Matching Digital Tools to Strategies That Work
Return - http://ly.tcea.org/mdts | Facilitator: Miguel Guhlin (@mguhlin)
Learn new technologies and how they can be adapted to evidence-based instructional strategies.
Announcements
Topics
- Types of Learning Intentions
- Introducing Weston Kieschnick's Process
- Chart: Matching High-Effect Size Instructional Strategies with Digital Tools
- Examples from Educators
- Blog Entries and Online Courses to Expand Your Learning
Before We Get Started....
“How do you know if what you’re doing in the classroom is effective?”
The Visible Learning MetaX research base is the culmination of his quest over the past 25 years to answer this question and represents more than 1,600 meta-analyses comprising more than 96,000 studies involving more than 300 million students around the world.
Through the Visible LearningTM research, John Hattie has identified more than 250 factors that influence student achievement. He then set about calculating a score or “effect size” for each, according to its bearing on student achievement.
The average effect size of these 250 factors was 0.4, a marker that can be shown to represents an (average) year’s growth per year of schooling for a student. Any factor that has an effect size above 0.4 has an even greater positive effect on student learning. (source)
1- Types of Learning Intentions
"What and when are equally important when it comes to instruction that has an impact on learning.
Approaches that facilitate students' surface-level learning do not work equally well for deep learning, and vice versa.
Matching the right approach with the appropriate phase of learning is the critical lesson to be learned."
- Hattie, Fisher and Frey (Visible Learning for Mathematics, 2017)
Want to maximize student growth? Select instructional strategies that work best for different phases of learning.
Prior knowledge is the information and educational context a learner already has before they learn new information. A learner's understanding of educational material can be improved by taking advantage of their prior knowledge before dealing with the new material (Source).
Activate Prior Knowledge through the use of strategies like graphic organizers, concept maps, KWL charts, anticipatory sets, and brainstorming (Source).
Activate Prior Knowledge through the use of strategies like graphic organizers, concept maps, KWL charts, anticipatory sets, and brainstorming (Source).
Surface Learning
Content focused.
At this stage, you introduce students to concepts, skills, and/or strategies. Think of it as building a strong foundation. Strategies seek to help student gain requisite knowledge needed to move forward to deep learning.
Deep Learning
Relationship in and among contents.
We define deep learning as a period when students consolidate their understanding and apply and extend some surface learning knowledge to support deeper conceptual understanding . . . We think of this as a 'sweet spot' that will often take up more instructional time, but can be accomplished only when students have the requisite knowledge to go deeper.
Transfer Learning
Transfer of new skills to new situations or tasks.
Transfer learning [is] the point at which students take their consolidated knowledge and skills and apply what they know to new scenarios and different contexts. It is also a time when students are able to think metacognitively, reflecting on their own learning and understanding.
Source: Hattie, Fisher and Frey (Visible Learning for Mathematics, 2017)
The SOLO Taxonomy
The SOLO Taxonomy has been around since I graduated from eighth grade. In spite of that, I never learned about John Biggs and Kevin Collis’ creation in 1982. It needs little introduction since heavyweights like Peter DeWitt and Pam Hook have spent some time explaining it.
Yet, as I mentioned, it’s important to build one’s own theory of understanding. To do so, I have juxtaposed various explanations. These explanations are organized in a simple table.
Some Example Learning Intentions & Strategies
Core factor. These include strategies that affect everything about a lesson. Some sample strategies include:
Teacher Credibility (1.09)
Success Criteria (.88)
Teacher Clarity (.76)
Feedback (.64)
Surface Learning. At this stage, you introduce students to concepts, skills, and/or strategies. Think of it as building a strong foundation. Strategies seek to help student gain requisite knowledge needed to move forward to deep learning. Some sample strategies include:
Jigsaw Method (1.20),
Summarization (.74),
Direct Instruction (.59)
Flipped Classrooms (.58)
Interactive Video (.54)
Deep Learning: In this category, strategies assist students gain a deeper conceptual understanding. A few favorites include:
Reciprocal Teaching (.74),
Classroom Discussion (.82)
Concept Mapping (.64)
Metacognition Strategies (.58)
Transfer Learning. As you might imagine, students must finally apply what they know to new scenarios and contexts. Students should also be metacognitive, reflective on their learning. Strategies that typify this include the following:
Transfer Strategies (.86)
Problem-Solving Teaching (.68)
Service Learning (.58)
Peer Tutoring (.53)
Gaining a deeper understanding of high-effect size instructional strategies can be difficult.
