 Helping Students

Learn in a Learner
Centered Environment
Developed by Professor Terry Doyle


Ferris state University


 Learning Outcomes
 As a result of participating in today’s
activities faculty will:
1. Have a clearer understanding of the reasons most
students resist learner centered teaching.
2.
4. Take away rationales explaining why LCT is the best
 approach to college instruction.


3. Have a clearer understanding of the skills students

will need to be
 successful learners in a LCT environment.


4. Take away strategies for teaching students the

learning
 skills and strategies they will need to be
Not a single grad school or


employment recruiter has ever

indicated that what they are really
looking for in a college graduate is:


 ‘A great note taker and someone who is

excellent at multiple choice tests!’
 A Key to Understanding
Learner Centered Teaching
• It is the one who does
the work that does the
learning

www.wmin.ac.uk/.../Students-working-together.jpg
 The Definition of Learning

•
• Learning is a
change in the
neuron-
patterns of the
brain.
 (Ratey, 2002)

www.virtualgalen.com/.../ neurons-small.jpg
 A Teacher’s Definition of
Learning


 Learning is the ability to use information

after
 significant periods of disuse
 and
 it is the ability to use the information to
solve problems that arise in a context
different (if only slightly) from the context in
which the information was originally taught.
(Robert Bjork, Memories and Metamemories, 1994)



What is the optimal learning outcome of any
course?
 What would make us happy (from all
that we taught—the skills, content and
behaviors) that our students remembered
and could use six months after they
finished our class?
•
•
 A Definition of
Learner Centered Teaching
 Learner Centered Teaching

 Each decision we make as teachers

is based on one simple question—


 Given the context of my

teaching assignment (# of
students, learning environment or
physical space etc.), will this
teaching action optimize my
students’ opportunities to learn?”



Eight Reasons
Students Resist
Learner Centered
Teaching
 1.Old habits die hard

 The expectations our students

have for their roles and
responsibilities as college learners
are based on strongly formed habits
learned through twelve or more
years of teacher-centered instruction.
 2.High Schools Remain Teacher-Centered
Institutions

• “Despite the efforts of many, the

organization and structure of most
comprehensive high schools look very
similar to those of high schools of
generations ago. High schools have
stood still amidst a maelstrom of
educational and economic change
swirling around them.” (The National Commission on
the High School Senior Year in 2001, p.20).

•
•
 3. Learning is not a Top Reason Students
give for Attending College

 Many first-year
college students
are sick to death of
school by age
eighteen and see
college as just the
last hurdle to be
crossed.
 (Leamnson 1999, p.35).

•
 4. Students don’t Like Taking Learning
Risks

• “But as we grow older we develop a

great tendency to hide from
failure.”
 (Tagg, 2003 p. 54).
•


 4. Students don’t Like Taking
Learning Risks
• Students that don’t take risks and
make mistakes, which are the very
actions successful thinkers must
do, are in the business of protecting
their unblemished record of
mediocrity
• (Covington, 1992, p. 231)
 5. LCT Doesn’t Resemble what Students
Think of as School

•
• By age 18, our students have spent
70% of their waking lives in school
(Leamnson, p.35),
•
• Each school year looks a great deal
like the year before.

Eighth Twelfth
First Fifth Grade
Grade Grade Grade
 6. Students don’t Want to Give More Effort
and LCT Requires It.

• K. Patricia Cross in her 2001 talk Motivation

Er… will that be on the test? in discussing
American students’ views about effort
said:


• “One of the oddities of traditional

American culture, especially the
youth culture, is that it is better to
be thought lazy than stupid. Thus, in
the competition of the classroom,
students prefer to be seen by others
as succeeding through ability rather
 If I have to work
at it I must not be
smart !
 


•
 7. Students’ Mindsets about Learning Make
Adapting to LCT More Difficult
 Thousands of students each semester
pay tuition to take courses in subject areas
they firmly believe they cannot learn.



 7. Students’ Mindsets about
Learning Make Adapting to LCT
More Difficult
• This strange scenario occurs because
of the fixed mindset these students
have developed about learning a
particular subject. (Dweck, 2006)
 8. Many Students Follow the Path of
Least Resistance in their Learning.
• Minimalist learners.
• These are students that adhere to
the philosophy: “What is the least I
have to do to get the grade that I
need.”
•
 8. Many Students Follow the Path of Least
Resistance in their Learning.


