Serendipity35

I was reading an article called "The Problem of 'Pedagogy' in a Web 2.0 Era"  and it got me thinking about how often we throw around that term in higher education even though very few educators at that level have any formal training in it.

Higher education faculty don't get any courses on pedagogy or learning theory in their degree programs. Faculty members in four-year universities are often researchers and their focus is on their research and not on how learning occurs and perhaps not even as much on their own disciplinary knowledge as those at other colleges.

Of course, there should be faculty development efforts at all colleges and those should include workshops and presentations to increase awareness of the basic research in learning theory of the past few decades as well as what is being found currently.

All teachers learn by teaching. That in itself is a learning theory that has several names attached to it. But that learning process is made more efficient by exposing faculty to what we know about pedagogy. That doesn't mean just learning the language of constructivism or Bloom's taxonomy. It means trying out lessons and being exposed to new approaches to what is often very old content.

And if you are teaching older, non-traditional students, then you really should be aware of what has been found to work in the field of andragogy. Pedagogy literally means "leading children" and came first from studies of students in grades K-6 and then later included those in secondary school. Andragogy was a later area of study. Malcolm Knowles and others theorized that methods used to teach children are often not the most effective ways of teaching adults. I think many college professors would say that their students are often somewhere between those two -gogies. The 18 year old freshman, the 21 year old senior, and the 23 year old graduate student are very likely to sit in a classroom with a 28 year old freshman, 35 year old senior and a 50 year old graduate student.

I would love to be in a discussion with a group of interested educators about some learning theory like "situated cognition." If the topic is new to the participants, all the better. Situated cognition is the name given to the theory that knowing is inseparable from doing. It proposes that all knowledge is situated in activity which is bound to social, cultural and physical contexts.

To take this theory on means nothing less than making an epistemological shift from empiricism. To put it into action in a classroom would mean encouraging thinking on the fly rather than the typical back-and-forth of knowledge storage and retrieval. Cognition cannot be separated from the context.

If it sounds radical, it's because it is radical. And yet, students and teachers have been doing it throughout their lives - though probably not very often in a classroom setting.

Do I think this should be the new way to teach? No. But I would love to hear educators talking about it and about learning theories, pedagogy and andragogy with some of the same passion that they discuss their research, promotion and tenure, and contracts.

I was very pleased to see a post titled "Pedagogy – You Keep Using That Word… I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means" by Rolin Moe on his blog All MOOCs, All The Time. He bounced his response off Bryan Alexander's post about a MOOC course called CFHE12 (more later). Although Moe is focused on MOOCs, his question is one I often ask myself when dealing with the use of technology in classrooms.

People toss off the word "pedagogy" easily. I hear vendors use it when pitching products as a way to connect a tool with good teaching practices. I hear educators use it to mean that they have changed their classroom practice.

Using PowerPoint slides instead of writing on the board does not change your pedagogy. It probably doesn't change learning either- and don't tell me it addresses visual learners because those bullet points have some clip art next to them.

As Moe points out, "learning theory" is not pedagogy. Neither of those are topics that many teachers in higher education have ever studied, and that most have probably not even considered formally.

Learning theory is the study of the way people learn. They are conceptual frameworks to describe how information is taken in, processed, and retained. The big three are behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism, but there are others like connectivism that come up in MOOC discussions.

Pedagogy is the blend of art and science and the way we teach.

CFHE12 (Current/Future State of Higher Education) is a course that started last week. It is an open online course to "evaluate the change pressures that face universities, and help universities prepare for the future state of higher education." That's a big mission. Good luck kids.

Some MOOC history: cMOOCs versus xMOOCs. Udadicty/Coursera/edX courses are referred to as examples of xMOOCs.  xMOOCs are based on the teaching model (instructivist) where the teacher teaches, and the students learn by consuming the knowledge from the course, and by doing activities such as watching/hearing a lecture. cMOOCs are based on connectivism.

It's not that no one in education is considering the possible pedagogical and learning theory possibilities and implications of MOOCs. And it's not that there aren't clear connections to online learning that has been researched for decades.

Moe's post references how Coursera courses are self-described as being "designed based on sound pedagogical foundations, to help you master new concepts quickly and effectively" but that those pedagogical foundations are not explained.

In most of these xMOOCs you watch a segmented video lecture, take a quiz during (embedded) or after viewing. There are discussion boards (perhaps with a facilitator) to discuss concepts and ask questions and share knowledge. There might be supplementary resources. There might be a written assignment, but that's hard to assess when there are thousands of students in a course, unless you use peer review.

Described in that way, a lot of people in higher ed might say, "That's new? It sounds like an online course that could have been offered ten years ago. And not even a great online course at that." 

Of course, in 2000, you wouldn't offer the course to 50,000 students. Or have it open to anyone. Or offer it for free. And a learning management system (more likely called a course management system back then) and the bandwidth would never has been able to sustain the activities.

So, is that what is new?

Take a learning theory like constructivism from educational psychology which came out of the work of Piaget and Bruner. It emphasizes the importance of active involvement of learners in constructing knowledge for themselves. It is top-down processing. Start with complex problems (problem-solving, problem based learning) and teach the basic skills while students solve the problems. If you believe in constructivism, you are less likely to believe students will learn deeply by experiencing a lecture or reading a textbook.

