Citations Are Out Of Style

In addition to occasionally aiding and abetting torture, the American Psychological Association is perhaps best known in schools for the APA Style Guide, which is frequently used when writing about topics in the social and behavioral sciences. My high school uses the Modern Language Association's Handbook instead as the go-to source for writing research papers. Both guides are well-researched, thoughtful, and very helpful to students in the entire writing process. In my experience, however, they are most often the topic of conversation when it comes to using the proper formatting when citing your sources. Over the years many a student has spent countless hours trying to get the correct spacing, punctuation, and abbreviations/underlining/italics/etc. correct so that their paper wouldn't get returned to them all marked up in red ink (often without benefit of even getting feedback on the actual content of the paper). Thankfully, today we have many electronic resources like EasyBib that allow students to accomplish this task much more easily and much more accurately. We need to stop.

No, I'm not saying we should stop using tools like EasyBib. As long as we have APA or MLA-type requirements, then students should definitely take advantage of the tools to accomplish those requirements quickly and accurately. What I'm saying is that we need to stop using APA or MLA citation requirements altogether. That doesn't mean that I think students shouldn't cite their sources; they definitely should. What I'm suggesting is that both APA and MLA citations are legacy artifacts that are no longer the best way to accomplish the primary objectives of citation:

to uphold intellectual honesty (or avoiding plagiarism),^[1] to attribute prior or unoriginal work and ideas to the correct sources, to allow the reader to determine independently whether the referenced material supports the author's argument in the claimed way, and to help the reader gauge the strength and validity of the material the author has used.^[2](emphasis mine)

I'm curious. I wonder how many of the high school teachers (who I'm focusing on here, but it applies equally at other levels) have actually tracked down the original source of a citation on one of their student's papers? (Your time in graduate school doesn't count, I'm talking the day-to-day grading and feedback you give to your students.) I'm going to hazard a guess that it's not very often (if ever), and that the overall percentage of citations you have actually used to "determine independently whether the referenced material supports the author's argument in the claimed way" (in other words, read the entirety of the relevant section of the original source and reflect on it's relevance and applicability) is in the low single digits.

I suspect, instead, that the majority of a teacher's time is spent evaluating and providing feedback on the writing of the student (which it should be), and then the time spent on the citations is mainly on the formatting (which is not the purpose of citations). It's a prime example of "style over substance." I completely understand why the formatting requirements exist, by standardizing on and requiring precision in the formatting of the citations, we can ensure that the correct information is provided so that - should we want to - we can track down the source. But if we don't ever track down the source, what's the point?

So what's the alternative to APA or MLA? I think it's pretty simple and relatively obvious: it's the hyperlink. The vast majority of content today is available online, either the full text (or full images, audio, video, etc.), or a link to purchase the content in print form. Surely if the full content is online it makes more sense to link to the actual content so that the reader can investigate for themselves as opposed to a print citation that would require the reader to purchase or find the printed copy of the material. If the full content is not online, linking to where you can acquire that content seems to me to be much more useful than the print citation as well.

But what about sources that are not online, say out-of-print books? Well, first, I would question the "relevance of the work to the topic of discussion" if it's not available online. If a source is old enough that it doesn't exist online, and no one thinks it's important enough to make it available online even for purchase, then how relevant is it? What are the chances that the reader is going to be able track down this out-of-print, not-available-to-order online work, in order to accomplish the purposes of citation? In the rare case that a piece of material like this is relevant, we could have a simple, old-style citation, but I have to think this would be very rare.

What are the downsides to this system? I see two major complications. First, if you are linking to content online it is not always easy to identify the exact section (page, etc.) that you might be referencing (for instance, for a quote). Web "pages" often don't have "pages," they just scroll. And if you link to a way to acquire the material (say, to Amazon), then you run the risk that different copies ordered from that same link might be formatted differently, thereby changing the "page" the specific content you're referencing is on.

I think this is worth some discussion in the academic community, but I see several possible ways to address this. First, if the full content is online, the point is somewhat moot. If you are trying to find the exact quotation, you simply have to search the content. If the full content is not online and you are linking to a way to acquire the material, then perhaps we could come up with a brief citation protocol that could identify the relevant section of the material so that it could be easily found if anyone were to actually track it down in print. (Suggestion for publishers: figure out a system of both relative and absolute reference inside your published works to address this very issue.)

The second complication is a bit more challenging. As we all know, links sometimes change or disappear. I think this problem can really be divided into two scenarios, one of which is the most realistic one for most of us, which essentially makes the problem moot, and one of which is still very real but surmountable. The more realistic scenario, the one that the vast majority of students and teachers in high school will face, is that those citations are only going to be accessed for a very short time period. I don't know what the typical length of time for writing a high school paper is, but I would imagine it is less than six weeks from start to finish. A very high percentage of links that a student would use are still going to be valid six weeks later and students could confirm those links (and update if necessary) just before submitting their paper. The chances of those links becoming incorrect in the time it should take the teacher to assess the paper is very, very small.