• T h is b e h a vio r re fle ct a life tim e o f

le a rn in g in a n e n viro n m e n t w h e re
tryin g to g a in a re w a rd o r a vo id a
p u n ish m e n t w a s th e g o a l.
 Why Learner
Centered
Teaching is in
our Students
Best Interest
 Students need to Know WHY

• One of the most

important
aspects of being
a learner
centered teacher
is to remember
teaching is, in
most ways, no
different than
any other human
to human
interaction–
If I don’t know WHY you want me to


work on a project or learn a concept

or if I can’t see how taking on a
certain task has some benefit to me I
am hesitant to do it.
 3 Key Rationales for Explaining the Change
to LCT

1. The best answer to WHY we have



changed to a learner-centered
practice is this is where the research
has led us.


 .
 WHY Learner Centered
Teaching
• New discoveries about how the
human brain learns and the
subsequent recommendations for
how to teach in harmony with these
discoveries has guided the
development of a learner centered
approach to teaching
 Rationales for Explaining the Change to LCT

 The learning
tasks we are asking
our students to
take on, which
require them to
adopt new learning
roles and
responsibilities, are
based on what we
now know
optimizes the way
the human brain
 3 Key Rationales for Explaining the Change
to LCT

 2. Readiness for Careers



 The rationale for teaching many of the

learning skills, behaviors, attitudes and
critical thinking strategies that are now part
of learner centered college courses is that
our students will need these skills to be
successful in their careers.


 As students understand this their buy in

to LCT will be greater.
•
 Rationales for Explaining the Change to LCT


3. Preparation for Life Long Learning(LLL)



One of the significant changes our
students need to accept is that college is
no longer their terminal educational
experience. A college education gives
students their learners’ permit.


•

 3. Preparation for Life Long
Learning(LLL)
• Our responsibility
as college
educators is to
prepare our
students to be
life long learners.
•
• Many of the LCT
actions we take
are done to
develop LLL
skills.
 Rationales for Explaining the Change to LCT

 For Example


 One of the
reasons students
are being asked to
take on more
responsibility for
their own learning
is because they will
be responsible for
it the rest of their
lives.
 LCT means Sharing Power with Students

 Having choices in what and how to

learn and having some control over the
learning process and accepting the
responsibility that comes with choice and
control is an authentic expression of how
the work place and the home place
operate.
 It is excellent preparation for life
after college.
Eight Skill
Areas
Students Will
Need Help
with to
Succeed in a
LCT Classroom
 1. Helping Students Learn How to Learn on
their Own

 There are two important messages if we are to involve

our students in more independent work.
 1.Many of our students are not well
prepared to do a great deal of their
learning on their own.
•
 2. If they are to develop the skills
needed to learn on their own we will have
to teach them these skills.
 Learning on One’s Own
• The broad categories include the
ability to handle four areas of task
management:
•
1.Task analysis
2.Identifying resources and planning
actions
3.Taking action based on planning
4.Assessing actions and revising plans.
• (adapted from work done at the University of Surrey, University Skills Program.
 Rationales for Having Students Learn on
Their Own


• It teaches them to figure things out for

themselves and trust their own
analytical abilities in order to
complete a task.
•
•
•
Rationales for Having Students
Learn on Their Own
• It teaches them to generate their
own questions about what is
important to know and what is not
important to completing the task.
•
Rationales for Having Students
Learn on Their Own
• It teaches them to
identify resources
and learn first
hand which
methods of
investigation are
helpful and which
are a waste of
time.
•
Rationales for Having Students
Learn on Their Own
• It teaches them
how to organize
their findings and
prepare
appropriate ways
to communicate
their results.
•
 Learning on One’s Own
 But perhaps the
most valuable
outcome of learning
on one’s own is--
•
• The satisfaction
and confidence
that comes
when students
are successful.
•
 Learning on One’s Own
• When students
prove to
themselves that
they can be
independent
learners, capable
of thinking for
themselves, and
figuring out how
to find and use
knowledge in
meaningful ways
to solve real
world problems,
 2. Learning to work with others

•
• Knowing and learning
are communal acts.
•
• They require many
eyes and ears,
many observations
and experiences.
They require a
continual cycle of www.osucascades.edu/.../images/two_students.JPG

discussion,
disagreement, and
consensus over
what has been seen
 Three Vital Questions
 1. What do our students know about
effectively working with other students?


 2. What have their previous experiences

taught them about how groups and teams work?

