Hello everyone,

Thanks so much for joining this discussion! I see it as a very important one in education because, as much as we strive to help students in our classrooms, chances are that they will have difficulty taking knowledge from our classes and applying it once they move on to another class or graduate. As Perkins and Solomon (1988) explain, research has shown that "a great deal of the knowledge students acquire is 'inert' or 'passive.' The knowledge shows up when students respond to direct probes, such as multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank quizzes. However, students do not transfer the knowledge to problem-solving contexts where they have to think about new situations" (p. 23).

Of course, this isn't a flaw on the part of our learners. Instead, it is because the human brain is wired to learn things in a particular context. Take something out of context and the brain has difficulty remembering and applying what it has learned. Here's a case in point from my own experience: I take great care to memorize the names of all my students, even though I teach the large ground sections of 90 students each. I can do it well enough to remember who they are when they come to see me during office hours, and during any class period I can call on any student without referencing my notes or their name tags. (This takes me almost half the semester to accomplish, but I can do it for about 340 students.) If I finish fall classes with students' names fully memorized, I can still remember the names of students I had when I have them again in the spring. However, two weeks into the spring 2017 semester a student from the previous fall, who was not enrolled in my spring class, saw me on campus and came to talk to me. I could not remember his face or his name. And it's because he and I were outside the context in which I learned his name.

Think, then, about the implications of that kind of effort. Just as I put a lot of effort into memorizing student names, we and our students put a lot of effort into their classroom learning: we craft careful lesson plans and use CATs and SETs during class while they work diligently to write papers and pass exams.   But even with all that effort, chances are they cannot apply their newfound knowledge once they leave our class. And all of this is really important because we want to give students the best educational experience we can. Just as our president Brian Mueller has stated, Grand Canyon University is committed to producing global citizens, critical thinkers, effective communicators and responsible leaders (Grand Canyon University, 2017). Thus, we want to help them be successful in our classes, but we also want them to apply that knowledge outside our classrooms. The purpose of this discussion is to help make that happen.

As our discussion progresses, I'll share research on learning transfer, as appropriate, to promote discussion. In the meantime, perhaps we can start with this question:

As noted above, I experienced difficulty transferring knowledge from one context to another when a former student approached me on campus (and not in our classroom) to say "hello." When have you experienced (or witnessed someone else experience) difficulty transferring knowledge from one context to another?

References:

Grand Canyon University. (2017). University snapshot. Retrieved from https://www.gcu.edu/about-gcu/university-snapshot.php

Perkins, D. N., & Salomon, G. (1989). Are cognitive skills context-bound? Educational Researcher, 18(1), 16-25.

Tom, It is very interesting that you should bring up this topic because in recent classes several students have told me how they have used what was discussed in the class in the same week as the discussion. In one class we were talking about various counseling interventions and the research was to support these counseling interventions. The student said she had decided to show a movie to one of her clients to help the client work through the transitions needed if they were to be moved another family in a different state. The student reported that the client was very excited to watch the video which created a dynamic conversation between the student and her client.I pointed out to the student that there is considerable research to support the use of movies in counseling. Here is an interesting article on this topic: http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/features/movie-therapy-using-movies-for-mental-health#1

In a more recent class, a student reported that she used the assignment in the Discussion Question to address her client's search for a job (This is the master-level Career Counseling class.). The assignment asked the student to familiarize themselves with the O*Net career assessment tool. The student used the same website to assist her client.

Ron

Hi Mark,

Thanks so much for responding! I appreciate your insights from your own class, and success stories from your students is encouraging.

I'd like to go back to Perkins and Solomon (1988) for a moment because they define transfer as something that "goes beyond ordiniary learning in that the skill or knowledge in question has to travel to a new context" (p. 22).  They use examples such as learning to drive a car and then transferring that to trucks (which are very similar but still requires that the learner adapt some skills) or from "lawyers to summer" (which is a very baffling example until one understands that Perkins and Salomon explain that transfer can also involve extracting abstract principles from one context and applying them to  a very different context). The key to transfer is that there is a gap significant enough between contexts to require adjustment and re-application of learned knowledge and skills.

