Literature Review
Books and documents pertinent to my thesis
Mindset: The new psychology of success; Carol Dweck
Sep 1, 2018
In this book, Dweck explores the concept of two opposite mindsets: fixed mindset and growth mindsets. She uses extensive examples to help readers understand what is a fixed mindset vs. a growth mindset, and their respective impact on learning. She also discusses ways for people to change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.
Dweck’s clear explanation and rich examples of growth mindset bettered my understanding of what constitutes a growth mindset, which is one the fundamental concepts my thesis is based upon. In addition, I found two examples she mentioned in the book particularly inspirational to my study. 1) Instead of vowing to adopt a growth-mindset, having a vivid, concrete strategy (when, where and how) tremendously ups the success of changing the mindset. Based on this insight, any intervention I come up with should help users clearly visualize their next steps (observable actions) towards their goal. 2) Dweck and her team developed Brainology, a digital program that uses “interactive animations and classroom activities” to teach students a growth-mindset. I intend to further investigate the program and documents the findings in an artifact review.
Resilience; Harvard University — Center on the Developing Child
Retrieved from https://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/key-concepts/resilience/
Sep 3, 2018
This article investigates factors that contribute to building resilience for children. Resilience develops as a result of the interaction between children’s genes and the “protective factors” of the environment. The key ingredient for children to develop adaptive skills to cope with adversities is to have at least one committed caregiver who can provide them with long-term, responsive support.
Understanding the factors that help children build resilience is crucial because interventions I come up with should strengthen these factors. In the research, they also point out that “resilience can be developed at any age.” Given the fact, I will investigate strategies that help children develop resilience and evaluate their effectiveness on adults.
The Road to Resilience; American Psychology Association
Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience.aspx
Sep 9, 2018
Similar to the article Resilience from Harvard University, this online brochure explains the concept of resilience, discusses the factors that contribute to the quality and suggests strategies for building resilience. In order to identify what strategies work best for each individual, the brochure also consists of a series of questions designed to help readers reflect on their past experiences and sources of strength during difficult times.
The article reinforces that having caring relationships within and outside of the family is critical to building resilience. It also mentions that helping others when they need help also can benefit the helper. Following this insight, one of the things I can try with my design is to encourage its users to build mutual support with each other, as this can potentially benefit both of them. I also found the reflection questions in this brochure to be helpful. I can use them as a reference for designing interview questions or self-reflection workbooks.
21st Century Skills; Bernie Trilling & Charles Fadel
Sep 10, 2018
The book explains why the “global landscape of learning” is transforming and how it is transforming. It also serves as a guide for any educator who would like to bring a change to his/her school. In the 21st century, the authors suggest these three types of skills are essential to students: learning & innovation skills, information, media & technology skills, and life & career skills. Paired with project examples, a learning framework and many learning methods were also covered in the book. These methods were proven to be effective in improving students’ academic performances, as well as cultivating the 21st-century skills.
One of the learning method discussed in the book is “design-based learning, ” which I found relevant to my research. The authors suggest that using the project cycle, which is similar to IDEO’s design process, has been proven to be more effective for students to acquire new knowledge and skills than the traditional learning methods. It is clear that design-based learning, such as designing a website based on a real-life problem, keeps students engaged and helps students develop innovation skills. However, I want to investigate further whether the design-based learning is also effective in helping students strengthen their ability to adapt and bounce back from setbacks. I also learned that the design-based learning is especially embraced and appreciated by science education. For example, the University of Michigan developed a program in which students design and build their boats. Given this information, I think science may be a good content area to address with my design interventions.
Design for how people learn; Julie Dirksen
Sep 14, 2018
In the book, Dirksen explains the elements and procedure to design a great learning experience. Similar to any design practice, designing an effective learning experience requires educators to know its users (learners), identify the problems (learning gaps), setting goals, create solutions that are specific to the problems, evaluate the designs and iterate. In addition, Dirksen discusses strategies that can be used to tackle different learning gaps, such as a skill gap or a motivation gap.
I found Dirksen’s book to be helpful in many ways. At a higher level, this book showed me an excellent framework to approach my research. It pointed out many great questions that I will include in my user research, such as who are the learners, what are the learning gaps, what are the learning goals, etc. I can also see myself come back to Dirksen’s strategies once I isolate and identify more specific issues through the user research.
When fear, anxiety, or discomfort with the new behavior has been identified as one of the main issues, practice becomes particularly important — Dirksen
One of the chapters in the book is highly relevant to my topic. Dirksen suggests that one of the strategies to help learners be more motivated is to improve their self-efficacy, and practice is particularly important for building self-efficacy. With that in mind, I will further investigate efficient strategies to help learners practice complex skills, which in return helps build their confidence to confront more challenges down the road.