 3. What concerns do they have about

working with others?
 Finding the answers to these questions is
the best place to start building a successful
model of students’ cooperation, collaboration
and team work.
 A Rationale for Working with
Others
• The rationale for students learning to
effectively work with others is a simple
one—if they can’t learn to do it fairly
well their career success will be in
jeopardy.
•

 A Rationale for Working with
Others
• Of the three main
modes our
students use to
learn, writing,
reading and
speaking-- the
one that is least
used is speaking
(Nystrand and Gamoran ).

•
 A Rationale for Working with
Others

• Speaking is also the

one which teachers
most often give
students a pass on.
•
• The irony of this is
that speaking to
others is one of the
most important, if
not the most
important
professional and
personal skill that
 Some advice for faculty
• Teachers like to talk; I mean really
like to talk. Teachers can’t stand
silence so if the students don’t
immediately answer we answer for
them.
• The best advice for facilitating
students’ discussion is for us to
keep our mouths shut!
 3. Helping Students take Charge of their
Learning
 As instructors we
are conditioned to
be in control of the
learning process --
moving away from
that idea makes
many of us
uncomfortable.


 This
uncomfortableness
is shared by our
students when we
ask them to take
more control of their
learning.
 Some Good Reasons to Share Power.

 1. Our students 
2.
cannot improve their
abilities to be more
responsible for their
learning with out
being given greater
responsibility for it.
 skill they will need as
When students have
some control over how
they learn they can
discover their
strengths and
weakness as learners,
a vital metacognitive
life long learners.
 Some helpful reasons to share power.


3. The more • 4. When students
control our make a choice
students take and they also must
the more choices learn to live with
we can offer them that choice. This
the greater their is a very powerful
desire and life lesson.
willingness to •
engage in the
learning process.
 ( Zull p.52)

•
 Who Makes the Decision?
 Teacher Students Together NA
•
• 1. Course Textbook
• 2. Number of exams
• 3. When in the course exams will be given
• 4. Attendance policy
• 5. Late work policy
• 6. Late for class policy
• 7. Course learning outcomes
• 8. Office hours
• 9. Due dates for major papers
• 10. Teaching methods/approaches
• 11. How groups are formed
• 12. Topic of writing or research projects
• 13. Grading scale
• 14. Discussion guidelines for large or small group discussions
• 15. Rubrics for evaluation of self or peers’ work
• 16. If rewriting of papers will be allowed
• 17. If retesting will be allowed
 Each decision we make about our
teaching sends some message to our

students.
 For Example

When we fail to maintain order in
the classroom the message is we
don’t really care about their learning.


–
 When we share power with our students by
offering learning choices the message is


–
– we trust their judgment;
– we trust them to act in ways that are in
their best interest,
– we believe they will make decisions that
are in the best interest of the whole
community of learners
 Let Students Teach Each Other

 Teaching others
requires the
persondoing the
teaching to thoroughly
understand the
knowledge or skill sets
being taught.


 Teaching others
promotes deep www.csulb.edu/depts/chls/images/MorenodiceLat...

learning for the

student doing the
teaching
 Teaching Students how to
Teach Others
 Learning benefits:

•

1. Students must
determine how best to
learn all they will need
to know about the
assigned or chosen
topic.

•
 2. Students must locate
 Teaching Students how to
Teach Others
3. Students must


seek out resource

people (librarians
or content experts)
on campus and
around the world
via the Internet.


4. Students will need



to spend some face

to face time with
the course
instructor.
 Teaching Students how to
Teach Others
4. Having students
teach promotes
independent
 learning and the
taking on of
increased
responsibility
 for their own
learning.

 Learning from the Other Side
of the Desk
• A positive
outcome of
students
teaching each
other is that the
students will gain
an increased
appreciation for
the effort and
skills that we
must display to
effectively teach
 5.Helping Students with Presentations
and Performance Assessments

 Your work will be made public!



www.uog.edu/dns/NSF/mbCl_files/image004.jpg
 Your work will be made
public!
 Making our students’ work public helps
students


1. Take their work more seriously



1. Adds more accountability for their work

2.
3. Gets students to take more time and care in
preparing their work
4.
5. Allows for additional audiences to assess our
students’ work
Your work will be made public!

