General – Page 2 – Learning Aloud

Processing video for Personal Knowledge Management

John’s “The Science of Reading” explores the historical and scientific journey of reading as a science and a practice. Much of my professional life as a researcher focused on reading and reading skills and as a consequence, I was aware of some of the history of the research and theory. What I found my perspective lacked was the broader perspective on what was expected of reading as a determinant of culture and as the basis for citizenship and commercial and scientific advancement. The political perspective associated with assumptions about what specific skills were necessary for the general advancement of nations was an angle I had not considered.

The closest I can come to explaining some of the insights I encountered might be compared to present assumptions concerning political arguments over why “educated” citizens can believe the things they believe and even what should be excluded from classroom consideration to prevent what some see as undesirable outcomes. Those of us involved in the nitty-gritty of the learning and improvement of the skills of reading are often oblivious to broader questions of what the general population may expect the skill to accomplish or the problems the acquisition of a skill may create.

A historical perspective provides both a way to see transitions in a skill and how that skill is developed, but also how in this case to consider that a skill exists in a reciprocal relationship with that knowledge and culture. For example, political values, arguably a part of culture, have varied in demanding that a specific form of communication be prioritized and thus justifies support as a means for accomplishing prioritized goals. Who needs to develop a specific communication skill, what information should this skill target, and how will the use of this skill be controlled? More to the point of this post, are we in an era in which reading is coming to the end of its reign in this broader capacity and are we seeing the early stages of a transition to a different means for recording and transmitting knowledge and culture? Are we in the midst of this transition without acknowledging it and perhaps more importantly supporting and shaping the direction of this transition?

Perhaps asking whether we are moving on from reading seems radical, but these thoughts came to me as I have watched my grandchildren and truthfully most of my relatives spend hours exploring videos on their phones. The time children and adolescents spend on YouTube and other video content exceeds by a considerable margin the time they spend reading. It seems this reality has to be acknowledged. I tried to locate some specific data and found that the results of a recent Gallup poll indicate adolescents report spending an average of 1.9 hours daily on YouTube alone. Adults may be different, but I would wager when they encounter a skill they must execute they are far more likely to see if YouTube has something to offer rather than search for and read the manual that provides related information. I understand that what may seem a similar reaction has been associated with television viewing because everyone spent and spends so much time watching television, but how we make use of televised content seems different and less responsive to transitory personal interests than online video.

A modest proposal

OK. I have not abandoned reading and I rely on reading professionally. I must read journal articles and books to perform my occupational role. Scientific research demands the sharing and reading of text documents in a specific format and with a required approach to citing related sources so that any arguments made can be evaluated based on existing research findings and theory. At this point, I am bound by this approach. However, the process by which the findings of this formal research process reaches potential practitioners is not so rigid. Classroom educators can read articles and blog posts in which proposed instructional activities based on the findings of the research community are offered, but they can also listen to and watch podcasts and YouTube presentations. They can take courses (e.g., Coursera) and interactive classes (e.g., Zoom) that rely on video. We all have been taught to read (and write), but what about the development of skills that optimize learning from video.

For several years now, I have been interested in the role of Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) in self-directed learning. Part of this interest has involved the exploration of specific digital tools that support the processing of information within the context of PKM. The PKM perspective can be applied to traditional educational settings, but it also encourages a long-term perspective which is the environment all of us face once no longer involved in courses that require us to learn to pass examinations and produce projects that demonstrate our learning. Our challenge is remembering specifics earlier exposure to information sources have provided when potentially useful and finding personally useful connections within this great volume of information.

PKM is about tools and tactics. What processes (tactics) allow us to store (internally and externally) a residue from our reflection on the information we have experienced? What external activities (tools) can facilitate storage and processing?

There are plenty of tools and plenty of related suggestions for tactics proposed by the PKM community. My focus here is on the less extensive focus on video and the even more limited focus on digital tools that are used during the initial video experience. How does a video viewer capture ideas for later use? How can skills unique to this approach be learned?

Why an integrated digital note-taking tool?

While watching an informative video, why not just take notes in a notebook next to your laptop or tablet? Why not just open a second window and simple word-processing app in a second window on your laptop? My answer would be you use an integrated digital tool to link the context between the original video and individual notes in ways that recognize future issues and uses. Note-taking is a far from perfect process and being able to recover a missing piece of information necessary to fix a confusing note requires being able to reexamine a specific segment of the original video. I first wrote about the importance of the preservation of context when describing apps that allowed the sound from lectures to be recorded within note-taking apps. These apps automatically establish a link between any note taken with a time-stamp connecting the note to a specific point in the audio recording. I even suggested that when a note-taker realizes she has missed something she knows she should have written down as a note, they simply enter something like ??? in their notes as a signal to later check the recorded audio for something not mentioned in the notes that may have been important.

I have a different reason for proposing the importance of digital notes. I use digital note-taking systems that allow me to quickly search and find notes I may have taken years ago. Students are not in this situation, but the delays say in a course with only a midterm and final exam involve delays that are long enough to be related to a sizable amount of content to review and a time frame likely to increase memory retrieval challenges. Digital notes make searching simple and allow integration and cross-referencing of content over time to be relatively easy. For those of us now functioning to manage large amounts of information outside of a formal and short-term academic setting, such challenges are now often described and addressed as Personal Knowledge Management (PKM).

Reclipped

There are several tools available to annotate videos. My favorite is ReClipped. This tool is an extension that is added to the Chrome browser and is activated when a video source the tool can be used with appears in the browser. When the extension has been added, an icon will appear in the icon bar at the top of your browser and the appearance of this icon will change when it has been activated by the presence of video content within the browser. When active with YouTube, additional icons will appear in YouTube below and to the right of the window displaying the video (see the following image with ReClipped icons identified by a red box). (Note: the video used in this example was created by Dr. Dan Alosso and associated with an online book club he runs.)

