Three Untruths

Every so often a book catches fire in the world of higher education punditry. The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt is a recent example. I’ve read many articles referring to Coddling, some by people who have actually read the book, and I’ve seen references to it by many others who refer to these articles even if they haven’t read the book for themselves. By the time I put my name on the hold list at my local library, it was quite long. The book finally arrived and now I can say I’ve read it.

Many have commented that the book’s title is less than apt to its content. I agree, but it depends on how one defines the word ‘coddling’. (The authors define it as ‘overprotection’.) The book’s subtitle more aptly presents the problem: “How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure”. One point brought up in Coddling is ‘concept creep’ – the usage of words such as ‘trauma’ and ‘aggression’ are specific examples the authors bring up. Thanks to all the punditry, this book is likely contributing to an expanded definition of the word ‘coddling’. Interestingly, the book’s title did not originate from the authors but from an editor, when the forerunner to the book was published with the same title in The Atlantic.

I’m glad Lukianoff and Haidt were able to expand their thoughts carefully and potentially constructively in the extended form of this book. Over the years I’ve found myself increasingly tempted to consume information through short articles, but that often papers over the nuance and complexity of the issues involved. I have to consciously make an effort to read longer, often denser, treatises to get a better handle on things. (After all, I study complex systems.) If we all took a little more time to read, listen and think, and curb the temptation to knee-jerk reactions of outrageous response, the world might be a better place.

The authors try to do this in their book by first presenting the Three Great Untruths that fuel the vicious cycle of outrage that have been highlighted by the mass media. What makes an insidious Untruth easy to propagate? Popular Lies, those that get repeated over and over again, have a grain of truth in them and they hit close to home. Distorted, yes, but when it resonates, it kinda, sorta feels like it might be true.

First up is the Untruth of Fragility. This perhaps is where Coddling gets its name. The catchphrase? “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.” Play to your strengths! Avoid challenges that might make you look weak! If you get a C in this class, your ambitious dreams are over. If you struggle, you lose pace, and you’re out of the running in the ratrace of life. There is a grain of truth. If the struggle is severe enough (and without recourse or help), it can make you weaker. But human beings time and again show that they are often more robust and come out of a struggle (with scars perhaps) but overall in better shape and able to withstand more challenges.

Next, there’s the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: “Always trust your feelings”. Sometimes your gut instinct tells you the right thing to do. You shouldn’t just discount your feelings – they can be a useful source of information. But emotions don’t always lead you in the right direction, even though there’s something that feels ‘right’ about following your feelings – you’re being ‘true to yourself’. It requires struggle to do something contrary to one’s feelings as if you’re resisting your own ‘will’ so to speak. When someone hurts my feelings, it feels painful. My antagonist might be malicious, but it might also be an honestly unintentioned hurt.

This leads to the Untruth of Us versus Them: “Life is a battle between good people and evil people.” Arguments have been made that humans are, to some extent, evolutionarily wired towards tribalism. Community has many advantages including strength in numbers. Strengthening ties within that community, can often be enhanced by having a common obstacle or enemy to be overcome or withstood. If I’m on the side of Good, anyone who is not on my side is Evil!

The next six chapters discuss the sources of this shift towards these Untruths. The chapter I found most interesting was the analysis of growing anxiety and depression, particularly in iGen – kids born circa 1995 and thus entering college circa 2013. There are multiple possible reasons for this trend, and the authors try to address the available evidence. As you might have guessed, it’s complicated. There is no smoking gun explanation but there are interesting correlations that likely require further study. The graphs showing adolescent depression rates is, well, depressing. Apparently, it’s significantly worse for females compared to males. Cases of “nonfatal self-inflicted injuries” have increased noticeably since 2010, as iGen girls enter their high school years.

“Paranoid Parenting” and “The Decline of Play” are among the six. According to the authors, childhood has become test prep. Although the present book focuses on the U.S. and makes reference to English-speaking countries, it would be interesting to compare the data with East Asia – where test prep reigns supreme in many countries. In my regular job as a college professor, I don’t often interact directly with parents of my students except on graduation day. However, as a student-adviser I’ve noticed more issues related to mental health and intrusively concerned parenting. As an administrator, I’ve seen my share of more complicated cases. All I will say is that things can be quite challenging for today’s youth. I’m glad I grew up in a different milieu, when things seemed truly simpler and less stressful.