Additionally, Perkins and Salomon (1988) make a distinction between the degree of gap when they explain the difference between "low road" and "high road" transfer (p. 25). In the case of transfer from driving cars to driving trucks, some arguably minor adjustments need to be made, which would constitute low road transfer.  "High road" transfer involves significant and often non-intuitive adjustments that can sometimes be pretty drastic (as from "lawyers" to "summer). We might also think of this on a continuum: the more one must adjust between contexts, the more transfer moves from "low" to "high."

In your case, to what extent do you see the examples from your students as instances of transfer? For example: is there a gap one needs to overcome (especially in your second case)? And to what extent are these examples of "low" or "high" transfer?

Best,

Tom

Reference

Perkins, D. & Salomon, G. (1988). Teaching for transfer. Educational Leadership.  (I apologize--I need to go back and find the complete reference. This one is in the GCU library, so I'll see if I can find a permalink.)

Hi Ron, 

Thanks for the movie reference.

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the reference about transfer.  What do you believe are the best techniques to get the students engaged in the conversations in the discussion forums?

Linda

Hi Tom, 

I love this topic on the transfer of learning, in nursing, we tend to call this, the application  of knowledge to learning. We accomplish this  through Bloom' s taxonomy,  we start off at the lowest level (knowledge) and build up so that they can apply the knowledge to the higher level through critical thinking, reasoning, and judgement. Hope I am not off base with your topic Tom. This allows for interactive feedback in the discussion forum for a reciprocal exchange of knowledge.

Dr. Smith

I agree there may not be a direct transfer of knowledge based on specifics learned in a class but the knowledge is still there and can be applied out of context. During our grade school, high school and college years some or all of us  were exposed to multiplication tables, geometry, trigonometry, chemistry, algebra and various other mathematical concepts. Most of us do not apply all  those principles to what we are about on a day by day basis. However, we do use the concepts in one form or another subconsciously. My point is the learning and concepts are there. If the concepts are not needed they do not disappear they are stored in the brain and can be rekindled with a refresher course.  I suspect that if each of us asked ourselves what we apply and use on a daily basis  from what we learned in our educational quest the answer would be closer to 20% than 50%. The exposure to that knowledge is what makes us the person we are today. 

Tom, You refer to Mark in your response. I am not seeing the original post by Mark. 

I have not read the article by Perkins and Salomon. I think there are two distinct issues here related to "transfer of knowledge." The first issue is the transfer of the critical thinking involved in making application of the knowledge. This is illustrated in my example of the student who showed a movie to her client. We had not talked about picking movies for clients; we talked about how research could be applied to the counseling practice. The student applied this to her context. We are teaching students to become a "scientist-practioner" per CACREP standards.

The second issue is the the transfer of the actual knowledge in the class. This is illustrated by my second example of the student who learned about the O*Net program in the class and then used the same program with her client.

One of the activities I enjoy doing in my downtime is serving as a volunteer teaching assistant for some free online courses, often referred to as MOOCs. One of those courses is on the topic of learning how to learn. Some people look at me a little strangely and think something like "Take a class to learn how to learn? We know how to learn." It's the same sort of look I get when I read Mortimor Adler's book titled How to Read a Book. Is there a right and wrong way to read a book? Yes, it depends on the genre and the reason why you are reading it. Are there good and not-so-good ways to learn? Yes. 

The main goal of the course is to teach people how to learn effectively so that what they learn not only sticks with them, but then is also transferrable to other contexts. It covers such areas as focused and diffused thinking, spaced learning, how sleep and exercise help learning, how to take notes, how to quiz yourself, interleaving, etc. (I could go on, but I won't). 