I have written about ReClipped before in my series about layering tools. I define a layering tool as a tool that allows additions overlayed on existing online content without actually modifying that content as sent from the host server. I wrote previously about ReClipped as a way an instructor could add content (questions, comments) to a video so that the composite of the original video and the additions could be presented to students and supplement their learning. The difference here is that a learner is adding the additions for personal use.

To keep this as simple as possible, I will focus on one tool — the pencil. The pencil represents the note tool (see the icons with the pencil tool enclosed in a red box below the video window). Clicking on the pencil creates a time stamp in the panel to the right of the video window allowing the user to enter a note associated with that time stamp (see examples in the image). I tend to click the pencil, pause the video, and then enter my notes. Pausing the presentation is obviously an option not available when listening to a live lecture and solves all kinds of issues that learners face in the live lecture setting.

The save and export buttons are also important. ReClipped will archive your annotations for you when you save, but I am more interested in exporting my annotations so I can use them within my broader Personal Knowledge Management strategy. I use a tool called Obsidian to collect all of my notes and to work with this large collection in other ways (reworking, linking, tagging). I also make use of an AI tool ( Smart Connections) to “chat” with my collection of notes.

ReClipped allows the notes associated with a given video to be exported in several formats (e.g., pdf). I export notes in markdown because this is the format Obsidian likes for import. Markdown is a formatting style something like html if you are familiar with the formatting style used in creating web pages. Such additions allow the incorporation of other information with text (e.g., links). For example one of the entries included in the example I have displayed is exported as the text string that appears below.

– [08:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukJtbtb8Tb4&t=523s) levels of notes — fleeting, literature, permanent — literature vs permanent is a matter of connecting to what you already know vs summarization. Permanent note has been “filtered by our interest”

When stored in Obsidian it appears as the following image (this is an image and not active).

Within Obsidian, the link is active and will cause the browser to return to the video stored in YouTube at the location identified by the time stamp. So, if necessary, I can review the video I saw when first creating the note at the point associated with that note. This link will simulate that experience. One issue with time stamps — the creation of a time stamp follows the content the stamp references. You listen and then decide to create a note. To reestablish the context for a note it thus requires that you use the link to a time stamp to activate the video and then scrub backward a bit to view the relevant material.

ReClipped allows other content (e.g., screen captures) from a video to be collected while viewing. Taking and exporting notes is straightforward and easy for me to explain in a reasonable amount of time.

There is a free version of ReClipped and the paid unlimited version is $2 a month. Note that ReClipped is presently free to teachers and students.

Research

I try to ground my speculation concerning the application of digital tools and techniques in unique learning situations with links to relevant research. In this case, my preference would be for studies comparing traditional note-taking from video with taking notes using integrated digital note-taking tools similar to ReClipped. I have been unable to locate the type of studies I had hoped to find. I did locate some studies evaluating the effectiveness of scratch-built tools typically incorporating some type of guided study tactic (see Fang and colleagues reference as an example). Though important work, learner application of more flexible and accessible tools seems a different matter and need to be evaluated separately.

Putting this all together

If you agree with the argument that we will increasingly rely on video content for the skills and information we want to learn, my basic suggestion is that we think more carefully about how to optimize learning from such content and teach/learn skills appropriate to this content and context. Digital tools such as Reclipped allow notes to be taken while viewing videos. These notes can be exported and stored within a Personal Knowledge Management system for reflection and connection with information from other sources. This post suggests that experience with such tools under educator supervision would provide learners the skills needed to take a more active approach to learning from videos they encounter.

References:

Fang, J., Wang, Y., Yang, C. L., Liu, C., & Wang, H. C. (2022). Understanding the effects of structured note-taking systems for video-based learners in individual and social learning contexts. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 6(GROUP), 1–21.

Johns, A. (2023). The Science of Reading: Information, Media, and Mind in Modern America. University of Chicago Press.

Adolescent mental health, phones, and schools

I recently listened to Kara Swisher interviewing Jonathan Haidt the author of The Anxious Generation. I checked on this book and it is #1 on the New York Times nonfiction list this week. I provide a comment on the ranking because the ranking would indicate the book was receiving a great deal of attention from the general public and the message must have substantial appeal.

Briefly stated, the book argues that rising anxiety and mental health issues of adolescents are significantly determined by overparenting and the amount of time spent, especially by adolescent females, on social media. I have personal comments related to this issue particularly Haidt’s recommendation for phone use in schools, but I would encourage you to listen to the interview because Swisher pushes back and the interchange offers some useful insights into whether cellphone activity is responsible for an increase in mental health problems.

Certain facts are well established: a) adolescents spend a great amount of time on their cellphones since the introduction and wide purchase of iPhones (this specific event figures heavily in some arguments), and b) beginning before the Covid shutdown and continuing to the present adolescents, particularly females, have shown an increase in mental health issues. The big question, the focus of Haidt’s book, and lots of research (citations will be included) is whether there is a causal relationship such that a significant proportion of the increase in mental health problems can be accounted for by the great amount of online activity mostly using personal phones.

The amount of time adolescents and many of the rest of us spend online is staggering. PEW has done regular surveys of teens to quantify their online activity and provides the following data points.

YouTube (95%), TikTok (67%), Instagram (61%), and Snapchat (60%) are among the most popular social media platforms used by teens.
On average, teens spend 1.9 hours daily on YouTube and 1.5 hours on TikTok, with males spending more time on YouTube and females on TikTok.
Around 35% of teens say they use at least one of the top social media platforms “almost constantly”.