To balance the three Untruths, the authors close with a section titled “Wising Up”. There are a number of suggestions. I won’t go through them in detail, but here are three catchphrases mentioned that counter the three Untruths.

·      Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child

·      Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded

·      The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being

There are no simple solutions although the authors briefly discuss societal changes that could steer us away from the intensifying of Coddling. It will be difficult.

Brain Training

Brain games. Do they train your brain? Are they effective?

Are chess players and musicians smarter than the average person?

If you wonder about such questions, you might find a recent article by Sala and Gobet of interest. The title, abstract and citation are shown below. The title tells you the conclusion: Negative evidence. In short, No. But there are some interesting tidbits.

First, we need to define Far Transfer. According to the authors: “Far transfer occurs when a set of skills generalizes across two (or more) domains that are loosely related to each other.” This is in contrast to near transfer where practice in one area helps in a closely related area – no surprise to anyone. Pay attention to this difference because it crops up aplenty in the world of education punditry. You may have encountered this when someone is promoting ‘critical thinking’ as a generalized skill, and that certain habits of mind (or perhaps brain-boosting tricks), will help you think smarter across a wide swath of domains.

Second, this short article is based on meta-analyses. No new data has been generated, but rather the data in previous studies was revisited and examined for “effectiveness of cognitive training”. The sample size is relatively small. Given those caveats, the conclusions are interesting. The studies that showed a positive correlation between chess or music or other brain-training with some improvement in cognitive ability, were in some sense the least rigorous from an experimental design point of view. For more rigorous experimental designs (with better control groups), this correlation disappears. The authors also cite several recent studies that suggest no correlation between brain-training programs or even video games on far transfer.

Perhaps this is not all that surprising. Based on Geary’s work, if some skill is biologically primary, no ‘training’ is needed – it’s already built in through evolution. If biologically secondary, expertise gained is domain-specific, i.e., practicing a particular skill improves your ability in that skill and anything closely related, but doesn’t transfer well in general to activities further afield. The authors write that “…the most obvious practical implications of our findings concern education… Considering the insight gained by the research on expert performance and cognitive training, educational and professional curricula should focus on discipline-related material rather than general principle without any specific reference to a particular subject (e.g., domain-general problem-solving skills).”

One interesting tidbit from the paper is that there is correlation between cognitive ability and expertise in chess players and musicians. However, “there is little evidence that chess or music instruction makes people smarter.” It may be that folks with strong cognitive abilities tend to engage in such activities, but it’s unclear if anything else contributes. More study needed, I suppose.

My daily brain-training comes from the New York Times crossword puzzle. In the early years, I would struggle even with the Monday (easiest) puzzle and my spouse and I would work together to solve the puzzle. We might be able to complete the puzzle in the early half of the week, but Friday and Saturday puzzles (the hardest) were often unfinished by day’s end. Too difficult. After a few years, we could complete all the puzzles together, and that individually we might be able to complete Monday through Wednesday puzzles. Nine years after our initial foray, we can individually complete the puzzle any day of the week. I do mine on paper and she uses her tablet. The only loss? What used to be a joint activity has now become an individual activity, although we do discuss fun and interesting themed features of the puzzle at the end of the day.

How has doing the crossword helped me? Well, I'm certainly better at doing New York Times crosswords. I might even be slightly better at crosswords from other sources, although I don’t do those much. Maybe I’ve gotten a little better at some types of word puzzles, but I’m not sure which. I have learned some trivia, reinforced by certain words that get reused often because of their vowel-consonant combination. Some examples: I’ve never read H.G. Wells’ Time Machine but I know who the Eloi are. I’ve learned a new shade: Ecru. I know that Melville wrote another whale-like novel called Omoo. And I now know a number of different famous or semi-famous individuals named Omar. My vocabulary of four-letter words (of the non-offensive kind) has also likely increased.

So much for brain training. The article is a bummer in that sense. Maybe I could call it the Brain Train Drain.

Sleep and Dreaming

When I was in college, the most popular elective class was “Sleep and Dreaming” offered by the Psychology department. Unfortunately, I was never able to fit it into my schedule but many of my friends took it – word on the street was that it was a ‘low workload’ class. I’ve been interested in the subject for a long time for two reasons, though. I had insomnia problems for many years, although thankfully those seem to have gone away with age. And I think I’m a lucid dreamer.

