TLL Library

"Six Days to Bubble Gum Blowing and Other Lessons in Learning,"
Vol. XI, No. 5, April 1999

Lori Breslow

This semester, Miriam Diamond, who is the educational coordinator for Course 5 (chemistry) and I have been co-teaching a subject called "Teaching College-Level Chemistry" (5.95). Eleven Ph.D. students from chemistry, material science, and biology are enrolled. The impetus for the course came from the students themselves. Besides having a natural inclination for teaching, they had heard that the demands of the job market are such that newly minted Ph.D.s are often asked to demonstrate their teaching ability, and they wanted to prepare themselves as best they could.

In designing the course, Miriam and I tried to touch upon as many facets of teaching on the university level as possible. So far during the semester, we have covered, for example, writing a syllabus, dealing with diversity in the classroom, lecturing, leading discussions, and using active learning techniques. In the first half of the course, Miriam and I planned and facilitated the classes; during the second half of the term, we turned the teaching over to the students.

Early in the semester, we assigned a short paper we called "Examine Your Own Learning" that was to set the stage for a class on that topic. We asked the students to spend some time over a two-week period becoming adept at a relatively simple task - baking a cake, playing a recorder, or naming all the kings and queens of England. They didn't have to become proficient at whatever they were studying; they simply had to begin to master the skill or data set. Of more importance, they were asked to keep a journal in which they made observations on how they went about learning whatever it was they chose. Their journal entries were to be guided by a set of questions, including, for example: Why did you decide to learn this particular skill or concept? What kinds of authorities did you use to facilitate your learning? And, what were sources of frustration and satisfaction for you as you completed this assignment? They were then to write a short paper based on their journals in which they drew some tentative conclusions specifically about themselves as learners, and more generally about the learning process.

If truth be known, this was the first time I had ever given such an assignment, and I was a little nervous about how well it would work. I needn't have been anxious: When the students reported on what they had accomplished during the two weeks, it turned out they had not only discovered much about themselves as students, but they had also uncovered some well-established principles from educational research. The fact that even these quick, relatively easy learning tasks yielded some basic truisms about how humans learn astonished me, and so I decided the results of this experiment were worth reporting more widely. (In fact, the title of this "Teach Talk" is taken from the paper of one student, Mitch McVey, who, as you can tell, set upon the task of learning to blow bubble gum.) [The 5.95 students are: Course 5 - Dana Buske, Stacey Eckman, George Greco, David Green, Robert Kennedy III, Justin Miller, Deborah Perlstein, Kevin Shea; Course 3 - Mike Fasolka and Bindu Nair; Course 7 - Mitch McVey.] I have pulled out 10 principles of learning from the 5.95 students' papers. In this "Teach Talk," I'll discuss five of them, all of which can be loosely categorized as having to do with cognition. In next issue's "Teach Talk," I'll deal with some of the social and emotional aspects of learning.

Principle #1: Prior Knowledge Plays an Important Role in Learning

Research in cognitive psychology has shown that one of the most effective ways to teach new material is to build upon what students already know. New knowledge that extends old knowledge is most easily assimilated. On the other hand, incorrect ideas that students hold as true can hamper learning. Thus Mitch McVey writes, "After my first unsuccessful attempts [at bubble blowing], I realized I had certain preconceived notions. . . that prevented me from being able to learn the skill." (Mitch thought the gum was supposed to be in front of his teeth before blowing air into it. He couldn't figure out why wads of gum kept shooting out of his mouth every time he tried to blow a bubble. He finally called in an "expert" - a friend who was an avid bubble gum blower - who explained the proper form was to have the gum behind the teeth before blowing.)

This problem of prior incorrect knowledge is a common and insidious one in technical subjects. Diana Laurillard in her book, Rethinking University Teaching, points out there are a handful of common misconceptions about the way the physical world works that can interfere with a student's ability to understand basic principles of physics. (The particular example she cites deals with the reason students have difficulty understanding Newton's Third Law; see pages 38-42.) The job of the instructor, then, is to identify - and surface - these common errors in order to remove the obstacles students face. Or as Mitch explains, "A teacher's role, as exemplified by what my friend did, is to make the students aware of their preconceptions and force them to wrestle with the discordance that results from . . . two different sets of ideas."

Principle #2: Modeling is an Effective Way to Learn

Several of the students saw the skill they were attempting to master modeled by an expert before they tried it themselves. Thus, when Kevin Shea and his wife, Jennifer, wanted to learn to make pasta, armed with a notebook and camera, they went to his Italian grandmother to watch her make the dish. And when George Greco decided to find out how to mend clothes, he asked his girlfriend to sew on a button and tear a rip seam while he observed her. "I know I learn best," George writes, "by watching an experienced person do something, imitating them, and practicing doing it until it becomes internalized."

Albert Bandura's social learning theory provides the classic description of the role of modeling in learning. George echoes Bandura when he comes to the conclusion that watching others and then practicing what they do is a powerful way to produce learning.

This finding has been substantiated by more recent research. In a highly regarded article in the American Association for Higher Education Bulletin (December 1997), Peter T. Ewell, senior associate at the National Center for Higher Educational Management Systems (NCHEMS), identifies "approaches in which faculty constructively model the learning process" as one of the most effective means of instruction. "Apprenticeships," Ewell writes, "allow students to directly watch and internalize expert practice." (p. 5)

As instructors, we model for our students in a variety of ways. Some are obvious - using equipment in the laboratory or doing problems at the board. But what about the more subtle ways our behavior in the classroom or our interactions with students create models that they then imitate? For example, if we dismiss a wrong answer with silence, are students to infer that wrong answers are "bad"? If we concentrate on the mathematical representation of a problem without referring back to the physical phenomenon that it symbolizes, can we fault students for not being able to apply abstract principles to more practical problems?