Connectivism is a learning theory and cMOOCs seem to rely on the networking of those thousands of students, personal learning networks, digital artifacts, and not much teacher involvement. No teacher, no pedagogy?

And xMOOCs emphasize content over teaching and are very student-centered. If the student utilizes the resources, they can learn, but that is up to the student.

Besides MOOCs, another very buzzy concept this year has been the flipped classrooms. Platforms like Coursera follow a similar model to Khan Academy’s flipped classroom.

Didn't we have flipped classrooms before this? Sort of. We didn't have HD quality video and that bandwidth to stream it. Sal Khan was asked about the research and learning theory behind his Academy, but he passed on the question and allows that others can do the research. Khan also expects his lectures to be used along with teachers to assist students. The "teacher" in a MOOC may be another struggling student.

So, when we talk about MOOCs are we also talking about pedagogy or learning theory? Not yet.  And don't let me get started about andragogy.

For the past ten years, I have had a particular interest in andragogy - learning strategies focused on adults, as opposed to pedagogy. My interest began when I was working in designing online courses for adult learners. But, part of my interest is also personal - especially when I see articles with titles like "How to Train the Aging Brain" which was in The New York Times last week.

Like the author of that piece, Barbara Strauch (The New York Times’s health editor), I'm not all that happy with my aging brain's performance.

Strauch has a book coming out this spring called The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain. The article hints at some of her research and it should be of interest educators who work with adults and educators with aging brains.

Though the brain at middle age isn't as sharp as it might have once been, it actually gets better at some things, like recognizing the central idea, the big picture.

Many theories about the brain have been overturned. We do not lose 40 percent of our brain cells, as was once believed. And, when the brain and body in good shape, the brain continues to build pathways that us recognize patterns faster than a younger brain.

The plasticity of the brain continues longer than was once believed allowing for greater complexity and deeper understanding.

What can educators do to take advantage of these new findings? One way is to challenge the assumptions adult learners have accumulated in their brain full of well-connected pathways. Having learners confront thoughts that are contrary to their own is a good way to "jiggle their synapses a bit."

Reading about andragogy will surely lead you to Alexander Kapp, who introduced the term in 1833, and to Malcolm Knowles in the 1980s who has worked to develop a theory specifically for adult learning.

If you have taught children and taught adults too, you will have observed some differences in adults who are more self-directed and who expect to take responsibility for decisions. There is a definite contrast between self-directed adult education and the 'taught' education we use with children.

Anyone who teaches their evening class full of adult learners in the same way as their morning section full of "traditional" undergrads is doing a disservice to at least one group of students.

- Adults need to know why they need to learn something
- Adults need to learn experientially
- They approach learning as problem-solving
- and they learn best when the topic is of immediate value

For adult learner, we need to focus more more on the process and less on the content being taught. That is why case studies, role playing, simulations, and self-evaluation works better with adult students.

Though we have all heard for the past 20 years that instructors need to be more of a facilitator or resource rather than be a lecturer or grader, that is more important for adult learning situations.

It is also being found that teaching new facts should not be the focus of adult education, though acquiring new information is still important. Encountering new information that challenges our existing perceptions stretches the brain. That includes learning a new language like French or a new programming language, a new way to create a video file or working in an online virtual learning environment for the first time.

New learning and information that comes connected to older learning has an "overlay of complexity" that didn't exist before. Jack Mezirow (Columbia Teachers College), after 30 years of working with adult learners, proposed that adults learn best if presented with what he calls a “disorienting dilemma,” or something that “helps you critically reflect on the assumptions you’ve acquired.”

Like Strauch says in her article, I not only "forget whole books, but movies I just saw, breakfasts I just ate, and the names oh, the names are awful." I'm interested in doing a better job teaching my adult students. I'm also interested in keeping my own brain as sharp as possible.



Books on andragogy by Malcolm Knowles
The Modern Practice of Adult Education: From Pedagogy to Andragogy
Making of an Adult Educator: An Autobiographical Journey

I'm not sure exactly what my reaction is to this report I read about on The Chronicle's Wired Campus blog. It's a report from a group of IT experts who work for companies with ties to the Committee for Economic Development. They say that traditional colleges and universities can learn from for-profit colleges' approach to teaching, especially teaching that occurs online.

What is it we can learn from them? Here are three points.

1. For-profit colleges are more likely than traditional colleges to use disruptive technology if it allows them to serve new markets, or serve markets more efficiently and effectively in order to profit. E-textbooks would be an example.

2. Many for-profits put more of an emphasis on instructor training before allowing them to teach online. These institutions, such as The University of Phoenix, REQUIRE (key word) faculty to participate in a multi-week training programs that include theories of andragogy.

3. Because they are profit-drive, these institutions pay closer attention to costs and outcomes and student achievement rates.

The report committee sponsors include GE, Merrill Lynch and Company, IBM, McKinsey and Company, General Motors, and Pfizer.

Read a summary of the report here.