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Weekly Digest #132: Dual Coding, Visual Note Taking, and Sketchnoting

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Weekly Digest #132: Dual Coding, Visual Note Taking, and Sketchnoting

1. To Remember a Lecture Better, Take Notes by Hand by Robinson Meyer via The Atlantic

Why should you take notes by hand? If you can’t imagine going without your laptop, or asking your students to go without theirs, then this interview with Mueller and Oppenheimer may change your mind. Mueller and Oppenheimer tell the story behind their research comparing note taking by hand and note taking on a laptop.

2. Tips & Tools to Improve Student Notetaking Skills by Curtis Chandler via MiddleWeb

One of the reasons note taking by hand can be superior to taking notes on a laptop is that it allows for a wider range of note taking strategies. Particularly, strategies that allow for doodling and visuals. This article reviews some of the research behind note taking and how to use different methods in the classroom.

Have You Forgotten Your Childhood?

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Have You Forgotten Your Childhood?

By Yana Weinstein

Imagine if I asked you this question: “Are there large parts of your childhood after age 5 that you cannot remember?”. How would you answer: Yes, or no? Are you sure? And what might influence your answer? (Note that the “after age 5” part is important, because most of us do not remember much prior to that age).

It turns out that your answer to this rather straightforward question might flip-flop, and can easily be influenced by what you had been thinking about just prior to being asked. A group of researchers set out to see whether they could influence people’s judgments of their own childhood memory by giving them a retrieval task before asking the question above (1).

The method was very straightforward: Participants simply attempted to retrieve some childhood memories, and then answered the question about whether there were large parts of their childhood after age 5 that they could not remember. In the easy retrieval condition, participants tried to write about 4 different childhood memories: two from age 5-7, and two more from age 8-10. In the difficult retrieval condition, participants instead tried to write about 12 different childhood memories – six from each of the two time-periods, instead of only two.

The majority of participants were able to complete the retrieval task, regardless of whether they were asked to retrieve 4 or 12 childhood memories (the 8.5% of participants who didn’t quite get to 12 childhood memories in the time allotted were removed from analyses). But even for those who successfully retrieved 12 memories, the experience left them much less confident about their own memories. When asked the question “Are there large parts of your childhood after age 5 that you cannot remember?”, 46% of participants who had just successfully retrieved 12 different childhood memories said yes, compared to only 19% of participants who had just successfully retrieved 4 childhood memories!

This results was published 20 years ago, and yet, I still find it amazingly powerful. Not only is it so easy to manipulate what we think about our own memories, but it’s also a somewhat counterintuitive result: after all, participants who retrieved 12 childhood memories actually produced more information about their childhoods than did those who only retrieved 4 childhood memories – and yet, they are now less confident in how well they remember their childhoods.

How does this apply to leaning? The finding suggests that the more students are asked to retrieve, the less confidence they will have in their own memory for the subject – even when they are successfully retrieving. Of course, this does not mean we should discourage students from practicing retrieval! In the same paper, the authors found an easy fix: simply telling participants, before they started retrieving the 12 childhood memories, that people typically found this task difficult mostly neutralized the negative impact of the task on their confidence: in this case, only 27% of participants claimed to have forgotten large parts of their childhood (compared to 46% in the version where they were not warned that the task was difficult). Applying this back to education, it seems important to keep reminding students that retrieval practice is hard for everyone, and having to make an effort to retrieve doesn’t mean that their memory of a subject is poor.

References:

(1) Winkielman, P., Schwarz, N., & Belli, R. F. (1998). The role of ease of retrieval and attribution in memory judgments: Judging your memory as worse despite recalling more events. Psychological Science, 9, 124-126.

GUEST POST: Who Really Benefits from Retrieval Practice

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GUEST POST: Who Really Benefits from Retrieval Practice

So, what does this mean?

First of all, although the benefits of testing have been extensively reported, it appears that not all participants, at least among college students, do benefit directly from testing. In fact, for about 1/3 of our participants, retrieval practice made them worse. Does this mean we should stop incorporating testing as a pedagogical technique? Probably not – there are other benefits of retrieval practice (such as more frequent review of material, increased metacognitive awareness, and so on [8]). However, we would encourage students and learners of all ages to critically evaluate what works for them and what doesn’t.

