Applying Deliberate Practice to Online Courses

 

Last week I wrote about the steps to Create Education that Sticks.  With a lot of education taking place online for a number of reasons, I wanted to suggest some ideas for creating learning experiences in online courses.

 

The biggest hurdle for creating meaningful experiences is well…creating experiences.  Showing a video is one way of creating an experience but does that experience lead to learning?  And how do you know that?

 

• In one of my previous jobs as the online Learning Management System administrator, I had an internal customer that had created videos that demonstrated how to use a software package that is needed to request purchases.  The videos showed each click that was needed to find a vendor, determine if the product had been purchased before, determine the quantity previously purchased and make another purchase.  Pretty dry stuff.  They asked how they could test that the people taking this course actually understood what they had just watched.

•  My suggestion was that they have the students actually, step through the process and determine if they can use the software.  For instance, the question they can ask in the test is:  What is the address of the vendor with Vendor Code A123?  They can give 4 possible vendor names as the multiple-choice answers, however, the students would have to actually use the software to determine what the vendor address is.  There were hundreds of vendors available to choose from, so they could copy each of the questions and just change the Vendor Code, a couple of the addresses, and you could have many questions for the Learning Management System to choose from.  This would reduce the chances that students could "guess" at the answer and not really learn how to use the system.  If they did make a bunch of guesses, the passing criteria could be set such that they had to repeat the test.  And the Learning Management System could be set up to not repeat the same questions so there could be no "process of elimination."  Once they did THAT a couple of times, they would find it easier to just learn the software (i.e. pay attention to the video) than just try to pass the test.

 

• How about for other courses like biology?  Students could be asked to find a leaf of a plant and determine the biological classification.  They could be asked to create the process they used for finding the classification.  Once all the students had presented what they found and their process, they can develop their own process and use that to determine the classification for other plants.  That way they can determine if their process is sound or needs some adjusting.  Creating their own process is a powerful way of getting them away from memorizing and more toward becoming independent, critical thinkers.

• I was a math teacher at a High School.  On my first day, the department head told me that my main focus was to prepare the students for college.  With that, I set out teaching an Algebra class.  Using examples of where algebra shows up in real-life (e.g. If an apple costs $1 and an orange costs $2, how much would 4 apples and 3 oranges cost?), I would help the class change the actual objects to variables, and then see how that would work to find answers.  Then, I would give them examples to try on their own.  One day, the department head came in and told me that a parent called complaining that I didn't collect and grade the homework.  My response was, "I thought you wanted me to prepare them for college?  In college, there won't be anyone collecting their homework and grading it."  I also told him that I was testing their ability to think on their own and by giving them new problems to solve that they had not seen before, I was testing their knowledge of the material versus their ability to memorize and regurgitate what they were told.  By the end of the year, my classes had scored an average of 20 points higher than other classes on a standard test that was used by all of the Algebra classes at the school. 

 
While the Algebra example is not from an online course, the concept of deliberate practice is what we as educators can provide to assist students in gaining knowledge.
 

• One last example.  I had a colleague that provided nurses with an annual electrocardiogram (ECG) test.  The test was to show that the nurses could recognize some 20 heart rhythms.  The colleague was very protective of the test saying that if the answers got out, the nurses could cheat.  I asked what the goal of the exam was?  I was told it was to verify the 20 rhythms.  So, if they print out all 20 rhythms and learn all 20 so they are ready for the test, doesn't that accomplish the goal?  I said to make it more effective, you can get 40 different rhythms that are possibilities for being on the test and let them cheat away!  That way they are showing that they can recognize 40 rhythms instead of just the 20. 

 

It is very important to identify what the goal of the education is and then learn how to determine if that level of knowledge is met. 

Creating Education That Sticks

 

How do spiders learn to do this?

With all of the issues related to schools being closed and conducting classes online, there is a question about how effective these classes can be.  This post will talk about the education process.  I will cover how to do it effectively in an online setting in a future post.  Classes need to follow some principles of a good education.  These include:

·         Building on existing knowledge, experiences, and other classes

·         Reflect on experiences

·         Teaching models, frameworks, and concepts

·         Limit lesson to include 5-7 topics that you would like the student to grasp

·         Providing practice that includes critical thinking

 

Existing Knowledge, Experiences, and Other Classes

Were you ever told to write about anything you wanted and sat there staring at a blank screen or page?  But if someone hands you a topic sentence and you can explain what it means or expand on the topic it is much easier.  Similarly, if a student is receiving a totally new concept without having a context, they generally have a lot more difficulty in grasping the concept than if it relates to something they already have some knowledge about.  There are several ways of to accomplish that.

·         Have the students think of a specific topic about which they have knowledge (their favorite teacher)

·         Create an experience for everyone (show a video)

·         Link to other classes ("Recall from your cardiac class that cardiac cells have a property called automaticity…")

 

Reflect On Experiences

Through a structured reflection, students can begin to think more deeply about a topic.  Let's take the example from above regarding their favorite teacher.  Asking for the characteristics that made that teacher their favorite gets them to think more deeply about the characteristics that make good teachers.  

 

Models, Frameworks and Concepts

There may be some courses that have rules or facts associated with them.  Science, history, and language arts for instance.  These rules and facts may be important to the overall mastery of the topic, however, having a deeper knowledge of the framework will assist in putting the information to use in other contexts.  Students need to be able to move from one example to another and determine if the new issue fits into that model or not.  Models allow us to simplify thinking and (I would argue more importantly) apply that thinking to other topics.  For example, using an analogy about a baseball team to talk about the different roles that people play on a resuscitation team can get the point across about needing to be highly skilled in a particular area, as well as knowledgeable about other areas without having to be an expert in all areas.

 

Limit Learning to 5-7 topics

There have been many studies about how many items the human mind can retain.  For short-term memory, 3-5 is ideal.  (Think about phone numbers XXX-XXX-XXXX.)  Longer-term 5-7 is generally shown as the maximum for most of the population.  So if there are 15 items that need to be retained in order to get the overall concept, it will need to be broken up into smaller chunks.  I have heard several educators talk about needing to get all of the information into a single course.  To me, this does not make a lot of sense.  If students will not retain the information at a high volume, then forcing it on them is not going to help the situation.  If the goal is to get them to know the topic, put it in a package that they can understand.  What good is it to give them 15 items if they are only going to remember 7?  And which 7 are they going to remember?  If you give them 5 items that they can incorporate into their knowledge and that they are able to use, that becomes the Existing Knowledge for the next set of items.

 

Provide Practice

Just giving information does not ensure its retention.  There has to be a structured practice that allows the student to utilize the concept in various situations, learn from what works and what does not work, and apply the concepts in different contexts.  The key idea here is to have the students exercise this new muscle that they have been given to make it stronger.  In medicine, there is an adage of "see one, do one, teach one."  Each of these steps helps the student become more familiar and comfortable with the topic.  While it may take more than one "doing" time before they are ready to teach, the idea is that they will be questioning if there is an easier way, is this the best use case, are there other techniques that can be used, etc.

 

By following these 5-steps, students will be able to increase their knowledge incrementally and avoid the frustration of feeling like they are drinking from a fire hose.