How learning works: seven research-based principles for smart teaching; Susan A. Ambrose and 4 others
Sep 24, 2018
In this book, the authors introduce seven research-based learning principles that cover a wide range of learning behaviors, such as factors that motivate students to learn. These principles can be used to aid the design of a course. For each principle, the authors explain the rationale behind it, its implications, and practical suggestions for how to incorporate it into a learning experience.
I found this book to be highly relevant and helpful. At a macro level, it helps me locate the challenge my thesis is trying to address within a web of parameters that shape students’ learning experiences. It also allows me to see the connections between the problem I am addressing and the other factors. Through this reading, I learned that applying metacognitive skills is especially critical to being an effective self-directed learner, which includes the qualities of being able to persist and adapt when faced with adversities. Therefore, I will be looking at the steps involved to practice metacognitive skills and identify opportunities for interventions.
1.For example, the authors mention the significance for students to detect their own knowledge gaps before they come up with strategies to fill the gaps. It leads me to think: what interventions can I design to help students detect their skills and knowledge gaps?
2.Just like a classic design process, a self-directed learning cycle also suggests a series of steps that one can follow along. This leads me to think about the possibility of designing a framework which includes a series of methods that can help students practice the metacognitive skills, especially during the planning phase. These methods can take references from design methods such as mind mapping and affinity diagramming.
It is especially helpful for students to see that even experts — in fact, especially experts — constantly reassess and adjust as they go.
3.As mentioned in the quote, modeling experts’ metacognitive processes is an effective strategy to promote metacognition among students. This helps them “revise their own expectations about learning and their views of intelligence and to persevere when they encounter difficulty.” (p213) What if my intervention is about collecting experts’ metacognitive process and use them as models for students to refer to?
Wet mind: Chp 3–4; Stephen M. Kosslyn, Olivier Koenig
Sep 29, 2018
Wet mind explains the fundamental concepts in the neuroscience of how the human brain operates to serve cognitive activities such as visual perception, reading, memory, etc. According to Kosslyn and Koenig, multiple systems of the brain, which can be segregated into subsystems, operate together to handle cognitive tasks.
Understanding the core concepts of how the brain works to serve mental activities lays down a good theoretical foundation for me to proceed into my thesis research, which is essentially relevant to cognition. Especially from the last book, how learning works, I understood that there is a close correlation between metacognition and being a self-directed learner. The chapters I read so far mainly discussed how different areas of a brain, such as the ventral system and the dorsal system, work together to give rise to mental activities. An interesting insight is that our brain always tries to match what we see with the information we store in the brain. As explained by Sara Bernard in the article Science Shows Making Lessons Relevant Really Matters: “If a student acquires new information that’s unrelated to anything already stored in his brain, it’s tough for the new information to get into those networks because it has no scaffolding to cling to. Effective teaching helps students recognize patterns and put new information in context with the old.” This leads me to think if there can be a tool/framework that helps a student connect the dots. These two chapters also put me in a good position to read about the last chapter of the book, which directly addresses reasoning and consciousness.
The economics of attention; Richard A. Lanham
Oct 4, 2018
Lanham argues in his book that we are now living in an attention economy where information is plentiful, but attention is scarce, for, attention is what helping people filter through the overwhelming amount of data. He further argues that in an information economy substance/stuff was the commodity whereas, in an attention economy, style/fluff becomes the commodity. He also questions the effectiveness of the four-year university model and criticizes that the university isn’t responding well to the attention economy. In contrast, “the virtual university is the university in a pure economics of attention,” which “accommodates many different oscillations between theory and practice, task-specific “training” and exploration of fundamental principles.”
Lanham found the model of the virtual university to be effective partly because they supply knowledge when students need it. This relates to Ambrose’s writing in a way that they both recognize the significance of relevancy. The more relevant a learning material is to a student’s interest or problem at hand, the more motivated the student is to learn the material. This inspires me to look at opportunities of a digital platform, which may utilize the wealth of the virtual world to scaffold students’ learning when they need it. Another advantage brought by digital technology is the ability to revise easily and quickly. I wonder if the use of digital technology can also affect students’ mindset to treat their work as ongoing, continual revision?
Conceptual blockbusting; James L. Adams
Oct 7, 2018
In the book, Adams addresses common mental blocks that can prevent us from having creative ideas (aka conceptual blocks). This is because we are so programmed to certain thinking styles. However, Adams also suggests that we can consciously modify the conceptual blocks to enhance our problem-solving skills that warrant creativity. Due to Adams, much of the modification comes from being aware of our own problem-solving process.