For the rare occasions (at least in high school, but certainly not so rare as students get older) that you need your citations to be long-lived, then the possibility of links becoming outdated is most likely proportional to the age of the citation. (The older your citation, the more likely it becomes that the link becomes outdated.) Again, I think the academic community should discuss this, but I see several possible solutions, including tools that capture the web page at the time of the citation (Diigo, for one, or even just screenshots) or including a brief reference along with the link that would allow a dedicated reader to track down the material. (Suggestion for Amazon: figure out a way to make your links long-lived, so that even as things change existing links would still connect the user to an archive that shows them the relevant information.)

Is such a system perfect? Probably not, although I imagine if folks smarter than me started working on it it could be made pretty darn good. But, if our goal with citations is actually to further learning, to allow the reader to not only verify where we got our material but to explore further, then links are clearly superior to APA or MLA-type citations.

Just ask yourself, when is the last time you clicked on a link to learn more? When is the last time you tracked down the printed copy of an APA or MLA citation? Which system is more conducive to learning?

Data-Driven Schools: Homework

In my school's student handbook we state,

Homework is an expectation . . . Achieving students do homework at least 5 out of every 7 days . . . Do homework Sunday through Thursday, take Friday and Saturday off! . . . Average nearly two hours of homework each night.

Since we're increasingly encouraged to be "data-driven", I have a few questions.

Let's start with the "two hours of homework Sunday through Thursday." This has been an expectation since I started at Arapahoe . . . in 1991. I wonder what kind of "data" we based the two hours on. Why not 1.5 hours? Or 2.5 hours? Or for that matter, why not 111 minutes instead of 120? (We have an overly fond appreciation for numbers that end in 5 or 0.)

What kind of research did we do to determine that 120 minutes was the appropriate and most effective amount of homework each night? I'm one of only about 4 or 5 staff members who've been here since 1991, we've never done any research on this since then that I know of, and I don't know of any research that was done before then, so I suspect there is none. So if we just made up this number, how is that "data-driven"? Perhaps we need to sit down and rethink this and decide if that's truly the best number.

Of course if we did that, then we'd probably also want to look at the research on the effectiveness of homework in general. Alfie Kohn has been a longtime skeptic on the value of homework, so much so that he wrote a book called The Homework Myth. In that book he argues that the research shows no support for homework at all at the elementary level, and at the high school level there is only a weak correlation between homework and increased test scores (and, of course, that then leads into the debate about whether those test scores are meaningful or worthwhile). It's fair to say that he advocates for no homework at all, other than reading or self-assigned homework.

He recently wrote an article in the Washington Post about a new study that looked at homework and its effect on test scores and grades. In terms of test scores,

Was there a correlation between the amount of homework that high school students reported doing and their scores on standardized math and science tests? Yes, and it was statistically significant but “very modest”: Even assuming the existence of a causal relationship, which is by no means clear, one or two hours’ worth of homework every day buys you two or three points on a test. Is that really worth the frustration, exhaustion, family conflict, loss of time for other activities, and potential diminution of interest in learning? And how meaningful a measure were those tests in the first place, since, as the authors concede, they’re timed measures of mostly mechanical skills? (Thus, a headline that reads “Study finds homework boosts achievement” can be translated as “A relentless regimen of after-school drill-and-skill can raise scores a wee bit on tests of rote learning.”)

And the effect on grades?

There was no relationship whatsoever between time spent on homework and course grade, and “no substantive difference in grades between students who complete homework and those who do not.” This result clearly caught the researchers off-guard. Frankly, it surprised me, too. When you measure “achievement” in terms of grades, you expect to see a positive result — not because homework is academically beneficial but because the same teacher who gives the assignments evaluates the students who complete them, and the final grade is often based at least partly on whether, and to what extent, students did the homework. Even if homework were a complete waste of time, how could it not be positively related to course grades?

And yet it wasn’t. Again. Even in high school. Even in math. The study zeroed in on specific course grades, which represents a methodological improvement, and the moral may be: The better the research, the less likely one is to find any benefits from homework. 

It's important to note that not everyone agrees with Kohn's interpretation of the data, but even most of what I've read in support of homework tends to show it having a relatively small effect on student "achievement" (I prefer the word learning, myself), and often ignores the question of whether this work should be done at home or could be done at school.

I find it interesting, however, that we haven't looked at any of the research, or any of the dialogue between folks like Kohn and Willingham, we've just decided it's good, and that two hours five days a week is the optimal amount. So why do we assign homework?

In general, I think there are three main reasons that I've heard teachers use (and have used myself).

1. Students need the practice.
2. I can't cover the curriculum unless I give homework.
3. It teaches responsibility.

The research provides little or no support for number one. What little support it does give could be accomplished by giving them time in class to practice. At what point did we decide that school was so important that we decided to assign students a "second shift" of work at home after school was purportedly over?

Which leads to number two: there's not enough time to cover the curriculum. I agree with the diagnosis 100%, but not the treatment. Instead of assigning homework (and assigning students a "second shift") in order to cover the curriculum, we should change the curriculum.