Second, even among participants who do benefit from testing, the benefits vary. Testing might be more beneficial at some levels of learning than at others. When material is too easy or too difficult, the expected benefits might not be evident and frustration could result. Again, we recommend critically assessing which strategies are effective in which situations.

 

References:

(1) Karpicke, J. D., Blunt, J. R., & Smith, M. A. (2016). Retrieval-based learning: Positive effects of retrieval practice in elementary school children. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 350. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00350

(2) Agarwal, P. K., Bain, P. M., & Chamberlain, R. W. (2012). The value of applied research: Retrieval practice improves classroom learning and recommendations from a teacher, a principal, and a scientist. Educational Psychology Review, 24(3), 437-448. doi:10.1007/s10648-012-9210-2

(3) Coane, J. H. (2013). Retrieval practice and elaborative encoding benefit memory in younger and older adults. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 2(2), 95-100. doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2013.04.001

(4) Sumowski, J. F., Coyne, J., Cohen, A., & Deluca, J. (2014). Retrieval practice improves memory in survivors of severe traumatic brain injury. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 95(2), 397-400. doi:10.1016/j.apmr.2013.10.021

(5) Agarwal, P. K., Finley, J. R., Rose, N. S., & Roediger, H. L. (2017). Benefits from retrieval practice are greater for students with lower working memory capacity. Memory, 25(6), 764-771. doi:10.1080/09658211.2016.1220579

(6) Brewer, G.A., & Unsworth, N. (2012). Individual differences in the effects of retrieval from long-term memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 66, 407-415. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2011.12.009.

(7) Nelson, T. O., & Dunlosky, J. (1994). Norms of paired-associate recall during multitrial learning of Swahili-English translation equivalents. Memory, 2, 325-335. doi: 10.1080/09658219408258951

(8) Roediger, H. L., Putnam, A. L., & Smith, M. A. (2011). Ten benefits of testing and their applications to educational practice. In J. Mestre & B. Ross (Eds.), Psychology of learning and motivation: Cognition in education (pp. 1-36). Oxford: Elsevier.

Weekly Digest #131: Increasing Grading/Marking Efficiency

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Weekly Digest #131: Increasing Grading/Marking Efficiency

Grading (marking in the UK context) can be a time-consuming and, at times, annoying task that teachers face on a regular basis. How can we make grading more efficient and less burdensome, but at the same time provide students with the important feedback that helps them improve their performance in the future? We dedicated a weekly digest to this 2.5 years ago, but we thought it would be nice to have an update with some new, additional resources – given that grading season is here.

Understanding Sample Sizes and the Word “Significant”

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Understanding Sample Sizes and the Word “Significant”

One big issue related to sample size requires us to talk about what the word significance means in a scientific context. In “the real world,” significant means noteworthy, or worthy of attention. However, this is not what scientists typically mean when they say significant. Often, we are talking about statistical significance, and this is a totally different thing. When we say a finding is statistically significant, what we typically mean is that two groups (or more) were found to be different, and we’re willing to say that the difference is unlikely to be due to chance.

Here’s a completely made-up concrete example: Imagine we want to see whether an extra 30 minutes in college classes improves students’ grades in those classes. One team of researchers randomly assigns 200 students to stay an extra 30 minutes in class, and another 200 students to leave at the normal time. Imagine the researchers find a small difference between the two groups, but it is not statistically significant. They conclude that there is no reason to believe that additional time in class improves students’ grades. Now, imagine another team of researchers conducts the exact same study, only this time they randomly assign 2,000 students to stay an extra 30 minutes and 2,000 students to leave at the normal time. Imagine this team of researchers does find that the group that stays in class for an extra 30 minutes earn (statistically) significantly higher grades than the group that leaves at the normal time. This means that the difference between these two groups is not likely due to chance. The probability that we accidentally found a difference between the groups is very low. So low, in fact, that scientists are willing to say the finding is “significant.”

The issue here is that statistical significance does not signify a large or meaningful effect. In the fictitious example above, the effect may not be found by the first team of researchers because the effect size is very small, and there weren’t enough participants in the study to detect the effect. All things being equal, the smaller the effect, the greater the sample size we need to find it. But there does come a point where, at least for applied research, an effect is so small that it is not meaningful. If 30 minutes extra in class is enough to increase students grades by 2%, is it worth the extra 30 minutes? What about 1%? Even less? Are there other things we could do in the classroom that would take less time and improve grades even more? The greater the sample size, the more likely we are to find a statistically significant difference between groups, but that doesn’t mean the effect we find is meaningful. With infinitely large sample sizes, we can actually find statistically significant differences between basically anything. (For more on this, see this article.)