This book has brought me many new perspectives which are beneficial to my research. One of the questions I want to find out through my research is what strategies help students persevere through and overcome educational setbacks. The answer from Adams is creativity. Adams suggests that fixed thinking styles impede our ability to solve problems effectively. Conversely, if we are aware of our own thinking styles and alternative thinking styles out there, we are able to adapt our strategies and come up with creative solutions when we encounter educational challenges.
Among all of the conceptual blocks mentioned in the book, emotional blocks and intellectual blocks may be the most relevant to my topic. Emotional blocks impede our ability to explore ideas. Some examples include: “fear to make a mistake, to fail, to risk; inability to tolerate ambiguity; problem fails to engage interest versus over-motivation to succeed quickly.” (Kindle Location 535–537). According to Adams, the key to overcoming such fear is to understand it. If a learner makes a list of “catastrophic expectations” of a creative idea, he/she can swap the fear of failure with his/her analytical ability. Accurate assessment prior to implementation is effective in modifying these blocks. I can see this method to be helpful during a planning phase in a learning cycle.
Adams suggests that intellectual blocks can happen when we choose problem-solving strategies (e.g. thinking verbally, quantitatively, pictorially) inefficiently or we have a shortage of these strategies. Reason for that is we usually choose a strategy unconsciously out of our habits. One way to modify the blocks and become more creative is self-acknowledgment. I see this to be highly relevant to the metacognitive skills discussed in other literature. This again inspires me to investigate tools to help learners be aware of their own habitual thinking styles, assess their effectiveness and modify these habits if necessary.
Another way to broaden one’s problem-solving styles is to work in a collaborative environment. By leveraging diverse intellectual and thinking styles, learners are exposed to a wider range of languages. This is something that I am interested to explore further. How can a collaborative learning environment motivate a learner to reflect upon his/her learning styles and adopt new ones?
Frame innovation; Kees Dorst (to be continued)
Oct 8, 2018
Dorst introduces a new approach to solve complex problems and create innovative solutions: frame creations. It has similarities with “design thinking,” but it goes beyond the classic techniques we use in a conventional problem-solving situation. Frame creations focus on investigating new ways to approach the problem itself rather than generating solutions. Dorst describes the process as a movement of zooming in and out (“a shift in focus from an understanding of the core problem situation to widening the context, then to refocusing on the problem within a broadened field”).(p.80) Dorst also explains the nine steps (archaeology of the problem situation, core paradox, context, field, themes, frames, futures, transformation, integration)that constitute the frame creations process and gives examples of case studies to demonstrate how the process was applied in real-world situations.
Neuroplasticity: learning physically changes the brain; Sara Bernard
Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/neuroscience-brain-based-learning-neuroplasticity
Oct 14, 2018
In the article, Bernard argued that much research from neurology has shown evidence that our brain is constantly forming and developing throughout our lives. The idea of a “growth mindset, ” that our intelligence is malleable, is backed by scientific findings. The effective strategies to exercise our brain include 1) Practice. Repeated practices strengthen connections between neurons, which helps build a more efficient network in the brain. 2) Build connections. Neurologist and educator Judy Willis once said: “Whenever a new material is presented in such a way that students see relationships, they generate greater brain cell activity and achieve more successful long-term memory storage and retrieval.” 3) Demystify how the brain works. Letting students know that they can literally strengthen their brain through practice and review is empowering, which can be especially beneficial for students who label themselves as “not smart”.
Knowing why intelligence is malleable from a neurology perspective proves why effort and effective strategies are critical for academic growth. The first two strategies cause me to think about the opportunity of tools/framework that supports deliberate practice, which requires both repetition and reflection.
Who gets to graduate; Paul Tough
Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-graduate.html?_r=0
Oct 15, 2018
To the extent that the Stanford researchers shared a unifying vision, it was the belief that students were often blocked from living up to their potential by the presence of certain fears and anxieties and doubts about their ability. These feelings were especially virulent at moments of educational transition — like the freshman year of high school or the freshman year of college. And they seemed to be particularly debilitating among members of groups that felt themselves to be under some special threat or scrutiny: women in engineering programs, first-generation college students, African-Americans in the Ivy League.
This article looks at which groups of students are more likely to drop out of school. In addition, the article writes about the effective interventions conducted at the University of Texas that helped the more vulnerable groups of students. Research has shown that education outcome is associated directly with family income. Students from less affluent families have a much higher chance of dropping out of schools not because they are less capable, but because they are more doubtful about their own abilities to succeed, coupled with a lower sense of belonging. Researchers also found out that interventions “had no apparent effect on the white students …but it had a transformative effect on the college careers of the African-American students in the study.”
