MetaLearning : Teaching Students How to be Self-Directed Learners

1. MetaLearning:Teaching Students Howto be Self-Directed Learners St. Cloud State University~ 2013 Stephen Carroll, PhD

2. Notes You Can Use Date, Course, Topic Notes on what’s being presented This makes sense! Thoughts & feelings that arise Q: How does this connect with … ? Summary Reflections: ASAP – before sleepingWhat’s worth reviewing & remembering? For Best Results: Review Summary within 24 hours Summary:

3. The Problem: Presented by Father Guido Sarducci http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO8x8eoU3L4

4. OurProblem: • Students arrive in our classrooms knowing very little about the kinds of learning they are expected to do in college • Much of what they do “know” is wrong • Using the habits of learning they developed in high school leads to inefficient and ineffective learning • Reduced performance caused by the inaptness of their learning habits creates motivation and engagement problems that further reduce their academic performance—and learning.

5. A Solution: • Teach students how to learn • Metalearning Flight School is based on current research in cognitive science, the neurobiology of learning and learning theory • Seven years worth of data and experience show that it makes a significant difference in students’ learning • It’s especially effective in making students more self-motivated and more self-directed learners

6. The Contract This is not a miracle cure and it will be difficult at first. It will take you and your students a while to unlearn old habits and to develop new ones. (It takes ~21 days to break in a new habit.) What I can promise you is that if you teach your students how to learn, they will learn more, learn faster and retain what they learn longer—thus, your performance as faculty will increase as well. Start with one day—the first day of class, perhaps.

7. Objectives for Today • Motivate you to try metalearning techniques with your students to help them become more effective learners • Provide you with theories, resources, tools and inspiration to help you develop your own metalearning lessons • Provide you with tools to prove it works

8. MetaLearning: 6 Steps to Changing Learning Habits • Help students discover self-motivations for learning • Align their definitions of learning with ours (redefine learning) • Teach students how learning works and derive principles they can use to guide themselves • Derive strategies and tactics from principles (application) • Practice often to develop effective learning habits • Maintain those habits

9. Step 1: Fostering Self-Directed Learning Overcoming unhelpful beliefs about learning: • Carol Dweck’s work on mindset • Students who believe in innate talents and aptitudes don’t learn as well as those who believe improvement is possible • So we need to prove to them improvement is always possible Overcoming unhelpful learning habits: • Especially in the wake of NCLB, students are used to simply doing as they are told. They don’t expect to be responsible for or to direct their own learning. • We need to break this habit quickly and forcefully. Part 1: Building Self-Motivated Learners

10. Priming Students for Self-Directed Learning Start with the foundation and the goal Videos online throughmetalearninghabits.org learninghabits.wordpress.comand on our YouTube Youtube.com/user/learninghabits/videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwu8QqhrOP8 Part 1: Building Self-Motivated Learners

11. Fostering Self-Directed Learning Key Take-Aways: • Get students to recognize that they have goals of their own and that these goals will require them to change who they are and how they think • Get students to commit publically to their own learning goals for your course so that these goals can be used to guide and regulate classroom activities and behavior • Show students how their current learning habits prevent them from attaining their goals

12. Fostering Self-Directed Learning • Places the burden of responsibility for learning on the student • Connects students’ learning to their goals • Helps them develop a practice of self-reflection and self-regulation in relation to metalearning • Herbert Simon: “Learning takes place in the mind of the student and nowhere else, and the effectiveness of teachers lies in what they can induce students to do. -”What we Know about Learning, Journal of Engineering Education

13. Step 2: Aligning Definitions of Learning • What is learning? • What does it mean to learn something? • How can you tell when you’ve learned something? Part 2: Defining Learning

14. Typical Answers - Understanding • Knowing something • Understanding something • Being able to teach something • Getting it • Eureka! • Making a connection to something new • Insight • Discovery • Enlightenment • Knowing that (vs. knowing how) • Memorizing • Being able to recall • Remembering something • Understanding the principles • Seeing the logic • Being able to extrapolate • Seeing how it works • Epiphany Part 2: Defining Learning

15. Typical Answers - Skills • Being able to do something • Knowing how • Facility • Doing it • Mastering a procedure or process • Increasing level of proficiency • Following correct procedures • Being able to use what I know • Being able to apply something in a new situation • Acquiring the knack of something • Gains in craftsmanship • Getting better at something Part 2: Defining Learning

16. Typical Answers - Affective • Learning to like something • Getting engaged • Being inspired • Being motivated • Finding joy • Wanting to do more • Wanting to practice • Looking for chances to use what I know • Learning to love something • Learning to see the beauty or complexity or artistry in something • Learning to appreciate something • Gaining confidence • Becoming more interested in something Part 2: Defining Learning

17. Typical Answers - Habits • Being able to do something without paying a lot of attention • Doing things automatically • Integrating what I know into my life • Using what I know as a matter of course • Knowing when to use what I've learned • Ability to improvise based on what I already know Part 2: Defining Learning

18. Defining Learning How we define learning affects how we teach and shapes how students learn in our classes. Part 2: Defining Learning

19. Learning is Forming New Habits • Fueled by attitudes and desires (emotion) • Supported by skills and understanding Part 2: Defining Learning

20. Therefore Teaching ≠ We want to move away from the learning-as-acquisition-of-facts and teaching-as-Sherwin-Williams model toward defining learning as durable habit formation and teaching as developing and mentoring self-directed learners.

