What Do We Know about Undergraduate Learning

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What Do We Know about Undergraduate Learning?

• Bertram C. Bruce
• Library Information Science
• U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Writing assignment

• What learning experience do you remember from
  your undergraduate years?

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Learning is

• developmental
• personal, meaning-based
• purposeful
• social, situated, material, multimodal
• difficult
• reflective

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Learning is developmental

• dualism/received knowledge
• multiplicity/subjective knowledge
• relativism/procedural knowledge
• commitment/constructed knowledge
• --William Perry

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Learning is meaning-based
Interpretant
Neptune (representation)
Sea (object)
--C. S. Peirce
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Ex Weddings

• "Did you know that Pam was going to wear her
  grandmother's wedding dress? That gave her
  something that was old, and borrowed, too. It was
  made of lace over satin, with very large puff
  sleeves and looked absolutely charming on her."
• One Indian reader "She was looking all right
  except the dress was too old and out of fashion".
• --Steffenson, Joag-Dev, Anderson, 1979

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Learning is purposeful Response to exhibit

• Interpretive Visitor sees Visitor asks
• strategy gallery as ... what can ...
• Pragmatic classroom/workshop "I do with this?"
• Utopian encounter session "this say about my
• relationships?"
• Critical museum "be thought about this?"
• Diversionary amusement park "I feel about this?"
• --Jean Umiker-Sebeok (1994), Behavior in a
  museum

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Learning is multimodalWhat shape is the earth?
1.
3.
2.
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Is the world round?

• Child I can see it. The world is flat.
• Adult No, the world is round.
• Child Its round? Oh, a pancake!
• Adult No, no... a ball! Look at this photo of
  earth from outer space.
• Child Oh! Two earths! The round one in space and
  the flat one we live on.

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Learning is difficult

• Piaget disequilibrium
• Vygotsky zone of proximal development
• Dewey felt difficulty

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Learning is reflective

• We always live at the time we live and not at
  some other time, and only by extracting at each
  present time the full meaning of each present
  experience are we prepared for doing the same in
  the future. This is the only preparation which in
  the long run amounts to anything.
• John Dewey, Experience Education

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Interpretation

• Not occasionally only, but always, the meaning of
  a text goes beyond its author. That is why
  understanding is not merely a reproductive, but
  always a productive attitude as well.
• --H. Gadamer. Truth method

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Curriculum instruction

• We seek a curriculum design and instructional
• methods that are universal, non-developmental,
• decontextualized, impersonal, individual-based,
  unreflective, unidimensional, and easy.

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Trends

• information doubling every six years
• new forms of work
• globalization
• language changes
• new technologies
• concentrated control of media, information

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Performing - web design

• Few people are ever taught to create successful,
  satisfying experiences for others. Mostly, those
  folks are in the performing arts dancers,
  comedians, storytellers, singers, actors, etc. I
  now wish I had more training in theater and
  performing arts to rely on...especially
  improvisational theater.
• Nathan Shedroff (1997, internet.au)

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21st-century challenge

• Find problems
• Integrate knowledge from multiple sources and
  media
• Think critically
• Collaborate
• Learn how to learn

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Undergraduates

• are smarter (James Flynn)
• are better educated (Berliner Biddle Marable)
• more professionally-oriented, older, more female,
  more non-white, more non-English speaking
• get too little sleep (Mary Carskadon)
• use the Internet instead of print sources, but
  trust print more (Leigh Healy)
• focus on grades too much

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Connecting what we know about

• learning
• curriculum instruction
• students today

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Inquiry-based learning

• Questions arising out of experience
• Materials diverse, authentic, challenging
• Activities engaging. hands-on, creating,
  collaborating, living new roles
• Dialogue listening to others articulating
  understandings
• Reflection expressing experience moving from
  new concepts into action

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Teacher as inquirer

• Inquiry about the world
• Partner in inquiry
• Modeling
• Guiding
• Inquiry about teaching and learning

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LIS 391 Literacy in the information age

• Discoveries
• Projects
• Collaborative activities, e.g., timeline
• Media web board, doc cam, video, web interactive
  syllabus

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Instant messaging(synchronous communication)

• all of the students use it
• none of the faculty do
• questions
• What functions does it serve?
• What are its drawbacks?
• Why are student and faculty needs different?
• What are their communication practices?

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GradeAIM
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Continuing inquiry

• help with homework
• linking to family/friends at home
• the use of "away" messages
• checking away messages
• checking on the checking (ImSpot)

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Progressive education

• The education of engaged citizens involves
• respect for diversity, meaning that each
  individual should be recognized for his or her
  own abilities, interests, ideas, needs, and
  cultural identity, and
• the development of critical, socially engaged
  intelligence, which enables individuals to
  understand and participate effectively in the
  affairs of their community in a collaborative
  effort to achieve a common good
• John Dewey Project on Progressive Ed.

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Learning to teach - 1

• As a guide for the experimentation we so freely
  encourage, the table opposite will be helpful. We
  must caution, however, that it is rife with
  half-truths--despite our best efforts at
  disclosure. We are dealing here with living
  things whose colors, habits, and general
  constitutions will vary with locale and with the
  skill of the individual gardener.

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Learning to teach - 2

• This unpredictability, which strikes terror into
  the heart of the beginner, is in fact one of the
  glories of gardening. Things change, certainly
  from year to year and sometimes from morning to
  evening. There are mysteries, surprises, and
  always, lessons to be learned. After almost 40
  years hard at it, we are only beginning.
• Amos Pettingill, The Garden Book, 1986

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Inquiry in language learning

• Berghoff, et al, Beyond reading and writing
  Inquiry, curriculum, and multiple ways of
  knowing.
• Bruce Easley, Emerging communities of practice
  Collaboration and communication in action
  research.
• Short, et al, Learning together through inquiry
  From Columbus to integrated curriculum.
• Wells Chang-Wells, Constructing knowledge
  together Classrooms as centers of inquiry and
  literacy

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Inquiry in science learning

• National Science Foundation research-validated
  models (e.g., extended inquiry, problem-solving)
• Reinventing Undergraduate Education (Carnegie
  Foundation's Boyer Commission) 1 Make
  research-based learning the standard
• Project 2061 (American Association for the
  Advancement of Science) 1 science literacy
  for all high-school graduates