Roediger and Karpicke - Retrieval practice and effortful learning

Henry L. Roediger (Washington University in St. Louis) and Jeffrey D. Karpicke (Purdue University) have been at the forefront of the research on retrieval practice. For centuries memories were seen as objects to be retrieved but neutral for learning. Few saw that act of retrieval as a learning experience in itself, something that produced learning. They can be said to have put retrieval practice, as a learning strategy, on the map by confirming the efficacy of free recall over rereading, stimulating research in the area.

Testing Effect (Retrieval Practice Effect)

In their Testing-enhanced learning (2006) paper they showed that repeated tests substantially increased retention relative to learners who simply restudied the prose material. Restudying had a better short-term effect but retrieval practice, 2 days and 1 week later showed a significant difference. Roediger et al. (2011) then did a study on text material covering Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China, in the real context of real classes in a real school, a Middle School in Columbia, Illinois. Retrieval tests, only a few minutes long, produced a full grade-level increase on the material that had been subject to retrieval.

The first solid research on the Testing effect was by Abbot (1909), then Gates (1917), who tested children aged 8-16 on short biographies. Some simply re-read the material several times, others were told to look up and silently recite what they had read. The latter, who actively retrieved knowledge, showed better recall. Spitzer (1939) made over 3000 11-12 year olds read 600 word articles then tested students at periods over 2 months. The greater the gap between testing and the original exposure or test, the greater the forgetting. The tests themselves seemed to halt forgetting. 

Tulving (1967) took this further with lists of 36 words, with repeated testing and retrieval. The retrieval led to as much learning as the original act of studying. This shifted the focus away from testing as just assessment to testing as retrieval, as an act of learning in itself and Karpicke and Roedegir’s work in 2006 and 2009. McDaniel (2011) did a further study on science subjects, with 16 year olds, on genetics, evolution and anatomy. Students who used retrieval quizzes scored 92% (A-) compared to 79% for those who did not. More than this, the effect of retrieval lasted longer, when the students were tested eight months later. 

Karpicke and Blunt (2011) also showed that retrieval practice is superior to concept or mind-mapping. Spaced, retrieval practice is even better (Karpicke & Bauernschmidt, 2011). It has been shown to be effective at all levels in education; elementary, middle-school, Universities and in adult medical education.

The work by Kornell (2009) also shows that even unsuccessful testing is better. Retrieval testing gives you better internal feedback and works even when you get few or no correct answers. Testing, even before you have access to the material, as a learning experience, also helps learning. Once again, Huestler and Metcalfe (2012) asked learners what worked best and they were largely wrong.

Illusions of competence

In their 2006 research, Karpicke and Roediger used rereading as the control, as that is what most learners do, see Karpicke, Butler and Roediger (2009), and in doing so uncovered a fascinating supplementary finding. In a survey of 117 students they asked them to list their study strategies, then also choose from a list of set strategies. The majority chose rereading as a strategy with relatively few using self-testing or free recall. They christened this the ‘illusion of competence’. Just as Bjork had done in asking students about practice techniques, they found that students think they will do better by repeated study and not free recall practice, yet the evidence shows the students were wrong. This lack of metacognitive awareness severely limits the ability of learners to learn.

Make It Stick

Make It Stick (2014) by Brown, Roediger and McDaniel takes a wider view. It is the result of over ten years of focused research on 'Applying Cognitive Psychology to Enhance Educational Practice'. It is practical and gives plenty of advice on both how to teach and how to learn, the point being that knowing how to learn is a necessary condition for good teaching.

Researchers like Bjork, Karpicke, Rodeiger and McDaniel claim that most good learning theory is counterintuitive. Most students are misled by teachers and institutions into the wrong strategies for studying; reading, highlighting, underlining and rereading. This feels productive but the evidence suggests it is a largely ineffective strategy for learning. It turns out that we are very poor judges of our own learning. The optimal strategies for learning are in the 'doing' and some of that doing is counterintuitive. We think we are mastering something but this is an illusion of mastery. It is easy to think you’re learning when the going is easy – re-reading, underlining and repetition but it doesn’t work. To learn effectively, you must make the going harder. They also explain why the research is not about rote learning, the charge that is usually levelled against them.