I struggle with the increasing emphasis on covering more, and more advanced topics, earlier and earlier, and the emphasis on curriculum over learning. For example, we are now teaching topics in Algebra I (typically a freshman course) that we used to teach in Algebra II (typically a junior course). Why? And does it matter if you learn Algebra by age 15, or would it be okay if you mastered it at 16? (Or 25 for that matter?) We say we want to create lifelong learners, yet our policy is that they must learn things at certain ages that we determine (and standardize for all students). It's as if we think there's an expiration date on learning.

As far as the third reason, I have yet to see any research that shows that assigning homework teaches responsibility. In fact, anecdotally, I would say that it does not. How many high school teachers have you heard complain about students not doing homework? Yet we've been assigning them homework for years, shouldn't that have taught them responsibility by now? But, even if it did, would that be the best way to teach them responsibility? I would suggest that giving them meaningful and important things to do might teach them responsibility better than assigning homework of dubious value.

So, where does that leave us? If we truly believe that "data-driven" is the way to go, then the data is telling us that we need to step back and reexamine both our assumptions and our practices. I've previously suggested with textbooks that the default should be to not get a textbook, and then we have to justify why we need one. I would propose something similar for homework, the default should be no homework, any homework we assign should be justified. And that justification has to be well thought out and can't rely on any of the three reasons above, and has to also take into consideration the social and emotional health of our students.

And what about "average two hours of homework each night Sunday through Thursday"? Show me the data.

Data-Driven Schools: Sleep

Over the last few years there have been many articles regarding the research surrounding sleep. These articles not only focus on health, but frequently focus on the importance of adequate sleep for learning, and often focus on the need for teenage brains to get enough sleep (most of the articles seem to indicate that, for most teens, 9 hours is the minimum they need). The most recent, of course, was the recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics:

Pediatricians have a new prescription for schools: later start times for teens. Delaying the start of the school day until at least 8:30 a.m. would help curb their lack of sleep, which has been linked with poor health, bad grades, car crashes and other problems, the American Academy of Pediatrics says in a new policy.

The influential group says teens are especially at risk. For them, "chronic sleep loss has increasingly become the norm."

The policy, aimed at middle schools and high schools, was published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Studies have found that most U.S. students in middle school and high school don't get the recommended amount of sleep — 8½ to 9½ hours on school nights — and that most high school seniors get an average of less than seven hours.

This is a topic I've brought up frequently over the last few years, but it has gained very little traction. It's not that folks disagree with the research or the recommendation, it's mainly the problems it causes in three areas: after school daycare (older students watching their younger siblings), after school sports (practices and games), and after school employment. While I agree that those are real issues we should consider and tried to help mitigate, I don't think they should take precedence over our students' health and learning.

(I'm not sure I agree with the Executive Director of the National State Boards of Education who is quoted in that article suggesting that it's costs related to busing that's the problem. All school start times could simply be shifted later, or secondary schools could be shifted to start after elementaries - neither would affect the cost of busing.) 

Our student newspaper staff just did a survey where they asked a variety of questions and, interestingly, one of them was about sleep. Let me be clear, this is not a scientifically valid study, but given the sample size (323 students out of roughly 2150) and the distribution method (all students received a link in their student email accounts, so decently random), I think the data is going to be reasonably accurate.

The newspaper staff polled upperclassmen (11th and 12th graders) separate from underclassmen (9th and 10th), although the data for sleep was fairly similar. The choices students had were: less than 5, 5-6, 6-7, 7-8, and more than 8 hours of sleep. For both underclassmen and upperclassmen the median response was 6-7 hours, with the distribution of both groups skewing toward the left (fewer hours of sleep), with upperclassmen a bit more skewed than underclassmen.

So now we have some reasonably actionable data about our students. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends 8½ to 9½ hours (with some studies recommending slightly more), and our students are reporting they get between 6-7 hours a night, with a significant number getting even less than that. (I should probably also mention that first period for us starts at 7:21 a.m.)

So I find it interesting in this age where schools are increasingly "encouraged" to be data-driven (at least when we're talking about test scores), that this set of data doesn't appear to be driving anything (except decreased health, increased accidents, and decreased learning for our students). While I frequently question data-driven decision making related to test scores (because I question the quality and meaningfulness of the data itself), in this case I think the data is pretty clear-cut: our students are not getting enough sleep, and it's adversely affecting their well being.

I wonder if we're willing to take on the challenge of making the right decision for our students' health and learning, even if it means inconveniencing adults?

Is the Pen Mightier than the Keyboard?

The National School Board Association has a companion blog to their Board Buzz specifically for their Technology and Learning Conference coming up in October in Denver. A recent post pointed to research comparing students’ writing with a pen versus with a keyboard. Board Buzz said:

Virginia Berninger, a University of Washington Professor of Educational Psychology, discovered that children write better and longer essays at a faster pace when using a pen.

When I read the article it referenced, though, it actually stated:

"Children consistently did better writing with a pen when they wrote essays. They wrote more and they wrote faster." said Berninger.

