Posts Tagged ‘answers’
LNY Q&A
Posted on: January 24, 2023
No, this is not a primer for anyone who needs answers to questions about the lunar new year. It is about what I observe during reunion dinners and family visitations.
I observe this every year. The best conversations stem from honest, non-leading questions. They are asked by the truly curious and the humble-to-learn. The worst are ignorant statements made loudly and repeatedly.
Even though this is a public holiday and a moment of rest for educators, there must surely be a pedagogical lesson or two to draw from that observation.
Happy Lunar New Year of the Rabbit!
Long answer, short answer
Posted on: December 8, 2020
The news article in the tweet above provided a long answer to the question why the percentage of children graduating from primary to secondary school has not changed over five years.
One short version of the long answer is that the number of students taking the exam, the PSLE, is statistically large enough that the pattern repeats itself.
But here are a few short considerations.
A normal distribution is a bell curve, but a bell curve does not have to look like a normal distribution. The majority of students — about 66% — end up in the Express stream so the bell is skewed.
Not force fitting results into a curve does not mean that moderation did not occur. Moderation exercises typically occur after many individuals grade papers. The graders make adjustments should they be too strict or too lenient.
As the post-exam processes are not completely transparent, we can only guess what happens out of the view of stakeholders. But another short answer presents itself if you lean cynical: We have found a comfortable formula and we are sticking to it for sorting’s sake.
Fear Factor: e-Learning Edition 4
Posted on: April 12, 2020
I challenged my audience in 2013 with a series of slides led by the one above. My intent then was to provide a fourth element in a loose but critical scaffold for thinking about MOOCs.
Back then, I asked them if adopting platforms like Coursera would serve their underserved (they evidence then was that it would not). I challenged them to ask difficult questions like: What might the consequences be if they did not rely on evidence-based planning and approaches?
Today I position this questioning element in the context of emergency remote teaching. How do we respond to the fear of asking and getting answers to the following questions?
- What mistakes did we make and what did we learn from them?
- Why were we not better prepared? How might we be better prepared?
- How do we level up our collective capacity towards seamless learning?
The last question might be informed with this useful framework from Scott McLeod.
The other questions require a brutal and honest look at ourselves. Will we remember enough and be brave enough to do that when we are on the other side of the COVID-19 curve?
Five for five
Posted on: September 28, 2019
I have been an independent consultant for five years. I will be sharing unsolicited advice to anyone who wishes to leave conventional employment to be an independent worker.
The five question sets I will address next week are:
- Do you need to take care of anyone other than yourself?
- What is your backup plan?
- How comfortable are you with discomfort?
- What is in your portfolio, where is it, and how do people find it/you?
- Why do you want to do this?
I am sure that folks with aspirations to work independently will have a host of other questions.
I focus on this set in part to consolidate my experiences. I also know from page hits and feedback how a shared resource can have impact years down the road.
Answering before questioning
Posted on: August 23, 2018
Is there anything wrong with providing an answer before asking a question?
The tweet above by a newspaper typifies what some teachers do: Not just answering their own questions, but answering before questioning.
This might seem efficient, but it is not effective in nurturing learners who can think creatively and critically.
Answering before questioning creates these expectations and habits:
- Do not think, just wait for the teacher
- The teacher will provide
- There is only one right or desired answer
Providing one or more answers before asking questions is like providing a solution before identifying a problem. There is no purpose or context. There is no authenticity. There is no reason to create meaning.
I have said this before and I will say it again: We need to rely less on a pedagogy of answers and more on a pedagogy of questions.
Google provided lots of answers at the first day of I/O 2018.
Perhaps I missed something, but what were the questions? Who asked the questions and why were they asked? How exactly are we paying for the answers?
Don’t get me wrong — some of the answers and solutions are intriguing. But to be convinced, I need to know what the questions and problems were. Before you problem-solve, you need to problem-seek.
The STonline reported that a sample of Singapore students topped an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) test on problem-solving.
I am glad to read this, but only cautiously so. This is partly because the press tends to report what is juicy and easy. I am cautious also because such news is not always processed critically from an educator’s point of view.
For example, how did the OECD test for problem-solving ability? According to an excerpt from the article above:
Screen capture of original article.
There were no other details about the authenticity, veracity, or adaptability of the software-based simulation. Only the makers of the software and the students who took the test might provide some clues. This test system is a closed one and lacks critical observers or independent evaluators.
Perhaps it would be better to raise some critical questions than to make blanket statements.
The product of problem-solving is clear (the scores), but not all the processes (interactions, negotiations, scaffolding, etc.). So how can we be certain that this problem-solving is authentic and translates to wider-world application? Our Ministry of Education (MOE) seemed to have the same concern.
MOE noted that the study design is a standardised way of measuring and comparing collaborative problem-solving skills, but real-life settings may be more complex as human beings are less predictable.
Our schools might have alternative or enrichment programmes — like the one highlighted in Queenstown Secondary — that promote group-based problem-solving. How common and accessible are such programmes? To what extent are these integrated into mainstream curriculum and practice?
The newspaper’s description of the problem-solving simulation sounds like some of the interactions that happen in role-playing games. How logical and fair is it to attribute our ranking only to what happens in schools? What contributions do other experiences make to students’ problem-solving abilities?
Test results do not guarantee transfer or wider-world impact. What are we doing to find out if these sociotechnical interventions are successful in the long run? What exactly are our measures for “success” — high test scores?
