Concepts in Learning

Lately, I've been rereading Ausubel's Educational Psychology (1968).  Ausubel's Assimilation Learning Theory offers one of the best descriptions of conceptual learning I have found in education research. 

Here's a quote from the book that captures but a small picture of his theory:

"Thus preschool children are likely to classify objects on the basis of nonessential, incidental features, spatial and temporal contiguity, or similarity of action and location.  During the elementary-school years, similarity of structure and function becomes a more important classificatory criterion.  With advancing age, however, as children approach adolescence and become verbal-directed and freed from dependence on concrete-empirical experience in their conceptualizing operations, categorical classification on the basis of abstract criterial attributes becomes the dominant mode of organizing experience." 

The core of his theory is on the dictonomy between meaningful learning and rote learning.  An instructor's goal should be to enable students to meaningfully learn class concepts by providing the proper materials in the proper order.  What are those necessary preconditions to meaningful learning?

1. Clear definitions
2. Must integrate with students' prior knowledge
3. Must provide relevant examples
4. Students must be motivated

While I have some disagreements with Ausubel on the particulars of motivation, these four criteria echo statements made by Peikoff in his Philosophy of Education lecture.  They also share many similarities to Lisa VanDamme's implimentation at VDA.  Objectivists interested in educational and pedagogical theory might find Ausubel's theory a good place to start.

Smart phones - Not just for workouts anymore

So this is nothing new to everyone with smart phones, but I absolutely love how the phone integrates with every part of my life.  Entertainment, productivity, relaxation, communication, shopping, organization, navigation, and - workouts.  I found this great app called Endomondo that tracks my GPS position while I go for bike rides (I could use if for any sport if I wanted too).  I just start the app, throw the phone in my bike bag, and starting pedaling.  Ever few seconds, it plots my position and the length of time it took me to travel to that position so that I have an accurate record of my entire trip.  The data is saved to Endomondo's web site so that I can review the trip when complete.  It correlates my location with road maps and topographical maps so that I can assess speeds on hills, going around corners, stop lights, and what not.

After my latest ride, I uploaded my workout to Facebook then went inside to review it.  I was shocked to discover that my fastest mile was almost 55 minutes after I started.  While I remember that mile as being fast, I didn't think it would compete with my first few miles when I was fresh and hitting some higher gears.  Its just awesome that I can do this.  I wish I had this technology back in college when I was training for triathlons.  Of course, I may start training again.  And now with tools to get the most out of my workouts! 

You gotta love today's technology and our industrial progress.

Destroyer of Edison

I just finished reading "Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World" by Randall Stross.  And I must say, it was horrible.  I must emphatically do not recommend it.  The reason - Mr. Stross seems determined throughout the book to tear down Edison, to find every fault (real or imagined) and detail how Edison was not amazing.  Instead of reading about how Edison was able to achieve over 1000 patents in his lifetime, you read about how Edison was not a good businessman, not a good husband, not a good father, not a good friend, not a good philanthropist, and not a good employer.  You will read about how Edison over promised results, became insufferably conceited, sought after publicity, claimed credit for inventions he didn't create, and made hundreds (if not thousands) of bad decisions.  Stross meticulously documents every negative newspaper article printed throughout Edison's lifetime.  In every case where there are two possible explanations for Edison's behavior, Stross writes about the most negative one.  One has to wonder why Stross would want to write this biography.

What was noticeably absent was a detailed discussion of Edison's genius, of his innovative capacity, of his independence in thought, of his confidence in his own abilities, of his prodigous work ethic, or of his experience creating the world's first industrial laboratory.  It wasn't until the last chapter of the book that Stross even discusses the enormous values created from Edison's inventions, spawning several multi-billion dollar industries by the time of Edison's death in the 1930s.  But even then, Stross is quick to point out that Edison's net worth was only estimated at $12 million when he died, just in case you were not convinced of Edison's poor business skills.

All-in-all, this anti-hero book should be regulated to obscurity.  This destroyer of the greatness in Edison should be trashed and forgotten.  I regret the money I spent on it and will post most of this review to Amazon and B&N in hopes that others can avoid the same regret.

So now I am on a search for a biography to cleanse my mind.  If anyone knows of a biography about Thomas Edison that is positive and uplifting, I would love to hear about it.

Measuring productivity

One of my 5 year goals is to improve my productivity by 20%.  How will I measure success with this goal?   Well, the most obvious place to start is with my other two goals in Research and Instruction excellence. 

How to measure research productivity?  I could measure the number of publications per year.  I can always crank up the number of hours devoted to research.  But that does not mean I have increased my productivity.  It definitely means I have increased my time commitment, but it must be done at the expense of other values.  I consider productivity as output/input, but for me, my input is primarily time, so we can simplify productivity as output/time.  To improve productivity, I either have to increase my output in the same amount of time or decrease the time it takes to output the same amount.  Output in this case can include both quality and quantity.  My options:

1. I can improve the quality of my research - measured by publications in higher quality journals.
2. I can improve the quantity of my research - measured by the number of publications.
3. I can reduce the time it takes to complete my research - measured in the time spent researching.
4. A combination of all three.

If my current rate of research productivity is 1 average article a year, I can improve that by publishing more often, publishing higher quality articles, or continue my current publishing objective with less time invested.  While my university has certain expectations for publishing (at least 5 articles prior to tenure), I am not letting that be my benchmark.  Rather, I picked this university because their benchmark coincided with my already selected goals.  Up until recently, my thoughts were on improving on the third option, reducing time.  However, I came to a realization that the best way to reduce the time was to learn how to write and research better.  To do that, I need to consider options one and two as well.  So I have started a new research project aimed at a high quality journal.  My expectation are that the knowledge and skills learned from working on this project will help me reduce the time necessary for subsequent projects.

Instruction excellence was also an interesting.  How should I measure productivity in instruction?  For me, the output is similar to research.  I can:

1. I can improve the quality of my instruction - measured with current conceptual understanding and long-term rention. 
2. I can improve the quantity of my instruction - measured with my reach to more students.  If I can extend conceptual understanding to more students simultaneously, the more productive my instruction efforts will be. 
3. I can reduce the time to prepare the classroom environment and evaluate results. 
4. A combintation of all three.

How can I measure conceptual understanding?  Perhaps the best way is by their ability to write about the concepts, which unfortunately is difficult to track over time and very time consumming.  A new possibility, which I have been exploring, is using concept maps.  If concepts map evaluation can be automated, that will alleviate a major time hurdle.  My focus at this point is on the first, improving quality.  However, I am looking at the third optoin as well so as to enable the second.