Another thing to keep in mind while evaluating research findings is that a study with a large sample is not necessarily a study that is more generalizable, or applies to a more diverse group of people. This is because simply increasing the sample size does not necessarily mean that the study will have a diverse sample. For example, imagine a study that is conducted at an elite private high school with only girls aged 15-16. In this case increasing the sample size from 100 to 1000 is not going to allow the researchers to generalize much past girls aged 15 to 16 at an elite private school. This is not to say this study would not be valuable; if this is the population of interest and the research question is important, then so long as the study is designed and executed well the results should be informative. But in this case, a sample of 1000 girls is not necessarily better than a sample of 100 girls.

In addition to the points already mentioned, there are tons of other factors that need to be considered when evaluating and interpreting research to see if a result is meaningful and whether it should be applied in a given setting. How homogeneous (similar) is our sample and the population of interest? How much error or random variation is inherent in what we’re measuring (for example, test performance) and how we measure it (for example, in a multiple-choice test)? How many trials or repetitions are there (for example, questions on a test or ways we are assessing something)? What is the design of the study – are all participants doing all conditions, or are different groups of participants doing each one? The factors seem endless. Researchers also have to consider what types of statistics we are using, whether we are paying close attention to effect sizes, and the precision with which we can measure those effect sizes. Are there going to be replications, and are we presenting all of the data, even those results that don’t show an effect? What about meta-analysis procedures? These are all issues perhaps to be discussed in another blog!

We often have this idea that more is always better, and when we learn about basic research methods in high school or college, often this rule of thumb is taught in place of the extremely nuanced reality. However, as with many things, it really depends!

Film Club: ‘Why I’ll Raise My Daughters to Be Strong, Not Polite’

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Film Club: ‘Why I’ll Raise My Daughters to Be Strong, Not Polite’

• What messages, emotions or ideas will you take away from this film? Why?

• What questions do you still have?

3. An additional challenge: What connections can you make between this film and your own life or experience? Why? Does this film remind you of anything else you’ve read or seen? If so, how and why?

4. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)

5. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.

6. To learn more, read about the video series, Conception. “Conception Season 2: What’s It Like to Be a Parent in 2018?” begins:

In 2018, it can feel like what divides our society — race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status — is more evident than what unites it.

So, our video series asked parents: What is it like to parent in the context of major cultural, social and political shifts, such as #MeToo, the immigration discussion, the opioid crisis and the gun debate? How do we raise children in a world that already sees them — and you — in a certain way?

Hundreds of you submitted your stories about parenting in the context of race, mental health, gender identity, the rise of social media, infertility, the changing nature of work, incarceration and income inequality.

_________

More?

• See all the films in this series.

• Read our list of practical teaching ideas, along with responses from students and teachers, for how you can use these documentaries in the classroom.

We Tried 5 Cold-Weather Experiments. Instant Slushies, Frozen Bubbles and More.

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We Tried 5 Cold-Weather Experiments. Instant Slushies, Frozen Bubbles and More.

For the latest developments, read our cold weather live briefing.

EVANSTON, Ill. — It was minus 15 degrees here on Wednesday afternoon, near the epicenter of the polar vortex, and school had been canceled for much of the week.

“How are we going to survive?” one mother asked on a text thread Tuesday night. My phone pinged at 9 a.m. Wednesday with a plaintive message from someone else: “We’ve already gone through my two craft projects, painted and watched an hour of TV.”

At times like these, modern parents turn to Google and YouTube and Pinterest, which beckon with seemingly simple and fun science experiments for frigid temperatures.

But as my 7-year-old son, Gus, and his friend Eren, 8, learned on Wednesday when we tested a handful of popular cold-weather experiments, science doesn’t always follow the neat path of a viral video.

Several videos demonstrate how to super-chill soda. A similar experiment instantly freezes water.

We shook up two one-liter bottles of Sprite and placed them outside of our front door, where my phone told me it was minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit. We also put a small bottle of spring water alongside them to test the instant-ice trick.

