Best regards,

RAB

Robert A. Bjork, Editor

PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW
Department of Psychology
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563
(310-825-7028; fax 310-206-5895)

The word "metacognition" arises once again.

"Assessing the Impact of Instructional Technology on Student Achievement," by Lorraine Sherry, Shelley Billig, Daniel Jesse, and Deborah Watson-Acosta, T.H.E. Journal, February 2001, pp. 40-43 --- http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A3297.cfm 

Four separate simplified path analysis models were tested. The first pair addressed process and product outcomes for class motivation, and the second pair addressed school motivation. The statistically significant (p < .05) results were as follows:

• Motivation was related to metacognition. The relationship between class motivation and metacognition was slightly stronger (R = .307, p < the relationship between school motivation and metacognition (R = .282, p < .0001).
• The relationship between metacognition and inquiry learning (Beta = .546, p < .0001) was stronger than the relationship between metacognition and application of skills (Beta = .282, p < .0001).
• The relationship between inquiry learning and the student learning process outcome (Beta = .384, p = .001) was stronger than the relationship between application of skills and the student learning process outcome (Beta = -.055, not significant).
• The relationship between application of skills and the student product outcome (Beta = .371, p = .004) was stronger than the relationship between inquiry learning and the student product outcome (Beta = .063, not significant).

Clearly, correlation does not imply causality. However, when each of these elements was considered as an independent variable, there was a corresponding change in associated dependent variables. For example, there was a significant correlation between motivation and metacognition, indicating that students' enthusiasm for learning with technology may stimulate students' metacognitive (strategic) thinking processes. The significant correlations between motivation, metacognition, inquiry learning, and the student learning process score indicate that motivation may drive increases in the four elements connected by the first path. Similarly, the significant correlations between motivation, metacognition, application of skills, and the student product score indicate that motivation may drive increases in the four elements connected by the second path.

Based on the significant correlations of the two teacher measurements of student achievement with the student survey data, these data validated the evaluation team's extension of the Developing Expertise model to explain increases in student performance as a result of engaging in technology-supported learning activities. Moreover, nearly all students across the project met the standards for both the teacher-created student product assessment and the learning process assessment. This indicates that, in general, the project had a positive impact on student achievement.

Conclusions

These preliminary findings suggest that teachers should emphasize the use of metacognitive skills, application of skills, and inquiry learning as they infuse technology into their respective academic content areas. Moreover, these activities are directly in line with the Vermont Reasoning and Problem Solving Standards, and with similar standards in other states. The ISTE/NETS standards for assessment and evaluation also suggest that teachers:

• Apply technology in assessing student learning of subject matter using a variety of assessment techniques.
• Use technology resources to collect and analyze data, interpret results, and communicate findings to improve instructional practice and maximize student learning.
• Apply multiple evaluation methods to determine students' appropriate use of technology resources for learning, communication and productivity.

Rockman (1998) suggests that "A clear assessment strategy that goes beyond standardized tests enables school leaders, policymakers, and the community to understand the impact of technology on teaching and learning." RMC Research Corporation's extension of the Sternberg model can be used to organize and interpret a variety of student self-perceptions, teacher observations of student learning processes, and teacher-scored student products. It captures the overlapping kinds of expertise that students developed throughout their technology-related activities.

One of the greatest challenges facing the Technology Innovation Challenge Grants and the Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers To Use Technology (PT3) grants is to make a link between educational technology innovations, promising practices for teaching and learning with technology, and increases in student achievement. We believe that this model may be replicable in other educational institutions, including schools, districts, institutions of higher learning, and grant-funded initiatives. However, to use this model, participating teachers must be able to clearly identify the standards they are addressing in their instruction, articulate the specific knowledge and skills that are to be fostered by using technology, carefully observe student behavior in creating and refining their work, and create and benchmark rubrics that they intend to use to evaluate student work.