Why We Sleep by the neuroscientist Matthew Walker is the most interesting book I’ve read thus far. It’s aimed at the general public but is chock-full of scientific information. Reading it gives you the strong impression that the author is pushing sleep as the panacea to all manner of problems, but he does try to back it up with evidence.

The book opens by describing the latest knowledge in the science of sleep. It’s still mysterious but scientists now know a lot more about the process. Your sleep and wakefulness is determined by your circadian rhythm, typically following close to a twenty-four-hour cycle. The rise and fall of melatonin follows this rhythm in concert. The second factor is sleep pressure, controlled by adenosine. This substance keeps rising in concentration until relieved by sleep, which ideally happens after sixteen hours of wakefulness. Optimally you should try to get seven to nine hours of sleep per night. I also learned that evolutionary, our bodies naturally hit a lull in the early afternoon after lunch around siesta time. I used to take afternoon naps back in my younger days because I would only get to sleep in the wee hours of the morning. It was a vicious cycle of sorts.

You might call me a night-person – personified by the owl. The owl’s opposite is the lark. My spouse is a morning person – the lark. Early on we realized that conversations on complex matters should not be initiated early in the morning or later in the evening. Over the years I’ve slowly tried to move my circadian rhythm from owl to lark. I’ve been successful thanks to the aging process. While the circadian clock shifts rapidly to owl-ness starting at puberty and peaking at college age adolescence, there is a slow move back to lark-ness over the next twenty years. (This is from a large-scale German study from a number of years back.)

The sleep cycle comes in roughly 90-minute blocks, and the typical good sleeper has five cycles per night. There are five stages in each cycle: Being awake, REM, NREM Stage 1, NREM Stage 2, and finally NREM Stages 3-4 also known as slow wave sleep. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement, the only thing part of your body you can move – your system ‘paralyzes’ everything else during this stage. Dreaming happens during REM sleep. NREM, or non-REM, sleep is when you are zonked out and you don’t remember anything.

Why do we have these different sleep phases? Walker offers a theory: “the uneven back-and-forth interplay between NREM and REM sleep is necessary to elegantly remodel and update our neural circuits at night, and in doing so manage the finite storage space within the brain… [This] requires identifying which memories are fresh and salient, and which memories that currently exist are overlapping, redundant, or simply no longer relevant… deep NREM sleep, which predominates early in the night, is to do the work of weeding out and removing unnecessary neural connections. In contrast, the dreaming stage of REM sleep, which prevails later in the night, plays a role in strengthening these connections.”

In your first couple of sleep cycles, you quickly move to deep NREM (slow wave) sleep and spend most of your time in that state. However, in later cycles, the amount of NREM decreases while REM increases. In the last stage before waking up in the morning, your sleep is mostly REM – which is why your dreams often happen in this final stage, and sometimes you can still remember them upon waking up!

Walker spends a section describing the benefits of sleep for learning. Before learning, it “refreshes our ability to initially make new memories”. Yes, there are sleep studies to test this, and yes, they involve napping and then taking a learning test! This seems to be tied to stage 2 (lighter) NREM sleep, particularly with bursts of electrical activity known as ‘sleep spindles’. But there’s also a benefit of sleeping after learning. “Sleep protects newly acquired information, affording immunity against forgetting: an operation called consolidation.” Deep NREM sleep is helpful here. Pulling an all-nighter before the exam without getting any rest in between is a recipe for not doing so great – although it might be better than no studying whatsoever. My recommendation to students: Get at least half a night’s sleep, if you can’t get the preferred full night. The first half is where you get the most deep NREM sleep.

What’s REM good for? Walker points out that humans have more intense REM sleep compared to all other mammals. He posits REM sleep and dreaming as key to “(1) our degree of sociocultural complexity, and (2) our cognitive intelligence.” It turns out that “REM sleep exquisitely recalibrates and fine-tunes the emotional circuits of the human brain.” Secondly, it fuels creativity: “REM sleep helps construct vast associative networks of information within the brain.” And yes, they’ve done experiments to try to figure all this out. I highly recommend reading Walker’s book for details! Want to get smarter? Get enough sleep.

