At the keynote talk on Friday at the BCAMT conference, Dr. Peter Liljedahl shared three very interesting pieces of his research from the past ten years as an observer of classroom practice, in his lecture entitled "Lessons Learned while NOT Teaching."
- Given a choice between a sitting at a desk working on paper, sitting at a desk working on a whiteboard, standing up working on a flipchart, or standing up working on a whiteboard, how would you expect students to learn best?
According to Dr. Liljedahl, students learn best while working on a non-permanent surface, while standing. He suggested that this because the non-permanence of the surface makes mistake-making easier to cope with, and that by standing up, they are on-the-stage, and so can’t hide their thinking.
How many of our classrooms are set-up to encourage this type of learning environment?
- According to Dr. Liljedahl, note-taking is an activity which takes very little mental energy (from most students). Hence, if our objective is to get students to think more, we should rethink how we share notes. He recommends sharing the notes for your class after the class, and not having expectations that students will take notes from your class. Interestingly enough, this is a practice that many university professors are now moving toward as well, and it is standard practice at meetings to have minutes to share afterward. In other words, note-taking is a less useful skill today, than it might have been 20 years ago, and so it is less important that students learn the skill of taking notes. Note that I think that making notes on a topic is a different activity, and is still useful.
Is taking notes still a useful activity?
- Similarly, the types of questions we answer for students has an impact on their thinking as well. From Dr. Liljedahl’s experience, students tend to ask one of three types of questions: proximity questions (which are questions asked because you are near them), stop-thinking questions (such as: "Is this right?"), and start-thinking questions (such as: "What would happen if…?"). His recommendation is to stop answering the first two types of questions. The result is that students have to spend a bit more time thinking, and that peer to peer interactions become more important.
Does this change how we ask questions?
John at TestSoup says:
Very interesting stuff.
Number 1 makes sense, especially the bit about “not being able to hide your thinking.” I know that I was deffo guilty of just blending into the background of the classroom and doing the bare minimum when I had other stuff on my mind from time to time. Hard to do that when you’re up in front.
I disagree with number 2. I had a lot of professors who distributed notes after class, making note taking “unnecessary” during the lecture. I found that I ALWAYS did worse in these classes, so eventually stopped accepting the notes they distributed and resumed taking my own. Learning how to rephrase and synthesize material as it is being thrown at you is a very useful skill, in my opinion.
With number 3, I would add another type of question. The “I’m just trying to get my participation points for the day” question. Again, I was guilty of this one on many occasions.
October 24, 2011 — 12:08 pm
David Wees says:
I think #2 depends a lot on the individual. For some students, note-taking is a useful skill. If you are dyslexic or have dysgraphia, I think note-taking is more than a bit challenging. Personally, I only take detailed notes when I’m taking minutes for a meeting; otherwises I will take notes on things that interest me, or on things that will help me search for resources later. Also note that I think that note-making is useful.
Further, this is under the assumption that students will spend active time during class putting to use the knowledge they have learned.
October 24, 2011 — 1:16 pm
Chris Keipert says:
Hi David,
Thank you for your summary of Dr Liljedahl’s talk. However, could you please elaborate on what you mean by note-taking vs note-making?
Thanks,
Chris
October 25, 2011 — 3:37 am
David Wees says:
Sure.
Note-taking is when someone else constructs a sequence or an explanation for you, and expects you to copy it down, essentially verbatim. They’ve done the thinking, you are expected to record it.
Note-making is when you develop that sequence yourself, take ideas that you have in your head, and make sense of them in written form of some sort. You are doing the thinking in note-making. Note-making is normally what teachers do when explaining something to someone else, it’s a form of curation of the topic.
October 25, 2011 — 9:04 am