The real force behind successful learning is effortful learning. By effort they mostly mean retrieval practice. Practically, they recommend regular, low-stakes testing for teachers and learners, not ‘teaching to the test’ as summative assessment but regular formative exercises, where recall is stimulated and encouraged. Test little and often – that is what makes effortful learning stick.This is not testing as assessment, it is testing to learn. Interesting research is also presented for the idea that having a go at retrieval, even when you make mistakes and errors, is better than simply getting the exposition. 

They also recommend spaced practice, especially spaced retrieval practice and interleaving and delayed feedback.

Criticism

It is not that retrieval practice doesn;t work only that it only works for limited types of learning, such as factual recall, and that the effect fades, even disappears for more complex material. Many of the trials are on verbal information, word-pairs and so on. An associated problem is the difficulty in designing retrieval practice and transferring it to the classroom or online environment. It is ebay to design low-level practice.

Influence

Their work has gathered a great deal of attention, especially in schools and stimulated other research on different audiences with different types of material and in different contexts. Movements such as ResearchED have promoted the research and its spread in recent books on teaching practice, and online, has been significant.

Bibliography

Brown, P.C., 2014. Make it stick. Harvard University Press.

Abbott, E. E. (1909). On the analysis of the factors of recall in the learning process. Psychological Monographs, 11, 159–177.

Gates, A. I. (1917). Recitation as a factor in memorizing. Archives of Psychology, No. 40, 1-104. 

Spitzer, H. F. (1939). Studies in retention. Journal of Educational Psychology, 30, 641-656. 

Tulving, E. (1967). The effects of presentation and recall of material in free-recall learning. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 6, 175􏰀184.

Huelser, B.J. and Metcalfe, J., 2012. Making related errors facilitates learning, but learners do not know it. Memory & cognition, 40(4), pp.514-527.

McDaniel, M. A., Agarwal, P. K., Huelser, B. J., McDermott, K. B., & Roediger, H. L. (2011). Test-enhanced learning in a middle school science classroom: The effects of quiz frequency and placement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103, 399-414

Karpicke, J.D., & Bauernschmidt, A. 2011. Spaced retrieval: Absolute spacing enhances learning regardless of relative spacing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(5), 1250-1257. 

Karpicke, J.D. and Blunt, J.R., 2011. Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. Science, 331(6018), pp.772-775.

Clark - Media, direct instruction, analysis, agents, games and AI in learning

Richard E. Clark is Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology and Technology at the University of South California. He has produced a huge corpus of research and writing on technology and workplace learning and has put in a huge effort to bridge the gap between known theory, its boundaries, and practice. With a focus on instruction and not media, he has produced valuable work on performance gaps and how to do a thorough analysis using Cognitive Gap Analysis, to determine optimal training. His interest in learning technology has led to conclusions on everything from visual agents to games, in learning. He is also an advocate for the use of AI in training.

Learning from media

Clark asks us not to confuse methods of instruction with media and famously claimed 

in Clark (1983), considering research on learning from media, that there is no significant difference, in terms of benefits, between using different media to deliver instruction. His argument is that non-media methods, for example, instructional methods, different content, or assessment plans can be presented by any medium including teachers. What he does say is that different media can affect the number and variety of students who can access learning and, of course, that some media are more scalable and cost-effective than others (Clark, 2012).

Direct Instruction versus Constructivism

Evidence from learning theory, in particular the limitations of working memory, suggest that direct instruction may be more effective than unguided or lightly guided learning experiences. Guidance can be tapered off as learners gain competence and expertise. This is a direct challenge to the constructivist approach recommended by Bruner and Papert, that learners must discover or construct essential information for themselves. While the constructivist ‘description of learning’ may be accurate, the research shows Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark (2006) that the instructional methods recommended by constructivists are flawed.

Cognitive Task Analysis

In Turning Research Into Results: A guide to selecting the right performance solutions (2012) Clark focuses on the diagnosis of performance gaps in terms of; Knowledge and skills, Motivational and Organisational gaps. He then separates the use of  Job aids from Training and then Education. 

The solution, he recommends, is Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA), which is a front-end process to improve design. He sees this as the weakest part of most current analysis models. Research has found that experts are often unaware of what they actually do, as around 70% is executed automatically, without much self-awareness or reflection. The job of the learning designer is to uncover that 70%.

He starts with the selection of experts. You need experts who have been doing this for a while with proven success, who are not just trainers. 

1. Interviewing experts, focus on sequence and tasks, the action (physical) and decision steps (psychological). Listening matters here. Get transcripts of these interviews. An important extra is to ask where trainees have difficulties. Where do they get stuck? 

