How People Learn

1. How People Learn Donald P. Buckley, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Biology Director of Instructional Technology, School of Health Sciences Quinnipiac University Apple Distinguished Educator Computerworld Smithsonian Laureate

2. We Are HistoryThis is Our Revolution

3. Knowing The meaning of “knowing” has shifted from being able to repeat and remember information to being able to find and use it Herbert Simon Nobel Laureate

4. A Revolution in Education? 1. Disappointing literacies have provoked soul-searching • Emergence of the Learning Paradigm 2. The Decade of the Brain: • the cognitive development of learning 3. Computing tools facilitate • Simulation, data collection/analysis, & authoring • Communication • Formative Assessment

5. But where do we start? Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000.

6. The core goal is:Learning with Understanding

7. Key Findings about Learning • Learning is constructive we must confront and build on the experiences and beliefs that students bring to their learning experiences • Students need knowledge tolearn with understanding - our goal is making meaning • Students must develop metacognitive skills that are reflective and help them to gauge their progress toward making meaning …this is the gate to life-long learning

8. Elements of Learning Environments Learning Situated In Social Context Learning Centered Approaches Knowledge Centered Approaches Formative Assessment Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000.

9. Teaching So That StudentsLearn with Understanding Learning is improved by being: • Learner-centered • Knowledge-centered • Assessment-centered • All situated within social context

10. Teaching So That StudentsLearn with Understanding Learning is improved by being: • Learner-centered • Knowledge-centered • Assessment-centered • All situated within social context

17. National Training Laboratory, Bethel Maine

18. Memory for Words versus Pictures • How well do we remember? • Best: Pictures alone • Next best: Pictures and Words • Worst: Words alone • Different communication formats entail different learning opportunities, e.g. words • Linear strings of concept elements • Limited to 5-7 elements • With overload, we loose the middle elements • Then an individualistic synthesis

21. Gender Differences

22. The Biology of Personality

23. Where do brain-based learning principles begin?

24. A Neuron Firing - Cell Body and Axon

25. Learning involves neurons communicating signals - the synapse

26. Synaptic Networks

27. How does the brain learn? • Overproduction and cropping of synapses (early development …like sculpting a statue from rock) • Addition of new synapses (throughout life …like adding pieces to the complete statue) • Modification of synapses (Long Term Potentiation) (neurons fire easier after being modified by experience)

28. To a large extent… the depth of learning depends on how extensive a cognitive engagement is ...and how recurrent

30. Emotions

31. Emotions and Learning Old view: logic and emotions are incongruent WRONG! emotions thinking learning

32. Emotions & Logic • Emotions and logic work together: • Logic sets the goal • Emotion creates the passion to act on the goal • therefore • Emotion Pervades Logic Processing

33. Emotion Pervades Logic • Evidence? • Remove frontal-lobe areas: • most intelligence is re-learned • Remove the amygdala: devastating changes... • loose creative play • loose imagination • loose key decision making processes • loose nuances of emotion that drive: • Art Humor Love Music Altruism

34. Emotions Occupy The Brain’s Super Highway

35. Emotions: What kind of cognitive engagement? • Emotions get high priority in processing • (occupying the brain’s super highway) • Therefore emotion-laden learning • is well remembered • Emotions heighten attention, activating & • chemically stimulating the brain • Emotions have own memory pathways • Therefore, emotions act as the glue • in learning & cognition

36. How Does Memory Work?

37. Memory • Old interpretation: memories are records of the past stored for later recall • New interpretation: memory is a process for reconstructing a tangible interpretation of the past • Memory uses the same process used to imagine or to anticipate the future …reconstruction based on learned models

38. What do we remember? • Even perception is an assembly processes …based on reconstruction • We build mental models of our experiences • We learn mostly patterns and themes • We usually don’t learn the details • So what are memories and where do the details go?

39. Memory is Interpretive • Mind is not a passive recorder of events • Storing & recalling memories are constructive & reconstructive activities • People presented with events in a random sequence will reorder them during recall • Recall words in a list (yes or no): sour-candy-sugar-bitter-good-taste-tooth-knife-honey-chocolate-cake-tart-pie …will remember sweet, but it's not on the list • The brain uses inference processing to relate events

40. Memory of Experiences • When children are asked if a false event occurred… • Immediate response = "no" • Repeated discussions will change response • By 12 weeks, fully elaborated recounts • Repeatedly listing words with adults… • In repeated listings, words recalling non-experienced events map to the same regions of the brain as words for experienced events • MRI reveals that Q&A about true and false events light up same parts of the brain • Experiences are constructive and don't necessarily reflect reality - Learning builds on past experience

41. Kinds of Memory • Declarative memory • Facts and events mostly in hippocampus • Procedural or nondeclarative memory • skills and other cognitive operations • can't be represented in declarative sentences mostly in the neostriatum

42. Explicit Implicit Semantic Episodic Procedural Reflexive Conditioned Emotional Kinds of Memory

43. Semantic (book-learning) Memory

44. Episodic (contextual) Memory Ask yourself: What were you doing when you learned that JFK had been shot? What did you have for dinner last night? Most of us can remember things that are situated in space or time ...Episodic Memory

45. Episodic (contextual) Memory • Episodic memory has: • unlimited capacity, • forms quickly and effortlessly, and • is used naturally by everyone • Our visual memory records both • “what” and “where” • Problem: contamination (similar contexts for different memories)

46. How do we conduct critical inquiry?

47. The Process of Critical Inquiry understanding Hypothesis A Hypothesis B study BELIEF collect evidence defer judgement understanding This is how the brain seems to be wired! study BELIEF

48. Why? • The part of the brain that we use for critical inquiry seems to have evolved from part of the brain that we use for : Perception • Which draws lots of assumptions and makes lots of snap decisions in order for us to navigate though our daily existence

49. Teaching So That StudentsLearn with Understanding Learning is improved by being: • Learner-centered • Knowledge-centered • Assessment-centered • All situated within social context

50. Comparison of Novices and Experts Novices versus Experts Left -brain Serial processing Scanning possibilities Superficial distracters Abstraction Right-brain Parallel processing Recognizing useful patterns Core concepts Perception