I would first point out that writing “more and faster” is not necessarily the same as writing better, so I think NSBA might want to update their verbiage in that post. (The article did state that the students wrote more complete sentences in that portion of the study which might be considered “better,” but that wasn’t the essay portion.)

The study also left me with more questions than answers (which is not necessarily a bad thing). The study looked at second, fourth and six graders, and they had to complete a variety of tasks on paper using a pen and on a computer using a keyboard. But nowhere in the article (not sure about in the research itself as there’s no link) did it mention what kind of keyboarding skills the kids had or how much experience with computers they had - that seems like a pretty major thing to leave out. If the research actually didn’t take that into account, that seems to be a major oversight in the methodology.

After all, I think we can assume that the students have had plenty of practice writing with paper and pen, but how about on a computer? Did they have keyboarding skills or were they hunting and pecking? With the common wisdom of the moment being we shouldn’t start keyboarding practice until about the fourth grade, that really makes you wonder about the keyboarding ability the students had. Had they received instruction on composing on a computer, or was it just a test-taking tool? Since the article states that ,"We need to learn more about the process of writing with a computer, and even though schools have computers they haven't integrated them in teaching at the early grades,” that seems to indicate they have not received much instruction. Both of those factors – if they were not addressed in the actual research – would seem to suggest the results really don’t tell us very much at all. The students should do better with paper and pen if they don’t have keyboarding skills and haven’t practiced writing on the computer.

Now, having said that, I don’t necessarily disagree that young students should be writing by hand first. While I can’t find the link at the moment, I do recall some research connecting the physical movement of writing with helping students learn their letters and then to read and write. And I do think that around third or fourth grade is probably not a bad time to wait to start keyboarding in earnest based on developmental factors (although I know there are folks that start it earlier and it seems to work out fine). So the line that states, “We need to help children become bilingual writers so they can write by both the pen and the computer. So don’t throw away your pen or your keyboard. We need them both” is not bad advice, at least at the elementary level when students are learning to write.

So the article itself, and the NSBA blog post based on it, appear to be a little misleading. I also think that their definition of writing is too narrow. As the chair of the English Department at Rutgers states, writing/composing in the 21st century is a very different endeavor, and the power of the keyboard is not simply to process words, but also images, audio and video, and the resulting connections to others and their ideas that you can make. I don’t think we can make a broad statement on pen versus keyboard based simply on typing the alphabet, writing isolated sentences, or writing ten-minute essays on a certain prompt. My concern is that someone just skimming the NSBA blog might assume the research – and the NSBA itself – is saying something it really isn’t, and will apply this to older students as well as younger. That, I think, would be a mistake.

My CIO and a bunch of Anne Smith’s ninth graders have left their comments, so I encourage you to visit the blog and leave your thoughts as well.



Photo Credit: Writing or typing?, originally uploaded by Stefan Koopmanschap.

Publish in Wikipedia – or Perish?

Via ReadWriteWeb comes this story from Nature that any scientist that submits an article to the journal RNA Biology for their new section on RNA molecules, must also create a Wikipedia page summarizing their work.

"The novelty is that for the first time it creates a link between Wikipedia and traditional journal publishing, with its peer-review element," says Alex Bateman, who co-heads the Rfam database. The aim, Bateman says, is to boost the quality of the scientific content on Wikipedia while using the entries to update the Sanger database.

RNA Biology will require Wikipedia pages from all authors who submit work to a new section of the journal, to be launched later this week, that describes families of RNA molecules. The first paper scheduled is "A Survey of Nematode SmY RNAs"¹; its corresponding Wikipedia summary can be found here.

And it appears as though they’ve given this some thought and have experimented with other entries to Wikipedia, as there’s also a database they’ve been building that gets synchronized with Wikipedia every night.

The Sanger Institute created the Rfam database in 2005, and it now contains data on about 1,200 RNA families from some 200 complete genome sequences. Sanger last year started to experiment with the idea of using Wikipedia to improve the database. It set up an RNA subsection on the encyclopaedia, called RNA WikiProject ², which has the same entries as those on the Rfam database. The database is synchronized each night with Wikipedia, so that any changes made to the Wikipedia pages are transferred to the corresponding entries in the Rfam database.

Bateman says he has been "pleasantly surprised" by scientists' willingness to edit the RNA Wikipedia pages. Most of the edits are made by a core group of around 15 researchers, but there's a long tail of other scientists who pop in sporadically, he says, often to fix or add information about molecules specific to their research.

Hopefully, this will be the start of a trend of other scientific journals doing the same thing.

The RNA wiki is a subset of a broader project, the WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology, which has marshalled hundreds of scientists to improve the content of biology articles in Wikipedia. It, in turn, is collaborating with the Novartis Research Foundation on GeneWiki ³, an effort to create Wikipedia articles describing every human gene. Beyond Wikipedia itself, scientists are also increasingly using wiki technology to get scientists to help curate other biological databases (see Nature 455, 22–25; 2008).

