Learning opportunity

How to design better systems for lifelong learning, in a COVID-19 world

As with many aspects of our lives, COVID-19 accelerated trends in education that have been building for years. The obvious example is the wholesale shift to online learning platforms; however the impacts don’t stop there.

The pandemic exposes flaws to traditional systems and how we think about how we learn. While the new landscape remains challenging, it also presents a golden opportunity to pivot and improve.

In this article I focus on improvements to three aspects of learning: 1) course structure, 2) feedback, and 3) the role of the teacher. I also list out some tactical ideas to help us get there. Here’s a quick outline of my main points:

Thesis: Our approach to learning has been janky for a while. The pandemic offers an opportunity to make it less janky — we should focus on:

1. Hybrid courses: Interactive “in-person” classrooms for discussion, debate and teamwork; digital platforms for individual lectures, study and practice.

2. Sophisticated feedback: Adaptive technology for homework and exams that eliminates the noise and adjusts for the unique struggles of each student.

3. The new roles of a teacher: Design the learning environment, inspire the joys of learning, and remove obstacles; masters of “set and setting” in-person and online.

Some ways to get there: Prioritize teachers with the new required skills; digital platforms like ALEKS and Khan Academy; video games; “effortful engagement with ideas” through writing, presentations and debate; peer-to-peer teaching and grading; pivot to capitalize on a digital academic market with lower marginal costs.

Core premise: The joys of learning are vital to the individual and society. Thus, the joys of learning should be maximized. This requires personal responsibility, pragmatic evaluation, and strategic design.

The joys of learning, shaking the snow globe

To add some color to the premise — that the joys of learning are vital to the individual and society, and that the associated structures need to be redesigned — I thought Andy Matuschak put it nicely in this excerpt from his interview with Russ Roberts on a 2019 episode of EconTalk:

I think what you are accessing now is maybe the greatest tragedy of all to me, which is that: Why learn about math? Let’s put kind of political disagreements about forced education aside. Math is sooo beautiful. Maybe I’m not going to force you to learn it; but, oh, my gosh–understanding something really deeply–I’m not talking about arithmetic, but, for instance, why does e show up in so many places? It’s so beautiful. And that’s because you are connecting to something fundamental and true. These are Platonic objects. Okay–that is a controversial idea. And none of that, none of that is what is accessed in traditional K-12 education. You are learning it because you have to, or because I told you so, or perhaps because it will help you get a job; or perhaps, in a very enlightened environment, because it will help you think analytically and critically and abstractly, and those are skills which are useful in a variety of domains.

While this interview took place before COVID-19 erupted, it remains relevant today. The pandemic further highlights just how off we are in how we value education: schools are industrial daycares; universities are social, entertainment, publishing, and real estate enterprises; institutions are lagging behind technology (obviously there are many exceptions to these generalized claims).

On the other hand, the upheaval presents a unique opportunity to fix those flaws in our learning environments. I’m reminded of a great analogy of a snow globe being shaken up, from How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan (Chapter Five: The Neuroscience: Your Brain on Psychedelics, p. 320):

[Robin] Carhart-Harris argues in the entropy paper [“The Entropic Brain: A Theory of Conscious States Informed by Neuroimaging Research with Psychedelic Drugs,” published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in 2014] that even a temporary rewiring of the brain is potentially valuable, especially for people suffering from disorders characterized by mental rigidity. A high-dose psychedelic experience has the power to “shake the snow globe,” he says, disrupting unhealthy patterns of thought and creating a space of flexibility — entropy — in which more salubrious patterns and narratives have an opportunity to coalesce as the snow slowly resettles.”

In our case the pandemic has shaken up the snow globe, and we have the opportunity to shape how our otherwise learning systems look “as the snow slowly resettles.”

Hybrid courses

I was all geared up to tell you about how — even before the pandemic — the traditional classroom structure — namely lectures — is broken, and why we really need a new model. Instead, I’m going to direct you to Andy Matuschak’s excellent article Why books don’t work, which very eloquently articulates all the stuff I was going to say, and then some. Specifically, Matuschak summarizes the problem with our traditional lecture-based structure as follows:

In summary: lectures don’t work because the medium lacks a functioning cognitive model. It’s (implicitly) built on a faulty idea about how people learn — transmissionism — which we can caricaturize as “lecturer says words describing an idea; students hear words; then they understand.” When lectures do work, it’s generally as part of a broader learning context (e.g. projects, problem sets) with a better cognitive model. But the lectures aren’t pulling their weight. If we really wanted to adopt the better model, we’d ditch the lectures, and indeed, that’s what’s been happening in US K–12 education.

