5 ms·

> Some people's learning styles might make that less of a problem (i.e. so-called auditory learners might be able to internalize what's being said nearly at the

by wisty 13y ago

> Some people's learning styles might make that less of a problem (i.e. so-called auditory learners might be able to internalize what's being said nearly at the speed it's spoken), but for those of us who need to translate what we hear into our own mental language, constant note-taking substantially hampers the learning process. Learning styles is more or less discredited. IIRC, research indicated that most students respond similarly to the same learning styles. The main difference between students tends to be whether or not they understand previous material. I'm not saying that different mediums is a bad idea - most students do respond well to diagrams, explanations, examples, practice, etc. Research supports note taking, so it's probably a good thing for most students. However, it might not be good for all subjects - math and programming requires a lot less memorisation of facts, and a lot more thinking. If you want to understand dynamic programming, simply memorising the key points won't help you much. If you want to learn a new API, then writing down important methods might.

jacobolus 13y ago
Speaking only for myself, taking copious notes in class always substantially hampered my ability to keep up. The only times I took such notes were in a couple of mathematics courses which moved at a blistering pace and had no textbook or other provided material: in those, it was essential to write everything down so that it could be studied and learned later, after class. But the act of writing during those classes made it quite a bit harder to follow the lectures while they were happening. I would have much preferred to receive hand-outs with the same definitions/theorems on it a day or two before the lecture, so that I could have put my full attention on the professor and the material. In basically all other courses, I only wrote notes when struck by particularly insightful thoughts I wanted to remember later, and my notes as often were about my own reactions as about what the professors were saying. But because I find it easy to focus and pay close attention in lectures, I generally had better recall afterward than most of my peers, even the ones who spent much more time “studying” their notes later. * * * By contrast, I had several friends who could only follow lectures by writing notes while in class, because otherwise they found lectures hard to focus on, and because they found that the physical act of writing what they heard to enormously help their later recall (not to mention they had a physical artifact they could refer to afterward). * * * I would like to see your sources for the statement “learning styles is more or less discredited”, as it does not align with my experience either as a student, as an observer of other students, or as the son of a school teacher. It seems completely obvious and non-controversial to me that some people have an easier time following verbal conversation than others, that some have an easier time reading/writing, that some people are more attuned to pictures/graphic elements, etc. Maybe “learning styles” is a bad name for this, and I personally believe that it’s mostly the result of practice and acculturation rather than anything genetic/inherent, but it still remains obviously (to me) true that different students find different modalities and teaching/learning methods more effective.
- wisty 13y ago
  There's evidence for note taking, as I previously said. The main difference may have been that you had a good grounding in the subject, so taking basic notes would have been a waste of time. As for learning styles being discredited ... Treat education like alternative medicine, and ask for evidence for teaching methods, rather than evidence against. The amount of puffery some educators believe in is amazing. Education researchers are often even worse. Yes, other industries can be just as bad (software included), but that's no excuse. Especially when there is a lot of research on teaching methods, it's just routinely ignored by the theorists. For a review on learning styles, see http://steinhardtapps.es.its.nyu.edu/create/courses/2174/reading/Pashler_et_al_PSPI_9_3.pdf http://steinhardtapps.es.its.nyu.edu/create/courses/2174/rea... There's a huge body of literature concerning learning styles, but the actual evidence often tends to contradict the hypothesis. If you pick any popular teaching method, and search for it and the word "evidence", it's often pretty dire. Yes, some students say they prefer one learning style, especially if you ask them (which is kind of a loaded question). But they don't seem to individually benefit more than other students. There's exceptions, I guess. Students with visual impairments. You could probably find evidence supporting the use of mixed mediums (show 'em, tell 'em, make 'em do it themselves), but that's different to saying "show some students, and tell others".
  - jacobolus 13y ago
    This seems like a hopelessly high bar, considering all the problems inherent in any kind of study of teaching methods (a variety of different teachers’ and students’ past experience and aptitudes, the impossibility of blinding studies of instruction methods / curriculum, the ability for people to adapt to a wide variety of situations, the incredible amount of work it takes to tailor lessons to particular students / groups of students and the inherent impossibility of translating material precisely from one “learning style” to another, etc.): """ We concluded that any credible validation of learning-styles-based instruction requires robust documentation of a very particular type of experimental finding with several necessary criteria. First, students must be divided into groups on the basis of their learning styles, and then students from each group must be randomly assigned to receive one of multiple instructional methods. Next, students must then sit for a final test that is the same for all students. Finally, in order to demonstrate that optimal learning requires that students receive instruction tailored to their putative learning style, the experiment must reveal a specific type of interaction between learning style and instructional method: Students with one learning style achieve the best educational outcome when given an instructional method that differs from the instructional method producing the best outcome for students with a different learning style. """ I guess I can agree that anyone trying to sell specific materials to teachers may not have compelling evidence that it’s useful in practice. But that’s true of nearly all education materials ever, anywhere. This seems like a pretty solid summary: """ However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply not been tested at all. """ I found that when tutoring people (and from conversations with my mother, it sounds like this is generally the case for any kind of teaching) the key thing is to try a variety of methods, and try to engage with the student to come up with an explanation / set of exercises which helps the student to come to an understanding. In mathematics (my tutoring experience), it’s important to come up with some kind of mental model which helps them fit pieces together. I’ve found that some students have an easier time with motion-kinesthetic types of models, and other students have an easier time with 2d-visual types of models, and other students are just really good at making proof-style symbolic chains of logic, instead of trying to first make explicit graphic/geometric models. But I have absolutely no idea how this could be turned into a useful scientific study, since it involves direct back-and-forth dialog and improvised explanations, etc.
marincounty 13y ago
My insight into rembering things in schools was not taking copious amounts of notes. I found that if I drew a picture of the topic(for instance a Femur bone), and then placed the names of the protuberenses and holes on the picture. My retention increased dramitscially. I could bring up the picture of the page in my mind, sometimes down to a misspelled word. This is noting new, but if you are a poor student--try this technique. Learning anatomy is easy--I know, but any subjects will work with the incorporation of a drawing on each page(in your hand writing) Learing to put up static and dynamic websites(what I am currently doing) makes visual remberance almost impossible. I have found that learing Java, RoR, bootstrap, ect. was very are for my previous way of memorizing. I have now resorted to downloading courses I need. I'm too old to sit through twenty hours of instruction. Sixty percent seems redundant, or an instructor tacking about his personal life. I found an answer. The answer, for me, was the Faster feature on VLC. If the teacher has good diction you can get speeds up to 1.60x. This depends on the instructor of course. David Mann(wrong spelling), who teaches cs 75 at Harvard is perfect for this type of speed learning. Don't get me wrong--David s a brilliant teacher, but I found I could speed up his lectures and the subject made more sense. I'm using David as an example because he as perfect diction. I tried this on foreign teachers and it did not work--because I was not used to their diction. Oh, yea, if you are totally new to programming--listen to lectures on your iPod. You will be surprised how much you retain while exercising, or sone other mundane activity. Yes--you will miss the visual, but you will get the buzz words and when you go back to the lectures there are much easier to understand--at sometimes 1.7x speed.
- abhaga 13y ago
  I wish this feature would be available in Youtube and other video sites. I worked through half the Graphical Models course on Coursera at 1.5x and it was very comfortable. This would be a key feature to allow people to learn at their own pace. Literally.
  - clarry 13y ago
    That's one more reason I would prefer that sites provide a direct link to the video instead of forcing whatever plugin or js-thing or other crappy UI on me. For youtube, I always yget the videos in /tmp and watch using mplayer. I use the speed-up often.
taeric 13y ago
Any chance you have some good links regarding learning styles being discredited? I have heard that claim twice in conversation now, but I have not been pointed to the research.

