Steve Draper
Posts: 25
 |
| 31/05/2007 12:02 |
|
Tony,
I'm going to try to express my reactions to your CBM work, and case study paper. My question really for these reactions is: do you have anything to say about them and/or are they silly?
1) first, I'm impressed: there is too little work that can show it has positive effects on learning; that has evidence of this, and some theory underpinning it too. That's why I think we are lucky to have you contribute to this conference; and why I recommended your work last week to the relevant subdean of our medical school.
2) My next feeling is that it's clever to use the indirect manipulation of a marks scheme to get students to learn better. Most of us first think of more direct manipulation such as study skills training, exhortation, etc. But when indirect works, then it leads to more integrated and less invasive approach. Other designs I admire often have a similar quality, though more often the other way round: manipulating something at the front end in learning activities and then getting b etter outputs only indirectly asked for e.g. Baxter gets them to do regular exercises and only enforces participation, and they later discover how much better prepared for the exam they are.
3) I also agree there is an independent benefit here of getting medical students to have a better grasp of their confidence in each item for practical professional reasons: that such thinking about confidence should continue to be part of their professional reasoning throughout their careers. I.e. b eing self-critical is a practial professional skill.
4) But it is all unrelentlingly individualistic. I wonder what your thoughts were about the (in the literature) more common route of using peer discussion to get students used to the idea that not everyone thinks the same, that they need to be able to give reasons for (and against) their view, to weigh alternative views. Classically (and in Piaget) it is peer discussion that is used as the place and stimulus for that.
What about Abercrombie's wonderful book, again with medical students.
Abercrombie, M.L.J. (1960) The anatomy of judgement: An investigation into the processes of perception and reasoning (London: Free Association Books)
5) And again this can be justified in prof.skills terms. Whereas 50 years ago in the bad old days a doctor might expect his opinions to be taken as authority, that no longer works so well with patients. Since a lot of "cures" depend on patients following instructions ("complying"), being persuasive has a directd effect on health. CBM is part of the old world of never justifying yourself to others, just honing a private skill.
SteveD
|
|
|
|
|
Tony Gardner-Medwin
Posts: 14
|
| 31/05/2007 14:26 |
|
Thanks for your comments, Steve. Only one point (your last sentence) do I radically disagree with ("CBM is part of the old world of justifying yourself to others ..."). Rather, CBM is part of a new world in which you are instinctively always ready to justify your beliefs, or else acknowledge them as uncertain. A bit insulting to call this a new world - it is part of what has always been valued in every time and every clime.
When you have a hobby horse - as I certainly do over CBM (amongst many other things, I might add!) - there is a hazard that everybody thinks you want your idea to take over the world. Absolutely not. CBM is in no way meant to supplant peer or teacher based learning, or assessment methods that require hand-marking. But it is meant to supplant (in many, not all, situations*) the use of objective Qs without CBM. What I argue is that if you are going to use objective right/wrong questions (which many of us are forced to think about for all too familiar reasons), then you should combine them with CBM.
I am a great proponent of tutorials and interactive practical and CAL sessions with teachers, and of peer learning. This despite the fact that most of the learning I did as a student was done by challenging myself and the satisfaction it gave me to achieve deep understanding by this route. I do argue that objective testing (and of course CBM) are often undervalued, and that a major benefit of using them to stimulate and test breadth of learning is that it frees staff time to indulge in the most satisfying aspects of interactive teaching - the development of the highest level skills.
Thanks for the Abercrombie ref.. I have already got it from the library (a great plus for an online conference!) and am pleased to see it was conceived at UCL. I think I shall be in strong agreement with its thesis. But the ability to toss around different sides to an argument is not restricted to group interaction - it can happen (albeit sometimes not so well) in a single brain. We need to encourage this in students in every way we can.
Tony GM
* For example, a colleague showed me a nice biochemistry exercise in which performance requires a multitude of small decisions (about genetic translation). To express confidence for each action would have involved twice as many clicks and little added value.
|
|
|
|
|
Tony Gardner-Medwin
Posts: 14
|
| 31/05/2007 14:56 |
|
I should have picked up on the merits of peer discussion. Dr. Curtin and I both encourage (as discussed in chat and elsewhere) students to work in pairs on formative and revision exercises, and things like practical follow-up exercises. When you watch the group interaction between students, it is often getting agreement on C=1,2, or 3 that stimulates the valuable interaction. Nancy pointed out that an element of what is happening here is that the students are choosing whether this is something they wish to be assessed on :- C=3 is tantamount to saying "we (or I) think we know this topic", and it is weighted more heavily. Each student is motivated to check up on the other's justification for thinking they know it or don't, and what arguments can be put forward to justify certainty or uncertainty. This idea of justifying uncertainty is something that sometimes stalls people. But it's a very real part of peer-peer (or good one-brain thinking) - where you eventually argue to the conclusion you must look this up in the book.
We think that 2 is the best number in peer discussion of CBM. Students tend it seems to interact more honestly in pairs. With 3 or more there is often a tendency to show off, or bluff confidence, and less willingness in the group to be the one who challenges such behaviour. Working on your own with CBM (and all its feedback, diagnosing such behaviour as overconfident) is probably the best way to persuade such a student to get real.
Tony GM & Nancy Curtin
|
|
|
|
|
Steve Draper
Posts: 25
|
| 31/05/2007 15:50 |
|
Tony
Thanks for those replies.
I should have anticipated them for what else you've written, really.
I suppose (this is a comment about style), that in the best tradition of science papers, you write about CBM in a single minded way, because that makes the arguments clearest (for the reader as well as author), but I fell into the trap of assuming that meant that was all you thought.
Another kind of paper would have you discuss the role of CBM in a full programme (along with the other methods you say you use as well), and how they fit together.
But thanks for replying to my somewhat lazy reading!
steveD |
|
|
|
|
|
