In a year or so, when students read e-textbooks, the books may be reading students’ “engagement” and study habits.
Community college instructors are “flipping” — putting lectures online to use class time for discussion, coaching and collaboration.
Character becomes destiny
September 11, 2012 by
Pushing black students to earn science and engineering degrees has been a priority for Freeman Hrabowski (black guy with Polish ancestor), who’s run University of Maryland Baltimore County for 20 years, reports the Baltimore Sun. I was struck by the account of Hrabowski’s talk to predominantly low-income, black and Hispanic eighth graders at a Maryland middle school.
For their part, the kids appear distracted or sleepy. So Hrabowski attacks. “How many of you are smart?” he begins. A few hands tentatively go up. “All right, tell me your name and tell me what you want to be when you grow up,” he says.
. . . Slowly but surely, his energy transfers to the students. Hands raise more quickly. Thoughts come out more forcefully. “How many of you study at home at night?” he asks. Only two hands go up. “Now there’s the issue,” he says. “I guarantee the people who study are going to be successful. Nothing can replace hard work.”
Only two students study at home? Is it uncool to admit to doing homework? Or are they really that lazy?
He offers $50 for the first person to solve a math problem, but threatens to charge $5 for a wrong answer. (Of 29 students, 20 have a dog and 15 a cat. How many have both?)
“You need to be pumped all the time,” Hrabowski tells the students.
When I go to South Africa or Asia, they say, ‘Bring it on.’ They’re focused. They’re hungry for it. How are you gonna be the best if you can’t match that?”
As a young black kid, he says, he yearned to show a dubious world he was as smart as anybody. To this day, he works 80 to 90 hours and reads three books in a typical week. “That’s what it takes to be the best,” he says.
Nobody gets the right answer, but Hrabowski forgives the $5 debts, reports the Sun. ( I think it’s a range from six to 15. Is that right?)
He gets them on their feet and leads them through one of his favorite refrains: “Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes destiny.”
Three students, all black boys, walk him to his car. He chastens them one more time about their study habits. “Rich kids work hard,” he says. “Most black kids aren’t working hard enough.”
Philanthropist Robert Meyerhoff “was struck by Hrabowski’s absolute faith that black men could thrive at the highest levels of academia if held to high enough standards from the start of college,” reports the Sun. With Meyerhoff’s money, UMBC recruits students of all races aiming for doctoral studies in science or engineering.
Is college worth it?
May 18, 2011 by
Nearly all parents want their kids to go to college, but Americans aren’t sure college is worth what it costs, a new survey finds.
College presidents complain high school graduates are less prepared for college and don’t study as much as in the past. Most don’t think President Obama’s goal — making the U.S. first in the world in college graduates by 2020– will be achieved.
How to study effectively
September 7, 2010 by
What everyone knows about learning ain’t necessarily so, reports the New York Times.
Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of found almost zero support for such ideas. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded.
Much advice on study habits is wrong, researchers say. For example, studying in the same place every day is less effective than studying the same material in different environments. “Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.”
Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time. Musicians have known this for years, and their practice sessions often include a mix of scales, musical pieces and rhythmic work.
Cramming can help students pass a test, but students remember much more when they space their study periods.
It may be that the brain, when it revisits material at a later time, has to relearn some of what it has absorbed before adding new stuff — and that that process is itself self-reinforcing.
Testing is a “tool of learning” cognitive scientists say. Retrieving an idea “seems to fundamentally alter the way the information is subsequently stored, making it far more accessible in the future.” Students who study the material once and take a practice test remember much more than students who studied the material in two sessions.
If the test is stressful, that’s all the better. “The harder it is to remember something, the harder it is to later forget.”
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