What I found most valuable from this article is that it gives me hints on who I can target for my study. Based on the article, students who are going through an educational transition and especially for those who see themselves as outliers need the most help that addresses their anxieties and self-doubt. Additionally, the insights for how to deliver persuasive messages are also helpful guidelines that I can incorporate in my design. Researchers at Stanford found out that interventions were more persuasive if students feel as if they were independently seeking those out. In addition, “self-persuasion” can be a powerful method to help students internalize the messages delivered by the interventions. For example, if students read a material with a particular message and then produce their own material to persuade others, they internalize the message more deeply. This inspires me to question how I may leverage the idea of “pen-pals” to deliver particular messages that can be beneficial to both the writers and the recipients.
Productive failure in learning from generation and invention activities; Manu Kapar and Nikol Rummel
Nov 10, 2018
In the paper, Kapar argues that learning through productive failure is equally effective, if not more, than learning through productive success. Designing for productive failures is to design conditions “that may not maximize performance in the short term but in fact maximize learning in the longer term” (646). Designing for productive failures constitutes a phase ( invention phase ) when students explore “multiple representations and solution methods (RSMs),” and a phase ( instruction phase ) when student-generated RSMs are assembled and compared to canonical RSMs. In an experiment with 9th-grade mathematics students, Kapur found that comparing to students who received direct instruction before solving problems, students who were asked to activate prior knowledge or skills to solve problems by themselves first and then received instructions outperformed in the posttest.
In a standard learning experience, students usually receive structured lecture that teaches them the content knowledge before they apply the knowledge to solve problems. However, the order seems to be reversed when designing for productive failure. In this case, students literally need to learn from the mistakes they make to advance their learning. This idea questions my common understanding of what a learning process should be like and prompts me to look into design interventions that may not maximize students’ performances in a short term but eventually maximize their learning in a long term. I am also curious to find out whether using productive failure changes students perception of failures in a long run.
In addition, Kapar and some other researchers found that during the invention phase of productive failure, if instructors provide some forms of support without giving students the content knowledge directly, instructors can effectively avoid “unproductive failure experience” and thus enable students to get more out of the invention phase (649). If I design a learning experience that integrates productive failure, it seems to be more effective if I can include some forms of support, such as affective support or metacognitive support.
Evaluating metacognitive scaffolding in Guided Invention Activities; Ido Roll and 4 others
Nov 10, 2018
This literature review complements the last one. Roll and four other researchers investigated the effects of metacognitive scaffolding in the invention phase of Productive Failure activities. In the experiment Roll conducted, one group of students were given metacognitive scaffolding that prompts them to evaluate the task and the datasets at hand prior to generating solutions. The other group of students didn’t receive any instruction during the activity. Results show that the metacognitive scaffolding increased not only the quality of the invented methods, but also the likelihood for students to engage in related, unprompted metacognitive behaviors, such as evaluating their methods, later in the activity.
This study shows me that a small intervention early in a learning experience can have profound influence for the whole learning cycle. Providing support for students’ invention process requires the instructor to select productive strategies for students to model after. In this study, the researchers compared the invention processes of experts and novices and they identified four “inquiry strategies” that novices often skipped during the process. These four strategies include 1) exploratory analysis 2) peer interaction 3) self-explanation 4) evaluation of outcomes. I may apply authors’ approach in that I can give the same challenge to both an expert and a novice and identify how they start the process differently. Identifying the differences may inform what should be included in a metacognitive scaffolding.
[Podcast] Learning how to learn; Barbara Oakley
Nov 10, 2018
We have a gaping hole in the general public in that how to learn effectively. How your brain works in neuroscience is simply not communicated to the general public.
In the podcast, Oakley described common misconceptions of learning methods and she discussed several effective learning strategies informed by neuroscience research. For example, students may keep working on a problem that blocks them without realizing that it will be far more likely for them to figure it out if they walk away from the problem, do something else, and then come back at it. She also pointed out the importance of memorization, self-testing, chunking, repetition, relaxation and sleep in the learning process.
Similar to what Oakley suggested in the podcast, I realized that during my college education, I never had a class that teaches me how to study properly .Taking the findings from neuroscience and making them accessible for students can be a design opportunity. However, if I go down this path, it is important for me to place the strategies in a context (e.g. maths) and discuss how these strategies may influence students’ behaviors or mindsets in a long term.