Using the example by the facilitator of this thread, it's not a bad or negative thing to temporarily forget someone's name. When you meet the person in a different context and have a difficult time recalling their name, the work of mentallly retrieving that information helps better solidify that knowledge for you. That is one of the benefits of no-stakes practice quizzing that takes place prior to a graded test or quiz. 

It really boils down to how a person learns something in the first place. Students who cram for tests/quizzes and get little sleep the night before are less likely to be able to transfer their learning later on siimply because they did not learn the information well in the first place for a variety of reasons.

Speaking of building a bridge to students, I make it a practice to go around the class as it gathers, I introduce myself and shake the hand of the student as I do this. I do this in my classes as well as in those I substitute. 

Students have told me that I am the first instructor in their college experience to do this.

Thoughts?

Thanks so much for your responses, everyone! 

Ron: I'm so sorry I called you Mark. I thought I was looking at your message when I went back to find your name, but I must have made a mistake. 

Hi all,

Once again, I appreciate your thought-provoking responses. I'll see if I can respond to a few of them tonight.

I'd like to go back to Linda's question about facilitating learning for transfer while working on discussion questions with students. A bit of background in cognitive psychology might help:

One problem that students face as they learn is making a distinction between "deep structure" problem solving and "surface structure" problem solving. A student new to learning to calculate surface area, for example, would have difficulty applying it across contexts at the beginning. Daniel T. Willingham (2009) explains it this way: if a student learns to calculate the surface area of a table, he or she would find it difficult to calculate the surface area of a soccer field, even though both problems are essentially the same. As he tells it, calculating the surface area of a table and a soccer field share the same "deep" structure, but they have different surface structures. A student without enough practice in calculating the surface area of something would only recognize the surface structure (the type of thing they are looking at) and not the deep structure (the mathematical formula for calculating surface area).

Thus, one important key to knowledge transfer is to provide students with a variety of examples so they can practice understanding the underlying principle and become adept at applying it in various ways.

I have an example from my own discipline that I can share a bit later tonight. Can you think of any "deep structure" problem solving skills that you would want your students to use?  Ron's example of a student applying theory by using a movie with her client seems like one.

Best,

Tom

Reference:

Wilingham, D. T. (2009). Why don't students like school? New York: Wiley Publishers.

Hello everyone,

As we continue this discussion, I think it may be useful to name some representative examples of content we teach as a way to develop our discussions in this forum. In my own case, I'm going to choose resemblance arguments (a type of argument that relies on comparisons) because they can be a robust tool for writing. In my case, being able to recognize and develop resemblance arguments can help students meet a variety of course objectives in a variety of courses I teach in the Professional Writing program here at GCU. In other words, it seems to fit the definition of a generalizable principle that Perkins and Salamon (1988) discuss--a generalization that can be applied to a variety of contexts.

One of the reasons why I'm choosing resemblance arguments is because they are a type of "deep structure" knowledge that students might recognize in my classroom but will not recognize elsewhere (unless I use teaching for transfer techniques we can also discuss as the discussion moves forward). Just as a novice math student might not immediately see how calculating the surface area of a table and a soccer field have the same "deep structure," writing students wouldn't be able to recognize resemblance arguments outside of the topic they use them for in my classes.

A bit of background: Resemblance arguments are one of several types of argument that comprise the stasis theory. In my discipline, a "stasis" is a "stopping point" in an argument--in the sense that different parties disagree about something and have to "stop" to work out their disagreement. There are several stases: category, definition, cause/effect, resemblance, evaluation, ethics, and proposal. Each of these names a point of contention that parties to an argument may have; they may disagree about what something means (a definition), what causes and effects are (causal), and so on. While the stasis theory has historically consisted of several iterations, the one I have named above comes from John Ramage (2006).