Appendix 6
Update in February 2003

Accounting Professors in Support of Online Testing That, Among Other Things, Reduces Cheating
These same professors became widely known for their advocacy of self-learning in place of lecturing

"In Support of the E-Test," by Elia Powers, Inside Higher Ed, August 29, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/29/e_test

Critics of testing through the computer often argue that it’s difficult to tell if students are doing their own work. It’s also unclear to some professors whether using the technology is worth their while. A new study makes the argument that giving electronic tests can actually reduce cheating and save faculty time.

Anthony Catanach Jr. and Noah Barsky, both associate professors of accounting at the Villanova School of Business, came to that conclusion after speaking with faculty members and analyzing the responses of more than 100 students at Villanova and Philadelphia University. Both Catanach and Barsky teach a course called Principles of Managerial Accounting that utilizes the WebCT Vista e-learning platform. The professors also surveyed undergraduates at Philadelphia who took tests electronically.

The Villanova course follows a pattern of Monday lecture, Wednesday case assignment, Friday assessment. The first two days require in-person attendance, while students can check in Friday from wherever they are.

“It never used to make sense to me why at business schools you have Friday classes,” Catanach said. “As an instructor it’s frustrating because 30 percent of the class won’t show up, so you have to redo material. We said, how can we make that day not lose its effectiveness?”

The answer, he and Barsky determined, was to make all electronically submitted group work due on Fridays and have that be electronic quiz day. That’s where academic integrity came into play. Since the professors weren’t requiring students to be present to take the exams, they wanted to deter cheating. Catanach said programs like the one he uses mitigate the effectiveness of looking up answers or consulting friends.

In electronic form, questions are given to students in random order so that copying is difficult. Professors can change variables within a problem to make sure that each test is unique while also ensuring a uniform level of difficulty. The programs also measure how much time a student spends on each question, which could signal to an instructor that a student might have slowed to use outside resources. Backtracking on questions generally is not permitted. Catanach said he doesn’t pay much attention to time spent on individual questions. And since he gives his students a narrow time limit to finish their electronic quizzes, consulting outside sources would only lead students to be rushed by the end of the exam, he added.

Forty-five percent of students who took part in the study reported that the electronic testing system reduced the likelihood of their cheating during the course.

Stephen Satris, director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University, said he applauds the use of technology to deter academic dishonesty. Students who take these courses might think twice about copying or plagiarizing on other exams, he said.

“It’s good to see this program working,” Satris said. “It does an end run around cheating.”

The report also makes the case that both faculty and students save time with e-testing. Catanach is up front about the initial time investment: For instructors to make best use of the testing programs, they need to create a “bank” of exam questions and code them by topic, learning objectives and level of difficulty. That way, the program knows how to distribute questions. (He said instructors should budget roughly 10 extra hours per week during the course for this task.)

The payoff, he said, comes later in the term. In the study, professors reported recouping an average of 80 hours by using the e-exams. Faculty don’t have to hand-grade tests (that often being a deterrent for the Friday test, Catanach notes), and graduate students or administrative staff can help prepare the test banks, the report points out.

Since tests are taken from afar, class time can be used for other purposes. Students are less likely to ask about test results during sessions, the study says, because the computer program gives them immediate results and points to pages where they can find out why their answers were incorrect. Satris said this type of system likely dissuades students from grade groveling, because the explanations are all there on the computer. He said it also make sense in other ways.

“I like that professors can truly say, ‘I don’t know what’s going to be on the test. There’s a question bank; it’s out of my control,’ ” he said.

And then there’s the common argument about administrative efficiency: An institution can keep a permanent electronic record of its students.

Survey results showed that Villanova students, who Catanach said were more likely to have their own laptop computers and be familiar with e-technology, responded better to the electronic testing system than did students at Philadelphia, who weren’t as tech savvy. Both Catanach and Satris said the e-testing programs are not likely to excite English and philosophy professors, whose disciplines call for essay questions rather than computer-graded content.