by wisty 13y ago

jacobolus 13y ago

Speaking only for myself, taking copious notes in class always substantially hampered my ability to keep up. The only times I took such notes were in a couple of mathematics courses which moved at a blistering pace and had no textbook or other provided material: in those, it was essential to write everything down so that it could be studied and learned later, after class. But the act of writing during those classes made it quite a bit harder to follow the lectures while they were happening. I would have much preferred to receive hand-outs with the same definitions/theorems on it a day or two before the lecture, so that I could have put my full attention on the professor and the material. In basically all other courses, I only wrote notes when struck by particularly insightful thoughts I wanted to remember later, and my notes as often were about my own reactions as about what the professors were saying. But because I find it easy to focus and pay close attention in lectures, I generally had better recall afterward than most of my peers, even the ones who spent much more time “studying” their notes later. * * * By contrast, I had several friends who could only follow lectures by writing notes while in class, because otherwise they found lectures hard to focus on, and because they found that the physical act of writing what they heard to enormously help their later recall (not to mention they had a physical artifact they could refer to afterward). * * * I would like to see your sources for the statement “learning styles is more or less discredited”, as it does not align with my experience either as a student, as an observer of other students, or as the son of a school teacher. It seems completely obvious and non-controversial to me that some people have an easier time following verbal conversation than others, that some have an easier time reading/writing, that some people are more attuned to pictures/graphic elements, etc. Maybe “learning styles” is a bad name for this, and I personally believe that it’s mostly the result of practice and acculturation rather than anything genetic/inherent, but it still remains obviously (to me) true that different students find different modalities and teaching/learning methods more effective.