Resemblance arguments are disagreements (or potential disagreements) about whether one thing is like another. In other words, arguments at this stasis are based on comparisons. As with any argument, these can be quite subtle and sometimes implicit, but at other times they can be very explicit. And they are very common. Think about a literature review in an empirical research article. If the author contextualizes his or her study in a larger body of research and identifies a gap that the research will fill, that author is implicitly saying that his or her study is similar to or different from some of the other studies. At the same time, resemblance arguments can be very overt and obvious: think about political discussions of the Great Recession and how much it was like or not like past financial crises (such as the Great Depression in the 1930s or the dot com bust in the early 2000s).

In your own teaching practice and in your content areas, what are some of your teaching goals? What are some "deep structure" problem solving skills that help students achieve your teaching goals?

Perkins, D. N., & Salomon, G. (1989). Are cognitive skills context-bound? Educational Researcher, 18(1), 16-25.

Ramage, J. (2006). Rhetoric: a user's guide. New York: Pearson

Tom I appreciate this topic of Transferring of Learning as I am always looking for ways to build instruction materials to help my students take it to the real world.  Because really if we don't design for transfer why design instruction at all?  

I teach curriculum class online for the College of Education which is so important for future teachers.  I also evaluate student teachers and I find many of them don't know how to develop curriculum units.  I remind them of their SED 455 class and the common response is, "I didn't think teachers actually created curriculum units so I didn't really pay attention".  Between the discussions, teacher observations and the assignments I try to instill the importance of taking this knowledge to their student teaching.      

Brenda's post on how we actually learn is an important concept as it is related to instructional design models.  I share this article by Brandon (2004) with my students on the main perspectives on designing instruction.  Although based on e-learning I think should be applied for all classrooms and all age groups.

Cindy

Brandon, B. (June 1, 2004). How do people learn? Some new ideas for e-learning designers. Learning Solutions Magazine. Retrieved from  https://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/301/how-do-people-learn-some-new-ideas-for-e-learning-designers

Very good information here. I'm still sorting through responses but wanted to join  the discussion. I think that there is a great degree of personalization on retention as well. Am what I learning something that I am truly interested in leaning or is it to survive a test? Context really adds to the mix. It can be a catalyst or a distraction.

Tom, I am frustrated. I see that participants are responding and then there is a long line of attachment repeating the material previously posted. It takes forever to get through the long line of repeated material. I have experienced this in previous CIRT conversations and simply dropped out of the conversation.  

Thoughts?

Tom, Thank you. I am doing some research on problem solving in counseling. I will have a post in a few days.

Ron

Tom,

I am very sorry to hear about this loss in your family. Since it sounds like you want to get back into the discussion eventuallly, I will attempt to respond to a couple of your questions. Please, do not feel like you need to respond right away or at all. 

In the course I have been assigned, there is one DQ (prepopulated on LoudCloud) that asks students to identify one universal absolute, regardless of time or place. A lot of them really struggle with this question and want to say that there are no absolutes or that it is wrong for something to be an absolute. In the midst of our discussion, or sometimes as a wrap-up to it, I point to GCU's Ethical Positions Statement, so they can see a practical example of how GCU explains some of the absolutes they hold to and why. I ask them to identify some of the absolutes in that statement. 

Regarding metacognition, I wish that, as an online instructor, I was given data about students' activity in the online classroom. A Learning Management System has the potential to collect a lot of data, but if teachers can't or don't see it, we are in the dark sometimes about how to better help our students. If we could see the data on which pages they click, how long they spend reading the documents/announcements, if they download the add-ons I include, if they even look at their grade, etc. then it would be very helpful to instructors as they try to help their students learn how to learn.

I think things with the LoudCloud system could be improved, so that students and instructors receive e-mail notification of new comments/questions, submission of assignments, and posting of grades rather than having to log in just to see if there is something new. We are in the era of online education and using technology in the classrooms, but I feel we are underutilizing how the data from that technology can help our teaching and, therefore, help our students. For examples, here is the URL of a video that I recently watched.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fFVBWFSU60&list=PLeL3XURmMy6D0ZnG9jkuz62Gz-9eCbznY&utm_content=buffer65b25&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Excellent comments Brenda regarding finding a way to get a feel fro what the online students are really doing. I agree it would be great information to have and would help an instructor direct the DQ forums.