From a testing perspective, Catanach said the programs can be most helpful for faculty with large classes who need to save time on grading. That’s why the programs have proven popular at community colleges in some of the larger states, he said.

“It works for almost anyone who wants to have periodic assessment,” he said. “How much does the midterm and final motivate students to keep up with material? It doesn’t. It motivates cramming. This is a tool to help students keep up with the material.”

August 29, 2007 reply from Stokes, Len [stokes@SIENA.EDU]

I am also a strong proponent of active learning strategies. I have the luxury of a small class size. Usually fewer than 30 so I can adapt my classes to student interaction and can have periodic assessment opportunities as it fits the flow of materials rather than the calendar. I still think a push toward smaller classes with more faculty face time is better than computer tests. One lecture and one case day does not mean active learning. It is better than no case days but it is still a lecture day. I don’t have real lecture days every day involves some interactive material from the students.

While I admit I can’t pick up all trends in grading the tests, but I do pick up a lot of things so I have tendency to have a high proportion of essays and small problems. I then try to address common errors in class and also can look at my approach to teaching the material.

Len

Bob Jensen attempts to make a case that self learning is more effective for metacognitive reasons --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
This document features the research of Tony Catanach, David Croll, Bob Grinaker, and  Noah Barsky.

Bob Jensen's threads on "Online Education Effectiveness and Testing" are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus

Bob Jensen's threads on the myths of online education are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Myths

Accounting Professors in Support of Online Testing That, Among Other Things, Reduces Cheating
These same professors became widely known for their advocacy of self-learning in place of lecturing

"In Support of the E-Test," by Elia Powers, Inside Higher Ed, August 29, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/29/e_test

Critics of testing through the computer often argue that it’s difficult to tell if students are doing their own work. It’s also unclear to some professors whether using the technology is worth their while. A new study makes the argument that giving electronic tests can actually reduce cheating and save faculty time.

Anthony Catanach Jr. and Noah Barsky, both associate professors of accounting at the Villanova School of Business, came to that conclusion after speaking with faculty members and analyzing the responses of more than 100 students at Villanova and Philadelphia University. Both Catanach and Barsky teach a course called Principles of Managerial Accounting that utilizes the WebCT Vista e-learning platform. The professors also surveyed undergraduates at Philadelphia who took tests electronically.

The Villanova course follows a pattern of Monday lecture, Wednesday case assignment, Friday assessment. The first two days require in-person attendance, while students can check in Friday from wherever they are.

“It never used to make sense to me why at business schools you have Friday classes,” Catanach said. “As an instructor it’s frustrating because 30 percent of the class won’t show up, so you have to redo material. We said, how can we make that day not lose its effectiveness?”

The answer, he and Barsky determined, was to make all electronically submitted group work due on Fridays and have that be electronic quiz day. That’s where academic integrity came into play. Since the professors weren’t requiring students to be present to take the exams, they wanted to deter cheating. Catanach said programs like the one he uses mitigate the effectiveness of looking up answers or consulting friends.

In electronic form, questions are given to students in random order so that copying is difficult. Professors can change variables within a problem to make sure that each test is unique while also ensuring a uniform level of difficulty. The programs also measure how much time a student spends on each question, which could signal to an instructor that a student might have slowed to use outside resources. Backtracking on questions generally is not permitted. Catanach said he doesn’t pay much attention to time spent on individual questions. And since he gives his students a narrow time limit to finish their electronic quizzes, consulting outside sources would only lead students to be rushed by the end of the exam, he added.

Forty-five percent of students who took part in the study reported that the electronic testing system reduced the likelihood of their cheating during the course.

Stephen Satris, director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University, said he applauds the use of technology to deter academic dishonesty. Students who take these courses might think twice about copying or plagiarizing on other exams, he said.

“It’s good to see this program working,” Satris said. “It does an end run around cheating.”

