I recently read Paul’s “The extended mind” which deals with how we can harness resources external to our own minds and our own cognitive activities to deal with the abundance and complexity of information we must process daily. One value of a book such as this is that it greatly expands the variety of external resources that can influence our thinking. This variety aside, my main focus continues to emphasize technology (sometimes what some now call a second brain) and collaborations of various types (e.g., peers, experts, those with similar interests we have never met). I offer this brief overview as a recommendation for those who might find this book a useful investment of reading time.
I will focus this post on several social experiences that often are denigrated?—?meetings and lectures (especially online presentations). Without defending these social experiences, I will offer some insights that may increase the productivity of these social gatherings. In both cases, the key idea concerns how to take better advantage of the collective knowledge available in the real-time group setting.
Meetings
The suggestion I discovered here is straightforward so I can describe it quickly. Why are meetings the butt of so many jokes somehow targeting the time wasted and inefficiency of such gatherings? I spent a good part of my years as a college faculty member and department chair. The advantage of meetings is not the distribution of information as this could be accomplished by the distribution of a memo or email. The advantage is the opportunity to tap into uniquely held knowledge and collectively problem-solve. However, patterns of communication often work against these potential advantages. Too often, only a few or even one individual speaks. Paul suggests that this is due to the way issues are presented. When a group leader begins by spending too much time presenting his or her perspective on an issue, few participants tend to respond to add their insights. Paul proposes that the leader begin by asking “what do you think about XXX” and waiting to offer a personal opinion. He even recommends that individuals write their positions on note cards to distribute input more broadly. There must be a digital version of this suggestion.
The challenge of eliciting what individuals know is key to many of the strategies Paul proposes in benefiting from collaboration. Perhaps a better way to describe the message might be collaborative efforts are often actually not that collaborative.
The lecture experience
It is common to diss lectures. It is not that I don’t understand some of the issues. Why is it educator/teacher presentations are singled out for criticism? Why is the reading of a book different from participating in a lecture? Both approaches focus on the communication of information that is to be processed by individuals. Lectures probably offer greater opportunity for collaboration because individuals are in the same location and perhaps more importantly they are present at the same time. Yes, there is such a thing as collaborative reading and that also interests me, but “social presence” is more real in a physical or virtual group experience. Sure, tutoring is superior, but we must recognize practical realities in information exposure and do what is reasonable to take advantage of the social setting. While not a part of most critical reactions, exposure to information is not the end of the learning process, but it seems obvious exposure is a necessary component.
I emphasize thinking opportunities in my general approach to formal and informal learning experiences. How might thinking opportunities be encouraged when and in ways that improve the efficiency and success of learning? The effort I have invested in evaluating and promoting layering activities is based on this perspective. Layering provides a way to embed learning opportunities in what I call the exposure phase of learning. Adding questions on top of reading content or within video presentations makes a good example. When used in this way, questions are a way to add thinking opportunities during a stage of learning that is often passive unless a learner initiates such behaviors without external prompts.
Paul takes a similar perspective with an emphasis on collaboration. Many educators may recognize an example of this emphasis in the active learning method in which a lecturer pauses during a presentation to throw out a discussion challenge to small groups of students typically sitting around tables rather than the lines of chairs in a typical lecture hall. The groups deal with this challenge and may be asked to report a summary or conclusion. Think-pair-share activities are a variant of this approach. With many lecture settings, a group is there, but there is no collaboration.
The pandemic brought an educational emphasis on virtual learning typified by Zoom sessions. I think it fair to say the typical experience has received a great deal of criticism. I had retired from teaching so aside from using ZOOM in other ways I was not teaching online during that time. My experience with ZOOM has involved a book club I join each week and graduate classes in instructional design. The ZOOM classes involved students who found it impractical to come to campus so I was teaching both face-to-face and online simultaneously which comes with its own set of challenges. My personal experience using chat while involved online has been limited to the book club.
There are plenty of suggestions for the use of chat to create active learning experiences while working with students in a synchronous setting. These strategies involve an assortment of proposed benefits. My focus is narrower and addresses the importance of tapping individual experiences of a group members to embellish presentations of the instructor. The intent of this recommendation is to encourage students to connect concepts being presented with personal experiences. Such connections are essential in encouraging transfer?—?making what is learned useful in a more general way. Students can make such connections without external assistance, but the thinking required to make such connections requires that relevant experiences come to mind and learners have the motivation to commit to reflection. Questions and prompts are a way to encourage this effort and a chat system provides the opportunity.
It is easy to imagine how such prompts could work with ZOOM. The chat function extends and expands the impact of asking a question of the group. So, imagine I am presenting the concept of working memory overload. I may think this concept offers important applied insights, but understanding an explanation of the concept does not lead to learner associations. Asking the group to suggest examples typically generates useful responses from the usual participants, but it is often the nonparticipants who are most in need of external supports. Here is the value of chat. All can participate somewhat anonymously with less pressure and not need to be the first to respond. Chat has a very important added benefit. You get to tap into the knowledge of peers. An immediate response might identify the problem of distracted driving which you might not have thought of, but which you recognize and see the connection. Someone else mentions trying to use Instant Messenger in class reducing the attention students pay to what else is happening in class. As the responses roll in, each learner has the opportunity to consider connections both familiar and unfamiliar. Some may not be appropriate examples, but even considering such offerings allows extended thinking about the concept in question.
I do recognize that ZOOM chat offers private messages which obviously provides the potential for nonproductive distraction. So do the side conversations students in a face-to-face classroom might be having with the students sitting next to them.
ZOOM does not have a provision for blocking the responses of others until a personal response has been submitted. Some instructors recognizing this issue have proposed a “Ready, Set, Go” strategy. If the type of activity I have just described is a frequent technique and a pattern of participation has been identified, students understand that a question or request will be made and then students are to consider a response, but not enter it until given the signal. Time for thinking is essential if thinking is expected. Time to submit a response and time to contemplate the responses generated by peers must be allowed. The instructor might also use the post-response delay to identify some of the examples for the group.
Using chat as part of online instruction may sound like the online equivalent of classroom response systems that seemed popular a decade or so ago, but now no longer receive as much attention. This is true. Such systems have a variety of hypothetical benefits. This post has focused on one benefit?—?How to tap into uniquely held knowledge in an online group setting?
Resource
Paul, A. M. (2021). The extended mind: The power of thinking outside the brain. Eamon Dolan Books.