What would you suggest for someone like me who teachings online only?    I recognize names from various classes, but online, we do not necessary have a face to go with a name.

Hi everyone,

I'd like to take the opportunity this weekend to begin addressing the second question I posed earlier:

"2. In what ways would you provide what Perkins and Salomon call "bridging" or "hugging"?  (These are terms they use to describe high-road and low-road transfer.)"

To begin, I'll relate Perkins and Salomon's definitions of bridging and hugging: You might remember a brief synopsis of two types of transfer that Perkins and Salomon identify: "high-road" transfer and "low-road" transfer.  High road transfer is transfer of skills or applied knowledge across contexts or problems that are seemingly unrelated, whereas low-road transfer is transfer across contexts that seem closely related. To use Perkins and Salomon's words, "low road transfer reflects the automatic triggering of well-practiced routines in circumstances where there is considerable perceptual similarity to the original learning context," while high road transfer "depends on deliberate mindful abstraction of skill or knowledge from one context for application in another" (p. 25). These are where "bridging" and "hugging" come in. Bridging is an attempt by the teacher to foster high-road transfer, whereas hugging is an attempt to foster low-road transfer. In bridging, an instructor must mediate the process of abstraction necessary for high road transfer and help students apply the abstract knowledge to different contexts. In "hugging," a teacher creates the conditions of low road transfer by contextualizing a problem in a way that is directly applicable for the student (p. 28). An example Perkins and Salomon give for hugging is teaching biology and asking students to apply their knowledge to an ecological problem.

In my own case of resemblance arguments, I would argue that they are an abstract principle related to high-road transfer, and thus I often need to use techniques for bridging. I do this by bringing in a wide variety of examples of resemblance arguments and analyzing them with students. The examples come from a wide range of subjects and consist of a range of approaches to resemblance arguments.

In your own examples from your teaching, do you see yourself "bridging" more or "hugging" more?

Best,

Tom  

Reference

Perkins, D. N. & Salomon, G. (1988). Teaching for transfer. Educational Leadership, 46(1), 22-32. (Permalink: https://lopes.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=8524829&site=ehost-live&scope=site)

No two students are alike or learn the same way. Your example of the medical diagnosis applies to student for that very reason.

Hi everyone,

It may be useful to discuss techniques for practice (either for the classroom or for students to do on their own):

Without experience, a learner may have great difficulty applying a concept, procedure, or skill learned in a classroom to a problem outside that same classroom. As a response to that problem, Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham (2013) have attempted to winnow learning techniques that seem most broadly applicable to help facilitate not just the acquisition of factual knowledge, but also comprehension, application, and transfer (p. 7). Research also suggests that that reviewing and re-practicing material can have strong effects on future performance: retrieval practice, distributed practice across time, and successive practice with repetition in a short amount of time all helped learners perform better later (Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013; Rawson, Dunlosky, & Sciartelli, 2013). All of these techniques involve recall and re-application over time, and these (and other studies) consistently show that this type of review is effective in helping students retain learning.

I think the article by Dunlosky et al. is available freely online, but I'm not sure. I was able to find it through a Google search on the Sage Publications web site, and I'm able to retrieve it without my GCU library credentials. You may be able to find it at this link, and the full citation is below:  http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/psia/14/1

If you look at Dunlosky et al. (2013), you'll see a list of practice and review techniques that they have evaluated.  Which ones do you think would be most useful in your classroom, and why?  Which ones might work best with some of the skills you are teaching?

Best,
Tom

References

Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, J., Nathan, M.J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4-58.