The report also makes the case that both faculty and students save time with e-testing. Catanach is up front about the initial time investment: For instructors to make best use of the testing programs, they need to create a “bank” of exam questions and code them by topic, learning objectives and level of difficulty. That way, the program knows how to distribute questions. (He said instructors should budget roughly 10 extra hours per week during the course for this task.)

The payoff, he said, comes later in the term. In the study, professors reported recouping an average of 80 hours by using the e-exams. Faculty don’t have to hand-grade tests (that often being a deterrent for the Friday test, Catanach notes), and graduate students or administrative staff can help prepare the test banks, the report points out.

Since tests are taken from afar, class time can be used for other purposes. Students are less likely to ask about test results during sessions, the study says, because the computer program gives them immediate results and points to pages where they can find out why their answers were incorrect. Satris said this type of system likely dissuades students from grade groveling, because the explanations are all there on the computer. He said it also make sense in other ways.

“I like that professors can truly say, ‘I don’t know what’s going to be on the test. There’s a question bank; it’s out of my control,’ ” he said.

And then there’s the common argument about administrative efficiency: An institution can keep a permanent electronic record of its students.

Survey results showed that Villanova students, who Catanach said were more likely to have their own laptop computers and be familiar with e-technology, responded better to the electronic testing system than did students at Philadelphia, who weren’t as tech savvy. Both Catanach and Satris said the e-testing programs are not likely to excite English and philosophy professors, whose disciplines call for essay questions rather than computer-graded content.

From a testing perspective, Catanach said the programs can be most helpful for faculty with large classes who need to save time on grading. That’s why the programs have proven popular at community colleges in some of the larger states, he said.

“It works for almost anyone who wants to have periodic assessment,” he said. “How much does the midterm and final motivate students to keep up with material? It doesn’t. It motivates cramming. This is a tool to help students keep up with the material.”

August 29, 2007 reply from Stokes, Len [stokes@SIENA.EDU]

I am also a strong proponent of active learning strategies. I have the luxury of a small class size. Usually fewer than 30 so I can adapt my classes to student interaction and can have periodic assessment opportunities as it fits the flow of materials rather than the calendar. I still think a push toward smaller classes with more faculty face time is better than computer tests. One lecture and one case day does not mean active learning. It is better than no case days but it is still a lecture day. I don’t have real lecture days every day involves some interactive material from the students.

While I admit I can’t pick up all trends in grading the tests, but I do pick up a lot of things so I have tendency to have a high proportion of essays and small problems. I then try to address common errors in class and also can look at my approach to teaching the material.

Len

Bob Jensen attempts to make a case that self learning is more effective for metacognitive reasons --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
This document features the research of Tony Catanach, David Croll, Bob Grinaker, and  Noah Barsky.

Bob Jensen's threads on "Online Education Effectiveness and Testing" are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus

Bob Jensen's threads on the myths of online education are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Myths

Hi Yvonne,

For what it is worth, my advice to new faculty is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm 

One thing to remember is that the employers of our students (especially the public accounting firms) are very unhappy with our lecture/drill pedagogy at the introductory and intermediate levels. They believe that such pedagogy turns away top students, especially creative and conceptualizing students. Employers  believe that lecture/drill pedagogy attracts savant-like memorizers who can recite their lessons book and verse but have few creative talents and poor prospects for becoming leaders. The large accounting firms believed this so strongly that they donated several million dollars to the American Accounting Association for the purpose of motivating new pedagogy experimentation. This led to the Accounting Change Commission (AECC) and the mixed-outcome experiments that followed. See http://accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aaa/facdev/aecc.htm 

The easiest pedagogy for faculty is lecturing, and it is appealing to busy faculty who do not have time for students outside the classroom. When lecturing to large classes it is even easier because you don't have to get to know the students and have a great excuse for using multiple choice examinations and graduate student teaching assistants. I always remember an economics professor at Michigan State University who said that when teaching basic economics it did not matter whether he had a live class of 300 students or a televised class of 3,000 students. His full-time teaching load was three hours per week in front of a TV camera. He was a very good lecturer and truly loved his three-hour per week job!

