Honestly, I was only modestly convinced by the evidence presented. To be fair, I was aware that learning types are a myth even before this video, so maybe that colors my perception. But to test...
Honestly, I was only modestly convinced by the evidence presented. To be fair, I was aware that learning types are a myth even before this video, so maybe that colors my perception. But to test the myth by having students self-identify? Seems unsatisfactory to me. What would be much more convincing is to run the experiment (i.e. teaching and testing) twice. The first run can be used to infer learning types, and the second one tests that. Or in other words: You test whether what worked previously predicts what will work in the future. The more complicated you can make the "what" you test for, i.e. the learning types under consideration, the better.
I very much doubt that there is no such thing that could be described as a learning type. How complicated those types would get though....
Anecdotal, but I had a conversation about this same topic with a coworker who has a PhD in education last year. She explained pretty much what this video did, which is that learning "styles"...
Anecdotal, but I had a conversation about this same topic with a coworker who has a PhD in education last year. She explained pretty much what this video did, which is that learning "styles" matter more for the subject material than the person. Blew my mind at the time.
Oh, I absolutely think that that's a huge impact. But I also observe the hugely different ways two people can talk about a complex subject - both knowledgeable, both right, both mutually barely...
Oh, I absolutely think that that's a huge impact. But I also observe the hugely different ways two people can talk about a complex subject - both knowledgeable, both right, both mutually barely comprehensible. This suggests to me that people will subjectively think about the same topic in wildly different ways. That makes me think that there's some amount of useful signal in the noise that is learning outcomes.
Or frame it another way: Is the benefit of individual instruction (1 teacher - 1 student) really only that the teacher can match the pace of the student? Or is it also that a good teacher would change the way he phrases things, the demonstrations and material he chooses, or maybe even which topics to focus or omit?
Now granted, this is hard to figure out, as I highly doubt any simple model will be able to explain the signal in the noise. So I can't fault education research for it's current stance; it's the only one currently supported by evidence. But I also believe that with the right tech, we could build a model of learning that in the end will also consider the student in more ways than just his previous grades.
I didn't yet watch, but I'd say the only universal learning method is demonstration, practicing, and having a more-practiced person identify problems in the practice. Everything else is just an...
I didn't yet watch, but I'd say the only universal learning method is demonstration, practicing, and having a more-practiced person identify problems in the practice.
Everything else is just an abstraction from this student/master model.
Honestly, I was only modestly convinced by the evidence presented. To be fair, I was aware that learning types are a myth even before this video, so maybe that colors my perception. But to test the myth by having students self-identify? Seems unsatisfactory to me. What would be much more convincing is to run the experiment (i.e. teaching and testing) twice. The first run can be used to infer learning types, and the second one tests that. Or in other words: You test whether what worked previously predicts what will work in the future. The more complicated you can make the "what" you test for, i.e. the learning types under consideration, the better.
I very much doubt that there is no such thing that could be described as a learning type. How complicated those types would get though....
Anecdotal, but I had a conversation about this same topic with a coworker who has a PhD in education last year. She explained pretty much what this video did, which is that learning "styles" matter more for the subject material than the person. Blew my mind at the time.
This I can believe. For things like complex mechanical mechanisms, an animation or exploded diagram can explain what paragraphs of text could not.
Oh, I absolutely think that that's a huge impact. But I also observe the hugely different ways two people can talk about a complex subject - both knowledgeable, both right, both mutually barely comprehensible. This suggests to me that people will subjectively think about the same topic in wildly different ways. That makes me think that there's some amount of useful signal in the noise that is learning outcomes.
Or frame it another way: Is the benefit of individual instruction (1 teacher - 1 student) really only that the teacher can match the pace of the student? Or is it also that a good teacher would change the way he phrases things, the demonstrations and material he chooses, or maybe even which topics to focus or omit?
Now granted, this is hard to figure out, as I highly doubt any simple model will be able to explain the signal in the noise. So I can't fault education research for it's current stance; it's the only one currently supported by evidence. But I also believe that with the right tech, we could build a model of learning that in the end will also consider the student in more ways than just his previous grades.
I didn't yet watch, but I'd say the only universal learning method is demonstration, practicing, and having a more-practiced person identify problems in the practice.
Everything else is just an abstraction from this student/master model.