Reflection: Helping Students Avoid Plagiarism: Cognitive Principles to Maximize Learning (and minimize cheating)
Presenter: James Lang
Workshop: focus English writing and reading
April 15, 2014
Tompkins G 118, 10:30-11:30 AM
25 people attended
James Lang, author of Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty
Audience: teachers who are interested in learning how course design and daily classroom activities can help steer students away from plagiarism.
Sponsored: Office of Faculty Development, the Campus Writing and Speaking Program and the First-Year Writing Program
Notes from lecture (reflection follows notes):
Knowledge and Skills
Pitting the learning of basic knowledge and the development of creative thinking is a false choice both needed
Mastery requires both the possession of ready knowledge and conceptual knowledge and how to use it (R. Brown)
Cheating – Designing assignments that make it hard to cheat, write questions without "google" answers
Cognitive Principles
Retrieving – long term retrieving
The critical importance of retrieval for learning – Science (Karpicke and Roediger uk date)
• Test and Study 80%
• Test but no study 80%
• No test or study 33%
• Study but no test 35%
Opening retrieval examples
• What did we cover in Wednesday’s class?
• How about Monday’s class?
• What was the most import connect from the lasts nights reading
• How does this idea connect to material we cover last week in class?
• Pause for covert retrieval and rehearsal – Just ask.
• Use a minute paper in the first or/and last 5 min of class – increasing retention and lets the student understand they know the material perhaps 10 (did it)-5 (not sure read it) 0- point out of 1000 for the class. Collect at the beginning of the class and start the class as a starting point for discussion
Predicting (from Scientific American, Roediger and Finn date uk )
• Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning
• Ask students to tell about a story they are confused about:
Strategy used by author?
Strengthen by the author?
Primary argument in essay?
Self-Explaining
Making sense of new information by explaining to oneself helps learners construct new knowledge by elaborating upon presented information relating them to existing knowledge making inference and making connections among given information
During a writing exercise – ask what writing strategy are you using in this paragraph? How are you capturing the attention of a reader in this intro? How does your approach to this essay differ from your approach to the last essay?
Sarah Cavanagh (psychologist, professor): suggests finding a recent popular media account describing the findings of a psychological study for a writing assignment. Also suggests using the library website to find the original research areas to create assignments
Infrequent assessment leads to higher rates of cheating – multiple opportunities of assessment lets a student to know what they have learned, more secure, know what areas they need to focus on to study
Connecting – Assignments outside of class (homework)
Teaching connection to art: Draw what they see regularly
Connected curriculum: Things that matter to students, not able to just pull off the internet
In time: current events
On campus: impact their lives now
• Describe something on campus piece of art they see regularly
In the community: Their own area and how it affect them personally
Teaching Historical info: How the historical piece relates to a current and personal situation
Strategy to create a good paper: Write four paragraphs all include analytical stratagies
Fakebook online – interesting interactive project
Suggested Reading:
Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, (by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel. 2014 (Lang, "Best book so far about teaching and learning.")
The Art of Changing the Brain, James Zalt. Good for teachers to understand how we learn from the view of a neuroscientist.
Applying the Science of Learning (2014) free e-book
Starting with what the student already knows and having students see the connection. Be deliberate on how the course material connects with their lives.
Personal application: Write a paper on Service Learning: Applying it to your life. Compare it to your life and see if you could relate to it
Reflection:
Lang based his assumptions on the above readings and research as qualified by David Gruenwald (2003) who also makes a strong case for the ‘profoundly pedagogical’ importance of ‘place’. Gruenwald states “places teach us about how the world works and how our lives fit into the spaces we occupy. Further, places make us: As occupants of particular places with particular attributes, our identity and our possibilities are shaped.” (Foundations of Place: A Multidisciplinary Framework for Place-Conscious Education, American Educational Research Journal. 2003)
In thinking more about the idea of ‘place’ I feel that there is a component of personal identity missing. Noel Gough in, Ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? - Looks at the question of ‘places’ with a larger view of the world. He includes important world issues that also, he argues, are part of the whole person and we bring this with us into the classroom. What the instructor may never see when only looking at the ‘place’ (especially the idea of ‘natural’ or real places) is what else makes up the student. The instruction may never know what a student’s ecopolitical interests are; do they have personal views of deconstruction and what differing life experience do thirty – sixty – two-hundred students bring with them into the classroom?
If we relate everything to ‘place’ I feel we are missing a chance to have students look deeper into themselves and examine their own history, motivations, and aspirations. Long-term connections are made when deep reflection is realized and a personal commitment is established by discovery and interest. Gough suggests we make our own places as a state of mind using the human ability of invention and fabrication. He further looks at the affects of images, senses, and concepts of what we know at the moment and historically influence the processes of ‘becoming-pedagogical’. We are crating limits and boundaries when we rely on contained regions to choose as our point of reference for learning.
What I will take from this workshop is some very good ideas about connecting with students and starting a class with the familiar. What I think is missing is the chance to go much deeper and look for individual commitments and interests each student may share with peers and broaden the classroom experience.
