RESEARCH - US STUDY ON POWER OF CONCEPTUAL LEARNING

HUMAN LEARNING - US STUDY ON POWER OF CONCEPTUAL LEARNING
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DISCUSSION

The researchers conclude that long-term memory is not greatly enhanced with external motivators like immediate testing after exposure to new concepts. This was a startling finding for them, having implications on optimal instructional design.

'Assigning end-of-chapter problems and covering problems as part of class lectures prepared students as effectively as did adding the requirements that the problems be handed in for grading.'

There was no benefit from having graded homework. It actually worsened the result.

The main finding is that the graded homework was detrimental to solving qualitative problems. The researchers postulate that the other group, the ungraded homework students, spent more time in the qualitative aspects of the course to achieve a better performance in this area. The graded homework students, because of their directed time allocation, spent time on the quantitative homework questions, perhaps giving them a false sense of subject mastery.

'Thus, the allocation of instructional efforts should be examined with the goal of improving the students' understanding of the conceptual material in the course... Future research should focus on this subject.'

-DEBRIEF -

Spoonfeeding... that limits a holistic understanding of the delivered subject. Mmmmmm.

What students did was to chase the grade rather than chase the holistic understanding of the subject. That means that they completed the easily measured bits of a course... the graded quantitative homework assignments... to please the lecturer. But they naturally defaulted to inadequately absorbing the foundational concepts of the subject delivered. The homework biased them toward spending time in the linear, more predictable aspects of a subject rather than spend extra time understanding the multi-dimensional components of it.

What educators are realising is that they cannot afford to produce students with a sub-standard understanding of the concepts. Formulas may be adequate for mathematics but for the rest of the higher education subjects they are not nearly as adequate.

In fact, there is exciting new evidence (Tobias,2002) to show that some students are predisposed to learning the WHYs of a subject....not so much the WHATs of a subject ! They are conceptual thinkers (macro-viewers) not necessarily facts generators (micro-viewers)that most exams seem to be designed for ("because it is measurable"). But to repeat, educators are realising that producing students that are facts generators rather than inter-relationship describers might not be the optimal goal of higher education ! Could this be what Bloom's classic Taxonomy of Thinking has been all about ?

Four years studying in Biological Sciences at a major university.... and not once did lecturers or laboratory supervisors OVERTLY teach me the process of science. We were facts collectors - how mitochondria generate ATP, how cells replicate, how chemicals exchange electrons....Content Replicators. We were directed to the content largely and not so much to the process, the process of data collection, hypothesis, experimentation, analysis, discussion. Reductionist thinking rather than holistic thinking. The underlying process of the subject were not emphasised. Science graduates ended up not being able to express the purposes and the processes of their subject because they were so filled up with facts. Most graduates would be unable to "profess our profession" ? ! Do you relate to this ? Mmmmm.

Knowledge Management Implications....

You cannot shortcut profound learning.

When teachers/trainers overly guide their learners....learners get a greatly distorted view of their subject. In pharmaceutical selling as a working analogy....giving representatives a one page key facts sheet about the medication to be sold and its targeted disease without routinely encouraging the rep to STUDY in BREADTH and in DEPTH about their priority product leads to SIMPLISTIC THINKING and COMMUNICATING.... which the customer often detects ! It results in only a modest trust level in knowledge reliability and the customer is less convinced to buy.

So..knowledge workers need a learning vehicle that truly enhances their depth and breadth of their discipline knowledge. A dry facts, information-dumping database is inadequate. Do you follow ?

A learning vehicle that discusses the WHYs of what we do will enhance the knowledge worker's holistic thinking... leading to better decision making and task and performance outcomes. What is that learning vehicle ?

Knowledge management is a set of work practices that enhances competence in knowledge workers....not simply making them yet more informed... and none the wiser ! Those at the coal face of their work are the greatest contributors to generating and maintaining a HOLISTIC knowledge pool. The premier learning vehicle to achieve this staff development objective is face-to-face 'Communities of Practice' complemented with a member-driven online discussion forum... discussing the multi-dimensional issues in a free-flowing format. Ungraded students were seen to perform better if they attended classes than if they did not, further supporting the importance of live-instructor teaching methods. This is known as the Social Learning model slowly appearing in the workplace in part because of technology-driven support.

Rarely in any staff meeting in any occupation do we see on the supervisor's agenda serious time assigned to process improvement, regardless of how many highly qualified staff members they have in their board room. Participative management is still an exception rather than a norm.

A national culture can be a second reason for the lack of a concepts forum group. In many countries, the norm is that the manager need not involve subordinates in work changes. "After all....that is why they are managers and we are staff !" For instance, Indian management practices are often just that. It would be an INSULT to staff if their manager asked them to be involved in a major decision for their department. They grow up with "please the boss" work ethic and not to have responsibility for work changes. So, for cultural reasons, CoPs in typical national and organisational cultures cannot survive.

But where they have been flourishing at the moment is intra-organisational occupational groups. One common example is IT professionals independent of their organisations getting together regularly and examining both tactical and strategic aspects of their profession. In Spain, for instance, there is a MacIntosh users group thriving in all parts of the country under one label. It has over ten specialty groups within it you can be a part of.

Working on an internal reward system, i.e., self-paced learning by itself, has shown to be more than adequate for profound learning to take place. External rewards (formal recognition, incentives, grades etc.) may often distort a balanced learning approach while in an some adult learning groups it may slightly improve their performance.

In short, this study clearly shows that when higher levels of competence are needed you must provide for optimal learning vehicles for knowledge workers to absorb, master and refine the concepts of that field. The sole reliance of injection learning (teacher-centred, extended supervision) does not work. Engage and assist...not dictate... for optimal self-pace. OK ?

I continue to be in strong favour of holistic, profound learning assisted by optimal learning vehicles. The study results have encouraged us to move towards this same value of human learning.

Like one great football coach said, "Proper Practice Makes Perfect."

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