2. Edit transcripts to get descriptions that are meaningful to trainers.

3. Interview experts (3-4) separately, and ask each what they think was missed.

4. Go back to 1 say what 2 & 3 said and ask them to agree on one version.

5. Collapse separate versions into one final version.

6. Collect information about equipment, standards and examples from experts.

Motivation

His emphasis on motivation has always been a strong characteristic of his work. Motivation is not just what people need to learn, it can also be negative or harmful. People, for example, are often overconfident and reject advice. He sees four critical motivational features: 

1. Values mismatch (for what they’re doing) that are meaningful to them. There’s huge variation. 

2. Lack of self-confidence or self-efficacy.

3. Disruptive emotions - being anxious, angry, depressed, negative, all stop people from learning

4. Barriers that knock people, negative evaluations, attribution failures

Animated agents

Clark (2005) doubts that virtual, animated agents add any value in learning as the research shows a mix of results from well-designed studies. While guidance and attention may be focussed by agents they can also distract and place extra cognitive load on learners. Research is required that compares agents and non-agents in same designed learning experiences.

Games for learning

Clark sees no clear definition of what constitutes a ‘game’ and the research as insubstantial. Previous meta analyses of games have failed to include unpublished studies containing no significant gain results, which is what he believes is the most likely outcome in a well designed study. Games that use the discovery method of learning are, he claims, less effective than fully guided instruction for novice to intermediate learners and he thinks that the learning benefits, when found in games, are the product of instructional methods that can be presented, without the extra design and costs, in non-game contexts. They are a distraction from real, evidence-based instructional methods. In fact, games may result in less mental effort invested in learning because of the belief that they make learning ‘easier’. He concludes that less expensive instructional designs may be preferable and that increased motivation in games may actually hinder learning. He is also sceptical about the emphasis put on social learning and their implementation in chat rooms.

AI and learning

Clark is using AI to automate the CTA process and believes that all of training and development will, at some time, become AI supported. This will decrease the cost of front-end analysis and design, forcing it to become more evidence-based, free from biases and overcome the resistance that human beings bring to the table. This will, in his words “be a revolution”.

Influence

With MAyer, Clark has a reputation for rigorous adherence to research and evidence, providing guidance for practitioners in the design of learning experiences. Although online learning is often still blind to research-driven practices, Clark remains a rich and deep resource for professionals in the field.

Bibliography

Clark, R. E. (2012) Learning from media: Arguments, analysis and evidence, second edition. Greenwich Conn: Information Age Publishing.

Clark, R. E. (2011). Games for Instruction?. Presentation at the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA

Clark, R. E. (May-June 2007) Learning from serious games? Arguments, evidence and research suggestions.  Educational Technology.  56 – 59

Clark, R. E. and Choi, S. (2005). Five design principles for experiments on the effects of animated pedagogical agents.  Journal of Educational Computing Research. 32(3). 209-225.

Sweller, J., Kirschner, P. A., & Clark, R. E. (2007). Why minimally guided teaching techniques do not work: A reply to commentaries. Educational Psychologist, 42(2), 115-121

Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based experiential and inquiry-based teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75-86

Elen, J., Clark, R.E. and Lowick, J., 2006. Handling complexity in learning environments: Research and theory. In : (p. 283e297). Oxford: Elsevier.

Clark, R.E. ed., 2001. Learning from media: Arguments, analysis, and evidence. IAP.

Clark, R. E. (1983) Reconsidering research on learning from media., Review of Educational Research, 53(4), 445-459

Baldwin - Learning and evolution, may be one of the most significant learning theorists ever

You may never have heard of the philosopher and psychologist James Mark Baldwin. Yet he may be one of the most significant learning theorists ever. He was a psychologist who set up one of the first laboratories of experimental psychology, in Toronto, which influenced Paiget. He also introduced what is called the ‘Baldwin Effect’ into evolutionary theory. This profound and radical idea puts ‘learning’ into the evolutionary process and has been recently revived. Just as Darwin and Wallace struck upon the same idea at the same time, Baldwin had two Wallaces, in Henry Fairfield Osborne and Conwy Lloyd Morgan. All three published the same ideas in 1895-96.