Not only does the traditional lecture framework not fit the real world, it especially doesn’t fit the online world, which — in the times of COVID-19 — is now likely where much more of our learning and schooling will be taking place.

From my experience, most online course offerings attempt to squeeze the lecture model onto a laptop screen: awkward videos of professors reading slides to a camera; digital exercises with multiple-choice questions that offer minimal feedback; discussion boards with scattered threads and rambling comments that pale in comparison to a lively classroom discussion.

Just like there’s no digital equivalent to spending time together, there’s no way to fully replace the benefits of in-person learning with online alternatives. That said, let’s assume schools eventually return to in-person classes. Given what we know about online learning platforms, and how we’ve seen them implemented over the past few months, if we could wave a magic wand, how would we want those classes to look? What opportunities does technology present?

I think a hybrid model that combines in-person classes with online supporting tools would be ideal. Time together in classrooms would no longer be wasted with one-way transmissionistic lectures. Instead, savvy teachers would design interactive classrooms that encourage students to engage with the material through activities such as facilitated discussion, debates, team problem solving, and presentations.

Before and after class is when schools can use technology to introduce concepts and help students work with the concepts on their own.

I shared this hybrid idea with a professor years ago when I was getting my MBA. The professor wondered how schools would differentiate when online components play such an outsized role. I forget how I responded back then, but now, I think one key way schools and teachers will differentiate is by developing the best learning platforms and optimizing their use of technology.

In other words, schools need to adopt a digital-native framework that leverages technology to optimize individual learning. This then would open up in-person class time for social and interactive engagement, or, in Matuschak’s words from this EconTalk interview, for the “effortful engagement with ideas.”

Sophisticated feedback

I don’t think most people appreciate just how much technology can improve the way learning happens. Usually we roll our eyes because, deep down inside, we know how much of a drag online courses can be.

For the sake of discussion, let’s agree on two things: 1) in-person learning and individual learning are completely different animals; and 2) in-person learning is vital, and (pandemics aside) we really don’t want in-person classes to go away.

Now, let’s  turn to the individual learning that takes place outside the classroom, before and after class — this is where technology can really save the day, specifically as a way to improve the way we manage feedback.

One of my favorite Hidden Brain episodes, When Everything Clicks: The Power of Judgement-Free Learning, talks about the nuances of feedback and how clicker training — a method used to train pets — can be applied to improve the way we teach humans.

[Shankar Vedantam: Dr. Martin Levy] discovered that the feedback he provided with the clicker seemed more effective than any verbal praise or criticism he could give. He realized that when he stayed silent and only marked a student’s correct hand position with a click, there seemed to be more room for learning.

The old way he’d done it, saying great job, or, no, that’s wrong, that language not only didn’t help, it may actually have gotten in the way. That’s because praise and criticism tend to make students pay attention to praise and criticism. It makes them focus on their teacher…

Without these emotional crosscurrents, the students could concentrate on the task they were learning. When they succeeded…their pleasure came not from their teacher’s feedback but from the simple joy of mastering a skill.

Furthermore, the episode emphasizes how fragile learning moments can be, and asks the essential question: how can we eliminate all the noise?

LEVY: I think the take-home message from that for me was how fragile learning moments can be where everybody’s trying hard. The dog was trying hard to be successful. I was trying hard to be successful. But just a simple action of damn, and the dog interpreted that as her failure and was not able to perform after that for a couple of days.

VEDANTAM: Martin says the clicker can help take frustration out of the equation.

LEVY: And this is a very good method of freeing people up, opening them up, allowing them to accept new information without all of the debris that comes along with it. I’m quiet. You’re quiet. We’re just learning a skill.

VEDANTAM: But I think what I’m hearing you say is that there’s all of this psychological relationship between teacher and student which in some ways is crowding the actual engagement with the material itself. What does my teacher think of me? Does my teacher like me? Does my teacher hate me? Does my teacher approve of me? Does my teacher disapprove of me? Am I doing it right? Am I doing it better with my friend? Am I faster than my friend? Am I – can I show the teacher I’m actually a really good student? Can I show the teacher that I’m the best student that the teacher’s ever had? I have all this stuff going on in my head. And what that’s getting in the way of is pull the string so one-third of it is over the other two-thirds.

