Discussion of the reading
- Why look at a fish if you want to be an etymologist?
- What is the equivalent activity in CS?
- Why eight months of this? Would it have been better or worse with less time?
- Was Professor Agassiz wise to do what he did?
Learning
- Caveat: I have not formal training in cognitive science.
- Much of your brain is automatically pre-processing information for your conscious mind to work with.
- Example:
7 + 3.
- your brain probably supplies you with
ten and a sum and seven and three.
- but it used to just do
math plus, three and seven.
- and before that
angular line, crossing lines, and stacked curved lines.
- The sensation-into-information routines are schemata (for example, seeing
7 → thinking “seven” is a schema).
- You can also do those translations consciously where you do not yet have schemata.
- Depending on how you measure, your working memory can hold 3-4 ideas at a time.
- The load on that memory is split into three uses:
- Intrinsic load is needed to do the task at hand. You can’t sum numbers without the numbers in your mind. But intrinsic load depends on your available schemata; for many of us,
7 + 3 is resolved to “ten” subconsciously.
- Extraneous load is distractions, like “I’m hungry” and “that’s an odd accent” and “why does it smell like a gym in here?” and “I’m so stressed!”
- Germane load is used by the learning part of your brain to build schemata.
- Roughly speaking, the goal of educators is
- Make tasks small enough not to overload memory with intrinsic load
- Make tasks large enough there is scope for building new schemata
- Minimize the extraneous load, thus maximizing the germane load
Self-distraction and Stress
- People often create their own extraneous load because they are
- Bored (the mind wanders)
- Stressed (one definition of stress: wasting time thinking about how stressed you are)
- Thus you, as a TA, want to be
- Interesting (but not too distracting)
- Calming
- A hurried-, stressed-, or annoyed-seeming TA can add stress to students, impeding learning and increasing TA workload
Aside: learning styles
- There are different ways to present information: a picture, a story, an example, manipulatives, acting it out, etc.
- Research suggests that
- Most people have a preferred presentation style (one might be happier with pictures than with words, for example)
- This does correlate to learning, in part because the matching style is more interesting (less self-distraction)
- Most lessons have a best presentation style (stacks might be best taught visually, for example)
- This trumps preferences in the studies I’ve seen; better the right medium for the topic than the prefered medium of the student
- Everyone learns best if shown the information in several styles
- Hence, switch it up. Prepare ways to present each topic in 2+ styles.
Discussion of tutoring practices and this framework
- (details vary by session)