Baldwin Effect

The Baldwin Effect is the theory that learned behavior, and not just environment and genes, influences the direction and rate of the evolution of psychological and physical traits. Note that this is not Lamarckism, as it does not claim that acquired characteristics are passed on genetically, only that the offspring of an adaptive trait (physical or psychological) may be genetically better at learning. This creates the opportunity, as it creates the conditions and successful population survival, for standard selection to take place. It means that behavioural learning, which can take place culturally can eventually shape the genetics of a species.

The Baldwin effect therefore places ‘learning’ on a larger theoretical canvas, lying at the heart of evolutionary theory. Learning is no longer just a cognitive ability, albeit a complex one with many different systems of memory involved, but a feature that defines the very success of our species.

Growth of Baldwin effect

The theory has some impressive supporters, including Aldous Huxley, AI expert Geoffry Hinton, Nowlan, Dennett and Deacon. Evolutionary psychology, in particular, has had a profound influence on the resurrection of the idea. Hinton and Nolan revived the idea in How Learning Can Guide Evolution (1987) and Richard Richards who published Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behaviour (1996), in the same year. But it is Daniel Dennett who has done most to popularize the idea in Consciousness Explained (1991) and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995).  Dennett posits the Baldwin idea that learned behavior, especially sustainable innovative behaviours, if captured in substantial genetic frequency, can act as what he calls a ‘sky crane’ in evolution. Weber and Depew have since published an excellent explanatory and supportive book Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered (2007).

Deacon proposed that the Baldwin effect accounts for the rapid evolution of the mind and language. As Wittgenstein showed, a private language makes no sense as meaning is use. As soon as a small number start and continue to develop language skills it confers significant adaptive advantage and confers a real runaway advantage to the users. This ability to learn new skills may be the key to our species having moved beyond fixed, genetic determinism. More than just language, adaption to new environments, responding to climatic and food pressures and other changes that require quicker adaption through selected learning, may have played a role in the rapid success of Homo Sapiens. Dennett proposes the actual creation of selective pressure on others by sustained learned behaviour. 

Influence

In an interesting development Geoffry Hinton and Steven Nowlan (1996) claimed to have demonstrated, through computer technology (simulations) that learning could shape evolution. The Baldwin effect, may, through its own efficacy have created the technological conditions for its own proof! The brain, through consciousness, may have created a fast developing structure that in turn accelerates learning and thus evolution. It remains a controversial but increasingly supported idea.

Bibliography

Weber, B. H., and Depew, D. J. (2003). Evolution and learning: The Baldwin effect reconsidered. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Hinton, G.E. and Nowlan, S.J., 1996. How learning can guide evolution. Adaptive individuals in evolving populations: models and algorithms, 26, pp.447-454.

Laurent, J., 1990. Robert J. Richards, Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behaviour. Social Studies of Science, 20(1), pp.161-165.

Dennett, D. C. (1995). Darwin's dangerous idea: Evolution and the meanings of life. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Dennett, D. C. (1991). Consciousness explained. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.

Baldwin, J. M. (1973). Social and ethical interpretations in mental development. New York: Arno Press.

Baldwin, J.M., 1896. A new factor in evolution (Continued). The American Naturalist, 30(355), pp.536-553.

Mill - Utilitarianism, associationism and women’s rights

John Stuart Mill saw education as a means to the end of achieving happiness for the individual and happiness as a whole. Hot-housed as a child, and educated by his Scottish father the philosopher John Mill and Jeremy Bentham, his Godfather, he was kept apart from other children, reading Greek and Latin at age 8. As a teenager he suffered from depression, which he in part saw arising from the intensity and isolation of his education. He felt as though his purely rational education had not allowed him to develop feelings such as sympathy and appreciation of the real world. Finding Wordsworth helped him overcome this tendency to immediately rationalise and analyse the world.

He was one of the most significant intellectual figures in England in the mid-nineteenth century, as a philosopher, politician and economist. He also played a significant role in the advancement of women’s rights.

Empiricism and associationism

As an empiricist, he saw sensory experience as the raw data from which all else arises, even logic and mathematics. This meant he saw the mind as a tabla rasa, ready to be filled with sensations that lead to all manifestations of consciousness and thought. It is the scientific approach making inductive inferences from experience that should be used to build a view of education.

His associationist psychology meant the association of small pieces of data, sense data or feelings, to form our view of the world. This came from Locke, Hume and Hartley and forms the basis of his empiricism and belief in the strength of the scientific method.