As an aside, one of the “quality studies” Haidt mentioned to support his claim in the Swisher interview involved adult use of Facebook (Allcott et al. 2022). Swisher asked for examples of manipulative research showing that phone use and depression were related and Haidt provided this study. PEW doesn’t have much to say about Facebook activity among adolescents because the level has dropped so low. Haidt acknowledges that few quality studies exist with adolescents because doing manipulative research before the age of 18 is very difficult. This is why so many researchers use college students – they are available and they can participate.

Adolescent mental health issues have increased year by year with a big jump during the COVID years. Data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention tracking depression provide a good example of this trend. The following chart was taken from this report.

So, facts demonstrating adolescents’ heavy use of phones and increasing mental health issues are solid. Now, are these two variables related and how? All I can say is that the research or perhaps more accurately the interpretation of the research is messy. I understand that parents, educators, and policymakers just want the researchers to provide a clear summary, but this just isn’t happening.

You have books such as Haidt’s (I would also recommend Jean Twenge) and medical experts (this summary of research from the National Library of Medicine) offering analyses of the research that come across placing a heavy burden of blame on cell phone use. I can also recommend scholarly meta-analyses of the phone-mental health students to reach just the opposite decision (e.g., Ferguson, et al. 2022). I admit summaries of many of the same research publications that come to very different conclusions are challenging. I read and comment about this type of controversy in other areas (should notes by taken on paper or laptop, are books better understood on paper or from the screen) in which I have read most of the relevant studies and can offer a personal opinion. I am not a clinical psychologist and in this case, I do not want to go on the record telling parents or teachers what they should do about kids and cell phones. If you are interested, I hope I have offered some of the resources you can use to get started.

What I do want to talk about

Getting back to Haidt’s book. Haidt makes several specific recommendations based on his conclusion that cellphone use is damaging.

Schools should be phone free zones
Children should first be provided a phone specialized for communication and not Internet use (e.g., a flip phone)
Adolescents should not have access to a smartphone until high school (but see #1)
Access to social media should be changed from 13 to 16.

Some additional Haidt comments on schools as phone free zones are:

The agreement of schools to ban smartphones is important because a total ban applies to all students and avoids the problem of some students having access and some students not.
School policies such as having access only during class or having phones in backpacks or lockers don’t work.

I do not support classroom bans on smartphones. In part my logic is based in research experience I do have and this work involved cyberbullying. A couple of things I remember from the research are that cyberbullying very rarely originated using school equipment (cell phones were less of an issue at the time), but the targets and originators of cyberbullying typically involved students from the same schools. For this second reason, most assumed schools were in the best position to address the problem. The key point here is that bullying actions originated outside of schools (homes and homes of friends), but schools were in the best position to provide “educational remedies”. Some aspects of the cellphone and mental health issues are similar.

I see classroom use of cellphones as a convenience not that different from the use of laptops, chromebooks, or tablets. All devices could be used to access damaging or useful experiences. However, students would be in a supervised environment, unlike the situation in the home or other locations outside of the classroom. In allowing the use of phones (or other digital devices) teachers do not only monitor use, but have opportunities to focus on productive uses AND explore the damaging issues in a group setting.

You may not agree with my position, but I think the logic is sound and recognizes that phone use is far more frequently unsupervised outside of classrooms than within classrooms. It is easy to target schools and ignore the reality that parents are more likely to ignore what their children are doing on their phones for much longer periods of time. Experiences within schools are not the core source of problems that may exist.

The importance of a whole group experience also has two sides. Yes, if no student can use a phone in school then there are no haves and have nots. Nothing about this solves what happens outside of classrooms. Addressing the issues of what students experience online is going to be more consistent and probably effective when all students experience issues as part of a formal curriculum.

So, I don’t think banning phones in classrooms solves a mental health problem. I think the science on mental health and adolescence is still unclear. I disagree with what Haidt said in response to Swisher’s probing. His position eventually came down to “if it isn’t cellphones then what is it”. When there are positives and negatives associated with an activity (perhaps causally and perhaps not), simple solutions rarely produce a substantial advantage.

References:

Links are provided when possible. Other sources are cited below.

Allcott, H., Braghieri, L., Eichmeyer, S., & Gentzkow, M. (2020). The welfare effects of social media. American Economic Review, 110(3), 629-676.

Ferguson, C. J., Kaye, L. K., Branley-Bell, D., Markey, P., Ivory, J. D., Klisanin, D., Elson, M., Smyth, M., Hogg, J. L., McDonnell, D., Nichols, D., Siddiqui, S., Gregerson, M., & Wilson, J. (2022). Like this meta-analysis: Screen media and mental health. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 53(2), 205–214. https://doi.org/10.1037/pro0000426

Solving the three party online content problem: Party rights and responsibilities

I want to offer an analysis of what I think the rights and responsibilities of the parties involved in producing, sharing, and consuming online content should be. The parties that make up this system seem obvious. What I propose is that we consider the rights and responsibilities of these three parties more carefully.

Content creators: Whether it is text, images, or videos delivered as part of a blog or social media site, content is present because someone created it. I suppose I now have to amend this claim to add “unless it was created by AI”. I created this post. I assume you have created content as well.

Content consumers: Those who view or listen to online content are consumers of that content.

Infrastructure Providers: Infrastructure providers provide the bridge between content creators and content consumers. Providers offer hosting services that accept input from creators and provide it to consumers. Infrastructure providers would include companies such as Google (Blogger), Facebook, X, Medium, Substack, companies that rent hosting services to creators (I use Bluehost), etc.