You should read through the comments on the Nature post as well, including this one by Bill Wedemeyer from Michigan State:

Over the past two years, I and some of my students at Michigan State University have carried out an analysis of the coverage, quality and stability of the scientific articles on the English Wikipedia. We've analyzed hundreds of randomly sampled articles from the basic sciences, and have had roughly 100 articles reviewed by tenured professors expert in the field. Our data, being written up for publication, do not support Mr. Kohs' hypothesis that the RNA articles will degenerate into vandalism-riddled nonsense. On the contrary, we found that the developed articles (the so-called Featured, A-level and Good Articles) are stable and of reliably good quality. I presented our preliminary findings at a conference in July. I applaud Dr. Bateman and his colleagues for their initiative, which seems a promising method for outreach, connecting the scientific world with the public that usually pays for the research. We all hope for "broader impact", and this initiative seems likely to be effective.

Perhaps I’m just being optimistic this morning (I tend to alternate days, or sometimes hours), but I think this holds real promise for realizing the potential of Wikipedia and other socially co-constructed content.

Advanced Placement is Changing

One of the many interesting discussions in our staff development efforts revolved around the idea that many of the changes we've been discussing (a more student-centered and constructivist approach, students taking more control over their own learning, students developing personal learning networks, etc.) are very difficult to implement in Advanced Placement courses because of the very defined curriculum and the all-important "big test" looming at the end of the school year. The gist of the argument is that while this approach would be great for students, it's next to impossible to do with the time constraints and the amount of material that must be covered by a fixed date in May when the test occurs. That doesn't mean, of course, that the course has to be straight lecture and ours are not, but the general feeling from the AP teachers involved in our staff development was that there simply wasn't enough time for a more inquiry-based approach, and that - while they might value many aspects of that approach - they were concerned that it might actually hurt the students on the AP exam.

Now, being the radical I am (and also being completely unaccountable because I don't actually have to teach these courses or own up to the results), I often pushed back with my usual, "What's best in the long run for the students? What will help them learn and grow and understand history/mathematics/science/language/etc. at a more deeper level? Don't you think that if they truly develop a deep conceptual understanding that they'll do just fine on the AP exam and it will more than make up for any drop in their score from missing a few more multiple choice questions? Is our only goal to prepare them for one exam when they're 17 or 18, less than a quarter of the way through their lives? If so, we should stop the Super Bowl and hand out the Lombardi trophy just before the first quarter ends. Yada Yada Yada." (Yes, I'm pretty much always that obnoxious. But they love me anyway. I hope.)

I think I always acknowledged how difficult this was and conceded that realistically they might have to make some compromises due to the constraints the AP curriculum/exam placed on them. In any event, I think we always had some very good discussions and generated some great ideas, and the end result was better instruction and learning for the students in those classes (even if my radical self always hoped for more).

(As a side note, this discussion was also happening at the same time that my school was opening up our AP courses to many more students, meaning these teachers were not only being harassed by me but were also dealing with more sections of AP classes, and those sections had significantly more students with more varied levels of preparation. I actually think this was good, because it made all of us really question what we valued and what we wanted for students, but it also didn't make it any easier.)

So I read with great interest when one of our AP teachers sent me an email indicating that the College Board was in the process of redesigning the AP History and Science curricula and exams. And when I followed the links and did a little more reading, I was very interested in some of the changes they were proposing:

The review of the AP Exams in science and history has resulted in a recommendation to improve these exams, reducing the breadth of content covered and reducing the emphasis on memorization of facts, and instead requiring a greater depth of study among a smaller number of topics, emphasizing inquiry and scientific reasoning.

Okay, so far so good, but I wanted a little more detail. That article then linked to a couple of PowerPoints, one for science and one for history, that were in support of a live presentation given at the AP Annual Conference. Those PowerPoints referenced two books: Learning and Understanding (full text at that link) by the National Research Council and Understanding by Design by Wiggins & McTighe. I found that fortuitous (always wanted to use "fortuitous" in a blog post), as one of the early influences on our staff development was How People Learn (full text at that link), an earlier work by the National Research Council; and UbD is one of the books informing our current staff development work. So it appeared as though the AP review underway was tracking right along with the themes in our staff development these last three plus years.

What else did those PowerPoints say? Well, they both included a slide with recommendations "applicable to all AP course subjects:"

• Courses should emphasize deep understanding rather than comprehensive coverage.
  
  
• Programs should reflect current understanding of learning in the discipline.
  
  
• Programs should reflect current research directions within the discipline.
  
  
• Courses should include a deep emphasis on inquiry and reasoning.

Alrighty then. I was beginning to feel much better about some of the ideas we'd been discussing these last few years, as it appeared as though perhaps the AP curriculum and exam might change in ways that would better align with the approaches we had been talking about. If you download those PowerPoints (and I think you should), also pay attention to the "notes" section on each slide, as many of the slides have additional information and "talking points" for the folks that were presenting that give some valuable insight into their thinking (not as good as being there live, but still helpful). Here are some notes that jumped out at me:

History Presentation, Slide 4, notes: A very specific consistency is supported by evidence; there is too much content in the "science" courses.