The idea was to try to cool the soda and the water below their freezing point without turning them solid. Without the impurities found in tap water, there is nothing to start the nucleation process that causes water to freeze, delivering a supercooled liquid that, once jostled or disturbed, will instantly turn to a slushy ice.

But two hours later, the bottles outside our house were already halfway solid. Eren, Gus and my 3-year-old daughter, Hildy, didn’t seem to care as they slurped down cups of the stuff.

“What did we learn today?” my husband, Alex, said. “The internet is broken.”

Olivia Castellini, a senior exhibit developer at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, offered several other possible explanations. Our spring water might not have been pure enough, and we may have waited too long. Next time, she recommended timing how long it took to freeze one bottle, then putting out another bottle and returning about 15 minutes earlier to catch the liquid at exactly the moment. “You have to find just the right amount of time to super cool it,” Dr. Castellini said.

This experiment is designed to show how the volume of a gas expands as it warms, and contracts as it cools. The method: Blow up balloons in warm air, then expose them to cold air and they will deflate. They will reinflate when you return them to warm air.

This is the same reason car tires deflate in cold weather, said Michael Kennedy, a research professor and director of Northwestern University’s Science in Society, a science education center.

We inflated half a dozen balloons inside, then bundled up and went outside to wait for them to shrink in the minus 39 degree windchill. And we waited. Gus and Eren decided to bury their balloons in a snow bank. Hildy’s flew into the street.

When we could no longer feel our noses, we put the remaining balloons in a bag, tied it to the door handle, and rushed inside. After about 45 minutes, the balloons had deflated only slightly and we realized we hadn’t been very scientific: It might have wise to first measure the balloons’ original circumference, for example.

Alex, the lab assistant, prepared the balloon experiment for the scientists.CreditDanielle Scruggs for The New York Times

Once back inside, the balloons did return to their previous shape, but by this time only the adults cared. The child scientists wanted more Sprite slushies.

Dr. Castellini recommended tying a string around the balloons, placing them outside, in a window, where you can watch them from the comfort of your home. When the string falls off, they’ve shrunk.

Of all the cold-weather experiments, the one I was most looking forward to was the frozen-bubble trick. The online videos are magical, demonstrating how a normally ethereal soap bubble hardens into a lacy globe when the temperature is just right.

We tried two versions of bubble wands — a more traditional wand with a small, round opening, and a large, oblong variety designed for bigger bubbles.

Once outside, both wands created perfect bubbles, but it was hard to get a look at them because the wind whipped them down the street. Still, it was fun to watch them pop as they flew out of the wands, leaving frozen skins that dropped to the ground. If we waited too long, the bubble solution froze in the wand, creating a translucent pane that we could poke with our fingers.

Bubbles, Dr. Castellini said, are really a “water and soap sandwich,” with soap encasing a layer of water. In warmer weather, the air inside the bubble expands as it warms, popping the bubble before it gets far. But in cold weather, the water sandwiched inside the soap has a chance to freeze before the bubble pops.

Dr. Kennedy suggested experimenting with different solutions to create the longest-lasting bubbles. Many people add glycerin, which gives the bubble strength, he said.

This trick resurfaces during nearly every cold snap, along with the inevitable safety warnings (to riff off Jim Croce, don’t throw it into the wind).

“The cool thing about water is that it can exist in liquid, solid and gas states all at the same time,” Dr. Castellini said. By throwing boiling water into frigid air, she said, “you’re manipulating that transition.” Because cold air can’t absorb water the way warm air can, the water that is thrown has to go somewhere — so it freezes in tiny droplets and falls to the ground in a dramatic cloud.

The experiment works best with extremely cold air, and we certainly had that on Wednesday. We repeated the experiment four times — throwing about a half of a cup of boiling water out of a steel travel mug — and each time, the water dissipated in a billowing puff of ice crystals.

Given the demand for Sprite slushies, I had saved our other sugar-laden experiment for last.

Several websites describe a simple recipe for maple syrup taffy. Pack snow into a pan and place it in the freezer. Heat maple syrup to about 240 degrees Fahrenheit, checking with a candy thermometer. Pour the syrup over the snow, where it will harden into a chewy taffy.