• Letting others
see and hear
our students’
ideas, solution
or findings
represents an
authentic
model of how
information is
used, studied www.iowasenatedemocrats.org

and evaluated.
 Making Presentations
 Rationales for
using presentations
–
• For a presentation to
be effective
students must
know their
information very
well.
•
• Presentations will
drive students to
engage more www.fortlewis.edu/.../Quintana-Yates.JPG

thoroughly with
the material
 Making Presentations
• Presentations
enhance the
development of
our students’
organization and
communication
skills


• Students must
consider what
www.usyd.edu.au/.../visiting%20professors.JPG

structure or
pattern will make
the information
 Making Presentations
• Presentations can
also help to
improve the
comfort levels of
students that
struggle with
public speaking.
•
• Our classrooms www.uog.edu/dns/NSF/mbCl_files/image002.jpg

should be among
the safest places
to practice this
very important
 Making Presentations
• Presentations are an
authentic
expression of what
our students will
be asked to do
with much of what
they learn in their
professions.
•
• Their ideas will be of
little value to their
colleagues or
companies if they
are not shared in a
clear, organized

www.csuchicoag.org/.../C05AGRI1for%20website.JPG
 Performance Assessment
• “We can teach students how to do
math, do history and do science,
not just know them.
•
• Then, to assess what our students
had learned, we can ask students
to perform tasks that replicate the
challenges faced by those using
mathematics, doing history or
conducting scientific investigation.”
 (Jon Mueller)
 6.Helping Students Become Life Long
Learners

•
• An undergraduate
degree clearly is
just a starting
point in a life
time of adult
learning and
cannot begin to
fully prepare our lifelonglearning.cqu.edu.au/.../lllc-2008.gif

students for an
ever flattening
world.
 Hospitality Industry Key LLL
Skills
• Must be able to read large amounts of
information, determine what is important to the
task at hand from the reading and then quickly
summarize it for others.
•
• Must be able to learn on their feet from others—
be able to observe and listen to others and
quickly adapt what was learned into their own
work.
•
• Must know the difference between the
information you need to know and all the other
information that is out there. In other words you
need to know what you don’t know.
 Hospitality Industry Key LLL
Skills
•
•
Must be able to learn from your mistakes or
you will be out of business.

•
Must be able to communicate clearly and
concisely –to teach others so they understand

and can apply what you have given them.

•


Must have the skills to work and learn on your

own—if given a task or assignment you must be

able to know how to find the information etc.

 Hospitality Industry Key LLL
Skills
• Must know what you are good at (strengths) and also
your weaknesses, otherwise you risk making bad
decisions about what jobs you can do and the one’s
you’ll need help with.
•
• Must be able to use a computer in a wide variety of
ways and know how to learn new applications as
they become available.
•
• Must know how to plan and organize very well your
own time and that of others.
•
• Must know your self well, your values, moral and
ethics will be constantly tested.

 Hospitality Industry Key LLL
Skills
• What was not identified by the board
members as being important????


 Ironically, it was the skills colleges

often have students spend a great deal
of time mastering
• Note taking
• Memorizing
• Test taking
• Cramming
 Teaching LLL Skills
• One rational to
help students
understand the
need to be LLL is
the fact that
people by age38
they will change
employers or
change
occupations
while working for
the same
 Helping Students to Understand the Need to
Learn LLL Skills

•
• Eighty percent of all the scientists who
have ever lived are alive today. Every
minute they add 2000 pages to
human’s scientific knowledge, and the
scientific material they produce every
24 hours would take one person five
years to read.
•


• 1,000,000 new books were published

last year (International Association of Libraries).
 Metacognitive Skills and
LLL
• Metacognitive skills are among the
most important LLL skills.
•
• Metacognition consist of two basic
processes occurring
simultaneously: monitoring your
progress as you learn, and making
changes and adapting your
strategies if you perceive you are
not doing so well. (Winn & Snyder, 1998)
Metacognitive Skills and LLL
• Metacognitive skills include:
– taking conscious control of learning,
– planning and selecting strategies,
– monitoring the progress of learning,
– correcting errors,
– analyzing the effectiveness of
learning strategies,
– and changing learning behaviors and
strategies when necessary
 ( Ridley D.S. Schultz, PS, Glanz, R.S and Weinstein, CA 1992).