History Presentation, Slide 10, notes: Need to create flexibility for teachers to select topics of their choosing. In identifying essential historical knowledge, goal is to limit historical detail so teachers are not required to "cover" everything.

Science Presentation, Slide 18, notes: The Chemistry Commission recognized the need to replace the emphasis in the current exam on calculations and descriptions with an emphasis on the conceptual foundations of the discipline and on the ability of students to express the reasoning that underlies the calculations and descriptions.

Now it was getting just downright scary, as this could've been the summary of some of our staff development sessions (and a few of my Fischrants as well). There's much more in the PowerPoints, but I felt like I was probably still missing some pieces since I hadn't seen the live presentation. So I decided to read the executive summary (pdf) of Learning and Understanding (again, the full text is online, but I've only read the executive summary so far).

Some lengthy excerpts in case you don't want to read the executive summary:

This book takes a fresh look at programs for advanced studies for high school students in the United States, with a particular focus on the Advanced Placement and the International Baccalaureate programs, and asks how advanced studies can be significantly improved in general. (introduction)

. . . its primary motivator was the improved, research-based understanding of teaching and learning that has emerged recently, and its application to advanced study. (p. 1)

The committee found that existing programs for advanced study are frequently inconsistent with the results of the research on cognition and learning . . . Students learn best from teachers with strong content knowledge and pedagogical skills . . . High school teachers . . . have little opportunity to work with colleagues to improve curriculum or instruction . . .Research indicates that constrained curricula are more effective and equitable in helping students pursue advanced studies. (p. 2)

The goal of advanced study is to promote development of deep conceptual understanding and the ability to apply knowledge appropriately . . . Effective instruction is focused on enabling learning to uncover and formulate the deep organizing patterns of a domain, and then to actively access and create meaning around these organizing principles. (p. 6)

Seven research-based principles of learning can provide a framework . . . (p. 6-7)

1. Learning with understanding is facilitated when knowledge is related to and structured around major concepts and principles of a discipline.
   
   
2. A learner's prior knowledge is the starting point for effective learning.
   
   
3. Metacognitive learning (self-monitoring) is important for acquiring proficiency.
   
   
4. Recognizing differences among learning is important for effective teaching and learning.
   
   
5. Learners' beliefs about their ability to learn affect learning success.
   
   
6. Practices and activities in which people engage during learning shape what is learned.
   
   
7. Socially supported interactions strengthen one's ability to learn with understanding.

Successful implementation of advanced study that promotes learning with understanding also depends upon creating opportunities for teachers' continual learning . . . It treats teachers as active learners, builds on their existing knowledge and beliefs, and occurs in professional communities where there are opportunities to discuss ideas and practices as colleagues. (p. 8)

The committee's analysis . . . yielded the following findings: (p. 8-9)

• Excessive breadth of coverage (especially in 1-year science programs) and insufficient emphasis on key concepts in final assessments contribute significantly to the problem in all science fields . . . . [assessments] frequently focus on procedural knowledge at the expense of conceptual understanding.
  
  
• Except for mathematics, these programs do not specify clearly what prior knowledge is needed for success.
  
  
• Many programs and courses do not help students develop [metacognitive] skills.
  
  
• The single end-of-year examinations and summary scores, as found in AP, do not adequately capture student learning.
  
  
• Teamwork and collaborative investigation are especially important in advanced study . . . Better use of the Internet and technologies for collaborative learning is needed.
  
  
• Students need opportunities to learn concepts in a variety of contexts. The AP and IB programs currently do not emphasize interdisciplinary connections sufficiently.

Students can study topics in depth and develop conceptual understanding only if curricula do not present excessive numbers of topics. Currently, AP and IB programs are inconsistent with this precept . . . Additionally, the College Board models AP courses on typical college introductory courses, rather than on the best college courses or educational practices based on research on learning and pedagogy. (p. 9-10)

A striking inadequacy of the AP and IB programs is the lack of detailed research about what their examinations actually measure, including the kinds of thinking that the examinations elicit. (p. 10)

At present, neither the College Board nor the IBO supports systemic and continuing professional development for teachers. (p. 10)

Recommendations (p. 12-13)

• The primary goal of advanced study in any discipline should be for students to achieve a deep conceptual understanding of the discipline's content and unifying concepts. Well-designed programs helps students develop skills of inquiry, analysis, and problem solving so that they become superior learners. Accelerating students' exposure to college-level material, while appropriate as a component of some advanced study programs, it not by itself a sufficient goal.
  
  
• Course options in grades 6-10 for which there are reduced academic expectations . . . should be eliminated from the curriculum.
  
  
• Programs of advanced study in science and mathematics must be made consistent with findings from recent research on how people learn. These findings include the role of students' prior knowledge and misconceptions in building a conceptual structure, the importance of student motivation and self-monitoring of learning (metacognition), and the substantial differences among learners.
  
  
• Curricula for advanced study should emphasise depth of understanding over exhaustive coverage of content . . . Because science and technology progress rapidly, frequent review of course content is essential.
  