Lecturing appeals to faculty because it often leads to the highest teaching evaluations.  Students love faculty who spoon feed and make learning seem easy.  It's much easier when mom or dad spoon the pudding out of the jar than when you have to hold your own spoon and/or find your own jar.

An opposite but very effective pedagogy is the AECC (University of Virginia) BAM Pedagogy that entails live classrooms with no lectures. BAM instructors think it is more important for students to learn on their own instead of sitting through spoon-fed learning lectures. I think it takes a special kind of teacher to pull off the astoundingly successful BAM pedagogy. Interestingly, it is often some of our best lecturers who decided to stop lecturing because they experimented with the BAM and found it to be far more effective for long-term memory. The top BAM enthusiasts are Tony Catanach at Villanova University and David Croll at the University of Virginia. Note, however, that most BAM applications have been at the intermediate accounting level. I have my doubts (and I think BAM instructors will agree) that BAM will probably fail at the introductory level. You can read about the BAM pedagogy at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm 

At the introductory level we have what I like to call the Pincus (User Approach) Pedagogy. Karen Pincus is now at the University of Arkansas, but at the time that her first learning experiments were conducted, she taught basic accounting at the University of Southern California. The Pincus Pedagogy is a little like both the BAM and the case method pedagogies. However, instead of having prepared learning cases, the Pincus Pedagogy sends students to on-site field visitations where they observe on-site operations and are then assigned tasks to creatively suggest ways of improving existing accounting, internal control, and information systems. Like the BAM, the Pincus Pedagogy avoids lecturing and classroom drill. Therein lies the controversy. Students and faculty in subsequent courses often complain that the Pincus Pedagogy students do not know the fundamental prerequisites of basic accounting needed for intermediate and advanced-level accounting courses.  Two possible links of interest on the controversial Pincus Pedagogy are as follows:  

• http://www.csupomona.edu/~jis/1997/Hulme.pdf 
  
  
• http://www.usu.edu/account/faculty/nelson/chaos.htm 
  
  

Where the Pincus Pedagogy and the BAM Pedagogy differ lies in subject matter itself and stress on creativity. The BAM focuses on traditional subject matter that is found in such textbooks as intermediate accounting textbooks. The BAM Pedagogy simply requires that students learn any way they want to learn on their own since students remember best what they learned by themselves. The Pincus Pedagogy does not focus on much of the debit and credit "rules" found in most traditional textbooks. Students are required to be more creative at the expense of memorizing the "rules."

The Pincus Pedagogy is motivated by the belief that traditional lecturing/drill pedagogy at the basic accounting and tax levels discourages the best and more-creative students to pursue careers in the accountancy profession. The BAM pedagogy is motivated more by the belief that lecturing is a poor pedagogy for long-term memory of technical details. What is interesting is that the leading proponents of getting away from the lecture/drill pedagogy (i.e., Karen Pincus and Anthony Catenach) were previously two of the very best lecturers in accountancy. If you have ever heard either of them lecture, I think you would agree that you wish all your lecturers had been only half as good. I am certain that both of these exceptional teachers would agree that lecturing is easier than any other alternatives. However, they do not feel that lecturing is the best alternative for top students.

Between lecturing and the BAM Pedagogy, we have case method teaching. Case method teaching is a little like lecturing and a little like the BAM with some instructors providing answers in case wrap ups versus some instructors forcing students to provide all the answers. Master case teachers at Harvard University seldom provide answers even in case wrap ups, and often the cases do not have any known answer-book-type solutions. The best Harvard cases have alternative solutions with success being based upon discovering and defending an alternative solution. Students sometimes interactively discover solutions that the case writers never envisioned. I generally find case teaching difficult at the undergraduate level if students do not yet have the tools and maturity to contribute to case discussions. Interestingly, it may be somewhat easier to use the BAM at the undergraduate level than Harvard-type cases. The reason is that BAM instructors are often dealing with more rule-based subject matter such as intermediate accounting or tax rather than conceptual subject matter such as strategic decision making, business valuation, and financial risk analysis.

