Being-taught habits vs learning styles

In case the news has not got through to anyone yet, research into learning styles is pointless. The research that proves this is legion but, for instance, see (for just a tiny sample of the copious and damning evidence):

Riener, C., & Willingham, D. (2010). The Myth of Learning Styles. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 42(5), 32-35. doi:doi: 10.1080/00091383.2010.503139

Derribo, M. H., & Howard, K. (2007). Advice about the use of learning styles: A major myth in education. Journal of college reading and learning, 37, 2.

Coffield, F., Moseley, D., Hall, E., & Ecclestone, K. (2004). Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning: A systematic and critical review. 041543).

No one denies that it is possible to classify people in all sorts of ways with regards to things that might affect how they learn, nor that everyone is different, nor that there are some similarities and commonalities between how people prefer to or habitually go about learning. When these elaborately constructed theories claim no more than that people are different in interesting and sometimes identifiably consistent ways, then I have little difficult accepting them in principle, though it’s always worth observing that there are well over 100 of these theories and they cannot all be right. There is typically almost nothing in any of them that could prove them wrong either. This is a hallmark of pseudo-science and should set our critical sensors on full alert. The problem comes when the acolytes of whatever nonsense model is their preferred flavour try to take the next step and tell us that this means we should teach people in particular ways to match their particular learning styles. There is absolutelly no plausible evidence that knowing someone’s learning style, however it is measured, should have any influence whatsoever on how we should teach them, apart from the obvious requirement that we should cater for diversity and provide multiple paths to success. None. This is despite many decades spent trying to prove that it makes a difference. It doesn’t.

It is consequently a continual source of amazement to me when people pipe up in conversations to say that we should consider student learning styles when designing courses and learning activities. Balderdash. There is a weak case to be made that, like astrology (exactly like astrology), such theories serve a useful purpose of encouraging people to reflect on what they do and how they behave. They remind teachers to consider the possibility that there might be more than one way to learn something and so they are more likely to produce useful learning experiences that cater for diverse needs, to try different things and build flexibility into their teaching. Great – I have no objection to that at all, it’s what we should be aiming for. But it would be a lot more efficient to simply remind people of that simple and obvious fact rather than to sink vast sums of money and human resources into perpetuating these foolish myths. And there is a darker side to this. If we tell people that they are (just a random choice) ‘visual’, or  ‘sensing’ or ‘intuitive’ or ‘sequential’ learners then they will inevitably be discouraged from taking different approaches. If we teach them in a way that we think fits a mythical need, we do not teach them in other ways. This is harmful. It is designed to put learners in a filter bubble. The worst of it is that learners then start to believe it themselves and ignore or undervalue other ways of learning.

Being-taught habits

The occasion for this rant came up in a meeting yesterday, where it was revealed that a surprising number of our students describe their learning style (by which they actually mean their learning preference) to be to listen to a video lecture. I’m not sure where to begin with that. I would have been flabbergasted had I not heard similar things before. Even learning style believers would have trouble with that one. One of the main things that is worth noting, however, is that this is actually a description not of a learning preference but of a ‘being-taught habit’. Not as catchy, but that’s what it is.

I have spent much of my teaching career not so much teaching as unteaching: trying to break the appalling habits that our institutional education systems beat into us until we come to believe that the way we are being taught is actually a good way to learn. This is seldom the case – on the whole, educational systems have to achieve a compromise between cost-efficiency and effective teaching –  but, luckily, people are often smart enough to learn despite poor teaching systems. Indeed, sometimes, people learn because of poor teaching systems, inasmuch as (if they are interested and have not had the passion sucked out of them) they have to find alternative ways to learn, and so become more motivated and more experienced in the process of learning itself. Indeed, problem-based and enquiry-based techniques (which are in principle a good idea) sometimes intentionally make use of that kind of dynamic, albeit usually with a design that supports it and offers help and guidance where needed.

If nothing else, one of the primary functions of an educational system should be to enable people to become self-directed, capable lifelong learners. Learning the stuff itself and gaining competence in a subject area or skill in doing something is part of that – we need foundations on which to build. But it is at least as much about learning ways of learning. There are many many ways to learn, and different ways work better for different people learning different things. We need to be able to choose from a good toolkit and use approaches that work for the job in hand, not that match the demands of some pseudo-scientific claptrap.

Rant over.

 

Endnote (die die die)

I’m generally liking both the price and the performance of Mavericks on my relatively new-ish Mac, although there are some compatibility issues here and there, including with some of my most used software like MailTags, and although it won’t work on my old but still serviceable and well-loved first-generation Intel Mac.

But one incompatibility is really upsetting me, especially as I have deadlines to meet – EndNote X5. Thomson Reuters have no intention of fixing this and suggest upgrading to X7, which will get an update ‘in the next few weeks’. I have been irritated by EndNote too many times over the past few years, with perfectly servicable versions failing each time a new version of Word (another hateful piece of software) comes out and requiring costly updates, despite adding absolutely no new functionality of any value at all for over 10 years. Not to mention Thomson’s evil and cynical attack on the open-source Zotero. But this is ridiculous. X5 came out in late 2011, I bought it in 2012, and there have been two pointless and expensive updates since then, neither of which is anything more than a minor point-release. I reluctantly paid for a copy of X5 because, despite not wanting to use it and having perfectly decent free and open alternatives like Zotero and the pre-acquisition version of Mendeley, I work with people that do use it and it makes life easier to share the same reference manager. Now I give up. It has long been the case that EndNote is bloated, buggy and overpriced. Thomson Reuters are able to get away with it because of lock-in and path dependencies. When it was one of only a handful of options it was about as good as it got, so lots of people used it and it spread like a disease for compatibility reasons. I don’t care how difficult it makes it to work with collaborators around the world, or the effort involved in learning new quirks of new reference managers, I will no longer support Thomson’s greed. Their lack of interest in their locked-in customers as anything other than cash cows is more appalling than their ugly software. On the bright side, it will hopefully reduce my dependency on MS-Word (same collaboration issues) too.