Workshop: focus English writing and reading
April 15, 2014
Tompkins G 118, 10:30-11:30 AM
25 people attended
James Lang, author of Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty
Audience: teachers who are interested in learning how course design and daily classroom activities can help steer students away from plagiarism.
Sponsored: Office of Faculty Development, the Campus Writing and Speaking Program and the First-Year Writing Program
Notes from lecture (reflection follows notes):
Knowledge and Skills
Pitting the learning of basic knowledge and the development of creative thinking is a false choice both needed
Mastery requires both the possession of ready knowledge and conceptual knowledge and how to use it (R. Brown)
Cheating – Designing assignments that make it hard to cheat, write questions without "google" answers
Cognitive Principles
Retrieving – long term retrieving
The critical importance of retrieval for learning – Science (Karpicke and Roediger uk date)
• Test and Study 80%
• Test but no study 80%
• No test or study 33%
• Study but no test 35%
Opening retrieval examples
• What did we cover in Wednesday’s class?
• How about Monday’s class?
• What was the most import connect from the lasts nights reading
• How does this idea connect to material we cover last week in class?
• Pause for covert retrieval and rehearsal – Just ask.
• Use a minute paper in the first or/and last 5 min of class – increasing retention and lets the student understand they know the material perhaps 10 (did it)-5 (not sure read it) 0- point out of 1000 for the class. Collect at the beginning of the class and start the class as a starting point for discussion
Predicting (from Scientific American, Roediger and Finn date uk )
• Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning
• Ask students to tell about a story they are confused about:
Strategy used by author?
Strengthen by the author?
Primary argument in essay?
Self-Explaining
Making sense of new information by explaining to oneself helps learners construct new knowledge by elaborating upon presented information relating them to existing knowledge making inference and making connections among given information
During a writing exercise – ask what writing strategy are you using in this paragraph? How are you capturing the attention of a reader in this intro? How does your approach to this essay differ from your approach to the last essay?
Sarah Cavanagh (psychologist, professor): suggests finding a recent popular media account describing the findings of a psychological study for a writing assignment. Also suggests using the library website to find the original research areas to create assignments
Infrequent assessment leads to higher rates of cheating – multiple opportunities of assessment lets a student to know what they have learned, more secure, know what areas they need to focus on to study
Connecting – Assignments outside of class (homework)
Teaching connection to art: Draw what they see regularly
Connected curriculum: Things that matter to students, not able to just pull off the internet
In time: current events
On campus: impact their lives now
• Describe something on campus piece of art they see regularly
In the community: Their own area and how it affect them personally
Teaching Historical info: How the historical piece relates to a current and personal situation
Strategy to create a good paper: Write four paragraphs all include analytical stratagies
Fakebook online – interesting interactive project
Suggested Reading:
Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, (by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel. 2014 (Lang, "Best book so far about teaching and learning.")
The Art of Changing the Brain, James Zalt. Good for teachers to understand how we learn from the view of a neuroscientist.
Applying the Science of Learning (2014) free e-book
Starting with what the student already knows and having students see the connection. Be deliberate on how the course material connects with their lives.
Personal application: Write a paper on Service Learning: Applying it to your life. Compare it to your life and see if you could relate to it
Reflection:
Lang based his assumptions on the above readings and research as qualified by David Gruenwald (2003) who also makes a strong case for the ‘profoundly pedagogical’ importance of ‘place’. Gruenwald states “places teach us about how the world works and how our lives fit into the spaces we occupy. Further, places make us: As occupants of particular places with particular attributes, our identity and our possibilities are shaped.” (Foundations of Place: A Multidisciplinary Framework for Place-Conscious Education, American Educational Research Journal. 2003)
In thinking more about the idea of ‘place’ I feel that there is a component of personal identity missing. Noel Gough in, Ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? - Looks at the question of ‘places’ with a larger view of the world. He includes important world issues that also, he argues, are part of the whole person and we bring this with us into the classroom. What the instructor may never see when only looking at the ‘place’ (especially the idea of ‘natural’ or real places) is what else makes up the student. The instruction may never know what a student’s ecopolitical interests are; do they have personal views of deconstruction and what differing life experience do thirty – sixty – two-hundred students bring with them into the classroom?
If we relate everything to ‘place’ I feel we are missing a chance to have students look deeper into themselves and examine their own history, motivations, and aspirations. Long-term connections are made when deep reflection is realized and a personal commitment is established by discovery and interest. Gough suggests we make our own places as a state of mind using the human ability of invention and fabrication. He further looks at the affects of images, senses, and concepts of what we know at the moment and historically influence the processes of ‘becoming-pedagogical’. We are crating limits and boundaries when we rely on contained regions to choose as our point of reference for learning.
What I will take from this workshop is some very good ideas about connecting with students and starting a class with the familiar. What I think is missing is the chance to go much deeper and look for individual commitments and interests each student may share with peers and broaden the classroom experience.