One interesting chapter discusses “changes in sleep across the life span”. Sleep looks different in utero, during childhood, adolescence, midlife and old age. At the end of the book, Walker very strongly encourages moving high school start times to later in the morning. If anything, it significantly decreases teenage driving mortality in the early morning when kids don’t get enough sleep. He also exhorts the medical profession to change their grueling hours. Mistakes get made when you don’t get enough sleep. There’s another interesting chapter about sleeping pills. Quick summary: Don’t take them. They do the wrong things. Longer, detailed version: Read the book.

In the chapter on dreaming, Walker posits an intriguing theory: “Perhaps it is not time that heals all wounds, but rather time spent in dream sleep… REM-sleep dreaming offers a form of overnight therapy… [taking] the painful sting out of difficult, even traumatic, emotional episodes you have experienced during the day… [there’s] an astonishing change in the chemical cocktail of your brain that takes place during REM sleep.” Walker describes a powerful research example where a drug used to treat high blood pressure in veterans turned out to alleviate PTSD – by suppressing noradrenaline in the brain. It also turns out that REM sleep helps in “reading expressions and emotions of faces” and why certain types of autism are correlated to sleep problems. Walker calls REM-sleep dreaming an “emotional tuner”.

There is a separate chapter on “Dream Creativity and Dream Control”, and I was pleased that for the latter there are a number of MRI studies confirming that some people can indeed control our dreams. I do occasionally have a wild creative dream or one where I design a back-of-the-envelope chemistry card game. Others have claimed that groundbreaking ideas come through dreams. But most of my dreams are quite mundane and a number of them involve food and eating. Dreaming of the smell of food doesn’t quite match the real thing! Oh well. At least I’m enjoying my yummy sleep.

P.S. And in celebration of Pi Day, here's an older post reviewing How to Bake Pi.

Transmitting Knowledge: Dragonrider Version

Today’s guest post is encapsulated in the title below. Enjoy!

Literacy and orality in Dragonflight: The Dragonriders of Pern

“When is a legend a legend? Why is a myth a myth? How old and disused must fact be for it to be relegated to the category “fairy-tale”? And why do certain facts remain incontrovertible while others lose their validity to assume a shabby, unstable character?”

So begins Dragonflight, the first book in the Anne McCaffery’s classic SF&F series The Dragonriders of Pern, which I finally read for the first time.

To the questions above, the first words in the book’s Introduction, I would add—“What roles do literacy or orality play in determining whether these legends are handed down as myth or fact? Whether traditions are upheld or discarded? Whether knowledge is kept or lost?

The premise of Pern is that it is a planet colonized by people from Earth, but this was so long ago that the people of Pern no longer remember their origins. Though they must have had advanced technology, they have now reverted to a feudal society, with lords and holds and guilds and slaves.

What they do remember, because they still have them, is that their squad or company of dragon-creatures and riders are supposed to protect them from something called Threads, dangerous outpourings from another planet which occur whenever that planet comes too close in orbit (usually every 200 years or so) and which, if allowed to fall to the ground, would render it barren and unable to support human life. The idea is that the dragons breathe fire and scorch the Threads before they reach the ground.

However—and here’s where the question of myth and fact comes in—the Threads have not fallen for over 400 years, and not just the lords of Pern, but even some dragonriders themselves have begun to question whether they truly did exist at all.

Where literacy and orality come in, is Pern is an interesting society that has kept both written records (on animal hide, so the very old pieces are starting to harden and become illegible), as well as a strong oral tradition (with harpers responsible for learning, writing and singing songs, and through them, transmitting knowledge to the next generation).

New dragonriders learn their roles and responsibilities via special Teaching Songs, which they must memorize, along with other things like Disaster Sagas and Laws—they must be able to write these down, word-perfect, many times. So the passing of knowledge is largely oral, though assisted by literacy. It seems that in reverting to a quasi-feudal system, the oral culture that goes with it has also overshadowed any literate culture.

At the same time, the Weyrleader, the dragonriders’ captain, has access to archives which he uses to predict when the next Threads will fall, and where. With the secrets of the Threads as well as belief in their coming lost from living memory, he turns to the written records to learn the ways of his ancestors. From them, he is able to glean fact and detail that convince him that the threat is real.