The identification of these three interconnected parties seems straightforward. Now, what about rights and responsibilities? I think of rights and responsibilities as related to the flow of information. A party either accepts the conditions established earlier in the flow or refuses to participate. A lack of participation may encourage the parties already involved to modify their expectations. When describing the rights and responsibilities among these parties, what I propose here is what I consider ethical rather than what is possible. There are ways around nonparticipation as the only option. I regard these approaches as unethical.

Content creators and infrastructure providers have early roles in this flow. At this point, what are the expectations of the infrastructure provider? What are the conditions to be assumed by the content creator? Does the infrastructure provider assume content presentation is their exclusive opportunity or can the content creator offer the same content under other conditions by other providers? Does the provider assume any editorial control beyond the rejection of obvious inappropriate material? Does the infrastructure provider pick and choose what they will accept? Revenue opportunities must be clearly understood. Are decisions made independently (e.g., ads can be added, subscription fees charged) or are such decisions collaborative and are the parties subject to a specified method for sharing any income generated?

As for the infrastructure provider and the consumer, the flow of content must be based on transparency. The ethical options for the consumer are to use the content as provided or not, but this must be an informed decision. In situations in which personal information is being collected to compensate the provider and the content creator, the consumer must understand what information is being collected and for what purpose. An important distinction here is between the use of information to target ads that directly support the infrastructure provider and content creator and the collection of information for a secondary purpose (e.g., third party ads that collect information that is used by or sold to other parties not associated with the exchange between the consumer and the infrastructure provider). Consumers should have a way to determine if either or both methods for collecting their information are being used.

The content creator and the consumer have a similar relationship. If the content requires a subscription, it is obvious what the consumer is expected to provide in compensation for the content. Including ads to generate revenue is murkier. I don’t accept that the consumer has a right to block an ad as both the infrastructure provider and the content creator have a right to compensation for content that is being consumed.

Are arrangements that work available?

The only arrangements that work in satisfying what I consider the rights and responsibilities of all parties are subscription services (e.g., Substack, Medium). It is clear what all parties contribute and get with subscription services.

I do think ad-supported system can work unless purposefully misused. Ad revenue used to work in other industries (television), but cable successfully challenged this approach by offering subscription content. In that case, consumers wanted more than a system that worked at one level. but did not provide enough.

The example I would offer to support a better ad-based approach is Brave. Brave allows content creators to sign up to receive compensation when content consumers using Brave view ad-supported content from these providers. When consumers make this commitment, they can receive compensation from companies using Brave to display ads. Yes, I said consumers receive compensation for viewing ads. Brave then provides a way those receiving this revenue can compensate the content creators. Brave takes a cut when users make this commitment.

The Brave system works when content creators are paying to share their content. Then, if consumers accept ads (they can use the system to just block ads) and if these consumers then share revenue generated with content creators, the system works. So, I pay Bluehost to provide infrastructure for sharing my blog. I have enrolled my blog with Brave. If consumers make use of Brave and use the revenue they receive for viewing ads to compensate content creators, then I should receive compensation based on how frequently my content is viewed.

I like this system as an example of what is possible. I am also realistic and will indicate that I spend far more to rent the infrastructure I use to share content than I receive from the Brave system. Part of my deficit is my responsibility. Whether readers visit my content or not is not the responsibility of the infrastructure I rent or Brave. However, I also cannot control whether a content consumer uses the Brave browser and that part of the system is not my responsibility. This is what I mean by a system that potentially address what all contribute and receive from a system.

Those readers not using Brave see Google ads rather than Brave ads on my blog.

Here is an earlier post I wrote about the Brave environment

Summary

I think there are long-term realities that will control the online experience related to how the parties involved are compensated. There are legitimate concerns related to the collection of personal information to target ads and there are legitimate concerns for how costs of operation and the compensation of content creators will be covered. Subscription-based services are one solution. This seems to be what is happening with television and more and more with online content. I think a different ad-based approach is also possible. This post attempted to offer an analysis of the factors that are responsible for the pressures for change.

Tutoring and the Big Picture

The period since the end of the COVID lockdown has been difficult for K-12 schools. Students have struggled to attain traditional rates of academic progress. Student absenteeism has reached alarming levels. Where we live some districts have struggled to find teachers to fill vacant positions and other districts are now cutting staff because of massive budget overruns. Educators feel a lack of support from politicians and groups of parents complaining about various issues and sometimes pulling their children out of one school to enroll them in another.

I certainly have no answer to this collection of challenges as it seems a proposed solution to one problem only leads to complaints due to consequences from that recommendation for a different issue. I look to educational research for potential solutions and there are certainly strategies with proven positive consequences in specific areas, but this is as far as it seems practical to go.

Tutoring has been one of the recent areas I have been investigating. My specific interest has been in the potential of AI as a substitute for human tutors, but the ample research on the effectiveness of human tutors has also been a fruitful ground for considering what proven experiences and roles AI might be applied to approximate. I have continued to review what we know about the effectiveness of human tutors and what it is tutors provide that students do not receive from their traditional classroom experiences.

For those wanting to review this research themselves, I recommend a fairly recent working paper by Nickow and colleagues (2020). This paper is both a general descriptive review of how tutoring is practiced and a meta-analysis of a large number of quality studies (96) of the effectiveness of this addition to K12 instruction. The meta-analysis considers only the impact of adult tutors, but the descriptive review does include some comments on both peer tutoring and technology-based tutoring. The technology comments were written before recent advances in AI. My summary of this paper follows.