Since the effect of modeling is so potent, it behooves us to think carefully and consciously about what we want to model for students, and how this principle of learning can best be utilized.

Principle #3: Feedback is an Important Component of Learning

Cognitive psychology also emphasizes the importance of feedback in the learning process. Three students - Kevin Shea, Mike Fasolka, and Justin Miller - specifically noted the role of feedback in improving their performance. A simple example: After adding a fourth egg to a mound of flour, Kevin, the novice pasta maker, found "eggs flowed from my flour crater like lava onto the dining room table." Using feedback from this experience - something about the way he built the flour mound was wrong - Kevin tried again and was successful. In the process, he learned, "adequate instruction, practice, and feedback . . . are vital to master a complex skill." (He also decided the next time he and his wife want to make pasta, they will have his grandmother on hand.)

Mike wrote eloquently on mistakes as a source of feedback. To fulfill his assignment, Mike set out to teach himself how to play the video game, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. After familiarizing himself with the objectives and rules of the game, he began a period of "rough experimentation," during which he made many mistakes. "In fact," he writes, "I am quite certain that making these mistakes was essential to my learning process." He identifies this process as figuring out the "boundaries" of the task. For example, he found that as he tried to shoot down enemy ships, he was also crashing into them. But after every unsuccessful attempt, he would vary some parameter. He finally discovered that applying his ship's brake lever allowed him to destroy the enemy without smashing himself to smithereens. "This experimentation stage," Mike writes, "seems to be the longest, but most fruitful, period in my learning process."

Mike hit upon two essential points regarding the role of feedback in learning. First, educational research tell us that feedback is most effective when it is frequent and quickly follows upon the heels of the students' work. As Mike found, the learner can then immediately assess his or her mistake and take steps to correct it. Second, as Ewell points out, recent research on the brain has led to the understanding that "building lasting cognitive connections requires considerable periods of reflective ('alpha-level') activity." (p. 4) Given that, it's not surprising that Mike found this process of taking action, examining the results of those actions, planning strategy, and experimenting again a long, but productive cycle.

Finally, Justin Miller learned how to cross-stitch for his assignment. But he did so in a vacuum because no one around him knew how to do that kind of handiwork. "I found it mildly annoying," he reported, "that I received no assistance and no feedback while working on the piece."

Principle #4: The Learner Benefits from Having a Framework in which to Work

Research into how learners process information has identified the importance of creating a "framework" or cognitive "map" so that information processors have a sense of where they are going and how pieces fit together. For example, before Mike Fasolka started to play the video game, he consulted the accompanying booklet that described what the game was about, gave a synopsis of the rules, and illustrated a controller diagram, a "visual map" that gave him an overview of the handset's capabilities. Similarly, Bindu Nair, who set out to make dosa, a Southern Indian rice crepe, learned the hard way about the importance of an overview when her first batch failed miserably. Neither of the "experts" she had consulted - her mother and her aunt - had warned her that she needed to give the mixture "frequent breaks" during the blending process in order to keep it from overheating. In reflecting on her first attempt, she writes, "I . . . realize that structure is very useful for students in general. Pitfalls such as my blender trauma can be minimized if students have a clear concept of the entire process before they start."

"The legacy from Gestalt psychology," writes James R. Davis in his book, Better Teaching, More Learning, "is that individuals organize their perceptions according to the whole configuration (gestalt) . . . . The perceiver puts individual perceptions into the 'bigger picture' and sees things as part of a larger whole." (p. 147) In the classroom, this principle of providing the "bigger picture" can be honored through something as simple as writing an agenda on the board outlining the material to be covered for the day, or announcing the "thread" that will weave through the entire lecture. Including "objectives" on the course syllabus can also provide a "framework" for students by allowing them to see how each topic fits into and supports a coherent purpose.

Principle #5: Breaking the Task into Smaller Steps is Beneficial

The complementary principle to the idea that learners work best within a framework is, of course, that both skills and knowledge are best mastered when they are broken down into smaller pieces. In an earlier "Teach Talk," I likened teaching - especially teaching technical subjects - to a jigsaw puzzle. Students need to have the picture on the box to see what they are to build, but, ultimately, the puzzle is put together piece by piece. (See "The Jigsaw Puzzle of Teaching," Vol. VII, No. 4 of the Faculty Newsletter.)

The challenge, of course, is to figure out where the boundaries of each "piece" are, and how small (or large) each individual item should be. For example, Dana Buske, in choosing to master skate skiing (a kind of cross-country skiing that is faster than traditional cross-country skiing), decided first to learn what to do with her feet before practicing with poles. "Having already mastered the lower body motions," she wrote, "it was much easier then to add the arms."

Bob Kennedy, recognizing that "some facts in science just need to be memorized," decided to learn the names of all the presidents of MIT, with the decades they were in office, for this assignment. Implementing a strategy similar to Dana's, he first broke down the list into 50-year segments. "By subgrouping the presidents," he explains, "I could work on learning a smaller portion of the list." Yet in thinking about what he would do differently, he writes, "I would set smaller goals along the way."

Bob found it hard to motivate himself to learn the list; setting smaller goals, he hypothesized, would have given him more opportunities for success, which, in turn, would have spurred him on. This point reinforces an earlier one on feedback. As Ewell writes, "Using weekly quizzes or nongraded practice assignments . . ." (i.e., by allowing students to practice working with subsets of the material to be learned) ". . .[instructors create] iterative opportunities for students to try out skills, to examine small failures, and to receive advice on how to correct them." (p. 5)

Next "Teach Talk": The role of motivation, context, and emotion in learning.