When he needs help and ideas, he searches the Records to discover methods that could help defeat the Threads, given his limited resources—the Weyr is in decline due to internal issues as well as lack of support from a now unbelieving public—or rather, their lords—who no longer send the traditional tithe to the dragonhold.  (The lords behave, in fact, like today’s anti-vaxxers, who have forgotten the horrors of children dying from disease and decide that they no longer need these defences.)

  

Outside the insular Weyr, the importance of the dragonriders’ role and the threat of the Threads is being lost, as memories fade and the lords prohibit harpers from singing the old ballads of the dragonriders’ heroic deeds, so that they (the lords) can shirk their responsibilities. Duties such as ensuring there is no green grass close to human habitations are forsaken, as the reasons behind these traditions become obscure. The oral culture here is paramount, and when the songs are no longer sung, the populace begins to forget.

At the same time, it seems like knowledge is still being passed down in word and deed not just in the Weyr, but also in the guilds—the weavers, smiths, and others have also kept written records, which they can consult. Visual literacy is also relevant: in the absence of written texts, a tapestry serves as a vital historical document. The ability to sketch images to serve as visual references turns out to be very important as well.

In Dragonflight, it seems that losses of oral transmission (harpers’ songs, safety practices, use of some tools) has led to the disbelief and discarding of tradition, while written knowledge is preserved and provides vital clues. The written record is also patchy—some things were not recorded, and so that knowledge was lost to time—but what is available serves as a basis for belief, and action.

At the same time, there are still many who have heard the old songs, some who believe the ballads as historical fact, a few who continue to hold to the old doctrines. The knowledge is, in fact, being passed down via the oral tradition, and the truth is preserved there for those who can interpret it.

In that sense, both orality and literacy have a role to play in ensuring the defence of Pern. The Weyrleader, a true believer in an age when many of his fellow warrior-clergy have lost faith, clings to the written word and to the ballads, both to recorded fact and transmitted wisdom.

He needs both of these to discharge his responsibilities, and finds that he also needs to adapt what he learns to his situation—not become as “hide-bound” as his predecessor, who clung to the oral tradition but did not believe. He finds he needs to be flexible, discard some old traditions, honour even older ones, and come up with new ideas. He lays aside unhelpful practices, explores new possibilities (mostly thanks to his female colleague, the Weyrwoman), analyzes data—in short, begins the road back to a more scientific, more literate way of thinking.

In short, I quite enjoyed the first installment of The Dragonriders of Pern. The world and ideas are compelling, and you can see McCaffrey’s influence on many newer works like Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon (Temeraire) series and the movie series How to train your dragon. The prose is not very elegant—after a gripping first half, I started to notice the extra adverbs and somewhat amateurish language. It is also a product of its time, with archaic gender tropes, although the main protagonist is a “strong female character”. Still, overall, it is a fascinating story (mostly) well-told, and I understand why it is considered a classic. It was also probably ahead of its time in terms of being a “crossover” work (though perhaps this was common then), with fantasy woven into the matrix of science fiction. It also proves that you can put dragons into any genre, and make it work! 😊  

Energy Map Exercise

My second semester G-Chem class largely deals with energy; we discuss this topic broadly on the first day of class. Students write a definition on an index card before we begin. The most common answers refer to the “ability or capacity to do work”. A few folks will quote the energy conservation principle. This year one student wrote E=mc². Another cleverly said that energy is “what makes things work”. Three years ago, I had a perceptive student who said that no one really knows what energy is! I agree with her. It’s a shapeshifter that takes different forms, but one thing scientists and engineers know how to do is quantify energy.

There are so many kinds of energies encountered in first-year general chemistry that it’s hard to keep track of them all. To help my students do this, we try to sketch an energy map. On the first day of class, students work in groups to sketch an initial map and present it to their peers. Five weeks into the semester, after covering a large chunk of thermodynamics, I gave a written assignment: Submit an updated energy map with some accompanying text explaining choices made and difficulties encountered in generating the map.

The typical student map I was expecting looks something like what I’ve generated above, a composite of what students turned in. Most of them chose to work in groups but some submitted their assignments individually. The more extensive maps had some sort of color-coding and different types of lines/arrows connecting the categories. Almost all groups chose Kinetic and Potential energies as the two first branching points, although they realized that some things defy easy classification into one of the two. If asked to do this exercise, I would likely have produced something similar.

But sometimes I get a pleasant surprise! Below is a creative and clever map generated by one of the students or student groups (hereafter referred to as “the student”).