Key Findings

I will begin with the overall conclusion. While there are more and less effective implementations and situations, adult tutoring consistently results in positive outcomes. The authors concluded that tutoring was responsible for substantial and consistent positive effects on learning outcomes, with an overall effect size of 0.37 standard deviations. The results are the strongest for teacher-led and paraprofessional tutoring programs, with diminished but still positive effects for nonprofessional and parent-led tutoring. Notably, tutoring is most effective in the earlier grades and shows comparable impacts across both reading and mathematics interventions, although reading tends to benefit more in earlier grades and math in later ones. A large proportion of the studies and tutoring activity appears focused in the first couple of years of school and in the subject area of reading. There are also far more studies of tutoring in the early grades than in secondary school. Only 7% of the studies included students above 6th grade.

Categories of tutors

The study by Nickow, Oreopoulos, and Quan (2020) identifies four categories of tutors:

Teachers: These are certified professionals who have undergone formal training in education. They are typically employed by schools and likely have a deeper understanding of the curriculum, teaching strategies, and student assessment.
Paraprofessionals: These individuals are not certified teachers, but they often work in educational settings. Paraprofessionals may include teaching assistants, educational aides, or other support staff in schools. They often work under the supervision of certified teachers.
Nonprofessionals: This category typically includes volunteers who may not have formal training in education. They could be community members, older students, or others who offer tutoring services. Their level of expertise can vary widely.
Parents: Parents often play a tutoring role, especially in the early years of a child’s education. Parental involvement in a child’s education can have a significant impact, but the level of expertise and the ability to provide effective tutoring can vary greatly among parents.

The study found that paraprofessionals are the largest provider of tutoring services, followed by nonprofessionals. The effectiveness of tutoring was found to be higher when provided by teachers and paraprofessionals compared to nonprofessionals and parents. Tutors who have teaching certificates and classroom experience were rare, but most effective in the research studies. As mentioned in the introduction to this post, the question of how schools must apply their budgets appears highly influential in whether known sources of impact can be applied.

Mechanisms of Tutoring Effectiveness

This paper reviewed mechanisms potentially responsible for the effectiveness of tutoring. While these hypothesized mechanisms were not evaluated in the meta-analysis, I find such lists useful in considering other approaches such as AI. Which of these mechanisms could AI tutoring address and which would not be possible?

The paper discusses several mechanisms through which tutoring enhances student learning:

Increased Instruction Time: Tutoring provides additional instructional time, crucial for students who are behind.
Customization of Learning: The one-on-one or small group settings of tutoring allow for tailored instruction that addresses the individual needs of students, a significant advantage over standard classroom settings where diverse learning needs can be challenging to meet. The authors propose that tutoring might be thought of as an extreme manipulation of class size. I know that studies of class size have produced inconsistent results extremely small class sizes are not investigated in such research.
Enhanced Engagement and Feedback: Tutoring facilitates a more interactive learning environment where students receive immediate feedback, enhancing learning efficiency and correction of misunderstandings in real time.
Relationship Building: The mentorship that develops between tutors and students can motivate students, fostering a positive attitude toward learning and educational engagement.

Program Characteristics

The document evaluates the variation in the effectiveness of tutoring programs based on several characteristics:

Tutor Type: Teacher and paraprofessional tutors are found to be more effective than nonprofessionals and parents, suggesting that the training and expertise of the tutor play a critical role in the success of tutoring interventions.
Intervention Context: Tutoring programs integrated within the school day are generally more effective than those conducted after school, possibly due to higher levels of student engagement and less fatigue.
Grade Level: There is a trend of diminishing returns as students age, with the most substantial effects seen in the earliest grades. This finding emphasizes the importance of early intervention.

Summary

This research and analysis paper might be summarized by proposing that schools cannot go wrong with tutoring. The paper suggests several policy implications based on its findings. Given the strong evidence supporting the effectiveness of tutoring, especially when conducted by trained professionals, the authors advocate for increased investment in such programs. They suggest that education policymakers and practitioners should consider tutoring as a key strategy for improving student outcomes, particularly in early grades and for subjects like reading and mathematics

Reference

Nickow, A., Oreopoulos, P., & Quan, V. (2020). The impressive effects of tutoring on prek-12 learning: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the experimental evidence. https://www.nber.org/papers/w27476.

Improving peer editing

Clearly, the teacher is likely to be the most important source of guidance in developing the processes necessary for effective writing. However, peers are also an important resource. The generation of individual feedback is time-consuming and providing such feedback to a class of students multiple times would be extremely demanding. Our comments here reflect the proposal of writing experts who argue that peers as a group can likely respond more quickly than the teacher who would be working alone and the comments of peers can augment the feedback provided by the teacher. There is one more argument for involving peers (Bruning, Schraw & Norby, 2011, p. 300). Better writers at all ages appear to be better editors with poor writers often seeing little of substance that can be changed in their original first drafts. The learning of editing skills to provide a useful service to peers develops the same skills that can be applied to the student’s own work.

Peer editing has gained increased attention among researchers with the research offering greater insight as more specific issues are investigated. For example, Wu and Shunn (2021) note that most previous research has focused on the value of peer feedback in improving the document for which feedback was provided. This is a different issue than whether giving and receiving feedback results in improved performance on future writing tasks. In their research, which involved secondary students enrolled in an AP composition course, across multiple writing tasks, the researchers investigated both the impact of peer editing on the present and a future writing task. The study supported the positive impact of giving and receiving feedback on both document quality and future performance.

The proposed benefits of peer editing include (Pritchard & Honeycutt, 2007);

1 A non-threatening audience,

2 Increased opportunities to write and revise, and

3 Immediate feedback – to write and revise a lot, the teacher cannot do it all.

Note the use of the qualifier “proposed”. You might argue that some students can be quite insensitive in interacting with peers and so wonder about proposing peers offer a “non-threatening audience”. Proposed here implies that skills can be developed and offer advantages when a reasonable level of competence is present.

