❓The very first time I tried ChatGPT I asked a question to which I knew the answer.

It seemed like an obvious thing to do if I was to evaluate the effectiveness of the tool.

Otherwise, how would I be able to judge the accuracy of the output?

I’m deep into writing an article about AI and its impact on learning. And while, to be fair, there are many nuances and complexities to the issue, what I’ve come to realize is the way I felt the very first time I tried generative AI, hasn’t changed.

For me the most important distinction to make when thinking about adopting an AI tool is this:

Do I already know “a thing” or how to do “a thing?”

✅If the answer is yes, AI might be a good solution and free up some of your time.

❎If the answer is no, unfettered use of generative AI is likely not a good idea--at least if one is interested in learning and skill development.

And here’s why:

💡Cognitive development requires us to wrestle with things, process new information in meaningful ways and connect it to things they have already learned. It requires us to engage with new problems and persist when things get tough. It requires us to make mistakes and to struggle in sometimes infuriating but productive ways. If you offload all of this cognitive effort to AI, you won’t have any cognitive development. You won’t be learning.

💡If you haven’t learned something yet, how can you evaluate the output from generative AI? We know that AI makes mistakes, but you need knowledge to be able to evaluate AI output with a critical eye and spot a mistake. If you don’t have the requisite knowledge, you’re less likely to challenge the output in ways those with prior knowledge would. If I have not read a chapter of a book that I ask AI to summarize, how am I to judge if it’s a good or a bad summary? I need to know the thing first, and then I could discern if the AI tool has helped me, or given me the right thing.

⚙️AI tools CAN do a whole lot of things.

And just like any technological innovation, they are neither good or bad by default.

When contemplating using AI in educational contexts of any kind the most important question to ask is not what CAN be done with the technology, but what the technology can do to promote your goals and improve learner outcomes.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

A recent call for expert quotes on the site Qwoted read:

“Neuroscience expert input needed on how neuroscience helps leaders”.

The request continued:

“I am reporting on how neuroscience can help leaders in a business setting, particularly when it comes to organizational change.”

And then some questions, including:

o “How does neuroscience help leaders?”

o “How will neuroscience recognize and reduce employee stress?”

o “How does neuroscience work with employees asking for feedback in the workplace environment?”

Likely, the reporter received valuable insights into best practices for giving positive and critical feedback; stress-reducing tips and strategies (e.g., improving time-management, communication, taking regular breaks, setting clear expectations etc.), as well as other activities that have been shown to help leaders better cope with organizational change.

I don’t doubt that the responses were useful. But were any of them actually providing evidence of how neuroscience helps leaders? Or, is the advice this reporter probably received really based on a different science altogether?

Let’s back up a little and consider the world of “learning myths”.

Learning Myths

The field of education has its fair share of learning myths. For example, beliefs that:

• People have different learning styles

• Our intelligence is fixed at birth

• We use only 10% of our brains (which always reminds me of the part in the movie Wedding Crashers where Owen Wilson says: "You know how they say we only use 10 percent of our brains? I think we only use 10 percent of our hearts"💗)

• Listening to classical music makes you smarter

• Some people are right-brained and some are left-brained and this leads to certain personality traits or talents

• The early years of child development are significantly more important for learning than any other period

All the above statements are pervasive myths about learning that might sound cool, interesting, plausible or reasonable (or perhaps all of the above), but none are grounded whatsoever in any evidence about how people actually learn.

The Neuro-myth

One of the stickiest learning myths is thinking that something with neuro or brain in front of it is grounded in serious science and is thus, by definition, “high-quality”. And in some ways, it makes sense—neuro-anything sounds scientific, cutting-edge, smart, and robust.

If a product or instructional approach claims to be “brain-based” or “grounded in neuroscience”, there’s a baked-in assumption of rigor or quality.

This can lead us to uncritically accept any explanation or description including neuroscience information, even when the neuroscience presented does not support the logic of the explanation.

🧪Consider an example from biology.

Scientists know that chemicals known as antioxidants—such as vitamin C and vitamin E, can, in test tubes at least, halt oxidative reactions that are harmful to living cells. These oxidative reactions, caused by “free radicals,” have been suspected as causing some of the age-related accumulation of damage to cells and tissues.

This all is true.

It’s not much of a logical leap to imagine that supplementing antioxidants should reduce free radical damage and, consequently slow down aging and prolong lifespan. In fact, many researchers and marketers have latched on to this line of thinking to sell vitamin supplements and other, more exotic-sounding (read: “expensive”) synthetic supplements.

A large body of research—hundreds of studies—however, have found no evidence that supplementation with antioxidant vitamins or other chemicals prolongs life in laboratory animals (or humans). The reasons for these (admittedly disappointing) results are varied and not fully understood.

But the conclusion remains.

In the commercial educational world, claims such as “our educational games give your brain a workout” or “train your brain”, abound. Products claim to improve memory, stave off Alzheimer’s, or boost one’s problem-solving capabilities.

For example, the popular “brain training” company Lumosity claimed that its online games can:

“help users perform better at work and in school, and stave off cognitive deficits associated with serious diseases such as Alzheimer’s, traumatic brain injury, and post-traumatic stress.”

Following an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), however, the company was ordered to pay a $2 million settlement for making false marketing claims.

The FTC ruled that Lumosity lacked adequate scientific evidence for their claims. The reviews of the literature essentially found that playing these games made people better at…playing these games (or similar tasks). There is, however, no evidence that the training with the online brain games transfers to any real-world setting or that it confers the benefits touted by the company.

By translating, or interpreting research findings in ways that aren’t correct or that are only tangentially related to stated claims, brain gaming companies blur the distinction between improvements on specific tasks or games, and increase in overall cognitive ability. This can lead users to think that getting better at a specific game will positively impact their cognitive abilities and competence in everyday life.

Which just isn’t true.

What Neuroscience CAN Tell Us

The truth is, findings in neuroscience are, for the most part, based on molecular and cellular studies.

Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary domain focused on understanding the structure, function, and development of the nervous system, with a primary focus on the brain. It helps us understand the basic building blocks of the nervous system, how they work together, and how the structures communicate and behave.

Neuroscience research uses tools such as functional magnetic resonance imagining (fMRI) and PET scans to identify brain activity by identifying changes in blood flow in particular regions. For example, fMRI scans can be used to compare dyslexic brains and typical brains while people are reading and then measure how the scans change (or don’t) following treatment or intervention.

Neuroscience has also shown that the brain is capable of producing new brain cells (neurogenesis) many of which will eventually die unless we engage in some type of effortful learning. This is because certain pathways in the brain that are used are maintained, those that aren’t are eliminated. This is a prime example of “use it or lose it.”

Interesting and important?

✅ Yes! and

✅ Yes!

But neuroscience research evidence tends to be more academic—geared toward identifying fundamental processes, rather than the impacts of interventions on human behaviors under natural conditions.

Neuroscience research does not directly drive learning interventions or other applications. Put another way, recognizing that new brain cells will die if they don’t engage in effortful learning is useful information—but it does not, in and of itself, practically inform specific techniques or strategies for learning.

As Will Thalheimer wrote:

“As we learn more about how the brain works and link brain function with practical learning situations, we may uncover unique insights. But today, neuroscience has nothing to tell us about learning design and delivery.”

The authors of Urban Myths About Learning and Education concur, saying:

“For the time being, we do not really understand all that much about the brain... More importantly, it is difficult to generalize what we do know into a set of concrete precepts of behavior, never mind devise methods of influencing that behavior.”

The Risk of the Neuro-label

At this point, you might be asking:

• Isn’t this just hair-splitting?

• Is it really risky or damaging to keep the neuro-myth alive?

• Does it really matter if people believe that a learning product or approach claiming to be based on neuroscience is better?

Yes, I would argue. It does matter!

Neuroscience and learning science complement and relate to each other, but are very different endeavors.

Foundational principles vs. translational strategies

Suppose you are a mechanical engineer and you want to build a bridge. What must you know?

You must understand the fundamental principles of physics, for example the definition of a force and how forces act on a body or structure in a given situation. But while knowledge of those principles is necessary and useful, it does not actually tell the engineer how to build the bridge. Engineering is the application of those principles to create effective solutions in the building of structures.

Similarly, a learning engineer may want to develop an efficient training program for employees of a firm. Or a pedagogical framework for effectively teaching complex skills and ideas to new students in a graduate or professional school. These challenges involve learning, memory, and understanding the complex ways humans develop expertise.

Much as physics informs the work of mechanical engineers without doing that work, findings from neuroscience inform the work of learning engineers, without doing that work.

Understanding this can help us improve educational efforts and reduce the likelihood of being taken advantage of, or drawing incorrect conclusions that distort the reality of research findings.

Why This Matters

As learning professionals, we need to think like scientists. Which means considering the available evidence and tailoring our instructional practices accordingly.

And here’s why:

• Basing our instructional decisions and approaches on sketchy neuroscience claims is an opportunity lost to implement practices that do have solid scientific support.

• When we take time and effort to implement a strategy based on a learning myth, we are spending valuable resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

• Misconceptions and myths about learning can impede education reform efforts at many levels. If a large percentage of people cling to beliefs on the benefits of a neuro-label, they are less likely to support or engage with potentially effective, evidence-based initiatives that don’t have it.

• If we focus only on neuroscience-based information and claims, we are likely ignoring the impact of other factors on real-world learning.

Perhaps most importantly, if we are so focused on “changing our brain” we are likely ignoring the behavioral elements—or the impact of other factors on learning.

For example: We know that spending a certain amount of time focused on a learning task is good and that after that, we need to take a break and then revisit. This all has to do with the brain and the benefits of forgetting a little and then retrieving information.

As research by Robert Bjork (and others) shows, retrieval keeps strengthening the memory trace in our brains making it more permanent. But, when we look at things from the learning science angle, we realize it’s equally important to considering WHAT is it that people are doing in the time they are meant to be learning?

Time on task is not, in and of itself good or bad, it depends on the quality of what we are doing during that time. Learning science can help us think more strategically about how we design and implement learning experiences. If we fixate on some research that tells us that spending X amount of time learning and then taking a break is optimal, we may not end up with a good result.

Because what we actually spent time on was not the right thing!

Learning Science

Evidence from learning science allows us to think strategically about how we design and implement learning experiences and help people develop expertise. To do so, we need to engage in what learning science calls deliberate practice.

This involves:

• Not simply repeating that which you already know how to do.

• Engaging in meaningful tasks which grow in variety and complexity over time and focus on reaching beyond the current level of performance (and the motivation to do so).

• Coaches (i.e., experts of some kind) who help identify weaknesses, provide feedback, find specific tasks to address those deficiencies, and keep learner perception and judgement accurate.

• Time for forgetting and opportunities for retrieval.

While neuroscience might be able to inform some aspects of these strategies, is not contributing to these design efforts in a direct way.

The Way Forward

Respecting evidence is a good thing and there is an opportunity to make sure we aren’t misusing neuroscience evidence (such as cool-looking brain imaging studies), or drawing conclusions that go beyond what data actually show us. Because making learning design or product adoption decisions based on wrong assumptions or conclusions leads to wasted time, effort, and money—not to mention the impact on learning outcomes.

To counteract this, as learning professionals we can:

When we base decisions on how learning happens (rather than intuition, fads, preferences, or flashy marketing), we are better able to:

• Choose and implement the most effective techniques for meaningful learning

• Use appropriate educational technologies and tools thoughtfully

• Make smarter more effective use of time, effort, and resources

• Advance our profession by upholding a standard of intellectual honesty and practical rigor

• Remain open to evidence that:

  • calls into question existing beliefs

  • allows us to recognize gaps in our knowledge

  • ultimately serves our goal of promoting long-term meaningful learning for all learners

Neuroscience may sound cooler (or sexier) than learning science or cognitive psychology and come with colorful brain scans, but when it comes to improving learning experiences and outcomes, sounding smart isn’t our goal.

Being effective is.

This piece is based on an article I published in TD Magazine: Science and the Brain: The key differences between neuroscience and learning science—and why it matters to L&D practitioners. February, 2026.

We have a saying in our family. If a journey takes longer than expected because of traffic, road works, etc., we say we are “in molasses”.

A quick email search for the word molasses brought up this email—which feels relevant:

Molasses.

Back in September, Jay wrote the following to a friend who had checked in about how things were going with the “rebuilding”.

