3 ms·

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 wo

by 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.
Perseids 13y ago
As yet another individual who is hampered by copying down the lecture I'd like to provide some more anecdotal evidence. > 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. I guess we are talking about different kind of lectures. My experience comes from 5 years of mathematical courses with very dense material. Just taking "basic notes" doesn't cut it there, because only an approximation of a definition is mostly worthless. And regarding proofs, if I understand the subject good enough that I can boil down the essential steps of a proof while seeing it for the first time then I don't really need to take notes at all. So I'm actually always forced to copy everything from the blackboard (if there are no official lecture notes). And in these situations my brain is blocked with drawing characters instead of processing what is actually happening behind those characters. Yet, I do have friends that copy everything down, even if there are official lecture notes, because according to them it helps them processing the content. Whether a classification in auditory, etc. types is reasonable or not I don't know, but from this experience alone I find it obvious that people learn in different ways.
- XorNot 13y ago
  I had a realization in around 3rd year of my first degree that when I was copying down notes I wasn't actually hearing anything the lecturer said. I basically got a page of text, but I had no idea what it meant - worse for mathematics. Since I'm back at uni again, I've been trying various lecturer absorption styles, and trying to keep detailed notes still has the same problem - I can't actually follow what's being said. To an extent I don't even hear it.

by wisty 13y ago

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.

Perseids 13y ago

As yet another individual who is hampered by copying down the lecture I'd like to provide some more anecdotal evidence. > 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. I guess we are talking about different kind of lectures. My experience comes from 5 years of mathematical courses with very dense material. Just taking "basic notes" doesn't cut it there, because only an approximation of a definition is mostly worthless. And regarding proofs, if I understand the subject good enough that I can boil down the essential steps of a proof while seeing it for the first time then I don't really need to take notes at all. So I'm actually always forced to copy everything from the blackboard (if there are no official lecture notes). And in these situations my brain is blocked with drawing characters instead of processing what is actually happening behind those characters. Yet, I do have friends that copy everything down, even if there are official lecture notes, because according to them it helps them processing the content. Whether a classification in auditory, etc. types is reasonable or not I don't know, but from this experience alone I find it obvious that people learn in different ways.

XorNot 13y ago
I had a realization in around 3rd year of my first degree that when I was copying down notes I wasn't actually hearing anything the lecturer said. I basically got a page of text, but I had no idea what it meant - worse for mathematics. Since I'm back at uni again, I've been trying various lecturer absorption styles, and trying to keep detailed notes still has the same problem - I can't actually follow what's being said. To an extent I don't even hear it.