Utilitarianism

From his Godfather, Jeremy Bentham, he saw Utilitarianism (1863), expressed in the formula ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people’ as an empirical theory based on the observation that this is what all people actually desire - happiness. This is not to say that one should pursue one’s own happiness at the expense of others,as the greater good is a sure source of happiness for the individual. Although he did believe that some forms of happiness were higher than others and , unlike Bentham, saw feelings as important guides in moral, aesthetic and other judgements.

Utility is intimately connected with liberty and in On Liberty (1859) he is keen to press the idea that one cannot infringe upon the rights of others to pursue their happiness, unless their actions cause ‘harm’. State and social control were to be resisted. As they infringe upon the development of the individual. This debate around freedom of expression is still relevant today, along with the ‘harm principle’ and influenced his views on education.

Education

Education was the means to attain true happiness, not in the simple sense of hedonistic pleasures but the higher forms of happiness. He refused to believe that most learners were innately incapable of being fully educated. In his Autobiography, he was also critical of the idea that one should only teach what learners enjoy, as this appeals to a primitive view of the lower pleasures of ‘fun’ and prevents access to the higher pleasures and happiness of subtler, elevated subjects. This hinders rather than helps learning as it prevents the learner from reaching their fullest potential and happiness. Above all education should teach children to become autonomous being and and to think for themselves.

Education should have a strong moral purpose, to overcome the selfish pursuit of pleasures at the expense of others. Moral education must encourage the capability of appreciating that the happiness of others, the greater and common good, leads also to the happiness of the individual within that society and culture. The taking on of public duties and active participation in society and democracy was important.

In On Liberty (1859) he proposes compulsory, universal education for every citizen, including women, all the way up to University entrance. Although he was critical of the idea that such education should be provided by the state, as that could result in compulsory coercion and control, which was counter to his views on freedom and liberty. One notable example of his aversion to education coercing learners, was his view that religion, as a subject of opinions, should not be taught in schools.

Women’s rights

In The Subjection of Women (1869), he calls upon his utilitarian and libertarian principles to defend the emancipation of women from the social pressures to conform to what men think. Women are forced to lead less happy lives because they are not free to pursue their own happiness, almost in a state of slavery. Here, he also called for the abolition factual  slavery.

He makes the case for absolute equality, especially in the freedom giving process of education that would give women, as citizens, freedom and independence. 

Influence

Mill’s influence has been immense in politics, notably his ideas on freedom of expression and liberty. He is still read and quoted at length on these issues to this day and these issues in education, especially in the campus culture clashes, are still with us. His influence on education is not via his purely empiricist views but his appeal for compulsory, universal education was realised, at least in the developed world, along with the inclusion of women, especially in Higher Education. Mill played a key role in the latter.

His focus on happiness also influenced the recent rise of positive psychology, through Seligman and others, although much of that debate seems to ignore the deep and sophisticated interest taken on that topic in the 19th century.

Bibliography

Mill, J.S. and Stillinger, J., 1873. Autobiography.

Mill, J.S., 2018. (1869) The subjection of women. Routledge.

Mill, J.S. and Bentham, J., 1987. (1863) Utilitarianism and other essays. Penguin UK.

Mill, J.S., 1989. (1859)  'On Liberty' and Other Writings. Cambridge University Press.

Bentham - mummified inventor of Principle of utility and Panopticon

Jeremy Bentham sits mummified in the foyer of UCL (University College London). He is the founder of Utilitarianism, expanded on by John Stuart Mill and a living philosophical movement to this day. Most famous for his prison design, the Panopticon, much discussed by Foucault, he also wrote extensively about politics, the law and education. His general aim was to apply the basic principle of Utilitarianism, the utility principle, to all aspects of life. Transparency was all, the idea that all should be open to inspection, some would say surveillance.

Principle of utility

The principle of utility or ‘greatest happiness principle’ is the pursuit of pleasure over pain. It means designing society and institutions for the greatest happiness for the greatest number. It is based, for Bentham, however, on psychological egoism, the idea that we are all motivated by self-interest in the pursuit of personal pleasure and avoidance of pain. Pleasure and pain can be measured in terms of intensity, duration, certainty, proximity, productiveness, purity, and extent. His hedonistic, or felicific, calculus proposed a classification of 14 pleasures and 12 pains. These could be measured and the happiness factor calculated for any action. This led to some precise, some would say odd, recommendations for building institutions, such as prisons and schools.