The main organization follows the First Law of Thermodynamics, exemplified by DeltaE = q + w. The student took seriously the two models used to measure heat and work, the insulated water bath and the piston-and-shaft respectively. I was very pleased to see this since most students don’t recognize the importance (and limitations) of models. The most important equations we have covered in class the first five weeks all appear in the picture. The categories Potential and Kinetic energy appear outside and make connections to both sides. Chemical energy is placed in the center with a connection to both Potential and Kinetic. As a chemist I’m pleased to see this!

The other exemplary thing in this picture was the emphasis on chemical Bonds in the Enthalpy half since they are by far the largest contributor to enthalpy change. The student also subdivided these into intra versus intermolecular bonds, and further subdivided these categories in a way that overall makes good sense. This is the heart of chemistry: making and breaking chemical bonds. Thus, I was very pleased to see these details emphasized. On the piston side, the main subdivision was molecular motion and thus its connection to the entropy of the system. Again the molecular emphasis!

I have some minor quibbles with the diagram. Some things I would change: I would have clearly designated where the “chemical system” resides on both sides. Thus the entropy equation would reside in the system while the PV work equation refers to the piston movement. I’d have moved Gravitational outside the piston-and-shaft. In the middle top I would have put the two First Law statements together and moved the Free Energy equation to the bottom of the diagram where I would have connected heat flow with changing the entropy of the thermal surroundings and then connecting the two pieces to illustrate the Second Law of thermodynamics. But these are very minor quibbles. After all, I’ve spent years thinking about energy and thermodynamics and the student has barely had a five-week introduction.

That being said, I was blown away by the student’s overall vision. By choosing a different starting point, energy relationships were illuminated in different and important ways. The student also had a good eye for layout and balance – and I was tickled by the simple yet effective illustration of the two halves. I was reminded why it can be a good thing to have the occasional open-ended assignment. Most of my homework assignments are more tightly prescribed, having only a little open-endedness in speculative application questions. So I’m glad I kept this assignment open-ended. While I mostly got convention, I also received this gem! Students can bring refreshment and creativity to my sometimes stale approach, and I should welcome those opportunities more often.

Spring Break Forward

At the beginning of the semester, I counted the weeks to Spring Break. And now I’m here!

My first goal for Spring Break was to submit a manuscript on my latest completed research project. Research is never really complete, but the trick is to identify stopping points – milestones along the way. I’m pleased to say that I succeeded in my first goal this morning! Fingers crossed that the review process goes smoothly and that the paper is well-received.

My second goal for Spring Break is to get ahead in my classes. After finishing a sizable chunk on thermodynamics in my G-Chem 2 class, we’re just starting a smaller section on solution chemistry (Raoult’s law, colligative properties, etc). We switched to a new textbook which covers this chapter quite differently in terms of emphasis. So I’m substantially reworking the content and activities for class. I’ve also been revamping my P-Chem 2 class as I switched to annotated self-graded problem sets. Mainly I’ve been modifying the content in my worksheets and problem sets to facilitate this change in a way that I hope increases student learning. However, I don’t have a good plan of how to assess these changes and figure out if I'm making good progress.

My third goal is to write the draft of a proposal for an integrated one-semester long biology and chemistry double course. I have a colleague in the biology department who is enthusiastic about this idea. We will need some additional resources from the college, hence the proposal. I’ve been involved in integrated science curricula discussions in the month of February when our college hosted a visiting fellow who had experience in teaching and developing such courses. There are many advantages and positive outcomes for both students and faculty, but it will be more work for everyone involved. This is not a bad thing. I have an outline of my ideas but haven’t started the actual writing yet.

My fourth goal is to take a break. I’m not sure exactly where that’s going to happen yet since I’m still going to work at the regular early time in the morning even though parking is much easier during the break. Mainly it’s because I’m now on a better sleep schedule and going to sleep and waking up at the same time every day has helped significantly. It’s nice to get enough sleep and feel well rested in the morning. Unfortunately, the end of Spring Break corresponds to Spring Forward when we turn our clocks forward and ‘lose’ an hour of sleep. My G-Chem 2 class is MWF at 8am so the coming Monday morning is going to be a real drag, particularly for the students who have circadian clocks offset later than mine, at least on average. I’ve been reading the superb Why We Sleep, so I’ve been thinking about sleep issues a lot this past week.