The hardest pedagogy today is probably a Socratic pedagogy online with instant messaging communications where an instructor who's on call about 60 hours per week from his or her home. The online instructor monitors the chats and team communications between students in the course at most any time of day or night. Amy Dunbar can tell you about this tedious pedagogy since she's using it for tax courses and will be providing a workshop that tells about how to do it and how not to do it. The next scheduled workshop precedes the AAA Annual Meetings on August 1, 2003 in Hawaii. You can also hear Dr. Dunbar and view her PowerPoint show from a previous workshop at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/02start.htm#2002 

In conclusion, always remember that there is no optimal pedagogy in all circumstances. All learning is circumstantial based upon such key ingredients as student maturity, student motivation, instructor talent, instructor dedication, instructor time, library resources, technology resources, and many other factors that come to bear at each moment in time. And do keep in mind that how you teach may determine what students you keep as majors and what you turn away. 

I tend to agree with the accountancy firms that contend that traditional lecturing probably turns away many of the top students who might otherwise major in accountancy. 

At the same time, I tend to agree with students who contend that they took accounting courses to learn accounting rather than economics, computer engineering, and behavioral science.

Bob Jensen

-----Original Message----- 
From: Lou&Bonnie [mailto:gyp1@EARTHLINK.NET]  
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2003 5:03 PM

I am a beginning accounting instructor (part-time) at a local community college. I am applying for a full-time faculty position, but am having trouble with a question. Methodology in accounting--what works best for a diversified group of individuals. Some students work with accounting, but on a computer and have no understanding of what the information they are entering really means to some individuals who have no accounting experience whatsoever. What is the best methodology to use, lecture, overhead, classroom participation? I am not sure and I would like your feedback. Thank you in advance for your help. 

Yvonne

February 5,, 2003 message from James Borden [james.borden@villanova.edu]

Bob,

I thought you might be interested in another curriculum innovation that is taking place at Villanova, once again involving Tony Catanach, along with Noah Barsky. Noah is one of our young professors at Villanova who is an outstanding teacher, and has been committed to developing the Business Planning Model (BPM) approach to teaching Management Accounting for some time now. If you have any questions about the paper, feel free to contact Noah at noah.barsky@villanova.edu

Thank you for continuing to support the BAM approach to teaching Intermediate as well!

Jim

Note that Noah has a PDF file that he will probably send to you if you request it from him.

February 5, 2003 message from Milt Cohen

-----Original Message----- 
From: Milt Cohen, Accounting Instructor [mailto:uncmlt@JUNO.COM]  
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 9:54 PM 

A thought for the bright minded on this web site, after watching an H & R Block TV commercial where they boast about getting more refunds for taxpayers when they review their prior year's tax forms, do you think that if they find that the taxpayer OWES money for a prior year and......... if the taxpayer says, "hell no, I won't pay" ............are they obligated to report the short pay (tax owed) to the IRS?

Interesting letter in the current Journal of Accountancy , Feb. 2003 issue on pages 11 and 12, a professor of Accounting at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado, writes about how poorly the current text book used in his college classes do not provide explanation as to how transactions (of businesses) get recorded into the books and records of a business. And that the emphasis is on financial statement analysis. I can't help recalling how I (and my classmates) slaved over work problems in accounting classes in the 1950s. And how I emphasis (in my classes) the bookkeeping procedures. It's hard to realize that college Accounting classes ignore the bookkeeping phase of the profession. Without a bookkeeper, there is no basis for financial statement analysis.

Just a couple of thoughts.