“Back in SoCal, things are not quite as hunky-dory. Progress on rebuilding our house is very, very slow. I wish that I could tell you why, but it’s never clear. The number of things that must be done—in exactly the right order (which is kept a secret)—is very large. Surveys. Re-surveys. Soils analyses. Debris analysis and removal. Foundation testing. Fencing around everything. Blah blah blah. Suffice to say, Julia and I each oscillate between feeling hopeful and feeling despondent about our situation and the future. The trick is to keep our oscillations from becoming synchronized. That way, whichever of us is feeling hopeful, can talk the other out of spiraling too deeply into depression.”

Sadly, this email would sound about right even if written now. Molasses everywhere.

Today is May 8^th. Save for a brief respite from all of this—in the form of Jack’s graduation from Michigan (see below), things have felt like a lot recently.

We are currently at the ‘building and safety’ step in the permitting process. This is the part in which Lauren submits a giant packet of drawings and measurements and other information satisfying requirements for six different departments (Building Safety; Geology/Geotechnical; Environmental Health; Public Works; LA County Fire Department; Planning).

These individual departments or entities review the parts relevant to them and then send back notes with corrections to be addressed.

That’s where we were when I last left off. Superhero Yolanda had swept in and turned our corrections around in 24 hours.

Herein lies the paradox. We were excited to get the corrections back as it signals another step in what feels like the right direction. And at the same time, the corrections trigger a seemingly insurmountable chain of more things that now need to be done. Things that we either didn’t know we needed to do before (more on this later) or that need to be fixed.

As I’ve said previously, the opacity of all of this makes the process extremely difficult to navigate. And not just for us mere mortal non-architect/engineer/building expert folks.

For everyone.

Equivocation is everywhere. I am used to being in situations where I have some facility relating to my circumstances and if need arises, I am able to problem solve and figure things out. Or at least have a sense of the questions I need to ask, or where more exploration is needed.

In this realm of rebuilding a house after a fire—we are completely in the dark.

And what makes it all so much more unnerving is the feeling that we’re not the only ones. And by that I don’t mean other homeowners, I mean the staff at Malibu City or the members of the different entities mentioned above.

The week after we got the corrections, we met with Lauren to discuss interior design choices. We talked concrete colors, wood hues, wallpaper, paint, cabinetry, tile. We looked at cool, creative samples Lauren brought with her. Many things we would never have found, and as soon as we saw them, we knew they’d be perfect! This was definitely a more fun (the most fun so far) part of the process. But it also brought into sharper focus how far away we still feel from watching tile be installed, concrete floors poured, or cabinets hung.

Do we know that day will come? Yes.

Does the process still feel interminably slow and molassessey (sp?) with no end in sight. Yes.

Both/and.

There were corrections from each of the six distinct entities. Some of whom had a few small notes—others a lengthier list. Lauren was confident she could get through the corrections methodically—but some of the things we were being asked for seemed nutty. Even to her.

One of the requests focused on dark sky ordinances and our “outdoor lighting plan”. Things like:

What outdoor lighting? How on earth are we meant to thinking about outdoor lighting when we haven’t even started building a house yet?

The whole notion seemed so ludicrous that we told Lauren to just agree to whatever rules and regulations we need to follow. We can cross the outdoor lighting bridge when we come to it. Which, let’s face it, is not imminent. And so why the need to have it “locked” down at this stage of the game?

If this is the meaning of “expediting the process” I need to revisit my understanding of the word expedite.

One of the correction notes in the packet from Yolanda was we needed a civil engineer. We had previously been told we didn’t need one. But now we needed one because of something to do with the foundation. Again, out of my jurisdiction and above my pay grade to really understand any of this.

What I do understand is that for most things in life—you need someone to do something, you find them, you call them, you hire them, they do the work.

Turns out with people like civil engineers and this type of job:

• You need to find a few

• They need to be available when you need them to be.

• You need to get multiple bids.

• You need to be OK with the fact that they are likely not available for [insert number > 0] weeks.

All of which takes time. And it feels like nothing can happen in parallel.

We got a bid from one company. A bid Lauren thought was high. Thank goodness for her because we would have no clue if a civil engineer bid was reasonable or not.

I called our former pool contractor Jake (more about him another day) to see if he knew anyone. Jake gave us the name and number of someone he works with. This guy, Mack, gave us a quote that was half of the original one and said he could start right away. We said yes and set about sending deposits, docusigning contracts etc.

The other (another?) wrinkle in all of this is that because our house is on a gated, private road which used to have an access code we could give out if need be. But now (because of no power) there is no code and anytime someone needs to go there, we have a couple of options:

1. We have to coordinate a time and meet the person in Malibu. This option is not super convenient (but of course we will do it anytime if it helps move things along). It’s not, however, always doable because we haven’t communicated with the person previously and they don’t know they need anything more than our address if they want to swing by and check out the site.

2. We hope and pray that whomever is going will figure out the more complicated back way that doesn’t require a key (not a great option, either)

I chose Option 2 for Mack—mostly because we were away visiting a college with Charlie and I didn’t want to give him any excuse not to go to the house (given I couldn’t meet him even if I wanted to).

Luckily, Mack turned out to not be deterred by back roads and locked gates and managed to do his necessary site visit.

With the civil engineer issue mostly sorted out, we turned to other time-consuming minutiae mostly consisting of trying to get our 2025 taxes organized so we could send necessary information to Charlie’s college choice for next year. That was a huge doozey of a task and one I’ll spare you. Suffice to say, the administrative load of life was feeling very molasses-filled.

A couple of weeks ago, Lauren reached out with an update on where things stood with the corrections.

She reported:

1. The soils engineer (geologist) is working on their corrections, and confirmed they should have their updated report in the next three weeks.

2. The fire department’s corrections were mostly notes, although they require a 20’ access road. And the road to our house is not quite 20’. The plan is for Lauren to meet the fire dept folks in person to discuss this as we have to have the fire department’s approval before resubmitting to building and safety.

3. The fire department is also requiring a fuel modification plan. It is a drawing showing the different zones (distances) from your house, along with all existing and proposed plant species (botanical and common names) that must meet their requirements.

Like this:

Options to address this requirement:

a. Hire someone to create a fuel modification plan (drawing of our current had proposed landscape)

b. Hire a landscape designer to do the create a landscape plan.

c. If we choose option A, the caveat is that we will, eventually, need a full landscape plan approved by the fire department before we can get our certificate of occupancy.

4. Another hurdle had surfaced. While Lauren was communicating with the plan checker about the building and safety corrections, he told her we are required to have an MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) engineer. This was news to Lauren:

• At the pre-review meeting at the city Lauren was told we didn’t need MEP engineering.

• The corrections received also did NOT say we needed it.

• The “fact” that we needed it only arose through additional emailing

Faced with this new information, Lauren had reached out to the firm that completed our energy report and initial ‘mechanical schematics’ - as it made the most since to continue on with them. They together a proposal for the additional work (another $10,000 price tag).

5. The final note was that the most critical component in all of this is the fuel modification plan and the “road design” which is something we need to coordinate with the civil engineer (Mack) in order to resubmit to the fire department.

A flurry of emails ensued.

And, as you can perhaps imagine, the parts of this update that were most distressing to us are points 3 and 4 (for me, mostly point 4).

Why? Because it’s yet another thing that we weren’t told we needed, and that only surfaced during an off-hand conversation.

I wrote a quick note to Lauren saying I would contact Yolanda and ask her about the MEP requirement.

Lauren responded that she would email the landscape designer (one she knows) and see if he can take on the fuel modification plan. She also mentioned that the MEP requirement is apparently because our house is two stories…and the crazy part is a small two-story house needs this step, but a giant one-story house wouldn’t?

“Although, what I’m learning is, that’s Malibu...”

😖

Years ago there was a biology professor at UCLA. Jay knew him well. This professor was a little eccentric and unpredictable and it wasn’t unusual for students to show up for class only to find “class cancelled” scrawled on the board.

And the response of everyone (while other faculty were held to and adhered to much higher standards):

”Oh that’s just [Professor x]”.

To that I say NO!

And so I had to write again to the Malibu Mayor and City Council members:

…“It’s VERY hard not to agree with this assessment: “That’s Malibu.”

And one can’t help but wonder why the Pacific Palisades is FULL of houses being rebuilt and I have not seen a SINGLE one in Malibu…are the people in the Palisades experiencing this same kind of obstacle-ridden process?

I explained the parts I found the most egregious:

“Why were we not asked for this [fuel modification plan] before? And do we really, before a house has even begun to be built, have to map out existing and proposed plants/trees? As far as I’ve heard, many of the existing plants/trees will be destroyed as part of the construction. So why do I need to pay for someone to document what’s there now that will likely be gone? And we don’t know what will be there because why would we spend a single cent of our ever-dwindling budget on a landscape person? Our goal is to get a permit and start building and we will cross the landscape bridge later. I understand this is an important step. But is it an important step TODAY???”

I continued (in response to the MEP requirement]:

“Why are we so angry about these things?

Because we and our architect are trying to follow the directions. But it’s hard to follow directions when they either a) keep changing or b) people don’t know the rules.

In my opinion, there is NO reason that something that is ostensibly a requirement, was not communicated in the initial meeting. Not commented on as an omission in the corrections, and only surfaces during some subsequent conversation.

WTF is happening?

From where you sit, this may not seem to matter. What’s another form? Another requirement?

I’ll tell you.

It’s yet another professional we have to find and wait for to be available.

It’s another $10K fee.

It’s us having to stay more months in our rental apartment and not moving forward and getting back to our life.

Had we resubmitted without satisfying this requirement, then what? Another round of corrections and time passing where we feel no closer to even starting to rebuild?

When people say (as I recently read in an LA Times article) “at least the process is being expedited” I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or throw something.

Today I’ll probably go with all three.”

Our story does not end here (unfortunately, I hear you say!).

More emails ensue with kind words from Haylynn:

“I hear you. And I want you to know, I am beyond frustrated as well.

What you are describing is not an isolated situation. You are not the only homeowners reaching out with these same concerns, the same confusion, and the same sense that the rules are shifting mid process. That is unacceptable, especially for people who have already lost so much and are simply trying to rebuild their homes and their lives.

You should not be learning about major requirements like fuel modification plans or MEP engineering through side conversations after submittal. You should not be incurring significant additional costs because expectations were unclear or inconsistently communicated. And you should not feel like you are chasing a moving target every step of the way.

I also share your concern about the disconnect between what is being described as an “expedited” process and what residents are actually experiencing on the ground. Time matters. Money matters. And the emotional toll of this uncertainty is real.”

Haylynn hits the nail squarely on the head.

More discussion followed, culminating in me and Lauren paying a visit to Yolanda at City Hall (I figured I needed a quick picture break).

Yolanda had called in response to my email and wanted to help clear things up.

Our meeting was a textbook case of both/and.

Yolanda told us:

Was this all good news? Yes.

Is it frustrating to have arrived at this point after having been the squeakiest of wheels? Yes.

What if we hadn’t pushed back or questioned these things?

Would we have spent money we didn’t need to spend? Probably.

Would we have wasted more precious time? Almost certainly.

And so we soldier on. Grateful that we don’t have to jump through additional hurdles. But deeply frustrated and exhausted from this seemingly broken process.

💗Haylynn followed up with me:

“Maybe I can put you in touch with others who are experiencing the same thing? I’d also like to come into the city with you and your rebuild team in person so we can navigate this together would that be something you are open to? I hate to ask anything more of you but I have found it is helpful for owner, their team Yolanda, staff and myself to all sit in one room together and get this cleared up.”

I wrote I would welcome to be connected with other folks in the same boat, and she swiftly introduced me to some homeowners who are grappling with all of these same issues.

Haylynn wrote back and closed with this:

“You’re not doing anything wrong. This process is hard, and it’s heavier than people expect. Let’s take this one step at a time and get you unstuck.”

Would that everyone had a City Council member with the heart, the compassion, the empathy of 😇Haylynn.

As my friend Mary van de Wiel likes to say:

Deep bow.

And a Phoebe photo to lighten the mood.

He teaches life science to non-majors students, a population he likes for many reasons. One of which is non-majors are a group of students who are not likely to take a whole series of science classes.

