{"id":7211,"date":"2023-08-14T08:00:41","date_gmt":"2023-08-14T13:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=7211"},"modified":"2023-08-13T10:39:23","modified_gmt":"2023-08-13T15:39:23","slug":"teaching-helps-students-learn-new-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/teaching-helps-students-learn-new-research\/","title":{"rendered":"“Teaching” Helps Students Learn: New Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a>Not even two months ago, I admitted my skepticism<\/a> about a popular teaching technique.<\/p>\n

While I accept that “students teaching students” SOUNDS like a great idea, I nonetheless worry about the practical application of this idea:<\/p>\n

Understanding<\/em> a new idea requires lots of mental resources. Explaining<\/em> a new idea requires even more. All those cognitive demands might overwhelm a student’s WM.<\/p>\n

Even if students have the mental resources to accomplish these tasks, how can we be sure that their peers are — in fact — LEARNING the new ideas they’re being taught? For instance: what if the student-teachers misunderstood the material they’re meant to teach?<\/p>\n

Peers can intimidate. If teachers have “first day of school” anxiety dreams, imagine how students feel when they must take on the teacher’s job. (And: they don’t have our training and experience.)<\/p>\n

So: while I think it’s\u00a0possible<\/em> that students benefit from teaching their peers,\u00a0making this pedagogy successful will take LOTS of preparation, skill, and humility.<\/p>\n

Today’s\u00a0Update: Does the Audience Matter?<\/h2>\n

Happily, Prof. Dan Willingham recently highlighted a new study<\/a>\u00a0exploring this pedagogical question. Specifically, researchers wanted to know if it matters whom the students are teaching.<\/p>\n

College students in China\u00a0watched a two-minute video on synapses, specifically:<\/p>\n

how signals are transmitted across neurons in the human nervous\u00a0system and the role of action potentials, calcium ions, synaptic vesicles,\u00a0neurotransmitters, sodium ions, and receptors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After a few extra minutes of prepration, they then “taught” a lesson on this topic.<\/p>\n

One third of the participants explained chemical synapses\u00a0to 7 peers<\/strong>;<\/p>\n

one third explained to 1 peer<\/strong>;<\/p>\n

and the final third explained to a video camera<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Students in all three groups were instructed that the peers would have to take a test based on these explanations.<\/p>\n

So, what effect did the audience have on the student doing the explaining?<\/p>\n

Results and Conclusions<\/h2>\n

The researchers had hypothesized\u00a0that the presence of peers would ramp up stress and reduce the benefits of this teaching methodology.<\/p>\n

For that reason, they suspected that students would do better if they taught their lesson to the video camera instead of to live human beings.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, students who taught to the camera did better on basically every measurement.<\/p>\n

They offered more thorough explanations<\/strong> (Cohen’s d values here ranged from 0.95 – 1.23: unusually high numbers).<\/p>\n

They remembered<\/strong> the information better an hour later.<\/p>\n

They transferred<\/strong> their understanding to new questions more effectively.<\/p>\n

They felt less stress<\/strong>, and lower cognitive load<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

As the authors write: “minimizing the social presence of the audience [by have students teach to a camera] during teaching\u00a0 resulted in maximizing\u00a0learning outcomes.”<\/p>\n

Classroom Implications<\/h2>\n

At first look, this study seems to suggest that — sure enough! — students DO learn more when they teach.<\/p>\n

Alas, I don’t think we can draw that conclusion.<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>: this study\u00a0didn’t measure that question<\/em>. That is: it didn’t include a control condition where students used some other method to study information about synapses.<\/p>\n

This study DOES suggest that teaching to a camera<\/strong><\/em> helps more than teaching to peers<\/strong><\/em>. But it DOESN’T suggest that teaching <\/strong>(to a camera, or to peers) helps more than something else<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>: I’m not sure that the verb “teach” makes sense in this context.<\/p>\n

The students explained synapses to a camera, and they believed that another student would watch the video and take a test on it.<\/p>\n

I suppose we can call that “teaching.” But that’s a very niche-y version of\u00a0it.<\/p>\n

And, in my experience, it’s not AT ALL what teachers think of when they hear about this methodology. More often, students break up into groups to study small parts of a process, and then circulate and “teach” the other groups what they learned.<\/p>\n

Third<\/strong>: how would this “teach the camera” plan work in the classroom?<\/p>\n

The “explain to a camera” approach might work better than an “explain to peers” version. But I imagine at least two practical problems.<\/p>\n

#1: logistically, how does it work? Do I have 25 students explaining to 25 separate cameras simultaneuosly? Do I have a separate place with cameras where students go to record?<\/p>\n

#2: In this study, researchers told participants that other students would watch their videos and be tested on their understanding.<\/p>\n

Presumably this statement made the teacher-students quite conscientious about their explanations. For that reason (probably), they thought harder<\/em> and therefore remembered more<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That is: the camera method helped students learn largely because participants believed that others relied on their teaching.<\/p>\n

If, however, I use this strategy in my class, that causal chain (conscientiousness –> thinking –> remembering) could easily break down.<\/p>\n

Either I DO use those videos to help other students learn — in which case I have to review and critque them scrupulously;<\/p>\n

Or I DON’T use those videos — in which case my students know they don’t really have to be so concientious. (Reduced conscientiousness –> reduced thinking –> reduced memory.)<\/p>\n

These practical questions might sound mundane, even grouchy. But I’m not trying to be grouchy — I’m trying to help my students learn material!<\/p>\n

TL;DR<\/h2>\n

A recent study suggests that college students benefit more from “teaching” if they teach to a camera than if they teach peers.<\/p>\n

Although I’m inclined to believe these results — they certainly make a lot of sense — I still worry that a “students-teaching-students” pedagogy sounds better in theory than it might work in practice.<\/p>\n

\n

Wang, F., Cheng, M., & Mayer, R. E. (2023). Improving learning-by-teaching without audience interaction as a generative learning activity by minimizing the social presence of the audience.\u00a0Journal of Educational Psychology<\/i>.<\/p>\n

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Not even two months ago, I admitted my skepticism about a popular teaching technique. While I accept that “students teaching students” SOUNDS like a great idea, I nonetheless worry about the practical application of this idea: Understanding a new idea requires lots of mental resources. Explaining a new idea requires even more. All those cognitive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":7215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,191],"class_list":["post-7211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice","tag-generative-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7211","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=7211"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7217,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7211\/revisions\/7217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}