The Miseducation of Tamara Sanderson

(Source: Texas Co-op Power Magazine)

Two of my friends are in town this week. Akshay is speaking at a Social Impact conference; Amrita flew over to visit him (and subsequently, me).

Last night, we were discussing what we remember from high school and college.  

The unanimous agreement: very little.  

I can do basic algebra, but don't give me a graphing calculator.  I have no idea what I was pressing into my TI-89 in Calculus.  Amrita & Akshay both went to ITT Bombay, which has a crazy hard placement test -- I'm sure they studied WAY more than I did in high school, yet still, same answer.

So, why do we remember so little?

Well, Akshay has a theory that he's applying to his new for-profit / non-profit business in India, Avanti Fellows.

In most university classrooms, lecturing (1 professor to many students) is the most common form of teaching.  I always assumed this was a proven, studied method, perfected in the ivory towers of academia.

False.

The lecture style of teaching originated due to money.  Books were expensive, so it was easier to have one book per class, which was taught verbally by a teacher to the class.

The underlying cause of the "lecture style of teaching" has changed (i.e., books are cheap and accessible), but the effect has stayed the same (i.e., we still use the lecture style of teaching).

(Source: Alejandro Guijarro) 

That seems messed up.  Luckily, people are trying to change that teaching model.

Eric Mazur, a physics teacher at Harvard, thought he was a good teacher until he realized his students were memorizing information, not learning to understand the material.  

How did he figure this out?  

He started giving a "first principles of physics" quiz on the first day of class.  Even though the students made good grades and passed tests (I mean, it is Harvard), their scores on the same quiz only improved by 7% by the last day of class.  They learned the test, not physics.

So, what is he doing instead?

It's called peer instruction.  

• The "lecture" turns into pre-work
• The class kicks off with a 10 min video or lecture reviewing the concepts from the pre-work
• The video then follows with a concept quiz (not for a grade).  It needs to:
• Be on one concept
• Not solvable by equations
• Have plausible incorrect answers based on common misunderstandings
• Have unambiguous wording
• Aim at 30% - 70% of students arriving at the right answer
• Take 1 minute to arrive at the answer
• Students raise a card with their answer to the quiz
• Students then find a person that disagrees with their answer and spend 3-5 minutes debating
• The instructor then polls the class again.  ~80% of the class should now arrive at the right answer
• A typical class should have:
• Intro video / lecture (10 min)
• 3 concept quizes / debates (10 min each * 3 = 30 min)
• Closing video / lecture (10 min)

Through this method, Eric Mazur was able to get his students to learn, not memorize. 


PS - Here's a few other things that don't make sense in our education system

• Summer breaks: They originated so kids could help out on the farm during the "growing system."  Now, most folks are urbanites, but still have 3 months off.  I loved it, but it's not good for kids (they forget a lot of what was taught) or working parents
• School hours:  The rise of free public education coincided with the industrial revolution.  Why?  The rich wanted to make sure they had a subservient working class that could sit in factories for 8 to 10 hour days.  We still have the same "schools days," even though we know that people can only concentrate in chunks.  It'd be better to have 45 minutes of intense learning, followed by something creative or physical (art, music, running) as a release.

(Source: Paul Chiappe)