One should not assume that effective peer editing is a simple manner of having students exchange papers and offer the comments that come to mind. Without guidance and experience, student comments may be socially awkward and focused on the most shallow of writing skills (e.g., spelling errors).

Peers, by definition, are at approximately the same level of proficiency as those they are attempting to assist. In addition, they often lack the social skills and sensitivity to have their suggestions interpreted as helpful rather than mean. However, given some preparation, spending time responding to the written products of peers can be helpful to the peer writer and a way to develop the writing skills of the writer. (Pritchard & Honeycutt, 2007)

Here is a brief summary of a series of activities proposed by Simmons (2003) as a process for developing the skills of peer editors.

1) Teacher models editing. If possible, offer a document you (teacher) have written. Think aloud about what improvements might be made. Make the revisions and then compare the original and the revised documents.

2) Model how feedback should be communicated. Model praise. Model questioning – what was the author trying to do? Model how to offer suggestions.

3) Use peer pairs to initiate peer feedback experience.

4) Use examples from student work and student feedback with the class.

Those who have studied the development of peer editing skills want it to be understood that this is far from a one or two-lesson process. Often early efforts are a struggle. Student editors develop skills gradually and typically begin with superficial recommendations (spelling, grammar), unmerited praise (not to be confused with encouragement), or insensitive criticism. Regarding teacher expectations, it makes sense that the priorities of review applied to the work of others would be similar to changes, if any, developing writers would make with experience in their own work. Attention paid to the metacognitive processes of considering the audience and communication effectiveness of a document as a whole is more abstract than the recognition of grammatical rule violations. Hence, purposeful demonstration, discussion, and practice are important in developing editing skills whether applied to a document developed by the student or a document developed by a peer.

Peer comments should include and begin with positive comments. What did you like? The targeted writing skills will change as the goals of writing change either with experience or purpose.

A computer and classroom whiteboard or projector combination is a great way for the teacher to model and provide examples. Writing tools that save comments and recommendations and writing tools that allow a comparison of drafts offer the teacher an external representation of author or peer editor thinking and provide the teacher something tangible to address. What challenges were recognized and what changes were actually implemented? We provide some examples of such capabilities in our online resources.

One interesting model for upper-elementary developed by Sarah Dennis-Shaw appears on the ReadWriteThink site. This model suggests that students offer peers comments, suggestions, and corrections.

Compliments

e.g., My favorite part was ___ because ___

Suggestions

e.g., If you gave more details, I would be certain I can understand what you mean.

Corrections

e.g., I found this misspelled word – mispell

It is worth the effort to review Dennis-Shaw lessons no matter what grade level you work at as the online resources are quite specific in outlining the steps in the instructional process and also provide sample instructional materials. For example, what might a writing sample used in the training phase look like? We also recommend that you do an Internet search for rubrics or checklists that might be suited to your own instructional circumstances (e.g., Simon Williams rubric)

References

Bruning, R.H., Schraw, G.J., Norby, M.M. (2011). Cognitive psychology and instruction (5th ed). Boston: Pearson.

Pritchard, R. J., & Honeycutt, R. L. (2007). Best practices in implementing a process approach to teaching writing. Best practices in writing instruction, 28-49.

Simmons, J. (2003). Responders are taught, not born. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 46(8), 684-693.

Wu, Y., & Schunn, C. D. (2021). The Effects of Providing and Receiving Peer Feedback on Writing Performance and Learning of Secondary School Students. American Educational Research Journal, 58(3), 492-526.

Flashcards – I

Giving Flashcards a New Look

I thought you might appreciate a different example from the type of thing I tend to focus on explaining how a study technique used by students at all levels might be improved through the use of digital technology. When I taught educational psychology I included presentations on what I considered the classic recommended techniques – e.g., SQ3R, Cornell Notes. As I have explained in other things I have written on this general topic I would also ask how many of the students were aware of these strategies and then how many were using them in our class. Most were familiar with at least these two, but I can’t remember anyone ever saying they were using these approaches. Most took notes, but not Cornell notes and then they studied these notes. They tended to highlight the assigned reading content.

A topic I mentioned because I knew the strategy, but did not spent a lot of time on was flashcards. I have thought about why the use of flashcards was not a topic I discussed more since. I think at the time this was because there seemed a stigma associated with learning methods that were considered rote and not the way to develop understanding and a long term benefit. I kind of see a similar attitude surfacing from time to time now and it is often in the context of “why would you expect someone to store that in memory when they can just look it up with Google”?

I have changed my mind about flashcards. I think the students had a more realistic perspective than I did. They knew flashcards worked for them. I also think my perspective on effective learning has also changed some as I have read more about how humans learn. I have to decided to generate at least two posts on digital flashcards. I will being with what is mostly a tutorial describing a digital flashcard system I like. Eventually, I will provide additional content explaining what research has to say about study strategies that can be implemented with flashcards.

Elementary students have used flashcards to drill on math facts for decades and I commonly see university students studying for anatomy or geology examinations using nearly the same procedure. Flashcards provide individuals or individuals within small groups a way to systematically practice retrieval and evaluate understanding both of which are important and documented ways to improve performance and retention (Rohrer, & Pashler, 2010). I assume you understand how flashcards are traditionally used from observation if not from personal experience. In a typical approach a student has a stack of cards with a question on one side of each card and a response on the other side. Elementary math fact cards may have been purchased commercially, but the review material used by college students was probably generated by the learner. When a few minutes are available, a student brings out the cards and begins going through the stack. Do you know the answer to the math problem? Do you remember the origin and insertion for the muscle listed? You flip the card over to see if you were correct. Perhaps you developed a variant of this approach you thought improved the process. You may have discarded each card after initial consideration into a “I know that” pile or a “I don’t know that pile” and then spend more time with the “I don’t know that pile” instead of going through the entire stack a second time.