They typically need to take a science course to fill a prerequisite requirement of some kind, and his course satisfies that need. As such, he has the a brief (and important) opportunity to influence and inspire a group of students who one day will be out in the world as teachers, lawyers, architects, accountants, managers, writers, consumers, parents, spouses…

Jay writes in his syllabus:

Science touches our lives every day. Its increasing relevance is clear in a multitude of areas, including modern genetics & biotechnology, nutrition & health, and brain functioning & behavior. Maybe you’ve pondered questions such as these:

• Is eyewitness testimony in courts always accurate?

• Why are humans among the only species to have friendships?

• Does sunscreen use reduce skin cancer risk? How do we know that’s true?

• Do vitamin supplements reduce the likelihood of getting sick?

• What are taste preferences? Why do they exist?

• What is “blood doping?” How does it improve athletic performance?

• How does caffeine (and other drugs) work?

• Why doesn’t evolution lead to the production of perfect organisms?

• What are emotions? Why are they less permanent than they feel?

In Life Science 15, we explore these topics and many others. We’ll go beyond the facts as we dissect the process of scientific thinking. We will see that it is an intellectual activity, encompassing observation, experimentation, and explanations of natural phenomena. And, more importantly, it is a practical pathway to discover and better understand our world.

Jay wants his students to recognize ways that they can use evidence to guide everyday decision-making in their own lives and begin to appreciate that biology is about them and touches every aspect of their life.

They don’t need to be headed to medical school to get a foundational understanding of science and scientific thinking which will ultimately make them better consumers of scientific information.

And, perhaps most importantly, he wants them to see that biology can be creative and fun!

Students are often looking for ways to get some extra points to perhaps offset a low quiz score or simply boost their grade in any way they can! To this end, on top of his other assignments Jay provides his students with an extra-credit opportunity. One which typically about 2/3 of his students take advantage of.

The opportunity is described on this syllabus like this:

The idea is that the students will synthesize and summarize what they’re learning and create a video that creatively conveys important concepts learned in the class.

Some focus on one main concept, others synthesize multiple course concepts. And most collaborate with others in the class.

The assignment encompasses so many of the features of optimal learning experiences that can help students make truly make meaning of new information:

• Students have opportunities for collaborative interactions and many submit group projects.

• Students have the opportunity to make choices in what they create and exercise their creativity within a science course (something not always done).

• Students engage in elaboration in which they take concepts from the course and compare them, connect them to their own life, explain and describe different, and draw analogies.

• As they plan and write their scripts, they organize their thinking, grouping and connecting things in meaningful ways.

• They generate summaries and descriptions and explain course concepts in their own words.

• This also involves synthesizing concepts across the course and explicitly describing connections between them.

One of the first videos Jay received when he started offering this assignment is here. I watch it frequently. If you have ever taken Jay’s course, or read his book Mean Genes, you’ll know that this young lady absolutely NAILED this assignment!

A post yesterday from got me thinking again about assignments like these. And the purpose they serve—which may not be immediately obvious. Which perhaps is the point.

Paul has posted some thoughts on AI in education (I’ll save mine for another day!). He was underscoring some of the things he would say to students about using AI at school—if he only had 30 minutes to do so.

His first point was:

“The purpose of school is learning, not producing work. If you use AI for a task but haven’t learned, you’re acting against the whole purpose of your education.”

💯yes!

I sent a comment back to which he responded:

“There is such a massive gravitational pull towards thinking school is just about work completion…”

💯yes!

Focusing on work completion within a learning context completely misses the point. Does Jay give his students the video assignment because he’s itching to watch ~100 videos each quarter? (Granted, many of them are incredibly creative and impressive).

No!

He gives students the assignment so they can reap the benefits of doing all the things I listed above. He wants them to face the challenge of figuring out which course concepts to include. How to synthesize and connect ideas and then weave things together. How to represent scientific ideas visually, or through music.

And in doing all of these things, guess what happens? Students work together. Maybe they’re explaining things to each other. Perhaps they struggle a little (or a lot). They put in the time and the effort and they figure things out. And along the way they deepen their understanding of the course concepts. They learn the course material that much more!

Could they ask AI to do this for them faster and with less effort? I suppose so.

But then, of course, they would have missed the point. And also the benefits.

The goal isn’t a finished, perfectly produced video created with speed and efficiency.

The goal is the effort and the work that has to be done to create it.

As Jane Rosenzweig so aptly wrote in a Boston Globe article a couple of years ago:

“The friction is the point!”

First a story. One with which I open almost every workshop or presentation I give on learning science and learning engineering.

This is the Tacoma Narrows Bridge stretching across the Puget Sound in Washington State. Built in 1940 it was called a triumph of ingenuity and perseverance.

Unfortunately, four months after it opened the bridge collapsed in a windstorm

And went from being a triumph of ingenuity to “the most dramatic failure in bridge engineering history…”

Although incredibly dramatic, there were (amazingly) no human casualties, but there was one victim of the collapse.

Tubby a three-legged cocker spaniel who, following his unfortunate death, became something of a celebrity in the local area and came to symbolize the drama of the day.

So what happened?

The bridge wasn’t the first of its type. Nor the longest, or heaviest. To answer the question of what happened, we need to look to this guy, John Roebling.

John Roebling was a civil engineer and bridge expert.

A hundred years before the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse, there had been many bridge construction failures and a lot of debate over the overall safety of suspension bridges.

Wanting to figure it out, Roebling studied these failures and came up with a formula with three basic principles to guide the construction of safe bridges.

• “First, a bridge must be of sufficient mass and inertia to quell excessive wind excitation.

• Second, since the wind can either lift up or push down on the bridge, the structure must have stays tying down its deck, either deck to ground or tower to deck.

• Third, to be adequately stiff, the bridge must have trusses.”

  (Wind Wizard by Siobhan Roberts, Princeton University Press, 2013)

The focus of Roebling’s formula were design features to address the biggest risk to suspension bridges—wind. And he built a number of bridges (including the Brooklyn Bridge) successfully using this formula.

In the aftermath of the collapse many theories were discussed as to why it happened. Ultimately it was determined that the failure was due to the interaction between the bridge’s design and the wind in the Narrows.

The bridge designers knew how to design a bridge. They knew how to find people to build the bridge. It turns out knowing HOW is not enough.

The mistake the original designers made?

They designed the bridge without considering the context in which it was being built. And they designed the bridge without consulting an engineer with expertise in this area, or following the tried and true formula developed by Roebling who had experience building this type of bridge in this type of windy environment.

The mistakes that the bridge designers made are the exact same kind of mistakes that people make when designing learning experiences and environments. They oftentimes ignore (or aren’t aware of) the learning science evidence we have about what works, in which situations, and why!

This happens all the time!

• We might know HOW to teach methods for solving equations, but do we know how to do it for students who think they can’t do math?

• We might know HOW to teach someone to make an souffle, but can we do so with a group of boys who think “cooking is for girls”?

• We might know HOW to create a compliance course that satisfies state requirements for workplace harassment, but do we know how to do that for a group of recent high-school grads working in a supermarket?

The mistake?

We design learning experiences without considering the context.

Without consulting a learning engineer!

Some years ago, I was working on a study that involved training teachers how to use Smart Boards ( a new innovation at the time). Teachers received some extensive training in how to use the Smart Boards in their classrooms and then were returning to their school to put into practice all the cool new things they had learned.

When we called the teachers the following week to see how things were going, and if students liked the Smart Boards, we were surprised to hear—things weren’t going so well.

We scratched our heads. The teachers knew how to use the Smart Boards. They had content to use within the Smart Boards. So what was the mistake that we made?

The teachers were unable to implement the cool new Smart Boards because they had no internet connectivity in their classrooms.

And to make matters worse, to fix the problem involved some complicated Union rules that were almost impossible to navigate.

Our mistake? We designed the intervention without considering the context.

We had cool technology. We had the wherewithal to help teachers learn how to use it. But that wasn’t enough.

The truth is:

And when we think about context in learning, it’s not about weather conditions, wind, or temperature. It’s so much more complex!

Learners aren’t all starting from the same place. Their experiences, prior knowledge, and motivations are different. They’re not at the same place in in their educational journey. The environment in which they are learning is not the same.

Learners vary.

Teachers vary.

With an understanding of the evidence and scholarship relating to how learning works (including awareness of factors that can impede effective learning), we can design learning experiences that help keep learners engaged, paying attention, motivated, inspired, and on-task.

As we think about our teaching and training strategies and how we design our training and learning experiences there are three things to keep in mind. These are what I consider my “North Stars”:

✨There is not one “go-to solution” for every teaching situation. Understanding this prevents us from putting too much weight on one strategy;

✨Content and pedagogy interact in different ways. Some things may be more or less relevant for you, your classroom, your workplace, your employees, and your particular training modality;

✨A pedagogical tool is only as good as its implementation.

That’s why we focus not just on what to do but how to do it in particular climates and contexts.

So when designing and implementing learning experiences, we have to recognize we not necessarily operating under “ideal” or consistent conditions (just like the environment around this bridge).

We need to figure out how to implement ideas in the real world and understand factors that could get in the way of success, or increase the chance of successful outcomes.

If we don’t, it doesn’t matter how amazing our new learning program, online course, skills training program etc., is, if we haven’t considered the real-world context and constraints we are operating within, all of that innovation is for naught!

If we ignore, as the designers of the failed bridge did, the science and the principles that we know work and in which contexts, our learning efforts are likely to fail.

And we don’t want our learners to end up like Tubby—immortalized by engineering failures!

You may have heard about the 'expert blind spot' or the 'curse of knowledge' and how as we develop expertise, we tend to forget what it was like to NOT have that knowledge.

And this can negatively impact interactions we have with those on the more novice end of the spectrum.

Another, more nuanced issue is the potential for novices to not recognize or acknowledge the expertise of others. This mindset can negatively impact team dynamics in the workplace and lead to other disruptive and nonproductive behaviors.

I'm delighted to join Emily Harburg, Ph.D. and the folks from PairUp for a webinar and discussion on how to cultivate a workplace where expertise is valued.

You can sign up here 👇

📅 Thursday, September 11th | 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET
🔗 RSVP: https://lnkd.in/gmbpw2w6

I hope to see you there!

There’s a lot to be said for having goals. For making plans and following through. For creating teaching and learning objectives and using them to guide our curricula and course design. For stating an ambition, or having a vision, and steadfastly working towards it.

If we know where we’re headed, or where we want to go, we are more likely to be able to chart a course to get there.

But having clearly stated goals and plans can have a downside. Especially when it comes to college and career planning. And that’s because oftentimes our goals are formed without enough information, or are based on wrong information, and are viewed as rigid and fixed, unchangeable. Which can make changing your mind and your goals, in the face of new information, all the more difficult.

In their book on how to navigate and thrive in college (The Secret Syllabus) Jay Phelan and Terry Burnham write:

Choosing which college to attend, whether to attend at all, or which major to study are all big decisions that will have a huge impact on your life. And it can be crippling for many students who have no idea what they want to pursue, and feel a huge pressure to make what can only be seen as a pretty uniformed decision. This stress can be further intensified if they think that everyone else has it figured out and that if they have no idea what they want to study, there must be something wrong with them!

But maybe not having any idea is the better strategy.

During their college years students will have experiences, learn, discover things about themselves, about life, about how they want to spend their time in the near and not so near future. They will be exposed to new areas of study they had never even heard of, let alone imagined they would be interested in, or want to pursue.

It’s true that most people have jobs that the typical child doesn’t see, hear, or read about. Are these people working in jobs that kids don’t typically choose, failures? Because they didn’t necessarily go into college thinking they were going to be an IT manager, actuary, or prosthetist?

It’s also true that the job landscape is changing at a breakneck pace. Many of the jobs that today’s college students will have in the future don’t exist today. Which makes advising young people of “the best jobs” to go after even more of a futile effort!

In his book “Be Useful”, Arnold Schwarzenegger writes about visions and goals in a way that resonates with me and the way I have lived my life. One strategy is to begin with a small goal and build out from it until a clear picture emerges. Another strategy is to begin with a broad vision and then, just as a lens begins to focus as you twist it, you can zoom in until the picture becomes clear. The latter was Arnold’s way. His big picture goal was to move to America, but that was it. No specifics. He didn’t know what he would do—it was a broad vision. But from this vision, eventually a clearer plan emerged.

