Qualities of Effective Learning Researchers

Learning Researchers are expected to be a resource to help instructors understand and reflect on patterns of student thinking in their courses, and find ways to effectively respond to support student learning.

For the information, inferences, and suggestions that the LR makes to be useful to the instructor (and ultimately support student learning in the course), it is important for the LR and the instructor to "be on the same page." They should have specific, shared formative-assessment goals. The LR should understand what types of information are useful to the instructor and how their feedback will be incorporated into future teaching. In this way, they can target their observations and feedback in a way that will help the instructor be more effective.

For formative-assessment information to be most useful, it should be aligned with the learning objectives of the activities being observed. It should be targeted to questions about whether, how and why students are or are not meeting the learning objectives of the activity. It will often address questions such as, "How are students understanding the central concept(s) being applied?" "Are there foundational skills, knowledge, or concepts for which students need additional support to achieve the learning objective?" "Are there common 'mistakes' that students are making? What patterns of thinking are behind such common mistakes?" "Are students applying ideas or concepts in unexpected ways? Are these ways productive or counter-productive for meeting the learning objective?" And so on. Productively approaching this kind of question requires an understanding of the learning objectives.

A well-developed understanding of the ideas, concepts, content, practices, etc., being learned in the course is important for multiple reasons. For one, an understanding of the content and concepts covered in a course is necessary in order to understand the learning objectives of course activities. It is also necessary for evaluating students' progress towards those learning objectives. A deep understanding is useful in identifying the difference between productive or useful student ways of thinking, and counter-productive or less useful student ways of thinking. That is, if students aren't doing exactly what was expected of them (or in the case of a more open-ended task), a deep understanding of the concepts and content can help the LR assess ways that students are thinking about and using their knowledge. Finally, an LR with deep knowledge of the course concepts will be better able to make useful recommendations to the instructor about how to respond to patterns of student thinking in the course.

Effective Learning Researchers are able to give instructors insight into the patterns of thinking among students in their courses beyond whether students are "getting it" or "not getting it." Often, the ways that students are thinking about a course concept will be different than how the Learning Researcher does (or ever has). Therefore, inferring ways that students are thinking about something requires the Learning Researcher to apply empathy, imagination, and their understanding of different ways to think about the content, along with evidence of student thinking.

The most effective Learning Researchers are genuinely interested in trying to understand how others think about the course subject area. As they work with students over time, they develop a set of expectations about how students tend to think about different ideas, concepts or applications within the subject, and how to recognize when students might be thinking in these ways.

We have often heard instructors talk about formative assessment as a "Pandora's Box." When you assess student understanding and ways of thinking, you often learn things that you might wish you didn't know, and aren't sure how to respond to. It can be difficult to find out that, despite your carefully-planned and -implemented instruction, the students aren't meeting the learning objectives.

A Learning Researcher might learn things about how students are thinking that an instructor hasn't seen. This is, in fact, the purpose of the Learning Researcher role! Delivering this news might feel like a criticism--like you are saying, "Hey there, guess what? That activity of yours wasn't actually as successful helping students learn as you thought." In order to be effective, a Learning Researcher needs to have a relationship with the instructor that allows for honest sharing and discussion about what the Learning Researcher is seeing, what they think it means, and ways to respond to support student learning. A Learning Researcher who always tells their instructor, "Yeah, things went great again today!" is not a very useful resource for the instructor.

One way to think about the Learning Researcher role is as the "point person" for formative assessment in the course. One way in which highly effective Learning Researchers carry out this role is to recognize and advocate for formative-assessment opportunities. They might suggest adopting certain practices for making student thinking visible, such as having student groups work through problems on white boards, or including follow-up to closed-ended questions asking students to justify or explain their reasoning. They might give feedback about which parts of an instructional task implemented in class were the best at eliciting evidence of student understanding and thinking, and why/how. Depending on the goals, needs, and comfort level of the instructor, a Learning Researcher may be asked to give feedback on instructional tasks before they are implemented; in this case, the Learning Researcher might give feedback about whether they expect the task to elicit evidence of student thinking that could be used to assess their progress towards learning objectives.

Many of the characteristics discussed above can be developed while serving as a Learning Assistant for a course. Learning Assistants have repeated exposure to the content, concepts, practices and learning objectives for the course. Through their work with students in the course, they have practice with listening for student ideas, and have built up experience with some of the different ways that students approach and think about course material. In doing so, they have had opportunities to develop curiosity about the different ways that students can understand and think about course material. Moreover, they have had an opportunity to get to know and build a relationship with the instructor, which may make them more likely to communicate honestly with the instructor and feel comfortable making instructional suggestions.