A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education details a study done at CUNY’s graduate center advocates a concept called “self-regulated learning.” I’ve often pushed that students take ownership of their own education, and this study makes practical and explicit that philosophy. It’s grounded in research, too.
Taking ownership of one’s education to a large degree means that students need to own their own education, which in part means reflecting upon progress and study skills. The SUNY study builds self-reflective practice directly into courses rather than teaching study skills separately.
There are two driving assumptions that led Barry Zimmerman to explore this topic. One was that students often overestimate the degree to which they understand a topic. Perhaps it’s natural to think that we have a good understanding of something after a few lectures or after reading a textbook, but most things we study are more complicated than this, and while all teachers want our students to achieve “deep learning” of the subject material, this usually doesn’t come from just one or two lectures and a few readings.
Another is that students often blame failure on external factors rather than looking at their own approach. The textbook was not easy to understand – the teacher didn’t explain things clearly – the assignments so far haven’t given me a good foundation for learning this. Students see these external factors beyond their own control.
But the fact is that students take a class to learn something they could learn on their own if they really wanted to. That’s true for anything. Having the teacher present in a context with other students just makes the job easy. My own principle of “own your own education” means that I as a student need to do what I can to learn the topic I’m studying, and the course materials, teacher, textbook, and classmates are simply resources to help me towards that end. It also means that if any of these resources are lacking, and I’m paying for them, you can bet I’m going to be complaining and demanding that the deficiencies be addressed.
But the self-directed learning does more than this. Barry’s two golden rules of teaching are to “give students fast, accurate feedback about how they are doing,” and to make sure students demonstrate that they understand the feedback that you just gave them. The self-directed learning approach gives me tools as a teacher to facilitate the self-reflection students need to do in my classes. To accomplish it, there are some things I need to do:
Give constant feedback. Students need to know they’ve made a mistake as soon as possible. That means that small, daily assignments even for a class that meets twice a week are more powerful than weekly assignments in addressing deficiencies quickly.
Small, incremental, daily assignments. That’s from above.
Immediate, daily grading, feedback, and evaluation. It’s hard for me as a teacher, but the work has to be done anyway, and it might be easier to stay on top of grading a small daily assignment than larger assignments 1, 2, or 3 times a week.
Requiring correction. Students need to be evaluated on the process of correcting their work, which should include self-reflection below. Students should be required to rework at least two of the problems they miss, and optionally more.
Build in reflection. Ask the students if they did as well as they expected to do, and to reflect and write down why or why not on their test corrections, as well as something they can do differently if they did not do well.
I’ve also reviewed another paper from Meredith Lawry at NTLF. Other elements to include in course materials, sectional information, or the syllabus include:
Build in entry points outside of the course material that are places to start for both beginning study and for further study.
Be a learning facilitator rather than one who conveys information. This is also one of the principles for “What Great College Teachers Do.”
Provide examples of good work, possibly in the form of a correct solution, a good paper, or the like.
Establish clear rubrics for evaluation so that students know what to expect before they complete their work, and
Illustrate the self-evaluation process by showing how to compare your own work to a rubric.
Teach organizational skills. Encourage students to find methods of organization that work for them, such as checklists, daily planners, notes in books, underlining texts if students own their own books, problem selection.
Promote study circles. But require individual work with clear citations to any joint contributions.
I’m going to work hard to apply these principles during my next class and see if I can ascertain any improvement for my students, who generally find learning computer programming exceedingly difficult. That’s because it’s hard – but students are just not prepared for how hard it is going to be.