When I was in high school, I had no idea what I wanted to study in college, or what kind of job I wanted. But I did, like Arnold, have a broad vision. I knew that I loved to learn and wanted to keep doing so. And at the time, for me that was enough of an internal goal to motivate me to succeed. Even though the whole picture had not come into focus just yet.

So what’s the rush to choose a major and plan out the rest of your life starting on Day 1 of your college career?

In an article published this past weekend (in the Atlantic), author Ezekiel J. Emanuel proposes that the worst advice parents can give their first-year students as they drop them off at college is to tell them what they should study and why it is a good choice because it is most likely to lead to success.

You can hear it, right?

1. Study pre-law? Yes, guaranteed paycheck, respect, and success!

2. Study literature? Hmmm, maybe not. What can you do besides being a teacher?

3. Study pre-med? Excellent choice! Grandma and Grandpa always knew you would follow in their footsteps!

4. Study philosophy? (see literature above)

College is more than just a training camp for an already-chosen career path. It is (hopefully) a place that fosters curiosity, resilience, and discovery. When our middle son, Jack, asked me what he should expect from college, I encouraged him to see it as an experience, rather than a means to an end, or a straight path to the terminal goal of graduation.

I urged him to think about the things he can learn along the way: Teamwork, resilience, figuring out answers to tough questions, enjoying a class that he didn’t think he would at first, becoming a better consumer of scientific information, persevering when things get tough, taking courses “just for the hell of it” or “just for fun”, getting feedback on his writing, analyzing, and thinking—and improving those things.

All are skills that have the potential to transcend the fickle nature of the career landscape.

As Emanuel says in his article:

“The college years are the best time to take intellectual and experiential risks. It is okay—even good—if some of the choices students make don’t work out.”

So what kind of goals should students be making?

The rock band Rush sang in a song:

“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice…”

Similarly it doesn’t make you a directionless failure to have a big picture vision (like Arnold’s), or have your goals focus on exploring your options, learning about jobs you haven’t considered, or reflecting on whether or not you do still want to be….[an astronaut/doctor/race car driver/president].

Those are goals too.

Sure they don’t outline concrete end points, but they are ways for you gather information to make more informed decisions. They can help you more clearly identify your values and what is important to you, and then think about what kinds of specific goals align with them.

It might take longer than you want, or longer than your parents want(!), and that’s OK.

To this end, I like to channel Mary Schmich’s hypothetical commencement speech (used as the basis for Baz Luhrmann’s “Sunscreen Song”):

“Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life.
The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives.

Some of the most interesting 40-year olds I know still don’t.”

I am Julia and I’m a learning expert with a passion for bringing the science of learning out of the ivory tower and into the “real” world to improve learning experience design and outcomes. For everyone!

In many ways I am a generalist. I don’t focus on a narrow niche, or population in my work and my research. And to understand why, here are a few truths about learning:

💡Learning is happening all around us—in large, medium, and small ways.

💡Understanding HOW learning happens, and not how we wish it did, can improve and influence many facets of our lives.

💡If we want to know the best way to teach something, we need to consider the context.

💡Learning is hard! And only when we are doing hard things are we really learning!

The above is my mantra. OK, actually my mantra is:

Learning is hard: Hard is learning

My newsletter is a place to share strategies, tips, insights, guidance, musings about applications of learning science in the ‘real world’ and to showcase the work of others who are inspiring and teaching me too!

My company is called To Eleven and yes, the name was inspired by This is Spinal Tap. I chose it because it embodies the fact that at To Eleven we go above and beyond in all we do.

Whether you’re a novice just dipping your toes into the world of learning, a seasoned educator, researcher, or L&D professional, or just curious about how getting insight into how learning works can help you understand the world a little better, I hope you’ll climb aboard and join me on this learning journey!

In workshops I offer on the science of learning, I often ask participants to take a short online quiz based on one developed by Ulrich Boser. The quiz focuses on common myths and misconceptions around learning. One of the questions asks “To which of the following should you NOT tailor your learning?

The correct answer here is the first choice. We should NOT be tailoring our teaching and learning around students’ so-called learning styles.

[this is where I pause, duck under the table, or behind my Zoom screen and wait for the barrage of tomatoes…]

Let’s look at the other options: Students’ prior knowledge, interests, and ability are all important things to consider when designing learning environments and experiences. We also need to make sure students feel comfortable emotionally and that they belong and are welcome in the learning environment. We need to identify and address barriers to student motivation, minimize distractions, and eliminate things that can cause extraneous cognitive load. And even when we’ve attended to these things (no small feat), we can’t be sure that students are processing the information we are teaching in the way we would like, what exactly they are thinking about, or what connections they are making. But it’s a start.

In his research, Boser found that 90% of respondents thought students should receive instruction tailored to their own “learning style”. This is not particularly surprising. The idea that students have different learning styles, such as auditory or kinesthetic, is a tenacious myth, and one not supported by research evidence.

When I plan my workshops, I often hesitate and consider not talking about learning styles. Maybe I should just leave it alone and instead focus on “safer” topics such as encouraging students to write their own notes, or quiz themselves using flashcards (both of which are effective, evidence-based learning strategies).

Just as one avoids discussions of politics, and religion and other topics at a dinner party, I have been “conditioned” in a way not to want to bring up the topic of learning styles.

It’s a subject about which people feel extremely passionate, and it tends to stir up sometimes contentious, polarizing debates which can derail otherwise productive discussions about learning.

Recently I’ve been wondering why…

• One possibility relates to the “trophy culture” idea. If we all have different learning styles then surely that means if only we were taught in that style, we would all be able to succeed at everything? If we don’t do well on a test or in a particular class, it’s easy, after the fact to say “well, I didn’t do so well because I’m more of a visual person than a numbers person.” It’s a non-falsifiable statement and one which can serve to make us feel better about our poor performance.

• Or perhaps it’s because we have a tendency to want to do things we feel are easier. Or that we enjoy doing. This is why students like to study in ways that made them feel good (like highlighting or re-reading passages). They develop a sense of fluency and ease of recognition which tricks them into thinking they know something. But only when you actually try to recall something do you know if you really know it. And that’s harder. And may make you feel as if you’re not making as much progress. When you’re learning something new, it can be demoralizing to feel that you are stagnating, or not improving as fast as you would like. Even more so if you don’t understand that when you’re new at something the learning curve is steep — but an essential part of the process.

• We all have experience with teaching (in some form or another) which can make us feel as we have some level of expertise in the area. As Boser puts it, we have a “Been there, done that” problem. Most of us went to school, and have a feeling we know what good teaching looks like. As a result, we are keen to opine on the quality and effectiveness of the latest educational approach.

You don’t need to look that hard to find scores of well-renowned, knowledgeable educators and scholars working to shine a light on the paucity of evidence about matching instruction to learning styles.

In 2017, for instance, a group of thirty eminent academics from the worlds of neuroscience, education, and psychology sent a letter to the British newspaper The Guardian voicing concern about the popularity of the learning style approach among some teachers.

Others have conducted in-depth studies of the literature in search of well-designed studies showing clear evidence of a connection between instruction tailored to learning styles and differences in student outcomes.

Spoiler alert — they found “no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice.”

The idea of learning styles may be appealing because it is intuitive. Just as height, or head and foot size, eye color and shape vary, so do people vary in their abilities.

People are better at some things than others. It’s true.

Some people have an uncanny ability to remember faces, or to hear a piece of music and play it immediately, or be skilled at hand-eye coordination. Yes, we’re different, and we have certain preferences, but that doesn’t mean that the way we actually learn is better depending on the modality of instruction.

Let’s think about this: If I want to teach someone how to make a new kind of soufflé, what’s the best way to do it?

It depends!

I need to know things like:

• Have they ever made a soufflé before?

• Do they know how to separate egg whites from egg yolks?

• Do they know how to make a water bath in the oven?

• Do they know how to use a whisk and how to tell when the whites have been whisked just enough?

And so on.

For a complete novice, a video, and in-person demonstration, some step-by-step, scaffolded practice would likely be needed.

For a pro, I could probably hand them a printed recipe with the ‘innovative’ part highlighted, and off they’d go.

I am not teaching them based on any sort of stated ‘style’. I’m meeting them where they are and teaching them from the beginning or letting them apply their prior knowledge and experience.

Is this simply a matter of semantics? Is it really dangerous or damaging to keep this myth of learning styles alive? Does it really matter if some people feel that they have a “visual learning style?”

It does matter and here are some reasons why:

Opportunity costs: It does not make sense to pour resources, time, and effort into a framework of teaching and learning that is not substantiated by evidence. As educators, we need to think like scientists; consider the available evidence, and tailor our teaching and learning practices around that. Rather than wasting time trying to accommodate our teaching practice around learning styles, we should look to the preponderance of evidence for things that CAN positively impact learning. And there are many. Every moment of teaching training or professional development spent on figuring out ways to tailor instruction to students' individual learning styles is an opportunity lost to help support the development and implementation of evidence-based practices.

Growth mindset: As well as costs in terms of time and money, another reason the notion of learning styles is risky is it creates the belief that certain students are unable to learn because the material or mode of instruction is inappropriate for them. Talk about slamming the brakes on the idea of ‘growth mindset’ (which interestingly, does not suffer the same issues as ‘learning styles’).

If we tell students they can only learn in a certain way, they may develop a more rigid perception of learning. Humans have a tremendous capacity to adapt, change, and grow. It matters, therefore, for students to believe they have the ability to grow and learn and are expected to do so. Without that belief, students may lack the motivation to put in the mental effort and perseverance required to learn something new or get better at something. Learning is hard and we do a disservice to students if we let them believe otherwise. Or give them an ‘excuse’ to give up on something they find more difficult.

Square Peg/Round Hole: Imagine the student who is told they are a visual learner. They may try and process new content in the mode of their “learning style” even if the style does not fit the particular task. This is an incredibly inefficient way to learn.

Policy and practice reform: Misconceptions and myths about learning can impede school reform efforts. If a large percentage of people cling to beliefs on the efficacy of a learning styles approach, they are less likely to support initiatives that oppose it. Boser used the analogy of climate change to illustrate this point. Skepticism around climate change serves only to slow down meaningful policy action — even though there is broad consensus that climate change is real and poses a real risk to the future of our planet.

When we discuss educational topics, it can seem, more so than in other fields, that everyone’s opinion of what works and doesn’t work is equally valid and that we don’t need to look at data and evidence of efficacy. Everyone has been to school and has many years on the receiving end of teaching (likely some good and some not so good).

We do not all, however, have the same experience with medical research, or quantum mechanics, violin playing, or architecture. Thus we may be more willing to accept it when experts arrive at a consensus that a certain medical technique for knee-replacement surgery is no longer valid, or that a certain type of bridge design is better than another for a particular climate.

In Think Again, Adam Grant wrote: “Scientific thinking favors humility over pride, doubt over uncertainty, curiosity over closure.” If we believe we have already found the truth then we stop searching for or recognizing gaps in our knowledge. Grant uses the term “idea cults” for those who “preach the merits of their pet concept and ‘prosecute’ anyone who calls for nuance or complexity.”

A laudable educational goal is to help make students better consumers of information. Equally so is the need to make teachers and teacher-training programs “critical consumers of scientific research”. To normalize the practice of evaluating research evidence. Surely this should trump the status quo of relying on personal beliefs and experiences and what makes us ‘feel good’?

My hope is that soon I can stop worrying about engaging in fruitless discussions about learning styles; not only because we have wealth of excellent, reliable, robust research on what DOES work for learning, but because people know about it. That we, in whatever role we play, will be open to evidence that calls into question existing beliefs and allows us to recognize gaps in our knowledge.

Acknowledging the difference in stakes, debating this issue seems as pointless as debating topics like climate change or the efficacy of vaccines.

I’d rather be proactive than reactive.

I’d rather focus my efforts on helping others recognize and implement effective, lasting, motivating, active, research-based forms of teaching and learning which promote long-term meaningful learning for all students.