The hypothesis: That pouring boiling maple syrup on cold, cold snow would make taffy.CreditDanielle Scruggs for The New York Times

Our syrup boiled over when it reached about 220 degrees, preventing us from heating it to the right temperature. By now, the children had ripped their blankets from their beds, fashioned them into capes, and were begging for iPad time. I poured the syrup over the snow, and the hot liquid turned everything into a slushy mess. No taffy in sight.

Use a larger pot next time, our science consultants suggested, and cook the syrup more slowly.

There’s still time to try again, I suppose. The high on Thursday is expected to be just slightly warmer, at minus 1 degree, and school is still canceled.

Not all experiments turn out as planned.

“But that’s really the fun of science, is that you didn’t get the results you expect,” Dr. Kennedy said. “You start asking questions about why didn’t I get what I thought?”

“At the heart of science are questions,” he said, “not facts.”

What’s Going On in This Graph? | Feb. 6, 2019

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What’s Going On in This Graph? | Feb. 6, 2019

1. The graph above breaks down how we consumed music in 2018 by genre. How do traditional sales (defined as sales and radio play) compare to traditional sales combined with streaming? The chart below provides additional relevant information. Both originally appeared elsewhere on NYTimes.com.

After looking closely at the graph and chart above, think about these three questions:

• What do you notice?
• What do you wonder?
What are you curious about that comes from what you notice in the graphs?
• What might be going on in this graph?
Write a catchy headline that captures the graph’s main idea. If your headline makes a claim, tell us what you noticed that supports your claim.

The questions are intended to build on one another, so try to answer them in order. Start with “I notice,” then “I wonder,” and end with “The story this graph is telling is ….” and a catchy headline.

2. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment. Teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say, or they can have their students use this same activity on Desmos.)

3. After you have posted, read what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting a comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.

On Wednesday, Feb. 6, our collaborator, the American Statistical Association, will facilitate this discussion from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern Time to help students’ understanding go deeper. You might use their responses as models for your own.

4. On the afternoon of Thursday, Feb. 7, we will reveal more information about the graph at the bottom of this post. Students, we encourage you to post an additional comment after reading the reveal. How do the original New York Times article and the moderators’ comments help you see the graph differently? Try to incorporate the statistical terms defined in the Stat Nuggets in your response.

_________

• Read our introductory post, which includes information about using the “Notice and Wonder” teaching strategy.
• Learn about how and why other teachers are using this feature, and use the 2018-19 “What’s Going On in This Graph?” calendar to plan ahead for the 25 Wednesday releases.
• Go to the A.S.A. K-12 website, which includes This is Statistics, resources, professional development, student competitions, curriculum, courses and careers.

Rescue Pets

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Rescue Pets

Do you know anyone who has a pet acquired from an animal rescue organization, like the Humane Society? What is this pet like? How has having it impacted the lives of those this animal lives with?

Tell us in the comments, then read a related Opinion essay about “The Blessing of a Rescue Dog.”

Find many more ways to use our Picture Prompt feature in this lesson plan.

Word + Quiz: upstage

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Word + Quiz: <strong></strong>upstage

Note: Our Sixth Annual 15-Second Vocabulary Video Challenge is underway. It will run until Feb. 18.

adverb: at or toward the rear of the stage

verb: steal the show, draw attention to oneself away from someone else

verb: move upstage, forcing the other actors to turn away from the audience

verb: treat snobbishly, put in one’s place

noun: the rear part of the stage

adjective: of the back half of a stage

adjective: remote in manner

_________

The word upstage has appeared in 100 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Oct. 11 in “‘The Haunting of Hill House,’ on Netflix, Is a Family Drama With Scares” by Jason Zinoman:

Shirley Jackson was a writer who understood that good scares come to those who wait, but she also knew how to get to the point.

Her classic 1959 novella “The Haunting of Hill House” begins with the greatest opening paragraph in the history of horror, describing the doomed mansion from the title, curiously, as insane, before ending with this ominous phrase: “whatever walked there, walked alone.”

…. Jan De Bont’s 1999 remake, also titled “The Haunting,” indulged in computer-generated effects, which partly accounts for its critically reviled reputation. But the movie makes a credible argument for the scariest element of Jackson’s story: Hill House itself. De Bont painstakingly lingers on its creepy statues, iron gates and precarious spiral staircase, and the ornate and wonderfully eccentric design upstages the actors in almost every scene.

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