What is newsworthy should not be mistaken for critical information to be internalised as knowledge. The learning and problem-solving do not lie in provided answers; they stem from pursued questions.
I argue that we have more questions than answers, and that is not a bad thing. What is bad is the current answers are inadequate. We should not be lulled into a collective sense of complacency because we topped a test.
Q&A with Richard Feynman
Posted on: September 10, 2017
No, I have not found a way to bring Richard Feynman back.
But the world needs still needs his knowledge and wisdom. Case in point:
Call it what you will: Lifelong learning, life wide learning, growth mindset. I call it being open and child-like.
My As to some Qs from my keynote
Posted on: October 24, 2016
Last Saturday, I delivered a keynote and participated in a panel on game-based learning and gamification.
I had questions that I could not address in the limited time during my keynote as well as the panel at the end of the conference. These were from the pre-conference poll.
I wish to address these questions, but I will focus only on questions that I understand.
How to tie in GBL with small-wins or short-term rewards?
I have no idea how to do this with GBL because I have not implemented GBL with this design or intent. Nor will I ever. During the keynote I described how games could be integrated to focus on thinking skills, attitudes, values, and intrinsic motivation. These take time to develop and I would rather invest in these.
How would I use this technique if the University has a set of rules I have to follow and present?
The university (or partner university in your case) is unlikely to have rules about pedagogy. If it did, that is not a university that is looking to serve for today and tomorrow.
You know the content, context, and your learners best. The WHAT of a prescribed curriculum might be very full. The HOW is your responsibility and limited by your creativity.
Must it be IT based?
The “it” could be games or gamification. Both could be enabled with current technology or not. I gave examples of both during the keynote, so I have addressed that part of the question.
Here is the other part: ICT is a more current term than IT since the former is often more interactive and multi-way while the latter is more transmissive and about regulations.
What types of subjects are suitable for game based learning?
Any and all of them are suitable, especially if you do not limit yourself to content-based learning and expand the possibilities to include critical and creative thinking, socio-emotional learning, soft skills, attitudes and values, etc.
Can Gamification ideas be implemented not through a game but just mere teaching activity?
Gamification does not employ games; it uses deconstructed elements of games, e.g., points, levelling up, leaderboards.
Your question seems to hint at game-like instruction. There are strategies like putting the problem (assessment) first or early, and focusing on just-in-time learning instead of just-in-case front loading.
I would like to try this approach but I am afraid it might take up a lot of the class time. How do I go about it without sacrificing too much of the contact time?
Can you have a cake and not eat it? 😉
Something has to give and if it comes to that, you might have to use your judgement to see what to push out in order include something else.
How viable would it be to introduce gamification within a primary/secondary school classroom? The aim is to use gaming elements to increase engagement between the students and the teacher.
It is certainly viable, as apparent by the number of vendors and parties outside of schooling and higher education who want to do this.
Unfortunately, these groups sell you on the low-hanging fruit of “increased engagement”. Do not play this game because this is not why any technology-mediated strategy should be used.
Trying to engage is like trying to take control of light switches: You try to flip them on so that your students see the light. But they are just as easy to switch off or learners can move on to something else.
Engagement is something you do to try to help your students; empowerment is something you pass to students so they help everyone. By all means engage, but do not forget to empower. Vendors might tell you how to engage with gamification; I would rather see learners empowered by game-based learning.
how to know which game is appropirate [sic] for teaching when we don’t game?
You do not and cannot know. So play!
My replies to these questions might have a perceived tone. I assure the askers that my replies come from a good place and with good intent: I want us to collectively change and improve our practice.
Participants of the session observed how the panel and I approached the Q&A. The same tone and concern should be applied here.
More flipping Q&A (Part 2)
Posted on: June 16, 2016
Yesterday I responded to a query about how flipping drives discovery and student-directed learning.
Today I answer a question about how students might not discover the “right” content by discovering or Googling. I have a few responses.
The first is doing away with the notion that students “get it” only when a teacher delivers content. This is merely an illusion because there is no indication or confirmation that learning has happened.
My second response is that one way to be more certain about student learning is to get students to create content and to teach it. These processes help both students and teachers to see evidence of learning.
My third reply is that teaching wrong content happens anyway, not just in the flipped classroom or when you facilitate flipped learning. Both the student and teacher can be guilty of this. However, when the learning is visible the teacher can jump in and intervene.
This is why I include content creation and peer teaching in my model of flipped learning.
Peer teaching is something that instructors can do with strategies like think-pair-share, any variant of the jigsaw method, and class presentations. Content creation might be viewed as a prerequisite for this form of teaching. Without artefacts students have nothing to show during the tell.
However, content creation does not always have to be on the teacher scale or standard. The content that students create can also be externalisations or manifestations of what is in their minds. These can take the form of short reflections, practiced problems, recorded conversations, summary documents, etc.
My fourth response is to agree that simply copying and pasting Google search results may not be valuable learning. Most teachers tend to focus on content from an expert’s point of view. This is how they judge if content is good or not, and right or wrong. However, this is not how a learner processes information because s/he does not have structure.
The structure is put in place by thinking processes. So instead of just focusing on content (what artefacts students find and use), the teacher should also model processes of learning. For example:
- How do I look for information?
- How do I verify information or evaluate it?
- How do I incorporate it into my own work?
This response is not unique to flipping. But a focus on process over product is particularly important in flipped learning because one desired outcome is students who are more independent learners.
Another dot in the blogosphere? 