21. A Cross-lateral Neurobic

22. Cross-lateral Neurobic Cross-lateral activity opens up the corpus callosum • Gets more of your brain involved • Balances the load • Aids memory • Makes learning easier

23. Write your summaries 3-5 sentences in 3 minutes

24. Step 3: The ART of Learning A • Acquire new material • Retain new material • Transfer use of new material R T

25. The ART of Learning The A in ART is for Acquisition Mnemonic: Actively Build Connections Part 3: How Learning Works

26. Part 3: How Learning Works

27. Learning IS making connections:Neurons that fire together wire together 2 pyramidal neurons forming a synapse Part 3: How Learning Works

28. Ideas are patterns of neural firing Part 3: How Learning Works

29. More complex ideas are more complex patterns—made up of smaller patterns Part 3: How Learning Works

30. Learning IS Making Connections • Learning has the physical and metaphorical structure of an analogy. • Therefore we must teach analogically, not de novo. • “Nothing we learn can stand in isolation; we can sustain new learning only to the degree we can relate it to what we already know.” (Sci Am Mind, July 2010.)

31. Learning Hard Stuff Grows Your Brain New Brain Cells Forming Part 3: How Learning Works

32. Learning Builds and Maintains Healthy Neurons Part 3: How Learning Works

33. Learning works best when it is difficult • Therefore, we must teach our students to seek challenge • Always prefer the difficult over the routine or the easy • Optimal learning occurs in “flow state”—midway between boredom and anxiety • Analogy: crosswords and sudokus

34. Engagement comes from Difficulty Based on Flow, by MihalyCsikszentmihalyi (2002)

35. The ART of Learning Habits of Acquisition (Making Connections) • Note-Taking • Reading strategies • Paying attention/active learning • Not multitasking Part 3: How Learning Works

36. The ART of Learning R is RETAIN (Acronym) • REview, • Test, • Analyze, • INtegrate. Part 3: How Learning Works

37. Retention is controlled by Repetition and Chemistry Part 3: How Learning Works

38. Review/Repetition • The importance of review within certain windows • How to make review happen in the classroom • Daily review at start of class • Daily summaries at end of class • Review summaries offline on a regular basis • Repeated review is necessary for habit formation and transfer • Frequent low-stakes quizzes • Classroom mantras

39. Key Influences on Brain Chemistry • Emotions • How much and what kind of sleep you’re getting • How much and what kind of exercise you’re getting • Hydration and nutrition (including caffeine and alcohol) • Physical cycles and rhythms Part 3: How Learning Works

40. Managing Emotions: Your Amygdalas Amygdalas Part 3: How Learning Works

41. Fear response Part 3: How Learning Works

42. Key Factors Shaping Retention • Repetition and reinforcement • Strong emotion • Sleep (then review) • Exercise • Hydration and nutrition • Richness of the learning and studying environments Part 3: How Learning Works

43. The ART of Learning T is for Transfer (Bus transfer) Transfer is taking what you know and applying it to what you don’t know. You can’t get there from here. Part 3: How Learning Works

44. Teaching for Transfer • Transfer is about pattern recognition and • Changing set • It is the most difficult part of learning • … and the least practiced! • Students need to practice as much as possible Part 3: How Learning Works

45. Principles derived from neurobiology: • Learning ONLY works when it is active and conscious. • Learning actively connects new ideas to old information. • Learning IS making connections/patterns. • Involving multiple senses enhances learning Part 3: How Learning Works

46. Principles derived from neurobiology: • Learning works best if it requires real effort (if it is difficult). • Learning depends on managing emotions well. Positive emotions (especially self-motivation) accelerate learning by reducing resistance (electrically and metaphorically). Negative emotions (esp. fear and stress) block learning and recall. Part 3: How Learning Works

47. Principles derived from neurobiology: • Varying your modes of learning (rich learning environment) increases activity, helps reinforce neural pathway development and moves what was learned to long-term memory. • Active repetition is the best way to create durable learning. (Moving things from short-term to long-term memory requires reinforcement within 24 hours.) Part 3: How Learning Works

48. Write your summaries 3-5 sentences in 3 minutes

49. Step 4: Strategies and Tactics • Exercise regularly— • Moving blood and oxygen to your brain helps it work more effectively. (Making new brain cells is a huge metabolic load on the body.) • The chemicals your body makes when you exercise help you make connections more easily. • And taking your mind off of the mental work you’re doing helps you solve the problems you’re working on. (Eureka!) Part 4: Application

50. Strategies and Tactics • Make sure you are properly hydrated and nourished. • If what you eat comes through a car window or if the label lists ingredients with numbers, it isn’t food. • Hard mental work is equally taxing to the body as hard physical work—you have to nourish it to sustain peak performance. • Water is key. Even a modest amount of dehydration decreases your reasoning ability by 20%. (Don’t overdo it—over-hydration also adversely affects cognition.) • Caffeine, nicotine and alcohol Part 4: Application