Day: March 18, 2018

Reading is not studying

I think professionals find shorthand ways to identify key ideas that they use frequently. Reading versus studying is one such key idea for me. Even though I worked with college students, I know that many of them I encountered did not understand this distinction. They would assume that reading was enough or they read several times and assume they were studying. I try to explain this key idea to educators in the hopes it will be a way they can use concepts I assume are familiar to guide their own thinking and practice. Sometimes this works and sometimes it does not. Perhaps what is important here is coming up with your own ways to understand important issues. Perhaps teachers are using a concept such as “deep reading” in the same way I use studying.

If exposure to ideas is not enough (reading, lecture, videos, hands-on tasks), what can educators do to facilitate learners learning. How can educators facilitate studying and perhaps help learners learn to studying without facilitation? Yes, you did notice that I went beyond reading to list other versions of information exposure. In doing so, I may have gored some of your own sacred cows by implying these other learner experiences are equivalent to the information exposure involved in reading. I do think the magic of making and other forms of experiential learning is nothing more than information exposure. Like reading, these experiences with content expose learners to information, but the tactics without more cognitive activity on the part of learners do not do enough. Students need to study, process deeply, think or whatever concept you will accept in order to learn.

This has been a lengthy way to introduce you to a second distinction I find helpful – information vs educational content. I find this distinction relevant in thinking about the “abandon the textbook” tactic some find meaningful. I can argue each side of this tactic. I do think it important to consider why anyone thinks this is a good thing to do. Textbooks are costly? Textbooks are easily dated? Textbooks are not how adults learn? These pronouncements may be accurate, but textbooks are also produced from a single perspective, written in an integrated fashion, carefully vetted, and developed purposefully as educational content rather than information. If you are willing to move beyond the textbooks, there are unique challenges when making this transition.

As a textbook author, I have thought about the limitations and advantages of a textbook. My own efforts as an author have encouraged me to move beyond the traditional textbooks I once wrote to more of a hybrid product that addresses some of the weaknesses I and others have identified. As a cognitive psychologist interested in learning challenges and technology, I have also explored options for how information content might be transformed into educational content.

 In many ways attempting to help learners bridge the gap is what textbook authors and teachers try to do. They try to help learners study. A distinction I often draw between secondary education and higher education is that in secondary education teachers often study with their students. In higher education, teachers assume students will study on their own. As I mentioned above, the assumptions of college teachers are not always appropriate. We expect the skills of studying to have been developed from the shared activities of secondary teachers and students and this has not always happened. So, if we can acknowledge that exposure to content is not enough, where along the line and whom will help learners move from educator facilitated studying to learner guided studying?
I sense a way to get educators to understand this issue and to provide learners opportunities to acquire study skills. In a way, moving beyond the textbook should encourage educators to carefully consider their roles as the designers of learning experiences because they cannot assume this role is the responsibility of the textbook author. I like to describe this expanded role as teacher as designer. Of course, this is what educators have always done intuitively and perhaps mindfully. Because the process is so tangible, MODIFYING CONTENT TO CREATE A LEARNNG RESOURCE is a great exercise in thinking about helping students study and perhaps passing on tactics for studying to students.
I have identified a category of tools intended to be applied to online information resources suited to this purpose. I describe the design process as “layering for learning” because the educator as designer accepts the online information as it exists and “layers” activities/tasks/prompts on this information to encourage deeper thinking and specific forms of cognitive processing (studying).
You can gain a feel for some of these services by taking a look at product tutorials I describe online. This post has already grown too lengthy so I will generate a related followup description of these services and how I see them being used by educators.

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