wisty 13y ago
There's evidence for note taking, as I previously said. The main difference may have been that you had a good grounding in the subject, so taking basic notes would have been a waste of time. As for learning styles being discredited ... Treat education like alternative medicine, and ask for evidence for teaching methods, rather than evidence against. The amount of puffery some educators believe in is amazing. Education researchers are often even worse. Yes, other industries can be just as bad (software included), but that's no excuse. Especially when there is a lot of research on teaching methods, it's just routinely ignored by the theorists. For a review on learning styles, see http://steinhardtapps.es.its.nyu.edu/create/courses/2174/reading/Pashler_et_al_PSPI_9_3.pdf http://steinhardtapps.es.its.nyu.edu/create/courses/2174/rea... There's a huge body of literature concerning learning styles, but the actual evidence often tends to contradict the hypothesis. If you pick any popular teaching method, and search for it and the word "evidence", it's often pretty dire. Yes, some students say they prefer one learning style, especially if you ask them (which is kind of a loaded question). But they don't seem to individually benefit more than other students. There's exceptions, I guess. Students with visual impairments. You could probably find evidence supporting the use of mixed mediums (show 'em, tell 'em, make 'em do it themselves), but that's different to saying "show some students, and tell others".
- jacobolus 13y ago
  This seems like a hopelessly high bar, considering all the problems inherent in any kind of study of teaching methods (a variety of different teachers’ and students’ past experience and aptitudes, the impossibility of blinding studies of instruction methods / curriculum, the ability for people to adapt to a wide variety of situations, the incredible amount of work it takes to tailor lessons to particular students / groups of students and the inherent impossibility of translating material precisely from one “learning style” to another, etc.): """ We concluded that any credible validation of learning-styles-based instruction requires robust documentation of a very particular type of experimental finding with several necessary criteria. First, students must be divided into groups on the basis of their learning styles, and then students from each group must be randomly assigned to receive one of multiple instructional methods. Next, students must then sit for a final test that is the same for all students. Finally, in order to demonstrate that optimal learning requires that students receive instruction tailored to their putative learning style, the experiment must reveal a specific type of interaction between learning style and instructional method: Students with one learning style achieve the best educational outcome when given an instructional method that differs from the instructional method producing the best outcome for students with a different learning style. """ I guess I can agree that anyone trying to sell specific materials to teachers may not have compelling evidence that it’s useful in practice. But that’s true of nearly all education materials ever, anywhere. This seems like a pretty solid summary: """ However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply not been tested at all. """ I found that when tutoring people (and from conversations with my mother, it sounds like this is generally the case for any kind of teaching) the key thing is to try a variety of methods, and try to engage with the student to come up with an explanation / set of exercises which helps the student to come to an understanding. In mathematics (my tutoring experience), it’s important to come up with some kind of mental model which helps them fit pieces together. I’ve found that some students have an easier time with motion-kinesthetic types of models, and other students have an easier time with 2d-visual types of models, and other students are just really good at making proof-style symbolic chains of logic, instead of trying to first make explicit graphic/geometric models. But I have absolutely no idea how this could be turned into a useful scientific study, since it involves direct back-and-forth dialog and improvised explanations, etc.

marincounty 13y ago

My insight into rembering things in schools was not taking copious amounts of notes. I found that if I drew a picture of the topic(for instance a Femur bone), and then placed the names of the protuberenses and holes on the picture. My retention increased dramitscially. I could bring up the picture of the page in my mind, sometimes down to a misspelled word. This is noting new, but if you are a poor student--try this technique. Learning anatomy is easy--I know, but any subjects will work with the incorporation of a drawing on each page(in your hand writing) Learing to put up static and dynamic websites(what I am currently doing) makes visual remberance almost impossible. I have found that learing Java, RoR, bootstrap, ect. was very are for my previous way of memorizing. I have now resorted to downloading courses I need. I'm too old to sit through twenty hours of instruction. Sixty percent seems redundant, or an instructor tacking about his personal life. I found an answer. The answer, for me, was the Faster feature on VLC. If the teacher has good diction you can get speeds up to 1.60x. This depends on the instructor of course. David Mann(wrong spelling), who teaches cs 75 at Harvard is perfect for this type of speed learning. Don't get me wrong--David s a brilliant teacher, but I found I could speed up his lectures and the subject made more sense. I'm using David as an example because he as perfect diction. I tried this on foreign teachers and it did not work--because I was not used to their diction. Oh, yea, if you are totally new to programming--listen to lectures on your iPod. You will be surprised how much you retain while exercising, or sone other mundane activity. Yes--you will miss the visual, but you will get the buzz words and when you go back to the lectures there are much easier to understand--at sometimes 1.7x speed.

abhaga 13y ago
I wish this feature would be available in Youtube and other video sites. I worked through half the Graphical Models course on Coursera at 1.5x and it was very comfortable. This would be a key feature to allow people to learn at their own pace. Literally.
- clarry 13y ago
  That's one more reason I would prefer that sites provide a direct link to the video instead of forcing whatever plugin or js-thing or other crappy UI on me. For youtube, I always yget the videos in /tmp and watch using mplayer. I use the speed-up often.

taeric 13y ago

Any chance you have some good links regarding learning styles being discredited? I have heard that claim twice in conversation now, but I have not been pointed to the research.