Julia Phelan Ph.D is a learning engineer and co-founder of To Eleven. The name was inspired by This is Spinal Tap (“Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder? Nigel Tufnel : [pause] These go to eleven”) and embodies the fact that To Eleven goes above and beyond in all they do. To Eleven focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of learning experiences for myriad learners and contexts along with consulting and advising services. www.to11solutions.com

Why I’d Like to Stop Talking About Learning Styles was originally published in Educate. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A teacher friend recently asked me about the timing of instruction and the best times to teach certain subjects. He wrote:

I immediately thought of the oft-cited study in which researchers evaluated judicial rulings on parole, across four Israeli prisons, to better understand factors that influenced parole decisions. Gender of the prisoner, the prisoner’s ethnicity (Arab vs. Jewish), the severity of the crime, e.g., fraud vs. assault, or the amount, amount of time already served, were all possibilities they thought might influence decision-making.

The parole boards consist of a judge, a criminologist, and a social worker and they spend the entire day reviewing applications presented in random order. The judges spend around six minutes on each case, the time of the decision is recorded, they have two food breaks (a morning break and an afternoon break), and in 65% of cases, parole is denied. Thus denial of parole can be thought of as the ‘default decision’. Data on decision-making vs. time of day were plotted on a graph.

Given this information, we’d expect the graph to look like this:

Interestingly it looked like this.

It turned out that as the judges got closer and closer to their food breaks, they increasingly resorted to the default position of parole denial. We know that engaging in complex decision-making is difficult and these data suggest that as the judges got hungrier and more in need of a break, they were less able to devote the intellectual effort needed to go against the default position of denial. Thus they were more likely to revert to the default and deny parole. Indeed, as you can see in the graph, right before the break the percentage of time parole was granted had fallen to zero!

Back to my friend and his question. The results of the judge study and others suggest that time of day does play a role in learning as does taking breaks. In his 2018 book When, Daniel Pink explores the mismatch between what we know about the best time to do things and the way educational scheduling happens. As you might imagine, most educational scheduling tasks are administrative. Pink, however, suggests we should take a more careful look at our scheduling from a pedagogical perspective.

A 2016 research study examined students’ class schedules, grades, and state exam scores from almost 2 million students in the Los Angeles Unified School district and found some interesting effects of time of day of instruction. “If a student took a math class at the beginning of the day in the first or second period compared to the end of the day, the fifth or sixth period, they performed significantly better on their math GPA and their math test scores.” (Pope, 2016). Increases in GPA were similar for having English class in the morning, vs. the afternoon, but there was not an increase in English state test scores.

Another study, this time in Denmark, found that “for every hour later in the day, test scores decrease by 0.9% of a standard deviation. In addition, a 20- to 30-minute break improves average test scores.”

As with the parole board, a likely explanation for this pattern is that over the course of a day students’ mental resources are increasingly depleted, they experience increasing cognitive fatigue, and as a result, are more likely to underperform on a test.

This research speaks to the ordering of the school day and differential learning throughout the day, rather than the specific time that it should start.

This is important.

It is acknowledged that as children grow and develop, physiological changes can cause delays in going to sleep in the evening and make it more difficult to wake up early in the morning. Less commonly acknowledged is the role of cognitive fatigue and decreased student performance across the school day (regardless of when it starts).

It can be tempting (as with many things) to try and figure out the “best time” to be teaching and learning specific subjects or doing certain tasks. The time-of-day effect, however, varies based on the nature of the task. As Simon Folkard said in Stress and Fatigue in Human Performance, “Perhaps the main conclusion to be drawn from studies on the effects of time of day on performance is that the best time to perform a particular task depends on the nature of that task.”

Are there key takeaways from these findings for schools, teachers, and education policymakers?

I think so.

We focus a lot of time and energy on what we are teaching, how we are teaching, why we are teaching, who is teaching, but not as much on the most effective and efficient timing of learning and when students are likely to be most productive.

We know that learning is hard and takes considerable effort. Thus we must work to schedule our students’ days accordingly and consider the impact of cognitive fatigue as well as the need for frequent breaks.

There may be certain classes or tasks which schools deem more or less cognitively taxing (think PE vs. math or science) and figuring out the best time to schedule them matters. It turns out that timing, while not necessarily ‘everything’, does make a difference and some subjects will be better placed in (as my teacher friend put it) the ‘golden hours’.

Julia Phelan Ph.D is a learning engineer and co-founder of To Eleven. The name was inspired by This is Spinal Tap (“Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder? Nigel Tufnel : [pause] These go to eleven”) and embodies the fact that To Eleven goes above and beyond in all they do. To Eleven focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of learning experiences for myriad learners and contexts along with consulting and advising services. www.to11solutions.com

Subscribe to Insights from Educate for a midweek dose of professional learning and inspiration from authentic voices in education.

Timing May Not Be Everything was originally published in Educate. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Recently, a friend (we’ll call her Veronica) posted a photo on Facebook of her son’s latest cooking triumph; a perfectly cheesy, bubbly chicken Parmesan. Positively restaurant-worthy.

Another friend (we’ll call him Tom) commented and asked Veronica for the recipe. To which she responded as follows:

Looking at Veronica’s response, do you think Tom would be able to recreate the chicken Parmesan in the picture? What assumptions has Veronica made about Tom in her response?

To be fair, Veronica may be familiar with Tom’s cooking prowess and be confident he will understand what she means by “pound out” the chicken breasts, or “dredge through flour, eggs, and breadcrumbs.” If, however, Tom doesn’t have the expertise and cooking know-how Veronica clearly possesses, the recipe and directions she posted will be useless to him.

Tom might be left scratching his head thinking: What on earth does dredge mean? Is the order of the dredging important? Are the flour, eggs, and breadcrumbs mixed together?

As with many things, the amount of instruction and guidance Tom needs depends on his prior experience, knowledge, and level of expertise. Without knowing that, Veronica could be succumbing to her own expert blind spot.

Expert Blind Spot

When you have developed deep expertise in an area and you greatly underestimate the time and cognitive energy needed for a novice to complete an activity or understand a concept (that you think is straightforward or simple), you are failing to recognize your own expert blind spot.

The truth is: being an expert does NOT necessarily mean you are good at modeling the world of a novice and explaining yourself clearly and effectively. That is, teaching someone else something.

To Veronica, pounding out chicken, and dredging it first in flour, then eggs, and then breadcrumbs (yes, it turns out the order does matter, you don’t mix them all together, and you need to whisk the eggs first) are done so automatically, that it doesn’t occur to her that she might need to first explain these terms and why they are important.

How does this happen? And why is it so common?

Deliberate Practice

Let’s at how we develop expertise in the first place. Developing expertise requires:

Once we have developed expertise we move into a state of what is known as “unconscious competence”. At this point, we have organized our knowledge around meaningful patterns and we have multiple, flexible, efficient strategies for using that knowledge. We can also handle new challenges within our domain of expertise faster, more effectively, and without much thought.

Veronica knows that the flour on the chicken helps the egg stick to the meat a little better and she could perhaps use this technique in another recipe. But she doesn’t need to think about it. She can create the dish automatically and is not really aware of what she knows, or what she is doing. Experts in any field are susceptible to the expert blind spot and this feature of expertise leads experts to not always be the best teachers.

Experts have a highly organized, connected, and complex network of ‘chunks’ of knowledge (also known as knowledge structures or schemas). This organization helps facilitate meaningful learning and performance.

Our goal, as teachers, is to help learners move from novice to more advanced learner. To do so, we need to give students the basic conditions they need to succeed (a welcoming, safe environment with minimal distractions and low extraneous cognitive load), guide them to think deeply and make meaning of new information, and we also need to be aware of our own expert blind spots.

Unfortunately, many instructors receive little or no training in the art and science of teaching and instead rely on their own experience with teachers as well as their intuitions about how novices learn. Complicating the issue, even more, is the fact that the longer experts work in their discipline, the further removed they become from the perspective of the novice. This inability to recognize (or empathize with) novice learners’ difficulties can lead content domain experts to teach in a manner that makes sense from their perspective, but not necessarily from the novice learner’s perspective.

Let’s look at some examples:

Have you ever seen a recipe in which eggs need to be separated? If you know what that means and how to do it, then no further explanation is required. If you don’t, however, you may get stuck at this step and need to get more information.

Think about learning to drive. When you’re a beginner, each component takes a huge amount of effort and concentration to implement. Turning the key, checking your mirrors, stepping on the pedals, turning on and off the indicators. But as you develop expertise, you can perform all these tasks automatically with very little awareness of what you’re doing. But to teach someone to drive, it’s necessary to go back and decompose the complex task into its component parts, which isn’t always easy for experts to do.

An expert snowboarder can easily navigate an unfamiliar mountain. As they make their way down the slope, they quickly evaluate and factor in the slope, snow conditions, wind, likelihood of ice, and the number of other skiers and snowboarders. They might wonder why the novice snowboarder with whom they’ve been working at a different mountain is still stuck at the top of the hill trying to remember which foot should be in which part of the board.

Experts in physics (for example) can look at two seemingly different diagrams and immediately recognize that they both represent the same physics concept. Novices, on the other hand, tend to focus on the superficial features of the diagrams, and given the same set, incorrectly infer that they relate to different physics concepts.

As a result of the expert blind spot, new learners in any field may:

• Miss important information because they are still at step one when the expert has moved on to step three

• Make mistakes and do things inefficiently

• Get frustrated and begin to lose motivation

• Not grasp the how, when, and why of what they are learning

All of which can make meaningful learning (and developing expertise) that much more difficult.

We are all at risk of falling prey to the expert blind spot in our teaching and interactions with novices. There are things we can do, however, to help overcome the tendencies which come with expertise and experience.

1. Awareness: First and foremost, be aware of your own expert blind spots. Don’t assume that novices know what you know. A better assumption is that they don’t.

2. Empathy: This is a big one. To teach anyone anything you must have empathy. Consider the novice learner’s perspective. Try and remember how you felt when you didn’t know as much as you do now. Think if there are scaffolds you can provide to support motivation, learning, and a sense of self-efficacy.

3. Break things down: Identify and unpack the component skills which together make up a complex skill. Veronica could ask herself, “What else (that I haven’t written down) would Tom need to know or be able to do, to recreate this recipe?” This step may require you to talk to someone outside of your discipline who does not have the level of expertise you have. The smart, thoughtful novice may ask questions that reveal you have neglected some important steps and didn’t realize.

4. Prerequisite skills: Once you have isolated the important component skills, decide which skills need to be learned and practiced first, before practicing the whole task altogether. Experts can do a lot of things at the same time without experiencing cognitive overload. Novices, on the other hand (think of our driving example or the snowboarder), need targeted practice on the component skills before combining them. If not, they risk becoming overwhelmed and frustrated.

5. Help novices make connections: Be explicit and purposeful in helping novices make connections and see the applicability of what they are learning to other contexts. These connections won’t necessarily happen on their own. Give learners the chance to practice and learn and represent ideas in different ways. For example, teach students that fractions can be represented in multiple ways: as a ‘slice’ of a circle, a subset of a group of objects, a point on a number line, a decimal, a piece of a rectangle, and so on. Superficially they look different, but each can be used to represent the same concept.

The tendency to be unconscious of our own expertise can, if we’re not careful, influence our interactions with others in myriad ways and in contexts outside of the educational realm.

Next time you are explaining something, introducing someone to something new, or teaching a new idea or concept, take a step back, pause for a moment, and think about assumptions you may be making. Are you, assuming, like Veronica did in her explanation to Tom, that your audience knows what you know? Are you using jargon, or overly technical terms, which can potentially serve to alienate others? It can be helpful to try and recapture some of the conscious awareness of how you got to where you are; awareness which you may have lost.

Only then will you be able to effectively help novices do what you’re hoping they will do — develop expertise.

Julia Phelan Ph.D is a learning engineer and co-founder of To Eleven. The name was inspired by This is Spinal Tap (“Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder? Nigel Tufnel : [pause] These go to eleven”) and embodies the fact that To Eleven goes above and beyond in all they do. To Eleven focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of learning experiences for myriad learners and contexts along with consulting and advising services. www.to11solutions.com

Subscribe to Insights from Educate for a midweek dose of professional learning and inspiration with the latest news and research from the education industry.

Beware the Expert Blind Spot was originally published in Educate. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A good friend and colleague of mine describes motivation as “the desire to start, persist and put in the mental effort to learn.”

The starting part is key and one of the chief truths about teaching: if students aren’t motivated to put in the effort it takes to learn, all of our well-designed learning experiences are for naught.

When we think about starting it helps to ask ourselves: What are the things which could potentially get in the way of a student starting a learning endeavor?

