Make It Stick: Part 1

This week I’ve been setting aside 2-3 hours a day to prep my newly revamped class. Back in November when students were registering for Spring classes, I wrote an open letter to my potential students describing my grand plans. Over the holidays I came up with a theme to wrap around the course content. Since then I have made a list of all key content learning objectives for the course (it was a three-page bulleted list) and where each could be found in the textbook. I did tell the students that my plan was not to slavishly follow the textbook, although I do want to make sure I cover the same content as my other colleagues teaching second semester General Chemistry (there are seven sections running). It would be bad if my students did not cover the requisite material needed for subsequent courses that require General Chemistry as a prerequisite.

The next thing I did was drawing up a calendar of all class meetings for the semester. I started putting in potential topic names in a sequence. Some examples are:

·      Rocket Fuel: Work, The First Law, Enthalpy as a proxy for Energy

·      Quality of Energy, “Wasted” Energy, Riddle of Spontaneity

·      Energy in the DuraCell: Galvanic Cells and Batteries

·      Energy in the Cell: The ATP Currency, Coupling Endergonic/Exergonic

·      Primordial Soup: Colligative Properties

·      Before Continents: What’s in a Saltier Sea? Weak acids, bases and salts

·      Primordial Soup: Effect of a high CO₂ atmosphere

I then associated these “topics” with their corresponding content learning objectives. If you teach (or have taken) the equivalent of first-year college chemistry, you will probably know what I’m covering in most of these. (The one not-so-obvious example on CO₂ is an exercise I’ve used before: Students figure out the relationship between the partial pressure of CO₂ and pH of the solution, requiring playing around with a number of different equilibrium constants. There is evidence that early earth’s atmosphere had a much higher CO₂ content compared to today.) As you can tell the topics cover my twin themes: Energy and the Origin of Life.

For my “fun” chapter-a-night reading, I’ve been going through make it stick: The Science of Successful Learning. The authors, Peter Brown, Henry Roediger III, and Mark McDaniel, discuss what is known about learning from cognitive science, and come up with a list of very helpful and practical suggestions of how to improve teaching and learning. Some of their tips seem counter-intuitive to students, but the authors make good arguments (backed up with evidence), as to why the seemingly intuitive approach of novice learners results in shallower learning.

A theme in the book is that deeper learning is effortful. This comes as no surprise. I expect my students to put in the effort if they want to learn well. However I sometimes wonder that my “clean-and-clear” approach makes things feel a little too easy for them in class. By this I mean that because they listen to and enjoy my clear lectures (yes, students do say this on my teaching evaluations), many of them have a false sense of knowing the material. It seems easy and straightforward because I, as the teacher, have pre-digested and pre-packaged the material in an easy-to-use format. The authors write: “Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow.”

On the other hand, my classes are very high-paced, and so the students do have to pay attention to keep up. (The other comment on my evaluations from some students is that I’m too fast.) Strong students and others who do the pre-reading assignments are usually fine. But the weaker students who don’t prepare for class find it a struggle, and not the positive kind. For a teacher finding the right balance is always tricky when there is a large range of student preparation and ability. Many of my students, though, want learning to feel easy. That is, they seem to equate “getting it quickly” with learning. I’m not sure whether it’s a generational thing and whether kids immersed in today’s multimedia are wired differently. (That’s a topic for another post that will complement my previous neuroscience posts!)

In the book, the authors discuss interleaved practice being far superior for deeper learning compared to massed practice. Massed practice is just repeating something over and over again until you’ve burned it into memory. Examples given by the authors are repetitive re-reading and cramming for exams. I certainly discourage my students from doing this (even though I used the cramming approach in school, and learned nothing, thereby having to re-learn the material later). Interleaved learning on the other hand introduces varied topics and repeats things at different times and in different contexts. Opportunities to retrieve what is being learned (by self-testing and reflection) also lead to long-term gains.

Interleaved learning however feels more difficult because you’re moving on to something else before you feel you’ve grasped the current topic (at least at first encounter), but studies show that the learning and recall is more durable at the end. Massed practice on the other gives the illusion of learning in the short term. The authors compare this to binge-and-purge eating: “A lot goes in, but most of it comes right back out in short order.” On the other hand: “The simple act of spacing out study and practice in installments and allow time to elapse between them makes both the learning and the memory stronger, in effect building habit strength.”

This reminded me to check that I was indeed setting up interleaved learning at appropriate points in my course plan. So this afternoon I went back over my calendar of topics and tried to map out where the most important concepts and skills are revisited. In a number of cases, the time interval may be too long so I will have to make some adjustments either by re-ordering the topics or by providing appropriate “recall” exercises at the appropriate times. It also makes me wonder if I should jettison opening the class with nuclear energy since there aren’t many good places to bring it up again in connection with other topics. I’ll have to ponder this over the next couple of days.

The other thing I was reminded of is thinking about how to engage students in reflection. I’ve been toying with the idea of blog posts and discussions, and to perhaps have students submit a portfolio of their reflections (a “greatest hits” selection) periodically over the semester. But instead of my grading it, perhaps I should ask the students to suggest the grade their portfolio deserves based on a rubric that I will need to provide. I’ve only used blogs/forums in specialized non-majors courses or special topic chemistry courses but not in the “standard” courses required for the major. Hence I don’t have much experience with this approach and I’ve always struggled to grade them. Maybe this reflection portfolio is worth trying. More to ponder over the next several days.