Learning By Doing Let's get this party started with a fun little puzzle. You may have seen this on your favorite social media platform [1].  See if you can solve it. Struggling Productively That was a difficult problem, right? Would you say you "struggled" while attempting to solve it? I know I did! This experience raises a couple of questions: 1. What, exactly, causes us to struggle? 2. When does struggling assist learning, and when does it harm learning?  3. Under what conditions does struggling lead to long-term learning and transfer?  Before we attempt to answer these ..read more

Learning By Doing Without cheating, take a moment to scan the following matrix of pennies.  Which drawing represents the current design of a penny? (Fun fact: the front-side of a coin is called the obverse.) Figure 1. Can the real penny please stand up? Once you've made your selection, reflect on the following questions: Was this a difficult task? If so, why was this difficult? If not, what life experience did you have that prepared you to answer quickly and accurately? Like a Bad Penny... I've used the penny demonstration in several groups over the past year, and I w ..read more

Learning By Doing It's amazing —stunning, actually — how quickly the brain can adapt. A really wild example of the brain's adaptivity is growing a third arm. You can actually do this at home [1]. To grow a third arm, you will need the following supplies:  An accomplice  A rubber hand A small brush A blanket or towel A very sharp knife or hammer First, place your real hand and the rubber hand next to each other. Then, cover up your arm with the blanket so only the hands are visible. Then, have your accomplice use the small brush to stroke both the real and fake hand at the sam ..read more

LEARNING SCIENTISTS POSTS, FOR TEACHERS  Editorial Note: I am extremely excited to share with you a cross-posting from a group of like-minded scientists. This post originally appeared on The Learning Scientists Blog. The Learning Scientists aim to make research on the science of learning more accessible. Take it away, Dr. Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel! By Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel There is plenty of research supporting retrieval practice as a learning strategy. If left to their own devices, students report using self-testing as a way to assess how much they know, but not as ..read more

Editorial Note. We are in for a real treat! We have a guest post by Josh Ling, the CEO and founder of Podsie. I'm a fan of Podsie because it is one of the rare ed-tech companies that takes learning science seriously and attempts to fix a rather significant problem in learning and teaching. Take it away, Josh! Learning By Doing   Let’s start by doing a challenge. (Full disclosure: if you end up not finding this exercise challenging, it’s because I typically do this with middle-school students!) Here we go: Google a map of North Africa. Then, study the country that’s to the west of ..read more

Learning By Doing Let's play a game. It's super fun...I promise! Download and print this file. Your goal is to cross out all of the lower case d's with two dots above it. Try to be as fast and accurate as possible. Don't forget to time yourself. Ready? Go! [1] Back to the Front Stop me if you've heard this one. The left hemisphere of your brain is responsible for logical processing; the right hemisphere is designed for creative and wholistic thinking. While there may be a tiny grain of truth to these over-generalizations, there is a much less talked about difference i ..read more

Learning By Doing Let's pretend you work for a software company, and your manager wants you to create a clickable prototype for an app you are about to launch.  Part of your prototype includes a dropdown menu that appears when users hover over it; however, you've never mocked up a dropdown menu before.  You have two learning paths available to you. Would you rather: Watch a video of someone making a dropdown menu. Find a written worked-out example and follow along with your favorite prototyping software.  Based on your choice:  Which path do you think will b ..read more

  Learning By Doing Before we dive in, let's do a couple of math problems. Take a moment to compute the sum of the following number sentence:  34 + 66 = ? Ok, not too bad, right? I intentionally picked some numbers that are fairly "nice." Let's try another one:  34 * 66 = ? Same numbers, different operator. Also, much harder, right? Why is the second problem more difficult than the first? If you were an instructional designer, what would you do to help support a student who is learning multicolumn addition and multiplication for the first time? "I'm carrying quite a load h ..read more

Learning By Doing Let's play a game called, Concept Identification. No wait. That sounds really boring. How about Counter Spies, Like Us? That sounds more like a game people would actually play! Here's the backstory:  You are a counter-intelligence officer, and you just intercepted a code from an enemy spy. Your goal is to classify their coding patterns into two types. The first is called "DAX" codes and the other is "MED" codes [1]. Based on your previous training, you were given the following examples.  DAX Codes:    MED Codes:   Now it's your turn t ..read more

Learning By Doing Let's start with a handful of questions. Without looking back at any of the previous posts, try to answer the following questions: What are the three processes involved in memory?  What is the shape of the forgetting curve?  How many items can be held in working memory at the same time?  What is the capacity of long-term memory?  Are there memories that we never forget? The answers can be found at at the end of this post [1].  Wait...what was I going to say?  Do you remember sliding down the memory curve? If not, it's okay. It’s been a ..read more