Feeling we don’t belong is a big one.

If we question our belonging in a learning environment, we may end up using up the limited space in our working memory paying attention to cues related to our identity and if we “fit in.” And as with any such distracting influence, the more we attend to feeling like we don’t belong, the more we are overcome with negative emotions, and the fewer valuable brain cycles we have to devote to actual learning. Which we know is hard.

There are huge benefits in helping our students to see that they fit in, that there are people “here” like them, and that their path to success is clear.

So what can we do, as educators, to help set the right tone, foster a sense of belonging, and nurture an environment conducive to learning?

As we learned in the song Do-Re-Mi: “let’s start at the very beginning, it’s a very good place to start…”

If you’re a teacher, your course syllabus is one of the first exposures your students have to you and the journey on which they are about to embark. Impressions made during this initial exposure can help (or hinder) teacher engagement with students. Students’ initial perceptions about instructor approachability and warmth can impact how they approach the course and what they learn. This is even more important in an online environment where in-person interactions may be limited.

Ask yourself this: Does your syllabus convey an inclusive, welcoming, warm environment and explain key information about you, the course, and how students can be successful? Does your syllabus motivate students to embark on a learning journey with you? To begin, as Ken Bain says, “a conversation about how the teacher and the student would best come to understand the nature and progress of the student’s learning.”

No two syllabi will be exactly the same. Every course has different elements and emphases. There are, however, ways that you can convey policies, routines, and procedures to students that help set a positive tone for learning.

A welcoming, engaging, informative syllabus includes some of the following features interwoven within and between the various sections (throughout I use excerpts from my husband Jay Phelan’s UCLA Life Science course syllabus as example content).

1. Show Students How Content is Relevant and Valuable

You might consider posing some questions students may have pondered and let them know they will explore these topics (and more) within the course.

Focus here on what students will take away from the course rather than a march through the topics to be covered. Communicate to students that you will all be learning together and you believe they can attain the ambitious, yet attainable, goals of the course.

2. Show Your Personality and Passion

Don’t be afraid to show your personality and passion for what you are teaching. A little self-disclosure can go a long way. To the extent that students can see how ideas in your course have meaning for your own life and experiences, their learning will be enhanced and your positive emotions about the subject matter you’re teaching can also boost student motivation.

3. Encourage Communication and Feedback

Make sure students know how to contact you, where to find you, and encourage them to do so. List your email address, office location (if you have one), or your preferred meeting place. Include the times of your office hours (if you have them) and if you are available at other times if students have a time conflict. Encourage them to give you feedback on what’s working and not working in the course.

4. Be Clear About Expectations and Rationale for Course Components

Clearly describe what you will expect from students during the course and how they will be evaluated on these activities. Help students clearly see what they need to do to succeed. It should also be evident to students how the course expectations connect to the goals of the course, or why certain activities are included.

Based on the information above students know: a) the purpose of the study guides, b) when they will be available, c) how they will be used, and d) how they will help the students prepare for the weekly quiz (which is graded).

These are just a handful of the many opportunities to turn the course syllabus from a fire hose of information and deadlines to something which both conveys important information and helps set the right tone, foster a sense of belonging and community, and nurture an environment conducive to learning. Remember it isn’t just what we say, but how we say it that can make a difference.

Think back to the question I posed earlier: Does your syllabus convey an inclusive, welcoming, warm environment and explain key information about you, the course, and how students can be successful? Does your syllabus motivate students to embark on a learning journey with you?

If you teach and have a syllabus, why not give it a look and see if it could use a little warming up?

Julia Phelan Ph.D is a learning engineer and co-founder of To Eleven. The name was inspired by This is Spinal Tap (“Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder? Nigel Tufnel : [pause] These go to eleven”) and embodies the fact that To Eleven goes above and beyond in all they do. To Eleven focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of learning experiences for myriad learners and contexts along with consulting and advising services. www.to11solutions.com

Subscribe to Insights from Educate for a midweek dose of professional learning and inspiration with the latest news and research from education.

First Impressions Matter was originally published in Educate. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Small moves toward harnessing the positive power of feedback

A phrase I think about often is “if nothing changes, nothing will change.” And it’s true in all facets of life.

In order to improve on or master anything, we need to engage in goal-oriented instruction and practice of sufficient quality and frequency. We need to reach beyond our current level of performance.

And we need feedback as to how we are doing. Why? So we can change!

Plain and simple, feedback is a key piece of the learning puzzle without which we will never know where we are going wrong, how close we are to our learning goals, or how to address our deficiencies and improve.

Feedback has the potential to be incredibly powerful, but it can also be variable.

For feedback to be effective, we need to know when to give it, how to frame it, we need to make sure the receiver is ready to receive it, understands it, knows how to use the feedback to advance learning, and has the opportunity and tools needed to do so.

When these boxes are all checked, feedback can motivate learners to invest more effort, do better, and improve.

But what if something gets in the way of students receiving feedback in a constructive way (assuming that this is the intention) — especially if the feedback is particularly critical?

While much is known about ways to give constructive positive feedback, less is known about how best to provide effective negative or critical feedback so that it leads to improvement without destroying self-confidence and motivation along the way. And this is because, as with many things, a lot depends on the learning environment and the relationships present within.

Characteristics of learning environments that can help students best respond to critical feedback are those which:

• encourage and welcome mistakes as part of the learning process

• foster a growth mindset

• allow learners to experience the connection between effort and success

• provide a clear picture about current progress

• clearly articulate next steps and provide opportunities for improvement

• sincerely praise effort and the process used instead of outcomes

Interwoven into such a learning environment where mistakes are seen as learning opportunities is a sense of belonging and trust. Learning environments characterized by trust and support allow students to receive critical feedback and work through mistakes in a positive way and can prevent self-defeating behaviors and mindsets.

The idea is this → if you receive negative feedback from someone you trust, you are more likely to accept that they have your best interests at heart, and are acting in good faith and not because they have some bias or preconceived notions against you and your abilities.

To explore this idea, researchers have turned to contexts in which trust between the giver and receiver of feedback may be more tenuous. One such context is when a white educator gives feedback to a Black student. Studies have found that when compared to other racial and ethnic groups, Black students tend to have lower levels of trust relative to white Americans. Black students’ tendency to mistrust in the school environment may stem from the concern of being seen through the lens of a negative stereotype, or confirming one (a phenomenon known as stereotype threat), or the real possibility that they might be discriminated against.

We know these fears are very real and rooted in larger systemic issues of racial inequity which can threaten students’ academic identity and performance. There are many messages sent to Black and other minority students that they don’t belong in school, or that they are lacking in some way. Alongside the fact that Black students are three times more likely than white students to be suspended and make up more than a quarter of all students who are referred to the police, research has also found they are more likely to receive patronizing praise in school.

Thus, it is understandable that Black students might have a higher level of mistrust toward white teachers than other students. When one grows up experiencing bias on a regular basis it can be easy to perceive whole systems and institutions as unfair and infer bias in otherwise ambiguous-seeming situations. If, for example, you grow up in a violent environment, you are more likely to expect hostility in your interactions with others and may interpret ambiguous provocations as intentional, and as a result, respond in an aggressive way. The result? Often, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Mistrust can undermine motivation if students are uncertain how to interpret teacher feedback. When a Black student receives negative feedback from a teacher whom they don’t trust, they may fail to separate the teacher’s real motivations to help, from perceived racial bias. A student already worried about being subjected to biased treatment may interpret the situation in a way that makes the most sense to them and allow their mistrust to “fill in the blanks”. This in turn can damage their motivation to participate and put in effort in the future.

There’s our self-fulfilling prophecy again.

A common solution, when faced with the need to give criticism, is to first give some praise, and then deliver the criticism. Presumably, the idea is that the praise will sugar coat the criticism and make it easier to swallow. But in situations where the receiver of the feedback is in a precarious position in terms of trust, praise of “OK” or mediocre work can backfire. Although often well-intentioned, if students see praise as conveying low-expectations, it may end up confirming their suspicions that they are being stereotyped and others are biased against them. After all, why would you praise someone for doing an “OK job” on a basic task unless you never expected them to do any better?

This begs the question: What can be done to help all students reap the benefit of feedback — even when it may be critical in nature?

Turns out there are some quite simple, but powerful moves we can make to help address this and other similar issues. So-called ‘wise interventions’ are strategies that are attuned (or wise) to how people see themselves and their position in the world. They ask, and aim to answer the question: are there aspects of people’s psychology that are hurting their outcomes? And then look to change this process. These strategies rely heavily on the belief that in many cases the way we make sense of things in our environment can adapt and change to become more positive or productive as well as permanent.

For example, subtle moves have been used in testing situations to try and remove stereotype threat. In a test-taking situation, a group of motivated, academically strong students was told that the test was either a problem-solving lab task or a test measuring intellectual ability. Researchers found that when students were told the test measured intellectual ability, Black students performed less well than white students. Conversely, when no stereotype threat was present (in the lab task condition), Black students and white students performed equally well (when matched on SAT scores).

Psychologist David Yeager and colleagues conducted a series of double-blind randomized studies exploring the impact of a wise feedback intervention to help restore trust in critical feedback situations. In their study of Black 7th grade students receiving critical feedback on written work, researchers used specific strategies to help disabuse students of the idea that they were seen as limited in ability, or not belonging in an academic environment and also worked to repair trust.

The idea was to:

• Explicitly convey critical feedback to students in a way that reflected high standards and expectations and not bias.

• Assure students that they had the potential to reach high standards.

• Provide detailed, actionable feedback tied to resources that would make achieving the high standards possible.

Doing these three things, the researchers posited, would create a positive, productive space that could help prevent students from having negative interpretations of feedback. Then, provided they had the resources to do so, students would be more likely to improve, thereby refuting the stereotype by reaching a higher standard.

On the other hand, a student may interpret critical feedback from a teacher they don’t trust as an indication of bias. This can perpetuate a downward spiral as the student may ignore the feedback and begin to disengage in learning. But what if the motion could be reversed? If the teacher could remove the perception of bias, the student might begin to be more trusting of the feedback, engage in the learning process in a more meaningful way, thereby setting new beliefs and behaviors into motion.

Seventh-grade Black and white students were randomly assigned to get written feedback on a graded essay assignment as well as either a placebo note or an intervention note. The intervention note represented the wise intervention condition and assured students that the teacher had provided critical feedback because they had high expectations for the student and were confident the student could meet the high standards. The placebo note simply told the student that the comments represented teacher feedback on the essay.

Students who received the intervention note were more likely to submit a revision of the essay, make the changes suggested by the teacher, and improve the quality of work in the revision.

The effects were stronger for Black students, and in particular, those who (in an earlier measure) had indicated less trust of school in general. In the study’s control group, Black students who conveyed low levels of trust at the outset, continued to decline in trust across the course of the year. Thus, the intervention feedback seemed to contribute to interrupting the cycle of mistrust and its negative consequences.

This work is, of course, predicated on some assumptions which are worth noting:

1. The teacher plays a huge role in this process. A teacher who sees a student putting in effort, must provide new challenges, and support ongoing student improvement.

2. Rather than one-shot interventions, we need to work to build whole systems in which high standards and expectations are conveyed, and all students have the opportunities and resources to reach them.

3. The teacher must be assumed to be operating with the best of intentions. If feedback is not clear, or actionable, or is too little, and if racial bias is present, then assuring students that feedback is indicative of a teacher’s confidence in them is not likely to have much benefit.

Although wise interventions can have an impact on beliefs and behaviors, they are certainly not to be seen as a magic bullet. Rather they provide an example of ways that seemingly “small moves” can set into motion positive cycles of beliefs and behaviors which can lead to lasting change. And in the context of receiving feedback, an intervention such as the one described can help remove barriers impeding academic achievement, enjoyment of school, and motivation to succeed.

Julia Phelan Ph.D is a learning engineer and co-founder of To Eleven. The name was inspired by This is Spinal Tap (“Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder? Nigel Tufnel : [pause] These go to eleven”) and embodies the fact that To Eleven goes above and beyond in all they do. To Eleven focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of learning experiences for myriad learners and contexts along with consulting and advising services. www.to11solutions.com

Subscribe to Insights from Educate for a midweek dose of professional learning and inspiration with the latest news and research from education.