Appendix 7

How the Brain Deals With Information Overload

"Attention Must Be Paid," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, November 26, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/11/26/mclemee 

Actually looking at the e-mail would no doubt have informed me that it was a matter of paying a modest fee to some enterprising soul, probably in the Cayman Islands. Instead, I deleted this message on the basis of the subject line alone, along with a dozen other such communications. Meanwhile, my eyeballs were unwittingly drawn to a video loop of a woman screaming in terror – horrified at high credit card interest rates, which she could reduce via a company that advertises with my e-mail provider.

Then my cell phone emitted a short burst of music, announcing that someone had just left a text message.

All par for the course, of course. (At least I wasn’t driving.) The demands on our attention have now become a matter for professional expertise: An organization for specialists, the Information Overload Research Group, was formally incorporated as a nonprofit this summer and held its first conference in August. A substantial technical literature on interruption now exists. And one recent consideration of the world economic crisis suggests it has been exacerbated by all the data now sloshing around the globe: “We have far too much information today and that impedes our decision-making abilities and throttles our ability to resolve crises.”

The weak link in the information age seems to be our human hard-wiring. So one gathers from The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory (Oxford University Press) by Torkel Klingberg, who is a professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience at the Stockholm Brain Institute. A review of recent research on how attention and memory actually function within our gray matter, it is a work of scientific popularization rather than a handbook on how to minimize the cognitive drain of distraction.

But there may be some advantage to knowing how the systems in our heads actually operate – and it is Klingberg’s contention that, in spite of everything, those systems may actually benefit from the sometimes excessive demands our environments now place on our capacity to process the data flux. The human brain itself has not changed much in either anatomy or volume over the past 40,000 years. So at one level it seems natural that we should experience a cognitive bottleneck in handling the masses of information being hurled at us daily.

To simplify Klingberg’s already pared-down analysis, we can distinguish between two kinds of attention. One is controlled attention: the directed effort to apply one’s concentration to a particular task. The other is stimulus-driven attention, which is an involuntary response to something happening in the environment. (You can tune out the conversations going on around you in a restaurant. But if a waiter drops a tray full of dishes, it is going to impose itself on your awareness.)

But it’s not as if these forms of attention are – as it may seem – different manifestations of the same state of consciousness: researchers have found from tests that the controlled and stimulus-driven attention “seem fairly independent of one another,” says Klingberg, which may mean “that there are different parts of the brain, or different brain processes” involved in them.

Likewise, there is a distinction between the kind of memory that allows you to recall an event from five years ago and a set of information connected with a problem you are trying to solve. Your recollections of yesteryear are part of long-term memory, which can be mysteriously capacious. By contrast, there are definite limitations on how much task-oriented data can be held in your “working memory.” (Evidently there are grounds for debate among researchers over whether or not this is the same as “short-term memory,” but we’ll just stick to Klingberg’s preferred usage.)

As with the forms of attention, the distinction between long-term and working memory corresponds to different processes within the brain, occurring within different parts of its geography. But there is evidence that (as you might expect) working memory and controlled attention are closely related. People who score lower on tests for the ability to retain information in their working memory tend to have more difficulty in focusing attention on a complex task. “It might not come as too much of a surprise,” says Klingberg, “to find that working memory capacity correlates highly with reading comprehension.”

Klingberg reports that a two-year study in his lab showed that it was possible to increase working-memory capacity: “children who had done a certain type of computerized memory task, such as remembering positions in a four-by-four grid and clicking a mouse button, improved at other, noncomputerized types of working memory too.... We had shown that the systems are not static and that the limits of working memory capacity can be stretched.”

Further study suggested that this improvement also corresponded to increased problem-solving skills. Our brains may still have many of the same fundamental limitations as the Cro-Magnon model, but there is also some degree of plasticity in how we can use and develop it.

Which brings us to Klingberg’s most surprising and even counterintuitive suggestion. Multitasking often threatens to overload the working memory. But at the same time, it’s clear that we can actually manage it, at least to some degree – reading a newspaper while walking on a treadmill, for example, and occasionally glancing up at the TV screen to see what’s breaking on CNN.

