{"id":4778,"date":"2019-07-05T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=4778"},"modified":"2019-07-02T14:29:41","modified_gmt":"2019-07-02T19:29:41","slug":"beyond-the-mouse-pointing-in-online-lectures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/beyond-the-mouse-pointing-in-online-lectures\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Mouse: Pointing in Online Lectures"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know, of course, that the right kind of movement can help students learn<\/strong>. The nascent field of “embodied cognition” works to explore the strategies that work most effectively.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s<\/a> a collection of resources.<\/p>\n

And, here’s<\/a> a recent blog post about kindergarteners moving to learn the number line.<\/p>\n

You also know that online learners easily get distracted<\/strong>, often because they multitask. (I say “they” because you and I would never do such things.)<\/p>\n

This <\/a>recent post shows that even folding laundry — a harmless-seeming activity — reduces online learning.<\/p>\n

What happens when we put these two research pools together?<\/p>\n

Specifically: can movement reduce distraction, and increase learning, for online learners?<\/p>\n

Benefits of Online Pointing?<\/h2>\n

Several researchers — including the estimable Richard Mayer<\/a> — wanted to answer that question.<\/p>\n

Specifically, they wanted to know: do pointing gestures made by the teacher<\/strong> help online students learn?<\/p>\n

They had students watch an online lecture (about “neural transmission,” naturally).<\/p>\n

For the first group of students, the teacher pointed at specific places<\/em> on relevant diagrams.<\/p>\n

For the second group, the teacher pointed generally toward the diagrams<\/em> (but not at specific pants of them).<\/p>\n

For the third, the teacher moved his hands about<\/em>, without pointing specifically.<\/p>\n

For the fourth, the teacher didn’t move his hands<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Do different pointing strategies help or hurt?<\/p>\n

Benefits Indeed<\/h2>\n

Sure enough, pointing matters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Students in the first group spent more time looking<\/em> at the relevant parts of the diagrams.<\/p>\n

They did better on a test that day<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And — most important — they did better than the other groups on a test a week later<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Now: a week isn’t exactly learning. We want our students to remember facts and concepts for months. (Preferably, forever.)<\/p>\n

But, the fact that the memories had lasted a week suggests it’s MUCH likelier they’ll last longer still.<\/p>\n

Practical Implications<\/h2>\n

If your classroom life includes online teaching, or teaching with videos, try to include specific pointing gestures\u00a0<\/em>to focus students on relevant information. At least with this student population, such gestures really helped.<\/p>\n

By the way, this study\u00a0doesn’t<\/em> answer an interesting and important question: “does student<\/em> <\/strong>movement as they watch online lectures help or hurt their learning?”<\/p>\n

We know from the study cited above that irrelevant movement (like folding laundry) doesn’t help. But: should students mirror your gestures as they watch videos? Should you give them particular gestures to emulate?<\/p>\n

We don’t know yet…but I hope future research helps us find an answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When teachers use gestures appropriately in online learning, students learn more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[69,100,29],"class_list":["post-4778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-embodied-cognition","tag-online-learning","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4778"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4784,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4778\/revisions\/4784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}