A Matter of Trust was originally published in Educate. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Fostering positive teacher-student relationships in an online world

Recently I asked a group of education experts this question:

The group submitted their answers using an online polling tool. As the responses rolled in, the polling tool generated a word cloud in which the dimensions of the word in the cloud increased along with the submission frequency. And the winner?

Caring.

Yes, smart was there, too. But caring, humble, empathy, fun, engaging, and patient all emerged as common descriptors of teachers whom we like, are motivated by, and who inspire us.

A common thread runs through these traits and it can help us as we design (or redesign) our learning environments, particularly online environments.

1. In What’s the Best Way to Teach Something?, I explained why there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for teaching and learning. Within any learning environment, many things influence students’ ability, desire, or motivation to engage in learning. Students start from different places, and the context in which they are learning is not the same.

2. Building strong relationships with students is spectacularly effective at increasing their motivation to engage in learning. Students’ motivation is further enhanced when they see value in the endeavor, feel they can succeed, do not perceive obstacles, and when they are able to maintain a positive emotional state. It is one of the chief truths about teaching: if students aren’t motivated to put in the effort it takes to learn, all of our well-designed learning experiences are for naught.

3. Our students’ cognitive resources (as well as our own) are finite. You can only think about so many things at once. Ideally, all of your students’ cognitive resources would be focused on learning; that can’t happen if they don’t feel they belong if they feel threatened in some way, if their ideas and perspectives are not valued, or if they don’t fit in.

The Online Learning Context

Context matters in the overall learning experience. Even more so with online learning. Which elements of your in-person teaching practice must you modify and adapt to better fit this new learning environment?

A high-value place to start is with the way you interact with and connect with students? Are you treating your students as real people? Don’t just assume that you are. In the absence of personal interactions and quick chats before or after class, much can be lost.

My advice is to think about all the ways that you would interact and engage with students in a face-to-face experience and devise strategies by which you can get to the same outcomes.

The key is to be more purposeful about your communication and interactions with students. Educators often believe that they care about their students and that their feelings are apparent, yet many of their students don’t “see it or feel it”. Research has found that students feel particularly valued when teachers exhibit attitudes and behaviors like the ones below.

Fortunately, most of these don’t take much effort or time. They do, however, require a high level of awareness and intention.

How to Create a Warm and Engaging Online Learning Environment

Here are some tips and strategies to help you connect, engage, and effectively communicate with your students online:

1. Welcome students to the course. If you have a syllabus, think about how you write it and make it explicitly warm and welcoming. Create a brief video to introduce yourself to students and let them know your expectations and experience your enthusiasm. Let your students see you and hear you and know you are a person too.

2. Reveal your personality and your passion for your discipline. Share stories about your life, your journey, and even your failures. In each case, be strategic. Maximize the relevance of your anecdotes and stories to the course content. Your positive emotions about the subject matter you’re teaching can boost student motivation.

3. Learn as much as you can about your students as individuals. Inquire about their interests and their goals (personal or academic). Learn their names and use them. Show students you care about them and their experiences. Make connections.

4. Make sure students know how to contact you and encourage them to do so. Use a friendly, encouraging tone in your communication with students. Respond as quickly as you can to emails and questions from students. Post announcements if you need to amend an assignment or update students on a change in the course syllabus.

5. Establish and engage in online discussion forums. Just as you would if you were having in-class discussions. Comment on student posts regularly and convey that you see and value them as individuals. Schedule regular time to engage in these online discussions.

6. Pose open-ended questions which will help students engage with course concepts and material and expand their knowledge. Provoking students with questions helps spark their curiosity, fosters critical thinking, and encourages a growth mindset.

7. Provide opportunities for collaboration and help students understand why collaborative work can be beneficial and give them the tools to make it effective. Guide them in understanding how best to work in groups.

8. Be aware that all students are different and need different types of support. As long as you are true to your learning goals, you can provide students multiple pathways to demonstrate their learning. Think carefully about where you can allow students to make choices about content, assignments, or activities.

9. Be flexible. You may need to be a little more accommodating with deadlines and assignments. Students may be in different time zones, having to juggle work and family priorities. Relaxing some of your class rules helps convey empathy and support for all students.

10. Encourage participation, but remember some students won’t feel comfortable raising their hand, volunteering an answer, or showing their face on camera. Using polls, or clickers you can make participation anonymous and assuage student anxiety about answering questions.

Teaching online requires effort, practice, and some adjustments, and so does learning online. Some students may adjust more quickly than others. Help your students see and understand you respect and care about them as individuals and they will feel more positive emotions. As a result, they will be more willing to put effort into learning which will lead to a more effective and engaging online learning environment for everyone.

Julia Phelan Ph.D is a learning engineer and co-founder of To Eleven. The name was inspired by This is Spinal Tap (“Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder? Nigel Tufnel : [pause] These go to eleven”) and embodies the fact that To Eleven goes above and beyond in all they do. To Eleven focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of learning experiences for myriad learners and contexts along with consulting and advising services. www.to11solutions.com

Subscribe to Insights from Educate for a midweek dose of professional learning and inspiration with the latest news and research from education.

Showing Students You Care was originally published in Educate. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It depends.

I recently had the chance to interview an engineer who was in the process of designing employee training for a utility company. During our conversation, she described her development strategies and the types of activities she was creating. At the end of our chat, she asked for my recommendations about how best to design and create training experiences and materials.

After pointing out some of the good things she was doing, and how they aligned with evidence-based practices, I then had to follow up with what I almost always must say in response to this question: “It depends…”

There’s no getting around the fact that this sounds like a cop-out. But I do follow it up with an explanation. It would be nice (but not very interesting) if there was a single, optimal instructional approach for teaching fractions or one formula for maximally motivating all students to read more effectively.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for teaching and learning. Students aren’t all starting from the same place. The context in which they are learning is not the same. They have different prior knowledge and experience, values, degrees of self-efficacy, emotions, sense of belonging, interests, home dynamics, and learning needs.

1. The same strategy or technique doesn’t work for all learners, in all contexts, and at all times.

2. The same strategy or technique is not appropriate for the same learner at all points during their educational journey. As we learn our needs change.

Let’s look at Truth #1 through the lens of learner motivation. Imagine you’re teaching genetics and present a pedigree problem to your class.

Two students appear disinterested and unengaged with the problem. Superficially, the students look the same; their affect is the same and neither are actively trying to solve the problem. Although they may appear the same, however, they may have completely different cognitive and motivational experiences.

What can you do?

First, try to ascertain why each student isn’t engaging in the problem. Perhaps they both are experiencing the same motivational issue. Or maybe they are viewing the problem through different lenses, both of which are precluding them from getting started — but for different reasons.

This matters.

Student A may lack the confidence to attempt solving the problem; they don’t think they are a math person. The pedigree problem might require some math or logical thinking, which they have already decided is beyond their pay grade. Student B, on the other hand, may not see the point in solving the problem. After all, they are interested in history and languages; what use are biology and weird pedigree problems to them anyway? These two students can’t be helped in the same way. Both manifest the same behavior, but the root cause of their lack of motivation is different.

After diagnosing the impediment preventing the students from starting, persisting, and solving the problem, you can move to ways to overcome these hurdles. Here again, the strategies will differ. Student A might benefit from reminders of previous math problem successes, from seeing an annotated example in which each step is described and a rationale provided, or from examples of others like them, who have mastered these kinds of problems. That won’t help student B. Instead, you might challenge student B to research and create a pedigree with which they can explore the heritability of hemophilia in the Russian royal family.

The second reason why there are no one-size-fits-all solutions for teaching and learning is that the effectiveness of a pedagogical strategy often depends on the level of learner expertise.

When a novice is first learning something, they need instructional guidance to help manage their intrinsic cognitive load (as I write about here), minimize the extraneous cognitive load of the task, and direct their attention and focus to the most important parts of the task. One such type of guidance involves using worked examples that are already solved problems with each step annotated and clearly shown (see example below).

Novice learners benefit greatly from using worked examples as they are learning new information; they perform better on subsequent tests than students who are required to solve the equivalent problems themselves with no such support (see for example Cooper & Sweller 1987).

If students are let loose to engage in unfocused problem-solving with new tasks, they end up with a heavy burden on their working memory which imposes an extraneous cognitive load and relevant information can’t move into their long-term memory. Demonstrating a procedure using a worked example can reduce extraneous working memory load, allowing students to allocate their precious memory resources to building new knowledge.

As expertise develops, however, we benefit from altering our techniques. Fading out the worked example methods as learning progresses yields even better learning outcomes. In this fading technique, a succession of problems is presented. The first is completely solved and the rest incrementally replace a solved step with a request for a student solution until the student is providing the solution for all steps in a problem.

A phenomenon called the expertise reversal effect helps explain why fading away the scaffolding is effective. The very techniques which helped the novice in the beginning, can lose their effectiveness and have negative consequences with more experienced learners.

A novice might struggle with understanding a problem, or even getting started, without some scaffolding in the form of a worked example. As learners develop expertise, however, these strategies become less effective — and actually counter-productive — to achieving learning outcomes (see Yeung, Jin & Sweller 1998). The worked examples contain information that an expert can work out for themselves, making it redundant and a source of extraneous cognitive load which can end up slowing them down.

In both situations, we see that a one-size-fits-all approach to designing learning experiences will never be possible. Interestingly, that may be a good thing. Understanding that there is not a go-to solution for every teaching situation and prevents us from putting too much weight on one strategy.

Importantly, it can remind us that the same strategy won’t always have the same effect. It just depends.

Julia Phelan Ph.D is a learning engineer and co-founder of To Eleven. The name was inspired by This is Spinal Tap (“Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder? Nigel Tufnel : [pause] These go to eleven”) and embodies the fact that To Eleven goes above and beyond in all they do. To Eleven focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of learning experiences for myriad learners and contexts along with consulting and advising services. www.to11solutions.com

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I am a much better teacher (and gardener) today because I completely ruined a cake.

Last December, I finally decided to make a cake using a recipe I had torn out of Bon Appetit a couple of years earlier. Because it looked unusually complicated, the recipe languished in my pile of pages torn from magazines. It called for multiple layers of fillings, a chestnut mousse, and a chocolate syrup to drizzle on the cake before rolling it up. The rolling up was the part that made me nervous. I’d never had much success with this technique; my rolled-up cakes always ended up cracking or splitting. But with a few days off around the holidays, I decided to give it a whirl.

One of the steps involved sprinkling cocoa powder on the cake prior to rolling it in a dish towel. I wasn’t entirely convinced this was necessary but I thought I should follow the steps exactly as outlined in the recipe. I did so, and the cake came out perfectly.

Given how much chocolate was involved, when I made the cake the second time, I opted to omit the cocoa powder sprinkle prior to rolling. There was already plenty of chocolate taste in the cake, syrup, and frosting. Why add more?

Well I learned the answer to that question when I tried to unroll the cake. Unlike the first time when the cake had unrolled perfectly, this time it was completely stuck to the dishtowel. I had to painstakingly peel it away, ruining the cake in the process. It turns out that the cocoa prevents the towel from binding to the cake as the cake cooled in its rolled up shape!

I know that now.

If I had known the cocoa powder had a functional purpose above and beyond augmenting the cake’s taste, I would never have made that mistake. If the recipe had said “dust the cake with cocoa powder before rolling it up — this will ensure the cake doesn’t stick to the towel, making it possible to unroll once the cake is cool”, I would have known why that stage was important and not thought I could omit it.

Only when I made the cake again, without the cocoa dusting, was I able to see the consequences of my mistake and appreciate why the step was necessary. While there were no serious ramifications from my error, I was able to learn from my mistake and make sure I didn’t repeat it. This is because now I understood why the recipe component was important and the function it served.

We can apply the same principle when we think about learning something new or developing expertise in an area. Understanding why a step in a procedure is necessary, which steps can ultimately be safely omitted or combined, and why a particular strategy is effective or ineffective leads to more meaningful learning.

We say that we have learned something meaningfully when we:

• Can relate and connect new concepts or ideas to things we already know

• Are able to use our knowledge flexibly and apply it to new situations.

That is, we have developed expertise. In my cake example, this would mean that I would not likely make the same mistake again when making this exact cake. Moreover, if making a similar cake which needed to be rolled, I would appreciate the need to have something to prevent the cake sticking as it was rolled up.