Rawson, K. A., Dunlosky, J., & Sciartelli, S. M. (2013). The power of successive relearning: improving performance on course exams and long-term retention. Educational Psychology Review, 25, 523-548. DOI 10.1007/s10648-013-9240-4

Hi all,

At this point in our discussion, we've been touching on several important things that need to happen with students if they are to transfer their learning to contexts beyond our classroom. 

Once they have been introduced to a skill and have become familiar with its "deep structure," deliberate and distributed practice might arguably be one of the more important tools we can use to help them internalize their learning. 

As I first read through the literature on practice, I was somewhat surprised at the results of studies that have tried to pinpoint how much practice is beneficial and how often.

It's already a given that cramming (or practicing a lot in a short period of time) can be unproductive. But what do you think an appropriate amount of practice is, especially over longer periods of time? Perhaps we can go back through some of the references I've provided to discuss research findings.

Best,

Tom

Hi everyone,

For the last of our original set of questions, let's turn to metacognition. Metacognition is the ability to think about our own thinking, which makes it an important factor in learning transfer. If students are in the habit of thinking about and evaluating their own work, they are more likely to be successful as they adapt learning from the classroom to new contexts. The work of Scott and Levy (2013) is very helpful in providing a definition of metacognition because it includes 5 components: knowledge of cognition, planning, monitoring, regulation and control, and evaluation. In other words, learners need to be aware of their own thinking processes so that they can then evaluate and adjust their performance accordingly.

Gorzelsky et al. (2016) have adapted Scott and Levy's taxonomy for writing, and there may be some work about metacognition available in other fields.

To my mind, one might help a learner develop metacognitive awareness by asking the right kinds of questions during informal classroom assessment or even through student engagement techniques (two really important teaching strategies we emphasize at GCU).

Thus, I've got a few questions we can work on to further our discussion about metacognition:

Can you find some literature about metacognition in your own discipline? (I might be able to provide some for disciplines other than my own--I need to go back and look.)

What CATs or SETs can you think of that apply to your own classrooms and that emphasize Scott and Levy's 5 components of knowledge of cognition, planning, monitoring, regulation and control, and evaluation?

Best,

Tom

References

Gorzelsky, G., Driscoll, D. L., Paszek, J., Jones, E., & Hayes, C. (2016). Cultivating constructive metacognition: A new taxonomy for writing studies. In Anson, C. & Moore, J. L. (Eds.), Critical Transitions, pp. 217-249. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado.

Scott, B. M., & Levy, M. G. (2013). Metacognition: Examining the components of a fuzzy concept. Educational Research, 2(2), 120-131.

Hi all,

As I was reflecting on my own teaching, I thought of a debate I've had with myself for a few years now.

One side of my debate is that the writing practices I teach in my classrooms (like the resemblance arguments) will only help students in the future if they have a conscious working knowledge of them. In other words, I would need to do everything I can to help them explicitly remember what resemblance arguments are and how to do them so that they can apply them consciously in the future. And without that conscious knowledge, they would lose any ground they gained in terms of argumentation skills or other skills.

On the other hand, though, I have often assumed that a semester isn't usually enough time to help students remember material for longer periods of time. While I would still use the same classroom strategies to help students remember what they learn so they can apply it later, part of me believes that students' knowledge about things like resemblance arguments becomes more implicit as time goes on. In other words, they might remember them explicitly while they are in my class, but that knowledge becomes more tacit and implicit. While they still might perform better outside my class with resemblance arguments or other material I teach them, they may not be fully conscious of it.

What do you think about these two sides of my inner debate? Which side would you be on, and why?

I agree with your comments regarding the explicit and implicit process. Because my courses do not have writing  assignments I cannot speak to learning based on writing practices but mathematical concepts when applied in the classroom are remembered explicitly. If one thinks of something as basic as the multiplication tables one can easily see how a student can easily perform outside the classroom although they may not be fully conscious of their thought process.