LEVY: You’ve said it precisely. I’d like to bring you into my lecture and just say that because that is the entire story. How can we eliminate all the noise?

This is relevant here because I like to think of digital learning platforms — especially ones that are adaptive — as a kind of Clicker Training 2.0: the technology can not only eliminate a ton of the noise from teachers, but by processing user data in real-time, the software can learn from the students, and tailor the activities to meet the unique needs of each individual. Furthermore, the feedback is instantaneous and objective.

My only experience with this kind of adaptive learning software was when I used ALEKS a few years ago to study for a math placement exam at Arizona State University. It was an excellent way to study, particularly because the software could see — even better than I could — what topics or concepts I was struggling with, and what exercises I could do to get over the hump. I was very impressed. I was also disappointed that this software wasn’t used in any of the subsequent math courses I took at the school.

There are probably a ton of platforms like ALEKS, and I imagine they’re all really busy as more schools shift online due to the pandemic.

My point here is not whether it should be ALEKS or Khan Academy or a competitor. Rather, schools need to be partnering with these companies, trying them out, or developing their own platforms to improve the way they manage feedback and class exercises.

From a broader perspective, schools and teachers need to explore opportunities to eliminate all the noise from learning environments — be they in the classroom, online or elsewhere.

The new roles of a teacher

Now that we have hybrid courses and sophisticated feedback covered, it follows that the role of a teacher must also be refreshed to fit the needs of our new learning model. This revamp centers on three areas: 1) teacher expertise, 2) student mindset, and 3) learning environment.

First, we need to change the way we think about expertise as a job requirement for teachers. From the same Hidden Brain episode (emphasis mine):

VEDANTAM: Everyone can think of learning moments when things broke down. One reason for this is that experts often make poor teachers. Once you’ve mastered a skill, it becomes difficult to remember what it felt like to not know the skill. Once you know how to ride a bike, you might say to a newbie, just push off. Start pedaling. It takes an enormous act of effort, of empathy to go back and remember how it felt when something seemed confusing or impossible. This is sometimes called the curse of expertise. Experts forget how difficult it can be to learn something because they’ve already mastered it.

Rather than requiring — or incentivizing — expertise in their fields of study, in the new world we need to hire and promote teachers who are experts in, well, teaching. Again, from Hidden Brain (emphasis mine):

VEDANTAM: There’s a radical idea at the heart of clicker training. It suggests that teaching can be effective without the use of criticism but also without the use of praise. Now, you might think that this makes teachers unimportant. You’d be completely wrong. The teacher is anything but a bystander. That’s because it’s the teacher who designs the world in which the student learns.

This new form of expertise feeds into the second and third teaching areas we’re talking about in this section: student mindset, and learning environment.

Designing the new learning worlds, which often take place on a phone or laptop screen, means teachers need to be: learning technology programming wizards; highly skilled presenters and discussion facilitators (in-person, or online); and inspiring, overflowing with passion for the joys of learning and student success.

Another way I like to think about it, oddly enough, draws on a concept usually associated with the world of psychedelics. Again, from How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan:

Set and setting: The inner and outer environments in which a drug experience takes place; “set” is a term for the mind-set and expectations the person brings to the experience, and “setting” is the outward circumstances in which it takes place. Set and setting are particularly influential in the case of psychedelics. The terms are usually credited to Timothy Leary, but the concept was recognized and made use of by earlier researchers such as Al Hubbard.

Through this lens, teachers need to be masters of “set and setting” by inspiring students to overcome obstacles and maintain an eager mindset (set); and by creating a consistently optimal learning environment (setting).

Tying it all together now, we can see that teaching does not depend as much on research prowess, behavioral psychology, counseling, or subject matter expertise.

Instead, I think teachers have three primary roles:

1. Design the learning environment (eg programming wizards)

2. Inspire the joys of learning (eg passionate coaches and role models)

3. Remove obstacles (eg experts at eliminating all the noise)

Some ways to get there

  • Revamp hiring practices and incentives to maximize the number of teachers on the front lines who are masters of the new teaching roles
  • Digital platforms like ALEKS, Khan Academy and their competitors
  • Video games as tools for teamwork, practice, and problem solving
  • Prioritize “effortful engagement with ideas” through writing, presentations and debate (even in quantitative courses)
  • Peer-to-peer teaching and grading
  • Embrace an online academic market: adjust business models, trim fat, and pivot to capitalize on a digital world with much lower marginal costs

References and further reading

If you only read one thing on this list, read the first one!