In contrast, when we haven’t learned things in a meaningful way, we may be able to recall information, or execute a procedure, but not know how it relates to what we already know, or be able to transfer or apply it to new situations. This is what happens when we learn something in a rote way, or cram information into our short term memory without working to make effectively process and make meaning out of it. It may stay there for a while, but will not be particularly durable, useful, or transferable to new situations.

This isn’t a story about how effectively failure can contribute to learning (although it could be). It’s about how just a bit of expert wisdom at the right time can guide novices to content or task mastery more efficiently and effectively.

I had a tree in my garden with roots growing too close to the house. We were advised to have it removed before it damaged anything. The operation needed to happen in two phases (so I was told). First, most of the above-ground part of the tree would be cut, leaving the roots and some of the trunk left to die. After this they would be easier to remove.

Phase one left a large stump with no leaves. A few months passed, though, and green leaves began to grow from the stump. My smart, botanist friend Glenn was staying with us, and he suggested that I cut the leaves from the stump. Had he stopped there with his advice, maybe I would have cut them, maybe I wouldn’t. But to be honest, I didn’t really see the point and my gardening laziness might have got the better of me. I thought he was giving me tips on how to make it look a little tidier.

But he continued. Plants make food they need to grow via photosynthesis and the green leaves are an integral part of the process. (In theory I knew this already). Some of the food can be stored in the plants’ stem and roots, so even if there are no leaves, the stored food can be used to produce leaves which can then produce more food and so on. If I didn’t keep an eye on the tree and cut off these little food-making shoots as soon as they appeared, the tree would keep producing leaves, keep making food, and I would never get to the point where we could more easily remove the tree!

When we are novices, or in the throes of learning new things, corrective feedback is incredibly valuable, but only if we know what to do with it. Corrective feedback on its own is not enough, nor is a statement about what one should do differently. Glenn telling me to cut off the new leaves and leaving it at that would not have been meaningful to me; as a consequence, I might not have done it. But, by helping me understand why cutting the leaves was important, and connecting my actions to my stated goal (getting rid of the tree), Glenn’s advice became valuable.

If we understand why we should do something and how it connects to our specific goals, then we are more likely to be motivated and able to change our behavior in a meaningful way, and can also better transfer that learning to other situations.

In some cases, like in the cake example, students will make discoveries themselves and begin to realize why something is an important step in a process. They have their own aha moment! But we can’t always bank on this happening, or on students persevering in the face of continued failure. And even if they do succeed at something, not knowing why something eventually worked, can make the learning experience less transferable to new contexts.

Novice learners benefit greatly from targeted, specific feedback to help them correct their course and most importantly, understand why the correction is necessary.

Julia Phelan Ph.D is a learning engineer and co-founder of To Eleven. The name was inspired by This is Spinal Tap (“Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder? Nigel Tufnel : [pause] These go to eleven”) and embodies the fact that To Eleven goes above and beyond in all they do. To Eleven focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of learning experiences for myriad learners and contexts along with consulting and advising services. www.to11solutions.com

How understanding different types of cognitive load can help you learn

Cognitive load relates to the fact that the part of our brains that processes what we are are currently doing, can only deal with a certain amount of information at one time. Often we talk about cognitive load in terms of that negative feeling we get when we are overwhelmed, have too much going on, or are distracted and can’t focus.

Sure that is part of it, but there’s another side of cognitive load which is actually a useful and essential part of the learning process.

To really understand it, we need a quick refresher on the architecture of our brains and how we learn.

We have two primary channels bringing information into our brains: vision and hearing. These senses connect to our working memory — that is, the conscious part of our minds. Meaningful learning requires that we engage in substantial cognitive processing (in both channels) during learning, but the catch is that our capacity for such processing is limited.

During learning, information must be held in our working memory until it has been encoded or processed sufficiently to move into our long-term memory. When too much information floods our brain all at once, our working memory becomes overwhelmed and much of that information is lost.

Why? It’s because although working memory can solve complicated problems, it can’t do too many things at once; it has a finite capacity. This imposes a fundamental constraint on human performance and learning. If you make too many demands on your working memory, you slow down and become less effective at learning.

At any point in time, our cognitive load reflects the current demands on our working memory, which does not have an infinite capacity. High cognitive load is not necessarily a negative situation — but only if what is taking up space in our working memory is directly related to what we are learning and how we are processing that information. We call this intrinsic cognitive load.

Intrinsic cognitive load is related to the inherent difficulty of what you doing as it relates to a learning goal or skill you are trying to master. The intrinsic cognitive load of a task may be higher or lower from one person to another, depending on their prior knowledge. For example, learning to juggle five balls is harder than juggling three.

For a given task and individual at a moment in time, however, intrinsic cognitive load is fixed. It is dependent on the learner’s current level of expertise and can only be altered by changing the nature of what is learned or by the act of learning itself. Depending on prior levels of expertise, a person may find juggling three balls easy, or impossible. If someone (we’ll call him Charlie) has studied and practiced juggling for a month, the task may be easy, and the cognitive load associated with it is low. Charlie might even be able to hold a conversation while juggling.

For someone else (we’ll call her Vanessa), with no experience at all juggling, the intrinsic cognitive load will be higher.

Vanessa most likely will not be able to pay attention to anything else while she tries to juggle. And if she does — even for a fraction of a second — she will probably drop her balls.

As well as the intrinsic cognitive load imposed by a task, there is also cognitive load imposed by the learning environment. This can take two forms: when it is ineffective for learning, it is called extraneous cognitive load. When it is effective for learning it is germane cognitive load. I won’t dwell on the germane type here. It is not an independent source of working memory load. It simply refers to the memory resources devoted to “dealing with” the intrinsic load of a task.

Extraneous cognitive load can be imposed when there is too much information coming into the working memory and it is a challenge to stay focused on the relevant task. Or you may have other things on your mind and can’t devote sufficient working memory to a particular task. Stress, hunger, threats to your identity, and strong emotions, too, are all things which can result in extraneous cognitive load.

Remember, we have a limited amount of space in our working memory. If we are going to learn anything, we must process information in meaningful ways that help move it into our long term memory for later access. And we can’t do that efficiently, or even at all, when valuable space in our working memory is occupied with things not contributing to the learning.

So back to cognitive load and the bad rap it tends to get.

Rather than branding all cognitive load as counterproductive to learning, we need to distinguish between the different types. For learning to be maximized some cognitive load is essential: we need to manage and optimize the intrinsic cognitive load in our learning environments. Extraneous cognitive load, on the other hand, is the enemy of learning. We must strive to reduce it. This means that we must challenge ourselves, but with a manageable amount of information to process in our working memory.

I mentioned earlier that the intrinsic cognitive load imposed by a task is specific to the individual. This is important when we think about directing our own learning. If we engage with tasks which are too easy, we may feel good, but we won’t learn as much. As I wrote about in I’m a Student How Should I Study? learners are not always good at managing their own learning activities. They tend to use ineffective strategies, and can also get tricked into thinking these strategies are effective.

When we design learning experiences and instructional materials for others (or ourselves) we must, of course, work to reduce the extraneous cognitive load imposed. But what we also must do, is to optimize the intrinsic cognitive load. How do we do this? There are many effective techniques and strategies for doing this. Here are just a few ideas.

1. Organization: Break down content. Sequence content delivery so that sub-tasks are taught individually before being explained together as a whole. The idea is to not overwhelm a student too early on in the introduction of new work.

2. Increase Complexity Over Time: Practice tasks should gradually grow in variety and complexity — reaching just above the students’ current level of competence. Instructional scaffolding and supports can be used to help those students who may need them.

3. Focus Problem-Solving Using Worked Examples: A worked example is an already-solved problem with each step fully explained and clearly shown for the students. Novice learners who are given worked examples to study as they are learning new information perform better on subsequent tests than students who are required to solve the equivalent problems themselves (Carroll 1994; Cooper & Sweller 1987; Sweller & Cooper 1985). Unfocused problem-solving places a heavier burden on working memory and imposes an extraneous cognitive load preventing relevant information from being transferred into long-term memory.

4. Connect to Prior Knowledge: Deeper processing happens when students connect new learning to their prior knowledge in meaningful way. It’s important not to see learning experiences as disjointed — rather the connections and ways that prior knowledge is being built upon and expertise developed, should be clear.

5. Use Concrete Examples of Abstract Concepts: Use multiple, varied, familiar concrete examples to help explain abstract ideas and make sure students understand which features of the examples are the most important.

Ultimately, the key to addressing intrinsic cognitive load is to make sure it is managed at just the right level to support meaningful learning.

Tasks which are too easy, or too difficult will not have positive effects on learning. If I can already juggle two balls then I should try three, but trying five is not likely to lead to much learning.

To get the best outcomes and have the most efficient learning environments we can’t be afraid of cognitive load. Rather, we must understand it and use it as a tool that enhances learning.

Julia Phelan Ph.D is a learning engineer and co-founder of To Eleven. The name was inspired by This is Spinal Tap (“Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder? Nigel Tufnel : [pause] These go to eleven”) and embodies the fact that To Eleven goes above and beyond in all they do. To Eleven focuses on the design and implementation of learning experiences for myriad learners and contexts along with consulting and advising services. www.to11solutions.com

Recent reports by the cybersecurity company Proofpoint describe how cybercriminals are capitalizing on coronavirus fears and using online scams to steal personal and financial information.

Cybercriminals may try to take advantage of your emotions — such as curiosity, fear, worry, and compassion for others — to trick you into clicking on a link, downloading an app, or opening an email attachment. Before you know it, you’ve been led to a phishing website or downloaded malware onto your device.

You may think cyberattacks involve sophisticated tools and tactics to hack into computers and steal data. Not true! Criminals have learned that it’s much easier to take advantage of human nature, and trick people into making a mistake and revealing sensitive information. These types of attacks are called social engineering and they turn out to be extremely effective ways for criminals to steal sensitive data.

Cybercriminals don’t necessarily need to come up with sophisticated ways to bypass computer security; instead they can take advantage of the predictable errors which humans make over and over again.

A recent report by Tessian, details findings from a survey of 2,000 professionals in the United States and United Kingdom. Respondents were asked about mistakes they have made at work. The results revealed how stress, fatigue, and distraction can have an impact on people’s ability to make good cybersecurity decisions.

Indeed, nearly half of respondents (47%) cited distraction as the top reason for falling for a phishing scam. With 57% of workers reporting that they are more distracted when working from home.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a situation where more people are working remotely than ever. And this move to remote working, and constant teleconferencing adds to our fatigue and stress which in turn can lead us to make more mistakes, which is why we must be extra vigilant about implementing good cybersecurity hygiene practices. Now more than ever, it’s crucial to be aware of possible social engineering attempts. Some things you can do:

• Be on the lookout for fake emails claiming to be from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or experts claiming to have information about the coronavirus or news of available vaccinations.

• For the most up-to-date information about the coronavirus and COVID-19, visit websites of trusted sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) yourself. Be suspicious if someone asks for information they should already have, or are not authorized to access.

• Look out for someone using overly technical and confusing terminology to get you to do something.

• Don’t click on links from sources you don’t know. They could download viruses onto your computer or device.

• Do not reveal personal or financial information in email, and do not respond to emails asking you for this kind of information.

• Beware of messages about “investment opportunities.” The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued warnings about online promotions, including on social media, claiming that the products or services of publicly traded companies can prevent, detect, or cure coronavirus, and that the stock of these companies will dramatically increase in value as a result.

• Do your research before donating to charities or crowdfunding sites. Don’t let anyone rush you into making a donation. If someone wants donations in cash, by gift card, or by money transfer, don’t do it.

• Look out for people trying to create a sense of urgency. By doing so, they are banking on you acting first and asking questions later.

You and your common sense are your best defense against becoming the victim of cybercrime. You can help keep your data and devices safe by being vigilant and always using good cybersecurity practices.

And remember, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Julia Phelan Ph.D is a learning engineer and co-founder of To Eleven. The name was inspired by This is Spinal Tap (“Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder? Nigel Tufnel : [pause] These go to eleven”). The name embodies the fact that To Eleven goes above and beyond in all they do. To Eleven focuses on the design and implementation of learning experiences for myriad learners and contexts along with consulting and advising services. Julia created a cybersecurity course series for the property management industry focusing on the ‘human element’ of keeping data and devices secure. www.to11solutions.com