Do You Believe?
Note: You are called on to believe...
...only a few of research "studies collected for any of the meta-analyses were done from afar. In this case, we'll have to take a leap of faith and identify the essential components of a [strategy] and determine how it can be used online."
Adapted from Source: Fisher, Frey, and Hattie (2021)
2 - Introducing Weston Kieschnick's work
Two Questions To Remember
"What will YOU as the teacher do?" This involves mapping out what ONE instructional strategy you are going to use.
“What will you and your students be doing in the lesson?” Carefully select and define what strategy your students will be engaged in.
Remember to match the strategies you choose to the learning intention.
Kieschnick's Five Action Steps
Weston Kieschnick defines "strategic technology integration" as the blending of high-effect size instructional strategies with digital tools. He does this through a five BOLD step process. You can find his original steps online.
Below is an adapted version inspired by his efforts and those of others. Any errors, misunderstandings are mine alone.
-Miguel Guhlin (@mguhlin)
Action Step #1: Develop and Pre-Assess Learning Outcomes
Focusing on learning outcomes enables both teacher and coach to develop student-centered goals. What’s more, focusing on learning outcomes lets you connect to standards-based goals. Weston suggests several questions. One of the important ones is What priority standards will you focus on? If you were going to write these as “I can” statements for students, what would they look like?
How To Pre-Assess with a Coach?
A fantastic tool to use is Diane's Results-Based Coaching Tool. You can get your own copy of Diane Sweeney's Sample Coaching Tool via her blog below. Try these sentence stems to get a coaching conversation moving.
Diane Sweeney
Please do me a favor and send a tweet @sweeneydiane and say "@sweeneydiane Thank you for sharing your amazing ideas and resources on coaching. @mguhlin shared your blog and books with us. :-) "
Action Step #2: Select Your High-Effect Size Instructional Strategy
In this action step, you will reflect on the academic standards and skills you want students to know. Weston suggests asking questions that are quite practical. For example, which specific HES instructional strategy will you leverage to meet goals?
Remember to consider these questions:
Where are your learners in their learning?
Where are they going?
How will they get there?
Action Step #3: Decide on the Digital Tool(s)
For ed tech advocates, the rush to select a digital tool is strong. So many tech tools are available now, it’s tempting to use as many as possible. However, focus on only ONE digital tool to use with students. Later, you can app-smash but it has to be in service of learning.
Explore other Education Technology Frameworks that are research-based. Visit a website that captures them. As an educator, it is important to understand the various lenses you can use to observe and assess the use of technology to transform and enhance teaching, learning and leading.
These frameworks serve as aids to campus administrators who may not understand what to look for in the classroom when technology is present.
For curriculum support staff, including teachers, each provides a different way of understanding how technology scaffolds instruction.
Action Step #4: Craft Your Lesson Procedure
“Plan your lesson, every activity, thinking through what your students will do.” Whomever your audience for lesson design, put yourself in the place of your students.
Action Step #5: Post-Assess Student Learning and Reflect
What student data will inform teacher instructional practices? For many educators, learning to analyze state assessment data as a team is familiar. Others may find they need more personalized data. For this, they may rely on a variety of assessment tools, many of which are available online. Some are tech-based, but others can be paper-and-pencil or other.
The goal of these assessments is to gain insight into what students know before instruction. It is also to gain insight into what they have learned after instruction. Use assessments to adjust instruction as well to meet the needs of students
Assessment-Based Feedback Blog Entries
3 - Matching Strategies and Digital Tools
Ready to explore how Kieschnick blended high-effect size instructional strategies with technology? Here are a few for your consideration:
How are you putting high-effect size instructional strategies and technology together to accelerate student growth and learning?
4 - More Ideas from Educators
Want to Learn More about Strategies That Work?