I’m defaulting to Zotero but, if anyone has any alternative suggestions (I don’t mind paying if it is worth the money), do pass them on!

Pedagogy – Scrap exams to create schools of the future – news – TES

A report on the findings of this year’s Equinox Summit. Amongst the more interesting:

the summit’s conclusion was that, in less than 20 years, “knowing facts will have little value”, meaning that schools will have to scrap conventional examinations and grades and replace them with more “qualitative assessment”. This would measure a student’s all-round ability, rather than testing their knowledge in a particular subject.”

A lot of other sound and common-sense ideas are reported on here. All good stuff.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storyCode=6365265

China Wholesale – Wholesale Electronics – Dropship From China

Thanks to my friend Richard for pointing me to this great site for total geeks. Electronic toys galore, at knockdown prices, direct from China. Important proviso – almost all look pretty awful, but the site is honest about their failings and ridiculously rich in information about them, so it is easy to decide not to buy things. But who needs Apple, Samsung, or Sony when you can get a no-name budget dual SIM Android phone for $70? Or any number of watch-phones, projectors, remote controlled doodahs and accessories to fit any need? Well, me. But I like browsing this site.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.chinavasion.com/

12 Awesome Social Media Facts and Statistics for 2013

An interesting summary of the GlobalWebIndex for Q2 2013. 

Some takeaways are:

Google+ is catching up with Facebook in numbers, but not in active usage. This makes sense as Google has a very different and less unpleasant agenda than FB that is all about search, not lock-in.  Google+ gets by far the largest number of visits, which is exactly what Google is aiming for.

Pinterest is still the fastest growing social media system. The report calls it a ‘social network’ but I think that is a slight mischaracterization that doesn’t quite capture its distinctiveness – it’s at least as much about interest sets rather than networks between people, with a focus on content and themes far more than on individual’s connected with one another. Tumblr is not far behind.

The trend is towards increasing mobility, of course. As an aside, it is interesting that Microsoft recently redefined smartphones as PCs. Probably an unwise statement from the point of view of their shareholders as it reduces Windows PCs to a very small percentage of the total.

 

 

Address of the bookmark: http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/09/20/12-awesome-social-media-facts-and-statistics-for-2013/

EdTechnology Ideas – Education Technology Journal

A new open-access educational technology journal. Looks slick, CC licence, a social approach, and I know and respect a couple of the editorial team, so I think it should be reliable and interesting.

Slightly less clear about the need for yet another journal in a crowded market though I guess it’s good to have a thriving ecosystem with plenty of competing species. However, there is a balance between those benefits and the relatively small amount of attention that can be spread around. Now that there are plenty of open-access journals of this nature I see a strong place for metajournals that consolidate writings around particular themes and/or that use curational skills to identify the best of the best. To some extent this occurs in isolated pockets like blogs and curated sites like Pinterest etc, but there is scope for more concerted and formalized efforts in this field.

Address of the bookmark: http://edtechnologyideas.com/

Fiverr: Graphics, marketing, fun, and more online services for $5

A marketplace for services, many of which start at $5, hence the name. Compared with long-established competitors like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk this is very simple to use and easy to understand – you hire someone for a ‘gig’ and they do the work for you, whether it is proofreading, choosing a gift, teaching you to juggle, turning your room design into a CAD drawing, correcting your code or whatever. Mostly, you pay $5 or some multiple of $5. Being a global site, some of the prices are amazingly low. It has a simple collective approach to reputation management so, like most such sites, it is not too hard to find reliable service providers. I’m torn between concerns about the ease with which it can handle contract cheating and delight that people can distribute workload in such a simple and convenient manner. I’ve not come up with a personal use for it yet but can see the potential value in many different areas.

Address of the bookmark: http://fiverr.com/

When Did Human Speech Evolve?

Balanced critique by Barbera J. King for NPR of a study that reveals strong correlation between brain processes for technology use (flint knapping) and those for language. The study itself uses fTCD to show brain activity while engaged in language and tool-use tasks, with remarkably consistent patterns for both.

The authors suggest that  ‘tool-making and language share a basis in more general human capacities for complex, goal-directed action’. The critique linked here provides grounds for being wary of drawing firm conclusions of this nature because there are other confounding factors (we already use language so it is possible that we are using it to conceptualize how we go about using tools) and the fTCD approach is a bit coarse. However, the study’s results accord well with the widely held view that language is a technology. Whether tool use or language use evolved first is still up for debate, though I strongly suspect that they evolved in tandem. Language is a technology that makes other technologies possible and vice versa: all technologies are mutually constitutive assemblies, evolving as a result of being combined and recombined.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/09/05/219236801/when-did-human-speech-evolve?ft=1&f=

IGI Global: Open Access

This is a very interesting development. I’ve not looked fully into the fine print but it looks on the face of it as though IGI, publishers of my first book and a number of chapters and articles I have written over the years, may have seen the light and is partially moving to an open publishing model, with free and open sharing and a creative commons licensing structure. This is big news as IGI is quite a significant player in the academic publication market.

Formerly, IGI’s draconian terms and conditions and shameless profiteering at the expense of hard-working academics have put me off working with them ever again but this looks like something that might well change my mind. At the moment it is in beta and looks like it is intended only for papers, but I applaud them for taking this initiative and hope that it will be extended into their book publishing business too.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.igi-global.com/open-access/