I picked up a DVD set on a PBS documentary called Big Pacific from the local library. It’s about the mysteries and marvels of the Pacific Ocean and its denizens. We watched the first episode yesterday evening and I’m hoping to watch one per evening most of this week. It feels leisurely to watch a lot of underwater scenes, and the many blues and greens of nature. Maybe that’s part of my break. I’m at least leaving work earlier this week so I can get in some exercise and do dinner prep earlier and at a more leisurely pace.

I expect to meet my four goals (I’ve already met #1, the first priority) and I’m already making progress in #2. A nagging thought is that the ‘break’ should be a higher priority. Why is it that work often occupies the top goal slots? Perhaps they’re easier to quantify or assess in terms of accomplishment. Doing something rather than taking a break seems more productive, but both are equally important. Maybe I should make a quick visit to the Pacific Ocean this week!

Cognitive Load Theory: An Update

Regular readers of my blog will know of my interest in Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), particularly where it relates to designing learning materials, activities and experiences. Three stalwarts in the field who have contributed significantly to CLT recently wrote a “twenty-year update”. Here’s a snapshot of the title, DOI and abstract.

CLT was described in detail thirty years ago by Sweller, and ten years later the fledging theory had gathered an impressive set of initial data resulting in a significant review by the same three authors in 1998. Since then CLT has matured as a theory, and in my opinion, detractors’ early criticisms have been answered with data from increasingly improved studies.

Most of the present 2019 article discusses “Developments in Cognitive Load Theory 1998-2018”. Of these developments, the most important in my opinion has been the meshing of CLT with Geary’s categorization of biologically primary and secondary knowledge. I’ve written about Geary’s article in this blog, and it has been one of the most influential articles in changing the way I think about learning. Geary’s article is a hundred pages long but it’s well worth the read. It explains why, according to Sweller and co-authors, “over the last few decades, many educationists, correctly realizing the importance of [generic-cognitive] skills, have advocated that they be taught. Such campaigns tend to fail, not because the skills are unimportant but because they are of such importance to humans that we have evolved to acquire them automatically without instruction.”

Thanks to Geary’s article, every time I hear someone mention teaching generic critical thinking skills, alarm bells go off in my head. You need to know a fair bit of content within a subject area to be able to think critically about it – but this requires first the hard work of learning that content. The evidence for “far transfer” of generic critical thinking skills in well-designed studies is practically non-existent. We’d like to think that such a thing would be the panacea for a new and improved education, but the evidence is simply not there.

Reading the 2019 paper reminded me to look into four-component instructional design (4C/ID). Last year I read a short 10-page article describing the basics. They make sense to me, but it also seems like a lot of trouble to redesign my chemistry courses from scratch according to 4C/ID so I put it aside. With my sabbatical coming up, and part of my proposal was to consider how to use CLT to improve teaching and curricular design in my field, I think I will be revisiting this. I’ve put in an order for the 3^rd edition of Ten Steps to Complex Learning. We’ll see how much time I’m able to devote to this. I have three divergent sabbatical projects because I like to work on different things and be able to shift my attention when I get stuck on one project. This is project #3 with third priority.

One of the main difficulties with CLT is how to measure the load. The article acknowledges this and provides some references that I plan to follow-up on. There’s still much to do in this area, although I’m not sure I’m the right person with the right priorities and expertise to do so. Looking ahead, the authors also describe some interesting ongoing areas of research in CLT. One that I found interesting was the study on working memory and how it can be “depleted after a period of sustained cognitive exertion resulting in a reduced capacity to commit further resources”. It reminded me of a discussion I was having with a colleague of how G-Chem 2 feels much more challenging for the students and the instructor when meeting two days a week on TuTh (for 1.5 hours each) versus three days a week (1 hour each) on a MWF schedule.

Thanks to this article, I’ve downloaded at least five other articles now queued in my reading list. Reading something begets more reading begets more reading. I suppose that’s what going down the rabbit hole is like. And I do enjoy learning!

Besides the Geary article, here’s a selection of my other blog posts about CLT.

·      Cognitive Load Theory: A Primer

·      Cognitive Load: Balancing Pedagogies

·      Cognitive Load in Learning Chemistry

·      Desirable Difficulties