take place

The table below identifies some key aspects of cognitive learning.

What Students Learn:	Origins and Theory:	Common Methods/ What the Teacher Provides:	Benefits:
Basic information, concepts, and terminology in a discipline or field of study	Cognitive psychology; attention, information processing, and memory	Presentations, Explanations	the building block for other types of learning; “still one of the key reasons students give for going to college”

Sometimes, I believe that faculty get caught up in a sort of overly high expectation of the more advanced skills from Bloom’s taxonomy. We want to push toward analysis and synthesis, without having covered knowledge building. Starting from the basics makes sense. 

This slide is a summary of and simplification of several cognitive models developed by Davis and Arend:

 

Attention is often a limiting factor in this process. And, while it is easy to put all the responsibility on students for paying attention, both students and faculty are responsible. Understanding that humans are not built for paying attention to two attention-rich activities at the same time is key. Researchers studying students born into the info age coined the term “continuous partial attention” to describe the need for direction and guidance required for some people to focus the dim attention that they usually pay to certain tasks. For more information, there are additional resources in the TLC's course from James Lang's book Distracted. 

The authors developed a series of 16 rules around a couple of topics to keep faculty focused on developing cognitive learning.

First, ATTENTION RULES:

Rule 1: Whatever it takes, get their attention. 

Rule 2: Tell students what to focus their attention on.

Rule 3: Don’t overload the system.

Rule 4: Slow down and regain attention when necessary.

Rule 5: Don’t try to compete with distractions. 

Super complex perceptions of our experience, but three elements are key to info processing - context, meaning, prior knowledge. 

 

First, context. How info is presented affects our perception of it. Order and sequence are key to organizing info in meaningful ways. And, sadly, the points of reference - the examples, the phrases, the pop culture references, make a difference in learning. When there is a large experience or age gap between faculty and students, problems are bound to occur. Next, meaning. Our brains work hard to make meaning of our sensory input, but there is no automatic one-to-one relationship between experience and meaning. What two people both experience may have varied individual interpretations. This is true of lectures, of readings, and even individual words. Finally, prior knowledge. Our brains try to make connections of new info to old. Meaning is often determined by prior knowledge, and processing is quick and easy when it is connected with previously learned info. We develop mental “scripts” for many things - from starting a new college class to ordering at a Chinese restaurant. It is about mental efficiency. But, when new situations don’t fit old or when we don’t communicate info because of our own expert blind spots, we struggle. 

Next, the authors identify RULES FOR EFFECTIVE INFORMATION PROCESSING. This list provides reminders to faculty that help support cognitive learning:

Rule 6: Recognize that interpretations always occur.

Rule 7: Help students discover the overall structure in the information being presented. 

Rule 8: Present information in context.

Rule 9: Help students with meaning making. 

Rule 10: Build strong bridges from prior knowledge to new information. 

Rule 11: Use visuals and imagery to aid with memory

Rule 12: Devise ways to ensure that students are actively involved. 

The final list of rules focuses on memory. There are the RULES FOR SUPPORTING MEMORY FORMATION:

Rule 13: Allow time for short-term memory to function.

Rule 14: Explode the myth of automatic memory/faulty recall. 

Rule 15: If needed, provide student with mnemonic devices.

Rule 16: Let students know that rehearsal alone doesn’t work well.

I invite you to think about the ways that cognitive learning could be useful in your discipline and support your instructional style. 

 

#4 Cultivating Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Abilities: Learning with Mental Models

Consider the following questions before choosing this approach:  

• Is this learning that involves solving problems or making decisions?
• Does it involve challenges for students to organize their knowledge into systematic strategies?
• Do students need to learn how to find and define problems, how to generate solutions, and how to evaluate and choose among solutions?
• Does this learning require students to deal with issues they need to make choices about, weigh the values of different options, and predict outcomes as possibilities?

If you can answer "yes" to the list, then this facilitation style is a great choice. 

Once again, the authors organize the approach this facilitation method by identifying what students learn, the origins of the approach, what the teacher provides, as well as the benefits.

What Students Learn:	Origins and Theory:	Common Methods/ What the Teacher Provides:	Benefits:
Mental strategies for finding solutions and making choices	Gestalt psychology, problems solving and decision theory	Problems, case studies, labs, and projects	Increased skills for both concrete and abstract problem solving; practice to avoid cognitive overload in decision making

Mental models supporting learning for have multiple reasons: 

“When we use mental models, ‘they allow us to set up hypothetical situations, make predictions about outcomes, and mentally ‘run’ the model to test those predictions.’ Most expert problem solvers use mental models to proceed systematically through the various steps involved in solving the problem. Decision makers use mental models to weight the factors in a decision and predict likely outcomes.” 