  
• Instruction in advanced courses should engage students in inquiry.
  
  
• Teachers of advanced study courses should employ frequent formative assessment.
  
  
• Schools and districts offering advanced study must provide frequent opportunities for continuing professional development.

Changes in the AP and IB Programs
The following substantial changes in the AP and IB programs are recommended: (p. 14)

• The College Board should abandon its practice of designing AP courses in most disciplines primarily to replicate typical introductory college courses.
  
  
• The College Board and IPO should evaluate their assessments to ensure that they measure the conceptual understanding and complex reasoning that should be the primary goal of advanced study.
  
  
• Both the College Board and IBO should take more responsibility for ensuring the use of appropriate instructional approaches.

Okay, I'm convinced. Our staff development efforts are pretty much directly aligned with the changes that are coming to the Advanced Placement program. While these won't occur any earlier than May 2011, they appear to be serious about these changes. Which implies that we need to be serious about implementing these changes in our Advanced Placement courses beginning right now.

I also firmly believe that what's good for students in AP courses is good for students in all courses. I'm not suggesting that all courses be AP courses, different students have different needs. But the essential idea of what constitutes understanding in any given field is applicable to all students, and the basic design elements of a course/learning environment should apply to all our students, not just the ones deemed "advanced."

So, Advanced Placement is changing. Are you?

World Book's 21st Century Research Skills

I had a nice conversation today with an associate manager in the Digital Products division of World Book. They are in the process of developing research guides (one for teachers, one for students) to go along with a new website launch and wanted my thoughts on what 21st century research skills might look like.

At the end of our conversation I suggested that there were many folks in my learning network that World Book could tap for advice and asked if it would be okay if I blogged about it, so here it is. If you have thoughts you'd like to share with World Book please leave a comment below or, if that's just not enough room for your thoughts or resources you'd like to link to, here's a wiki page you're welcome to add to. If you have the time I would really encourage you to do so, as this will be yet another way to positively impact our students.

"Open Up the World of Learning to Everyone Who Wants to Learn"

From the New York Times:

Publish or perish has long been the burden of every aspiring university professor. But the question the Harvard faculty will decide on Tuesday is whether to publish — on the Web, at least — free.

Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny readerships and high subscription costs.

Although the outcome of Tuesday’s vote would apply only to Harvard’s arts and sciences faculty, the impact, given the university’s prestige, could be significant for the open-access movement, which seeks to make scientific and scholarly research available to as many people as possible at no cost.

“In place of a closed, privileged and costly system, it will help open up the world of learning to everyone who wants to learn,” said Robert Darnton, director of the university library. “It will be a first step toward freeing scholarship from the stranglehold of commercial publishers by making it freely available on our own university repository.”

Under the proposal Harvard would deposit finished papers in an open-access repository run by the library that would instantly make them available on the Internet. Authors would still retain their copyright and could publish anywhere they pleased — including at a high-priced journal, if the journal would have them.

What distinguishes this plan from current practice, said Stuart Shieber, a professor of computer science who is sponsoring the faculty motion, is that it would create an “opt-out” system: an article would be included unless the author specifically requested it not be. Mr. Shieber was the chairman of a committee set up by Harvard’s provost to investigate scholarly publishing; this proposal grew out of one of the recommendations, he said.

Interesting addition to The Cult of the Amateur arguments. At least one professor isn't buying some of those arguments:

Professor Shieber also doubts that free distribution would undermine the journal industry. "We don’t know if that would happen,” he said. “There is little evidence to support that it would." Nearly all scholarly articles on physics have been freely available on the Internet for more than a decade, he added, and physics journals continue to thrive.

Research on the Motivational and Educational Aspects of YouTube

Curt Bonk, a professor at Indiana University, is "conducting research on the motivational and educational aspects of YouTube." As he explains in this post:

We are looking at why people post, view, share, comment on, or subscribe to a YouTube video. Areas of interest include motivation, engagement, instructional design, and learning or educational value in a YouTube video. We also inquire about various issues related to the Web 2.0. We ask questions such as "How important are YouTube videos in training and education right now?," "Why would you create a YouTube video? (check all that apply)," "How often do you watch YouTube videos?," "Have you ever shared a YouTube video link with a friend?," and "How important will other forms of Web 2.0 technology such as blogging, Wikipedia, podcasting, online photo albums, and online social networking be for training and education in 5 years?"

The participant is randomly assigned to one of 60 YouTube videos (6 types of videos and 10 videos per category). Each survey has one of the 60 YouTube videos below embedded in it. You can take the survey and help me in this research. If you do, you have a chance to win an iPod or iPhone. In addition, SurveyShare (the sponsor) is giving away 90 days of free unlimited service to anyone who takes the survey.

(Note: I don’t have any connection with Curt, but in the interest of full disclosure both the original Did You Know? and Did You Know? 2.0 are included in his survey. And Curt is also apparently the President of SurveyShare, so there's a marketing aspect to this. For some reason I feel like I should mention those things, even though I don’t think that influenced this post or benefits me – I’m living in strange times . . .)

