Three teaching things: week of April 4
In this issue: a paper that let me post a meme about that container ship; a framework for incorporating formative assessment; and a tool to zoom and annotate during screen capture videos.
Issue #41
1. The paper
Maybe they’re born with it, or maybe it’s experience: Toward a deeper understanding of the learning style myth
I had tucked this publication away pre-cargo-ship-blocking-the-Suez-Canal, but the quantity (and quality!) of higher-education memes coming out of the event last week was too good to pass up. So yes. This paper is just an excuse to post this meme (or is it vice versa?).
As alluded above, despite being debunked (here’s a three-page summary, if you’re looking) the idea that instruction should be aligned to students’ learning style persists. This paper investigates the idea that “psychological essentialism,” the sense that something like a learning style is an “inborn, immutable biological reality” (p. 222), drives this persistence.
The study’s findings aren’t clear, which is fine. What the researchers did find is interesting: the “…majority of believers [in learning styles] may view learning styles as less mutually exclusive and more malleable than researchers have previously recognized” (p. 232). It’s complicated! Also interesting: “…the other demographic factors we measured did not significantly predict learning style beliefs. These factors included age, gender, parental status, and level of education. We discovered great stability in the distribution of beliefs across demographic groups in our sample” (p. 233). It seems to be really complicated!
Now, I’ll admit that this paper might have a very limited direct application to classroom practice (did I mention I loved the meme?). In my review, however, it reminded me that we, as educators should be aware of the typical neuromyths, or misconceptions about learning, that can act as partial barriers (and here’s a paper that explores those) to our own success.
Nancekivell, S. E., Shah, P., & Gelman, S. A. (2020). Maybe they’re born with it, or maybe it’s experience: Toward a deeper understanding of the learning style myth. Journal of Educational Psychology, 112(2), 221–235. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000366
2. The resource
Collecting Data & Designing Differentiated Learning Experiences in Class or Online
This blog post by Dr. Catlin Tucker, articulates a six-step process to “weave formative assessment into the design and facilitation of learning.” A reminder that formative assessment is akin to tasting the soup you’re making (and then deciding it needs more salt) before you serve it to guests; using formative assessment helps you tune your instruction based on your checks of student learning.
I’ll note that while the post seems to be written for K-12 educators, it does not diminish the approach IMHO.
3. The tool
ZoomIt
This is free Windows software that “…is a screen zoom and annotation tool for technical presentations that include application demonstrations.” Don’t let technical presentations fool you: if you are creating screen capture videos, you can use this software to zoom in and annotate important features. Calling students’ attention in this way can help focus on the salient bits of a lesson, and improve learning (see: theory of multimedia learning as outlined in October 18th’s newsletter issue).
If you want to see it in action, I’ve embedded this demo:
Three Teaching Things is a weekly newsletter compiled by Gavan Watson, which shares three different teaching and learning resources (papers, resources or tools) worth your attention.
Thanks for reading!