Researchers have considered how the use of review techniques of this type might be optimized. These techniques might involve how frequently you view cards with information you do not know versus cards with information you do know or on how many different days you review material. Some of these findings and other inherent advantages of digital media are now incorporated in free or low-cost software or services you can find and use online or download to your personal device.

So, I might begin by asking the question, How might flashcards on the computer, a smartphone, or tablet offer advantages in comparison to the standard paper variety? I don’t think this is another version of the paper versus screen debates that now seem common, but some could see it that way.

What follows is an example of a flashcard application and then a consideration of the unique opportunities this and similar applications offer. These examples makes use of Flashcards Deluxe (information about this application and a few other flashcard options appears at the end of this segment); an app for the iPad or iPhone.

Flaschards Deluxe. A classroom example I sometimes use to explain that technology is not confined to the classroom we call the Turtle River Water Quality Project. One aspect of this project involved the collection and identification of macroinvertebrates. The prevalence of different macroinvertebrates (organisms without a backbone that can be viewed without aid of a microscope) can be used to evaluate water quality. Some macroinvertebrates can tolerate poor quality water and some cannot. So the collection and identification of macroinvertebrates allows a way to evaluate the “health” of a body of water.

Before making the trip to collect specimens, a teacher might want to prepare students by familiarizing them with the set of organisms they might encounter. This task involves learning to associate the name and whether an organism is tolerant of pollution with an image of the organism. Imagine a three-sided flash card – if there was such a thing. One side might contain an image of the organism, the second side would contain the name of the organism, and the third side would indicate whether the organism was pollution tolerant. If this were possible to create as a physical, paper card, the student would look at a picture, attempt to remember the name and tolerance of the organism, and then flip the card to check the information recalled or view the correct information. The student would then move to the next card and repeat the process.

The digital equivalent, created with Flashcards Deluxe, would work like this. The student would view the image appearing on the first card trying to remember the name of the organism and whether or not the organism is an indicator of healthy water (see Figure Front View). The student would then “tap” the image to flip the card and reveal the name of the organism and would tap the card a second time to reveal whether or not the organism is associated with healthy water (see Figure Composite Feedback). Selecting the “check mark” or “X” appearing at the bottom of the card would indicate whether the student had judged performance to be adequate or not and would move the student to the next image. When the student reached the end of the deck, all cards associated with a judgment of inadequate recall would automatically be repeated.

Front view of Flashcard Deluxe Card

Back views of Flashcards Deluxe Card

Individual flashcards are created using the following template. Text, images, and sound are added to the slots on this template representing the three sides of a card.

This video provides more details on this tool.

Digital Advantage

What case can be made for the digital version of flashcards? Here are some thoughts on potential advantages. All of these characteristics are available in some products or services, but not necessarily in all so you would want to review the capabilities of a given product before investing a lot of time.

A) Multiple media – Some digital flashcards can incorporate images and sounds (e.g., our example). If the value in multimedia flashcards is not obvious, consider situations in which the study task involves identification of orchestra instruments by the sound the instruments produce, recognition of vocabulary in a foreign language class based on listening rather than reading, or the identification of molecular structures in biochemistry. These would be study situations that would be difficult or impossible to address with paper index cards. You can create multimedia resources yourself. For example, you can collect images with your phone and use these images to create study materials. Would this be useful in preparing for biology or anatomy lab practicals?

B) Existing and shareable review materials – There are massive collections of existing review materials already available for a wide variety of academic areas. There appear to be basic standards or at least common formats for exporting sets of cards so that many of the resources developed through one service can be used on the software provided by other vendors. These collections can be downloaded, combined, and edited by individual students to best address personal study goals. It will often be more efficient to take a large existing collection and delete the cards not appropriate for your class than to create a new stack from scratch. A teacher can do the same thing and then share a set of cards optimized for a specific class with students. We include links to several vendors who store and share collections at the end of this section.

C) Data and suggested review strategies – It might be best to consider what we are describing here as study systems rather than just study materials. In addition to the information to be learned, these systems can keep track of performance on individual items and data such as the last date a given card was reviewed. If the student is so inclined, some systems can present items that cause the student difficulty more frequently or even schedule which content should be reviewed on a particular day within a designated time period. This is where our previous reference to what research can tell us about optimized review and rehearsal comes into play. Computers are good at keeping track of and applying numerical performance data. So, it turns out that free or low-cost digital resources offer more than the option of thumbing through the stack of cards you carry in your backpack. If you presently make use of “flashcards” or see such resources as having a use in classrooms that are or will be your responsibility, we encourage you to explore the following resources. I have included some resources that can be used from a computer and some from a tablet.

Resources:

Sites providing repositories of flash cards:

Flashcard Exchange

Quizlet

Flashcard products:

Quizlet is an online system you can use with your browser. Study existing stacks or create your own.

Flashcards Deluxe – This application is available for the iPad and iPhone from the Apple App Store. The application was created by OrangeOrApple.

Attacks on Higher Education

My own story includes a career working in higher education so I suppose that is mostly responsible for my reactions to what now seem to be the attacks on my occupation. I always want to point out one fact. The state through the legislature and the budget controlled by the legislature fund less than a third of the cost of state institutions. Yet, legislatures can pass laws that dictate how these institutions function. Most revenue necessary to run institutions must be generated by the institutions through tuition, grants, and donations and institutions must compete for these resources.