(Davis and Arend 143)

To effectively use mental models in our classes, faculty need to work hard to set students up for success. We need to be really transparent about WHY we are using this approach and WHAT the students will gain from problem solving and decision making models. Davis and Arend identify key ideas that faculty need to community to students, including an emphasis on skill development and growth mindset, details about how problem solving and decision making actually work, reminders that skills are increased with increased knowledge (in one or more academic areas), and that skill requires practice, practice, and more practice. 

Faculty have a large responsibility to set up effective models - poorly designed problems and questions don't develop skills and frustrate students. It is a learned skill to develop good problems for students to discuss. Some of the key features are clear instructions and context for students, reasonable difficulty, but still complex and open ended.

 

Prepping students for mental models is key. Students often believe that they are born either good or bad at certain skills, and it is essential they understand the possibility to improve in decision making and problem solving. One way to do this is to provide a clear picture of how to problem solve. While some students will have been taught this kind of skills (implicitly or explicitly), providing a transparent overview of the problem solving process attempts to close some equity gaps and also gives a great shared vocab for class discussion. Even if it appears slightly basic for you and some of your students, sharing a document like this and the step-by-step approach in the next slide makes sure that all students have a point of reference for problem solving. 

Defining the Problem Space 

Providing students with terms about the "problem space" used in scenarios allows for everyone to share the same vocabulary and provides a clear definition of what everyone is working toward. Again, well-prepared students may arrive in your classroom with an understanding of this mental model, but defining it for everyone supports transparency. The authors use the following terms and descriptions to describe the problem space:

• • Goal State: the solution. Make sure that the goal is clearly defined and discussed. Misunderstandings about where you are headed can be really difficult to overcome. 
  • Initial state - conditions provided in the problem/scenario define the initial state. Make sure to describe conditions, boundaries, and info available. 
  • Problem space - the distance or gap between initial and goal states.
  • Solution paths - the different paths possible to move from initial to goal state. Usually, a number of options are available. 
  • Operations - steps or actions that must be performed to move from initial to goal state. Often, these are quite challenging.
  • Barriers - obstacles in the solution path. The problem space is filled with barriers. If it were easy to move from initial to goal states, it wouldn’t be a good problem. These are necessary!

Once students have a shared understanding of what they are being asked to do, providing them ways to move from the start to the finish can help students with gaps in their processes. David and Arends developed two process lists to share with students. Both are systematic approaches: one for problem solving and one for decision making. Each list provides students with general steps to take can ensure an effective problem-solving approach. 

Working with Problems Systematically

1. 1. 1. Define the goals.
      2. Decide whether the problem should be solved. 
      3. Identify the givens (facts, figures, info, etc.)
      4. Manage the solution paths.
      5. Do not confuse problem solving with creativity.
      6. Identify the type of problem.

Working with Decision Making Systematically

1. 1. 1. Determine values.
      2. Determine outcomes. 
      3. Weigh the outcomes. 
      4. Generate options. 
      5. Identify attributes of options.
      6. Match attributes to outcomes.
      7. Make a choice. 
      8. Cast the choice as a probability and consider the consequences. 
      9. Predict the likelihood of outcomes. 
      10. Align the steps.

It may seem basic, but equity approaches ensure that all students start with the same skills. And, what may seem like unnecessary info that is know to "everyone," making these assumptions often disadvantages some students. A year or so ago, I discussed goal setting with my College Success students. We talked about the characteristics of clear goals vs. wishes - approaches that many of us as higher ed professionals live and breathe. A student came up after and told me that no one in her family had ever talked about goals or encouraged her to think about the future in any meaningful way. While I was really happy that she gained tools that may change how she moves in the world, I was also really concerned - how many other students felt the same way with info that I expected they knew before they arrived. Being transparent means providing definitions and basic information to everyone. 

Transfer of Knowledge

Students need to avoid becoming good at only one type of problem. If they limit their mental models or skills too much, they fail to understand the interconnectedness of problem solving. Transfer of knowledge is one of the most valued aspects of learning - in many ways, it is the most essential skill that students learn in college. We don’t train people for every aspect of their future jobs; we train people to be effective critical thinkers and to connect knowledge from a broad series of classes and learning to apply to the huge variety of issues they will encounter as future employees, citizens, and human beings. 

It is also one of the more difficult skills to teach. Students get caught up in surface-level thinking, and often siloed degree paths don’t encourage transfer. We can support transfer of knowledge by becoming transparent about the similarities and differences in the problems, as well as how we can focus on deep knowledge structures. We need to provide metacognitive reflection opportunities to encourage students to make the mental leaps that connect skills and tasks. Ask them questions like:

• What if we changed this aspect of the problem?
• Is it the same problem now?
• How does your approach change?
• What do you do similarly or differently now?

Another approach to ensuring transfer is to balance the desire to use a single model with a variety. Using the same one over and over again helps develop skills and familiarity with a specific approach, but using a variety of models helps students avoid getting stuck in the same pattern. 