Hi Frank,

Thanks so much for your response!

Because you're a math teacher, I'm wondering what you think about an example I used earlier.  Daniel T. Willingham (2009) explained that mathematical formulas are a type of "deep structure" problem solving, much like the way I've been explaining resemblance arguments here. He wrote, for example, that students who are just learning a mathematical concept might not recognize it in various forms right away. The example he gave was that a student who just learned to find the surface area of a table could be given the same task for a lawn, but would not be able to recognize that the two problems are the same (pp. 97-98).  In other words, our minds tend to look at "surface structure" (the table and the lawn) instead of the "deep structure" (the math behind the problem).

What has your experience as a teacher been on this issue? If you have experienced something similar with your students, how have you addressed it in the classroom?

Reference:

Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why don't students like school? A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. New York: Jossey-Bass/Wiley.

Hi everyone,

Thanks so much for all you've said so far. We still have about a week left! Please feel free to continue our discussion.

Thomas mathematical solutions and the formulas or processes used to get the answers are generally straight forward. I find that math word problems that describe similar situations and therefore should use the same formulas for solutions are confusing to the students. My students are in the college of business and generally are not math majors,  many of them, sad to say  have weak math backgrounds. I find I have to guide them to the correct process through helps I post in announcements so that they will use the correct formulas and processes to do the work. I would agree the mind is a surface structure rather than a deep structure when working outside of the individuals normal realm. However business students who are accounting majors for example will think more deeply than the average business student perhaps in leadership classes because they deal with numbers every day. Accounting student do well with the math business problems relation to SPC or forecast or queuing problems for example.

Tom, I read your post about resemblance arguments. Very interesting. You are wondering if students will remember the arguments after they leave the course. 

My thoughts are along the line of this: am I only teaching content or am I teaching principles of critical thinking? If I am only teaching content (as happens often when "teaching to the test"), then I feel I have to drill the concepts into the minds of the students. There are times when teaching content is important such as when I am teaching Theories of Career Counseling in my PCN 525 class. I want my students to have basic knowledge of the theories so when they hear the words, Super, Holland, self-efficacy and constructivist theory they know what they mean. I ask myself, is teaching the content enough? The students will go to a work world where they will meet clients who are seeking counsel for their work world. Now the client must be able to critically understand how to apply the concepts studied in the class to their clients. Using case studies and my own personal experiences help the client move from content to application. I was reviewed last week by a peer reviewer. She gave me high marks to making the bridge from theory to application.

Those are my thoughts on a Sunday morning.

As an online instructor, I can't tweak or add to the required assignments. I can create or link to supplemental material, but I can't require that students read, view it, or even participate in extras. As I mentioned previously, it would be helpful to online instructors if they had access to some of the student analytics, such as what they are clicking on, downloading, reading, etc., so that we aren't just trying new methods or approaches like throwing darts in the dark and hoping we hit the target. From what I've read, LoudCloud has the capability of tracking and reporting analytic data that can help instructors. Maybe it's just that I'm not aware of how to access that analytic data.

Having access to certain data could help instructors in providing feedback to students regarding how they can learn how to learn and become better learners. Becoming a better learner, in general, facilitates learning transfer.

This morning I read an article (linked to below) that is one instructor's report of what she learned from teaching a MOOC. No, I don't think MOOCs should replace higher ed, but there are things that those of us in higher ed can learn from MOOCs and the whole MOOC movement. What I found interesting in the report was the levels of learning section. 

I write this comment as a challenge to myself to try and pay closer attention to which level each student might be at, in order to provide better feedback that helps students advance to the next level, if necessary. As instructors, we don't want to just be delivering content and we don't want our students to just be consuming content. Without having access to student behavior data, I will need to do this through closer observation and attempts at developing better communication with each student in order to provide targeted feedback to them, so they can more fully understand their own level of expertise in learning and any improvements they might need to work on.

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20170822101005642