–
 7. Helping Students Recognize What They Know,
Don’t Know and Misunderstand

 Our students come to college with

a range of prior knowledge, skills,
beliefs and concepts that
significantly influence what they
notice about the environment and
how they organize and interpret it.
This, in turn, affects their abilities to
remember, reason, solve problems
and acquire new knowledge. (Bransford, et.
al. p.10)
 7. Helping Students Recognize What They Know,
Don’t Know and Misunderstand
• If the only learning tool our students
have is memorization than
everything we teach them will likely
be seen as something to be
memorized.
 7. Helping Students Recognize What They Know,
Don’t Know and Misunderstand

 We need to do a great deal of

checking.
•
• Numerous research experiments
demonstrate the persistence of
preexisting understandings among
college age and older students even
after new models have been taught that
contradict their naïve understandings.
(Bransford et. al.p.16)
 7. Helping Students Recognize What They Know, Don’t
Know and Misunderstand

• We need to ask our students to tell

us what they have learned in their
own words, using examples and
analogies that demonstrate their
accurate understanding of the new
material.
•
 7. Helping Students Recognize What They Know,
Don’t Know and Misunderstand

• Even our brightest students filter the new course

material through their own prior knowledge and
if they hold misconceptions or have incomplete
prior knowledge they are likely to arrive at
conclusions different from what we intended.
 If we don’t check we won’t know
•
 7. Helping Students Recognize What They Know,
Don’t Know and Misunderstand

• We must create activities and conditions that

allow our students’ thinking to be revealed.
•
• Formative feedback helps learners identify gaps
that exist between their desired goal and their
current knowledge, understanding, or skills and
guides them through actions necessary to
obtain a more complete understanding.
(Ramaprasad, 1983; Sadler, 1989).
 7. Helping Students Recognize What They Know,
Don’t Know and Misunderstand

• The most helpful type of feedback

provides specific comments about errors
and specific suggestions for
improvement and encourages students
to focus their attention thoughtfully on
the task rather than on simply getting
the right answer (Bangert-Drowns, Kulick, & Morgan, 1991;
Elawar & Corno, 1985).
•

 Feedback
 7. Helping Students Recognize What They Know,
Don’t Know and Misunderstand

• Make certain that

students are
using the
feedback they
have been given.
•
• Expect to see the
improvements in
their future work
 8.Helping Students to Evaluate—Themselves,
Others and the Teacher

• •
• Friend to Groucho
Marx: “Life is •
difficult!” 
•
• Marx to Friend:
“Compared to
what?”

..
imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/CLASS/1.
 Student Self-evaluation

• Self-evaluation is defined as students

judging the quality of their work, based
on evidence and explicit criteria, for the
purpose of doing better work in the
future (Rolheiser and Ross, 1999).
•
•

 Student Self-evaluation

• When we teach
students how to
assess their own
progress, and
when they do so
against known
and challenging
quality
standards, a
great deal of
learning can take
place.
 Student Self-evaluation

• Self-evaluation is a potentially
powerful technique because of its
impact on student performance
through enhanced self-efficacy and
increased intrinsic motivation (Rolheiser
and Ross, 1999)

•
Student Self-evaluation

•
• They need us to
model the self
evaluation process.
•
• We need to involve
students in defining
the criteria that will
be used to judge
their work
•
• Create a rubric and
demonstrate how
students are to
 Student Self-evaluation

• Give students feedback on the

effectiveness of their self-evaluations.
•
• Students' initial comprehension of the
criteria and how to apply them are
likely to be imperfect (Rolheiser and Ross,
1999).

•
• One of the best ways to help our
students determine the accuracy of
their self assessment is to share
findings from peers and our own
findings using the same rubric.
 Student Self-evaluation

•
• The final stage is designed to teach
students how to develop productive
goals and action plans for
improvement.
•
• One strategy is to have our students to
examine and measure the strategies,
skills, effort and time they put into
their work against their own findings
and the feedback from peers and the
teacher.
 Peer Evaluation

•
• The reason to involve students in
peer evaluation is that it is a win-
win situation for both the reviewer
and the one receiving the feedback.
•
 Peer Evaluation
• Those receiving the feedback
discover the accuracy of their self
assessment. They learn ways to
improve their work by having
others find errors that they failed to
see and offering suggestions on
ways to improve the overall quality
of their work.
•
•
 Peer Evaluation
• The reviewer benefits by developing
abilities to recognize good work
from bad work, frame feedback in
clear and helpful ways and deliver
feedback in a positive manner.
 Peer Evaluation

• Peers should focus their feedback on

a few important aspects of the
work.
•
• We must remember our students are
novices at giving feedback.
•
• Using a rubric or set of questions that
focuses the peer review process will
improve the feedback.
 Seeking Students'
Feedback
• Ask students three questions
•
1.What do you like about the course and
course instruction?
2.
3.What would you change about the
course or course instruction?
4.
5.What could you do to make the learning
in this course better for you and your
peers?
 Are your out of class
assignments doing what you
want them to do?
• When giving a
homework
assignment ask
students to tell
you if the
assignment was
useful in helping
them understand
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