Finally, consider the ways that faculty can guide and support students while still requiring them to do the work of learning. Davis and Arend suggest this strategies: 

• Step back and observe
• “Just in time teaching” - questions, reminders of facts, taps on shoulders to read/review
• Providing mental models, frameworks, checklists, questions, etc. to encourage procedural effectiveness
• Ask what mental model is being used if there are multiple options - call attention to their thinking
• Reminders about the purpose of the assignment, the outcomes connected, the knowledge or skills being developed, 
• Create awesome, real-world projects, tasks, etc. 
• Provide all the relevant background knowledge before the lab/problem/case study
• Provide low stakes, formative assessments before higher-stakes activities

 

#5: Exploring Attitudes, Feelings and Perspectives: Learning through Groups and Teams

Working with peers and contributing to groups are among the most highly valued skills for employers - a basic expectation of college graduates (178). Choose this approach if you answer yes to questions like:

• Is this learning that involves changing opinions, attitudes, and beliefs?
• Does it involve creating understanding from an awareness of multiple perspectives?
• Does it deal with feelings?
• Does it cultivate empathy?
• Is teamwork or collaboration being addressed here? 

If you can answer "yes" to multiple questions, then this is a good choice. 

What Students Learn:	Origins and Theory:	Common Methods/What the Teacher Provides:	Benefits:
Awareness of attitudes, biases, and other perspectives; ability to collaborate	Human communication theory, group counseling theory	Group activities, team projects	positive interdependence, individual and group accountability, development of teamwork skills, and group processing

 

Humans are often naturally BAD at collaboration, so support and modeling and explicit instruction is required. 

“Unfortunately, collaboration does not always come naturally to Homo sapiens. Although studies of bees, ants, and geese have found that they work together instinctively, humans often need to be taught to collaborate.”

(Davis and Arend 178). 

To effectively use collaboration in our classes, faculty need to work hard to set students up for success. "Group work" has a reputation among students, and most of those student assumptions are negative. We need to be really transparent about WHY we are using this approach and WHAT the students will gain from collaboration. 

Frequent collaboration models include the following: 

Cooperative Learning: “involves the frequent use of structured activities throughout a semester in which students learn in pairs or small groups of three or four” (178). In this format, students work together to find the correct or best solution to a given set of problems, and the teaching keeps them on track by providing just in time learning. 

Collaborative Learning: "Learning in small pairs or small groups of two to six students who work together, but the groups are often loosely structured and based on open-ended goals with no right answers, and the teacher is part of the learning community rather than the authority figure" (179). Collaborative learning encourages dissent and disagreement.

Team-Based Learning: small groups work together throughout the term, and teamwork is alternated with individual work. This approach can be “Used to develop content knowledge as well as application of content and team skills" (179).

Problem-Based Learning Teams: originally designed for medical students, groups of 9 or 10 students work through clinical cases or other unstructured problems. These teams can continue throughout the term or be specific to particular collaborative projects. 

Purpose and Design

Don’t do it just to do it… Group work can be perceived by students as “lazy teaching” so while we shouldn’t use it sparingly, we should have a clear purpose for utilizing collaboration. Have a goal or reason! Frequent reasons include:

• When individual effort is not enough
• To generate ideas
• To bring about a change in perspective
• To broaden participation and cultivate belonging
• To deepen understanding of the subject content by acknowledging different perspectives

Faculty are responsible for effective group design, including determining the right group size, composing the group, orienting the group, providing the task, monitoring progress, managing the arrangements, and interpreting the learning.

Managing Problems

There are frequent problems that come out of group work, and effective design can make a difference from the start. But, even the best laid plans can lead to problems. 

1. Conflict: some conflict in groups is normal and even necessary. The authors indicate that low-level tension is productive. Of course, more serious conflicts are possible, and they sometimes look like refusing to compromise, impatience with each out, dismissing or attacking ideas, or rude comments. Although providing resources for the group to solve problems on their own is preferable, faculty may have to mediate and arbitrate to help the group reach consensus. 
2. Apathy: when one or more of the group member appear to not care or engage, it may really be a result of an undefined task, fear of inadequacy, lack of trust, or even anxiety. Faculty may have to restructure a group to help teams move beyond obstacles.
3. Groupthink: when the desire of a group is to agree rather than consider alternatives. Often, group think close down conversation before everyone has had a chance to contribute and ask questions, or individuals feel pressured into agreeing with others to preserve social harmony. People need to have trust in their teammates to productively disagree and question. Faculty may need to appoint a “devil’s advocate” to give groups permission to pause and discuss.
4. Social Loafing: people often don’t pull their own weight when they believe that it is difficult to perceive individual efforts. We have all seen this phenomenon - when everyone is in charge, no one is effectively responsible. Individual accountability needs to be designed into all collaborative work to ensure reasonably equal efforts. 

Assessment of groups and teams can come in different forms, but you you may decide to assess individual performance (even for collaborative projects) through individual work or reflection on the group process, or have the same grade for all team members, or some combination of the two.