His post includes all 60 videos if you have a lot of time on your hands. You can take the survey if you wish, or even join the Facebook Group. It will be interesting to see what kind of response he gets and if that translates into some meaningful results.

Wikipedia: 4 Out Of 5 Experts Agree

The Denver Post ran an article about Wikipedia this week.

To try a more objective test than my own need to find Martin Scorsese's birthdate, The Denver Post asked five Colorado scholars to review the Wikipedia entries on Islam, Bill Clinton, global warming, China and evolution.

The results? Four out of five agreed their relevant Wikipedia entries are accurate, informative, comprehensive and a great resource for students or the merely curious.
The fifth scholar called his chosen entry "not very good," found some details to be inaccurate by omission, and said similar entries in more accepted encyclopedias like Encarta do their job better.

Who were the Colorado scholars?

Global Warming: Scott Denning, Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University.

Denning called the Wikipedia entry "a great primer on the subject, suitable for just the kinds of use one might put to a traditional encyclopedia. Following the links takes the interested reader into greater and greater depth, probably further than any traditional encyclopedia I've seen"

China: William Wei, Professor of History at the University of Colorado.

[Wei] call[ed] the basic entry on China "simplistic, and in some places, even incoherent." Wei said the Wikipedia entry mishandled the issue of Korean independence from China, for example, and the context of the Silk Road in China's international relations.

"One of its problems is relying on amateurs to contribute," said Wei, who admits he brings a rigorous perspective to the material as a specialist in Chinese Republican history. "I applaud a democratizing spirit, but quite frankly it can lead to, for want of a better word, mediocrity."

Clinton: Bob Loevy, Professor of Political Science at Colorado College (and frequent writer on Bill Clinton).

[Loevy] said the President Clinton entry was thorough and unbiased, giving fair weight to both Clinton accomplishments and scandals. The bulk of it appeared to have been written by the Clinton Museum and Library in Little Rock, Ark., Loevy said.

"It would have been a great place for a student to begin building his or her knowledge" on Clinton, Loevy said. As did the other professors, Loevy said he cautions his students to treat Wikipedia like any other single book in the library - any fact cited there should be double-checked somewhere else.

Islam: Frederick Denny, retired Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado (and a “40-year specialist in Islam”).

[Denny] was "quite impressed" with Wikipedia's 28-page entry.

"It looks like something that might have been done by a young graduate student, or assistant professor, or two or three," Denny said. He described the writing as clinical and straightforward, but not boring. Where important translations of Arabic language or fine religious distinctions are required, Wikipedia acquits itself well.

"I have a feeling there are very responsible people out there who are making sure this doesn't become" a free-for-all, Denny said.

Evolution: Jeffrey Mitton, Professor of Biology at the University of Colorado.

Mitton declared the entry "good," even if "stylistic infelicities abound." If a student read through the main entry and the primary links to supporting concepts, he would get a fine introduction, Mitton said.

Always the careful scholar, Mitton scrolled to the bottom of the evolution entry to the bibliography. The first reference cited was for the authoritative textbook on evolution by Douglas Futuyma, "so that is excellent, as it should be," Mitton observed. The rest of the source list was appropriate, and well-rounded, he added.

"Years ago, I never thought you'd be able to use a computer to find information so easily," said Mitton, who consults Wikipedia among other sources when he writes a newspaper column on plant species. "It has changed the nature of studying."

Now, obviously this is not a rigorous scientific study of Wikipedia. But I found it interesting on several fronts:

• That the reliability of Wikipedia merited a story in the Denver Post in the first place – in the entertainment section.
  
  
• That four out of five “scholars” on some pretty important and complex topics thought that Wikipedia was a pretty good resource.
  
  
• That there was no mention of whether any of the scholars contributed to the Wikipedia article they were reviewing.

That last one is always the question that I ask – and wonder why the writer doesn’t ask – after reading these types of articles. I did email the reporter that question, but haven’t heard back. It’s not like I expect the reviewers to take hours (or days) to clean up the articles, but you would think they might take an extra five or ten minutes to modify a few things since they’re there anyway. It almost seems like the thought never crosses their minds – or at least the mind of the reporter. It seems like such an obvious question to ask, and include the answer in the article.

This article was for the print newspaper, but I find it interesting that the print version doesn’t include the URL for Wikipedia (much less for the particular topics), and that the online version doesn’t include links. Again, that seems like such an obvious thing to do – at least to me. I wonder why they didn’t?

So, I guess my opinion of Wikipedia hasn’t changed much. I still think it’s an excellent resource for students – or anyone – wanting to delve deeper into any particular topic. As with any source, you shouldn’t rely on it exclusively. But think how often students (and teachers) in the past have relied on one source – often the textbook, with the assumption that it was both accurate and told the entire story. And, of course, the great thing about Wikipedia compared to a print resource is the links - you can easily find some of those other sources, which lead you to even more sources, and so on. To echo Professor Mitton, Wikipedia – and many other Web 2.0 resources like it – should change the nature of learning.