Panopticon

The idea of the Panopticon prison was a radial design where all prisoners could be seen from a central hub. Bentham applied this idea to education in Chrestomathia (1817). One should not see this as a wholly authoritarian ‘school as prison’ model but rather similar to the modern lecture hall in the round. The aim was to encourage good citizenship and this cutting off from the outside and surveillance, so hated by Foucault, was designed to free the mind from mischievous influences and delusions, with a focus on useful art and science. Intellectual instruction protects the individual from groupthink and allows freedom of thought, even self-delusion. 

He was interested in producing, not only good participatory citizens but also public servants and leaders. It was not just learners but teachers and other public figures that had to be open to scrutiny, to prevent delusion from taking hold of people’s minds. The Panopticon idea in schools was to do away with cribbing and copying. His curriculum was science-based (Natural Philosophy) and empirical, based on the senses and memory. Human testimony was also important, from biography and history. 

This authoritarian element in his thought has gained most of the attention but you can find in his writings a much more liberal figure, who really did value individual freedom of expression, women’s rights, legalisation of homosexuality, animal rights, the abolition of capital punishment, slavery and the separation of church and state. He was also against physical punishment of adults and children.

Industry Houses

The National Charity Company was his idea for the relief of the poor. Industry Houses would produce huge numbers of educated apprentices, who would repay their cost of living debt by working when released. The idea was to use education to allow poor children to get gainful employment, with 200 young people in every one of 250 Industry Houses.

There is a utopian streak in Bentham’s educational writing, grounded in his utilitarianism. He wanted to start over again, rearing children to become useful citizens of a society free from corruption, delusion and venal rulers. Citizens were to be able to challenge rulers in a liberal democratic society, where education and transparency were their weapons but also accept an education that allowed this to be realised.

Influence

There is an element of behaviourism in Bentham, with his view of the regulation of simple pleasure and pain, but Bentham’s best known influence has been on Foucault, who took from him the idea of the Panopticon in Discipline and Punish (1975). The Panopticon prison was never built and Foucault takes the more authoritarian aspects and ditches the rest of Bentham’s thought, so one could argue that it was clearly an early 19th century experiment in designing a society of educated, critical and useful leaders and workers, not a Foucaultian nightmare..

The current debates about whether the internet is a force for democritisation or digital surveillance, often introduce the Panopticon idea as a metaphor for a dystopian view of technology, yet Benthan saw it as offering transparency, freeing us from fake knowledge and beliefs. 

Bentham’s influence on Mill was profound, as Mill carried over his utilitarian principles, improving on them by taking it away from a simple hedonic calculus. They both held strong philosophical beliefs based on the pleasure principle that shaped their views of society and education but it was Mill that had more realistic recommendations. Their influence on the modern movement of positive psychology, with its focus on ‘happiness’ has also been significant.

Bibliography

Betham, Jeremy. A Comment on the Commentaries and a Fragment on Government, London: The Athalone Press 1977. p. 393.

Semple, J., 1993. Bentham's Prison: a Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Bentham, J. Chrestomathia, (1817) 1983. Edited by M. J. Smith and W. H. Burston.

Bentham, J., 2001. Writing on the Poor Laws, volumen I. The Collected Works of Jeremy.

Bentham, J., 2010. Writing on the Poor Laws, Vol. II, M. Quinn.

Thrun - Udacity and MOOCs

Sebastian Thrun is a Research Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, a Google Fellow, an expert in AI and self-driving cars. As one of the original MOOC evangelists, his first MOOC course, in 2012, on AI, attracted over 150,000 students, with some novel pedagogic techniques. However, in 2016, he resigned from his position as CEO of Udacity in 2016, as it swung towards vocational subjects.

Udacity

Thrun ran an online course with Peter Norvig in 2011, while at Stanford, “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence.” Within a few months, student numbers had surged from 58,000 to 160,000. But it was Salmon Khan’s TED talk that convinced Thrun that scale was possible and so Udacity was formed in February 2012. Udacity is a play on the word Audacity, designed to reflect student ambition. Pearson VUE provided a paper credential, for employers, at a small fee.

