Visible LearningJudy Robertson8/3/10

About me…• Teach 1st, 3rd, 4th MSc students on a range of

modules from Interactive Systems to Advanced Interaction Design

• Started teaching in 2003• Have taught at Edinburgh, GCU and HW• Have been researching technology enhanced

learning since 1997• Admin role is recruitment• I try to roll together teaching, research, admin

where possible• This includes publishing papers about teaching• See also www.judyrobertson.typepad.com under

“teaching” and “technology in teaching” tags

Here’s what we’re aiming forHappy

Proud

Confident

Independent learner

Achieving to top of her ability level

Teaching principles for first year experience (with Sandy)1. Students should construct their own

knowledge by designing and evaluating artefacts which have personal meaning to them.

2. Interactivity is at the heart of every class plan.

3. Module and class plans are carefully designed to be flexible and are subject to change

4. Encourage learner autonomy

Teaching principles for first year experience (with Sandy)5. Feedback is informal and frequent6. Feedback works both ways7. Students learn from each other8. Build a learning community9. Use educational technology when

appropriate to learning goals

Innovation: why bother?

•It encourages reflective practice:▫Keeps you alert and on your toes▫You keep a look out for what works and

what doesn’t▫You (ought to) look for contrary evidence▫You’re keen to discover consequences and

side effects•If you’re a new lecturer, every class you

run may be like this!

Is teaching an art or a science?

Teaching at HW…• Mostly treated as a practice

based art (and sometimes as a chore)

• Formal training courses like PgCap cover some theory (but not necessarily evidence based)

• CPD happens by casual conversations in the coffee room…

• …or hurried and heated debates in BoS

• Some formal seminars and annual conference, but again these tend to be experience based

• Sporadic email exchanges

Let’s hear it for science based teaching!

People have been researching this stuff for a while•Hattie’s work is a synthesis of

▫800 meta-analyses▫52637 studies▫236 million learners

•Why ignore this evidence?•Don’t we always tell our students not to

re-invent the wheel?

Effect sizes= magnitude of learning outcome•d = 1.0 is one std dev increase in outcomeOR•Increasing learners' achievement by 2-3

yearsOR•Improving rate of learning by 50%

What effect size are we aiming for?•Aiming for at least d = 0.4 •A least half of teachers can and do

achieve this in their normal practice

What works in education?

•Acceleration = .88•Reciprocal teaching = .74•Feedback = .73•Teacher-student relationships = .72•Meta-cognitive strategies = .69•Prior achievement = .67

What is visible learning?

“Teachers seeing learning through the eyes of their students and students seeing teaching as the key to their on going learning" p22

Visible learning

•"biggest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching, and when students become their own teachers" p 22

Challenge• If you want to improve achievement, set

challenging goals for your learners• (Rather than “do your best” goals)•This is particularly important because

students’ achievement is strongly correlated to their own perception of abilities. i.e. if students think they can’t do something, they won’t be able to.

• “The performance of the students who have the most challenging goals are over 250% higher than the performance of students with the easiest goals” Hattie (2009); 164

Feedback (groan)• If you have high

challenge, you also need high feedback to match it

• Feedback isn’t just from teacher -> learner. It’s also from learner-> teacher

• We need to hear from all the learners rather than just the few who bother to answer questions

• We need to know regularly how effective our teaching is

• Learning needs to be visible for teachers and learners: this is what feedback does

• Luckily, in computer science you get some help from the software itself!

Effective feedback• Aim is to help students fills the gap between what

they understand now and what they need to understand

• Help students:▫ Come to a different view point▫ Confirm to students whether they are correct or

incorrect▫ Indicate that more information is needed▫ Suggest further/ alternative directions for student to

pursue▫ Point out alternative strategies

• Feedback at self or personal level, or just praise is rarely effective

• Students need to be able to interpret and act on feedback – do they have the opportunity?

• See photocopy

Example: Metacognition

•First year learning logs for Interactive Systems(with Nicole and Roger)Students do the following:▫Planning▫Monitoring▫Evaluating product and learning process▫Identify weaknesses in their skills

Example: reciprocal teaching• First year IS students: teaching them to read!• (With Elaine Farrow)• Scaffolded group reading process which

teaches comprehension strategies:▫Clarify▫Summarise▫Question▫Predict

• (See http://judyrobertson.typepad.com/judy_robertson/2010/02/reciprocal-reading-with-first-years.html)

Questioning our assumptionsOften we make decisions about•what is best to teach next without knowing

what these students already know•How to keep the students engaged and

busy (but not necessarily learning)•What activities provoke the most interest

(rather than what leads to students putting in effort)

•How to structure material to make it easy to learn (rather than structuring it to help students learn through challenge)

What’s the point of school?

What’s the point of school?•How many of these things apply to your

students?▫Curious – like new and puzzling things▫Courageous – not afraid of uncertainty and

complexity▫Good at exploration and investigation▫Willing to experiment and try stuff out▫Imaginative▫But also able to reason in a disciplined way▫Sociable – can learn with others▫Reflective: think about the purpose of learning

and think of new strategies for doing it better

How many of these things are true in MACS?

•Lecturers ask genuine, meaty questions (which they don’t know the answer to) and give students time to think about it

•What do the displays of work tell you about what is valued in learning?▫Product or process of learning?

•Are mistakes valued?•Do students do activities or sit and listen?•Do students know why they are doing an

exercise?•Are the lecturers ever in role of learner?•Does the lecturer acknowledge that he or

she doesn’t know everything?

Summary•Innovation is worth doing to keep you

alert and learning about your teaching•Answers are to be found in the research

literature - we don’t need to have endless debates over solved problems

•Don’t listen to people like me woffling on – insist on high quality evidence for innovation

•(And ask the university learning and teaching committee for it next time they come up with some barking scheme)

Questions? Debates? Heckles?

•Judy.Robertson@hw.ac.uk