Two of the issues that some states want to control are the curriculum (what is taught) and tenure. These two issues are interrelated in this way. Tenure protects faculty members against even their own institutions. Since tenure gives a professor job security for decades, undercutting it is one way conservatives can more easily change campus culture, experts say, as well as fight against the liberal values they claim have taken over schools. For example, In Indiana, legislation is being proposed to review tenured professors every five years based on “free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity.” Tenure is intended to be based on productivity and teaching quality, but the practice is being challenged because of what is being taught rather than issues of quality performance.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) released data showing that in the fall of 2021, only 24 percent of faculty in U.S. colleges held full-time tenured appointments, compared to 39 percent in the fall of 1987. Rather than hire for tenure-track “lines”, more and more institutions are hiring adjunct faculty and more and more instruction is being delivered by adjunct faculty members. I saw this happen in the department for which I once served as chairperson and I thought this approach created a divisive class system. Tenure is already a probationary period with no commitment to the long term and all of us know profs who simply were let go because there was a financial challenge rather than a performance issue.

Anyway, this post is really about the motivation for eliminating tenure which despite other issues seems most basically about political control of institutions. The core complaint seems to be that college faculty are too liberal (or progressive whichever you prefer) which is proposed to be relevant because these values are being passed on (indoctrination is a common description) to unwary or cowed students. Efforts have been made to determine the accuracy of the first claim and seem to show few students actually claim they feel pressured. The second issue is more difficult and I think really breaks down into two underlying claims; a) liberal values are taught beyond what would be the appropriate information for a course, and b) students are afraid to voice opposition when issues of opinion as opposed to facts are discussed or are penalized in some way when they do challenge opinions or facts.

Party affiliation versus values:

Complaints when it comes to what is being taught seem to come primarily from one party. Why? Party labels seem far less helpful when reacting to accusations than specific values. I doubt many educators focus on party when teaching their content, but values and facts related to values could sometimes be the focus of instruction. I am not so naive to argue that party affiliation and values are not at least moderately correlated, but even knowing this I think a lot about why this is the case. Shouldn’t values be more important and what are the specific values taught that Conservatives reject?

I think people hide behind general labels. I assume that values determine party affiliation and not the other way around. Declared party affiliation could also be associated with combinations of values. Owning up to specific values and beliefs is what is really important. Owning up to the beliefs professed by your party is also at least important to consider. It seems cowardly to say there are too many Democrats on college faculties rather than to claim you object to the discussion of the causes of prejudice, inequity, and privilege or whatever other values you find objectionable.

PEW has done a lot of data collection on values and party affiliation in trying to provide data about education and other issues. They have a simple questionnaire about specific values allowing anyone to compare their specific values to political categories from extreme progressive to extreme conservative. I encourage you to take it for two reasons: a) see where you fall on the political continuum and b) consider the issues raised in assigning you to a given category and why they could be interrelated.

Pew Survey

I fell toward the end of political spectrum PEW classified as embellishment liberal (13% fall into this category).

PEW summarizes folks like me in the following way.

“They hold liberal positions on nearly all issues and support an expanded role for government and a larger social safety net. They also hold liberal attitudes on issues of racial and ethnic equality. Establishment Liberals are more likely than any other group to say that compromise is how things get done in politics. About half say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the country today, and an overwhelming majority say they approve of the job Joe Biden is doing as president.”

However, what I think is more important is what I think about specific items PEW used to arrive at these generalities.

The PEW survey presents items as a forced choice. See the following example:

Once, you have completed the survey, the system reviews your responses and compares your answer to the probability of others in your assigned group and to all respondents. So. in the following example, 61% of all those responding and 80% of the others assigned to the Establishment Liberals category agreed with my choice.

I recommend the PEW survey as it could recommend a level on which discussions could occur. I can explain why there are specific areas in which I think the country could benefit from government oversight and a safety net. You might disagree, but at least that would offer something concrete to talk about. Isn’t the level that a discussion should occur in a political science classroom.

Party affiliation among higher education educators.

Efforts to get academics to claim their party orientation do indicate that there is a general progressive orientation. Such data sources also show that political orientation varies significantly with discipline.

Perhaps the concern of the Republicans is more driven by the increasingly progressive leanings over time. This time difference is consistent by discipline (see above) and quite abrupt in recent years. Notice the shift beginning in 1997 or so. Initially, this shift seemed to be marked by fewer Conservatives toward more Liberals with a later shift from Moderate toward Liberals. The makeup of higher ed faculties changes gradually so it seems unlikely this rapid shift was the result of hiring alone.

Analysis

There is an expression sometimes applied when commenting on software applications – Is it a feature or a bug? Does the system contain an error or is the system doing what it is doing by design? Perhaps my rephrasing gets to the real issue here. What is the purpose of higher education and education in general? You have a sense of this issue when you hear some politicians complaining higher education does not focus enough on employment and has too many majors that are not directly tied to specific jobs. Why are there so many liberal arts requirements and so few STEM requirements? Do K12 and college students really need to learn about the history of slavery and continuing inequities related to race, gender, and generational differences in wealth? I happen to think so and these facts are relevant to the content I taught. Maybe those in math, physics, and coding don’t, but an important argument can be made relevant to these areas of study as well. Consider the present questions and reflection raised by the movie Oppenheimer. There is even the question of bias that keeps popping up because AI ends up statistically replicating the existing biases in the mathematics and algorithms generating the responses to AI prompts based on the corpus of content used to construct large language models (LLMs). Instead consider the old CS saying – garbage in, garbage out. Perhaps we need to recognize that it is now skewed values in, skewed values out. Values cannot be isolated by job category and why need to be concerned with the development of values in everyone.