In 2013 Thrun claimed the Udacity has a “lousy product’ and it became obvious that both the pedagogic and business models did not work, so Udacity pivoted towards meeting real demand in vocation courses such as IT, healthcare and business. The company swung sharply towards a demand model, which was vocational in nature, with VOOCs (Vocational Open Online Courses), where the aim was to acquire a skill or skills valuable for employment. I

In 2014, Udacity offered the first MOOC degree, with Georgia Tech and AT&T, a $700 Master’s Degree. In 2015 they offered Nanodegrees and Nanodegree plus, paid for courses. Udacity is now worth in excess of $1 billion.

Pedagogy

Following the mastery model, where one allows the learner to get to mastery in their own time, researched by Bloom (Norvig was a fan), the early MOOCs allowed the student to learn at their own pace, with a focused on problem solving, rather than straight exposition, lectures and quizzes. Another innovation was the hand (not head) writing on a whiteboard, which Thrun claims came about by accident. This was a more innovative use of video, avoiding talking heads in favour of  a hand, drawing and writing on a whiteboard, sequences. They also tended to have more of a formal, quality driven approach to the creation of material, with more crafted and challenging assignments, problem solving and various levels of sophisticated software-driven interactive experiences. Peer work and peer-assessment were used to cope with the high teacher-student ratios.

Criticism

Thrun, as an academic, originally saw MOOCs as a scalable alternative to college courses. This was common among the academics who created the movement, Yet the real demand lay elsewhere. Once professional business people got involved MOOCs swung, rightly, towards the real demand, which was skills for employment.

The criticism of low completion rates was misplaced, as the commitment to a MOOC is minimal, sometimes at the level of window shopping, rather than a tens of thousands commitment to a college course. This type of course should not be seen solely in terms of the 18-year-old undergraduate but a much wider and older age range.

Influence

Thrun, while known as the founder of Udacity, delegated business responsibility down in 2016. Although Udacity had to experiment with course and business models, it remains a learning force in the MOOC movement, after its pivot towards vocational courses.

Darwin - Darwin’s dangerous idea and the Scopes Trial

Learning theory changed with Darwin. It is a before and after event, as the very nature of the brain and how it learns changed with his theory of evolution. An unremarkable student who flitted from subject to subject, he eventually found his vocation in natural history and was recommended by his Professor for the Beagle Voyage.

Learning method

He spent years collecting, observing and reflecting on what he saw in the field. After five years on the beagle, it was another 22 years before he published the Origin of Species (1859). Described by the philosopher Danial Dennet as ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’, his discovery changed philosophy, science and repositioned our species, not as being at the top or centre of God’s creation but the result of a blind process. It had a huge influence not only in the teaching of biology but other fields of science that now had another narrative to support different theories about observable phenomena. 

His learning method was assiduous observation and meticulous note taking. Over time, and this is an important point as it was many years, he was free to digest, reflect and speculate on what the causes were for the variations he found. For example, his five weeks in the Galapagos Islands provided enough empirical evidence of minute differences for him to speculate on the isolation of one population from another and speculation on the causes of those differences. He is a great example of the empirical scientists who gathers data, then forms hypotheses from that data, what one would call experiential learning.

Scopes trial

A symptom of the sea-change in education was the Scopes Trial in 1925, which centred on the ‘teaching’ of evolution. The state of Tennessee had banned the teaching of evolution (Butler Act) but a teacher, John Scopes, refused to comply. He in fact was never sure that he had ever taught evolution but took a stance on the issue. The trial brought to a head a range of cultural, legal and scientific issues and was the first trial to be broadcast on national radio. Scopes was released on a technical issue, as the just should have set the fine not the judge, but the law was not repealed until 1967. 

It wasn’t until 1958 that the National Defense Education Act led to national textbooks that had, definitively, evolution as the framework for the biological sciences. 

The 1960s then saw the conflict move from Fundamentalism v Science to Creationism v Science and various forms of Creationism have been held to over the following decades, especially Intelligent Design, but the courts have decreed that it cannot be taught alongside evolution in US schools.

Influence

Darwin’s influence on how we see the world has been profound. His influence on education has also led to a worldview, taught in most schools, that evolution is fundamental to the natural sciences. Culturally, it led to more secular schooling, less dominance by religion, enforceable by law, and a rising respect for the sciences. 

Bibliography

Larson, E.J., 2008. Summer for the gods: The Scopes trial and America's continuing debate over science and religion. Hachette UK.

Darwin, C., 2016. On the origin of species, 1859.

Darwin, F., 1887. The life and letters of Charles Darwin.