“There is, fortunately, no research suggesting that exposure to mentally more demanding or challenging situations impairs our powers of concentration,” writes Klingberg. “Indeed, there is much that points to the contrary: it is in situations that push the boundaries of our abilities that we train our brains the most.”

But even if our basic ability to process information is increasing, a growing “discrepancy between demand and capacity” may account for the common sense of losing focus.

“You are very possibly 10 percent better at talking on the phone while erasing spam today than you were three years ago. On the other hand, the number of e-mails you receive per day has probably shot up about 200 percent. There is, therefore, no contradiction between the feeling that your abilities are inadequate and the improvement of those abilities.”

Well, that is some comfort – if not much. It’s been said that the scarcest resource in an information society is not information but attention. Klingberg’s book, interesting as it is, does not leave the reader with any way around that. In any case, a great deal of the “information” (such as my Ph.D. offer this morning) turns out to be noise, rather than anything meaningful. It’s necessary to pay just enough attention to decide not to pay any more attention – a kind of catch-22.

Which is why it sometimes feels like one’s brain is being nibbled by carnivorous gnats. It would be good if Dr. Klingberg and his colleagues would apply themselves to finding a salve. Or better yet, a repellent.

"Better Learning With Sites and Sound," by Andy Guess, Inside Higher Ed, December 3, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/12/03/audio

Students in four graduate courses at West Virginia University worked on and submitted group projects in two different ways, alternating for each assignment: using Microsoft Word to save, track changes, add comments and send files back and forth as e-mail attachments; and sharing files and editing them online using Buzzword. According to the study, the students “were more likely to use graphics, charts, links, etc. in Buzzword because of the ease of inclusion” than in Word, possibly as a function of the interface’s comparative ease of use.

Perhaps more significantly, the study found that they were “more likely to explain more complex concepts using a combination of text and non-text based materials. The majority of participants ... expressed the view that it was easier to express themselves at a higher cognitive level when they could present material using multiple media sources.” They also had higher levels of satisfaction.

Although the study had a small sample size, Ice suggested in an interview that the “multiple forms of sensory input” such as charts, links and graphics not only make the information more understandable to the reader “but apparently ... students are learning more from that process as well"; a process that’s not too different from the wiki editing experience. He is preparing a larger follow-up study with at least six different institutions around the world.

In theory, then, collaborations using Web-based editing tools can potentially boost understanding, at least visually.

But learning doesn’t just occur in the visual realm. Ice co-authored a study, currently under review, that examines how listening to spoken words while also reading at the same time can improve students’ learning experiences. In particular, he and his colleagues attempted a method in which professors record comments on students’ written assignments, which students can then listen to as they read along at corresponding points in the text. They can also record their own responses and continue back and forth in a sort of audio conversation.

While the Web-based collaboration tools are free, Ice’s method makes use of embedded audio features in Adobe Acrobat Pro. If institutions own the software, however, students can listen to the audio (and record their own additions) on the free and commonly used Acrobat Reader. (Adobe provided 60 copies of Acrobat Pro for the study but no additional funding or support.)

The forthcoming paper found that students in the audio study were at least three times more likely to take professors’ comments into account in their final assignments if they were in audio form as opposed to written. What they found, Ice said, was that “students are actually listening to the instructor and reading what they wrote so they have two sensory modes working at the same time,” which could actually improve cognition.

Since the paper was produced, Ice added, additional research has confirmed that the findings are generalizable over many different contexts, such as types of learners and types of institutions.

But a central component of the effect is what the authors call the “asynchronous audio feedback” aspect of the comments: that students can listen to previously recorded audio while they’re reading what it is referring to.

“I’ve tried other methods, too, where you send the students a document and then also send them a [separate] sound file, and the effect is not nearly as strong; as a matter of fact, it’s barely significant when you do that,” Ice said.

Continued in article

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