Retaining Learning through Reflection & Transfer

I'm Brian Myers. I'm Mike Ratowick. I'm Becky Hiread. And this is Alpellentz, a podcast featuring tips for ad teachers.

We are your agricultural education resource across the web, sharing research based tips and tackling the tough questions facing agriculture teachers every day. Hey Alpellentz, this is Brian here with Mike and Becky by the Alpellentz and we have with us another exciting phenomenal... Get your bingo cards out! Bingo!

My friends and colleagues here were giving me a hard time because I had not used my favorite word phenomenal yet this season. So the bingo cards were struggling. But with your alpellentz bingo card, you have been waiting for Brian to say some things. You finally got your phenomenal.

It's taken us a while to get there. It did. With that, speaking of phenomenal, we have a phenomenal guest with us today. Brad Coleman, welcome back to Alpellentz.

Thanks, Brad. I'm just so honored that you broke out phenomenal for the first time with me. Did you get me mixed up? Did you think I was going to be someone else that you're scheduled mixed around or what?

Did you wait specifically for somebody from UF? He knew what he was doing. Just trying to be thoughtful there. So Brad, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Re-introduction yourself to all of your thousands of fans here on Alpellentz. Yeah, so I'm Brad Coleman. Just going to glaze on over that. Just throw for that ego.

Just throw for that ego. Just throw for that ego. Yeah, so Brad Coleman originally taught Ag in Louisiana. Did, in fact, do my graduate studies at the University of Florida.

And I worked at Oklahoma State now as an assistant professor of agricultural education and leadership. Cool. So you've done some outstanding work here. We're going to be talking about some experiential learning, that sort of stuff.

So why don't you give us an overview of the topic today? Yeah, I thought it was a phenomenal study, actually. Fantastic. On the Bengal cards.

Perfect. Well, that's getting superb. You need your free space now folks. Break out my source here.

So, well, I guess, okay, so just briefly about the study because this is only a 20 minute podcast. We did a little bit of a quasi-experimental design. And so it was all around this area of experiential learning. And so we use this a lot in agricultural education at a lot of different levels, right?

Secondary level, post secondary level. So we set up an experimental design and an animal science course at the time. Yeah, it was at the University of Florida. And so just your introductory animal science kind of lab course lends itself to being very experiential in nature, right?

And so there's some things when we're teaching and when we're providing experiences to students that we should be doing. One of those is prompting reflection. And the other that sometimes we miss a lot of times, and I'm guilty of it too, is helping our students practice now that we've learned something. How do we transfer what we've learned to some other context?

Really? How can we prompt that transfer to other contexts? And so that's what we did is we practiced transferring concepts in similar situations, near situations, and far situations from what they were learned. And then with reflection, we also had students reflect in two modes.

We had them reflect written independently by myself. And some students really liked that our introverted students did. And then we had our extroverted students who liked our other mode of reflection, which was verbally with a peer. And so I get to talk with someone about my ideas.

And so we tested those effects on some learning outcomes. The three things that I think are probably most important, right, for what we're looking for. And that's did our students learn anything? Right.

So what did they learn? Can our students remember what they learned? And then can our students transfer what they learned to another context? So we want to see if, you know, how we reflected and how we practice transferring concepts had any influence on their knowledge gained, their retention of that knowledge, and their ability to transfer that knowledge to some other context.

So that's just a brief overview of the study. I'm so excited. Because I think this just kind of memory, laying back to how people learn series. And I think I really appreciate those three questions that did they learn?

Do they remember it? Can they transfer it? Because I think we often stop it. Did they learn it?

And did they like, yes, we want you to learn it, but it's not just did they learn it? And with that the idea of this that transfer isn't just can I do it? It's not can I do it again? It's can I do it again in a different context?

I think that piece. I'm excited to talk about that piece today because I think when we think that remember and transfer are really just going to talk about. Yeah, I always call transfer kind of like the gold standard of education, right? It's what we're aiming to do.

Yeah, we want our students to learn, but if they can't use that elsewhere in life, then what's the point? And that's lost so many times in, at least for me, if I reflect on my experiences at high school, like teacher, we're so busy worrying about the content. We're so busy teaching right up to the bell or going on a field trip and being late coming back that we forget about all of the learning and we move on to the next thing the next day without spending any time on the transfer. So I really to like Becky appreciate the conversation about not only the reflection about the transfer pieces because it's something that we probably lose sight of too often as teachers when we really get in the trenches.

So busy. We keep our students so busy. We just say we just say so occupied. And I think we talked about this a little bit earlier this season about that like that pause and that necessity of just that real to bring in that reflection of just we sent we tend to quantify so much the actual work or the product or that thing.

And we forget that that reflection is work that is learning and those things are really, really critical for learning to happen. So you want to find out what we found or you want to hear about what we found? I would love to hear what you found. Okay.

All right. We're going to join in this today. I set myself up for that. What a phenomenal joke.

Please tell all. All right. So well, I guess what I should say and just to clarify, and this is a kind of an idea that could be used in the classroom. We talked about practicing transferring learning right because as a teacher, sometimes I struggle with this right.

So we teach the context concepts, but how do we get them to transfer a push our students to transfer it in a different concept context, excuse me. And so where's the heart today? And so for us, we wanted to do something pretty simple that other people could do fairly easily. And it's just providing them with some case vignettes or scenarios is what we did.

And so we provided students at the end of whatever was happening in the lab that day with with a vignette that they would look at and they would say, okay, this is what we learned about in class. So we applied these concepts to in some groups. They applied it to the context that we were learning. For example, we were learning about food science and safety.

We maybe applied it to the specific context in which we learned it. Maybe it was dairy. And then we had some other vignettes where we pushed students to apply it a little further. And so we called that near transfer.

And so if it was that same food science example, maybe we had them apply it to a scenario still in food, but a different type of food. So maybe it's the whole idea of cookie dough safety and stores, right? Your mom always tells you can't eat that raw cookie dough. It's dangerous.

And so what, you know, so maybe we're applying those concepts in that context. And then we in a far transfer for group just completely unrelated to the context of what we learned. We had some students apply those concepts and with using that same example, maybe it's with safety on a playground, right? You're designing a playground and how do we have safety on a playground.

So that maybe that's just one example. So what we learned was when we had students, regardless of the way they reflected verbally or in person, those near or even saying context transfer. So the setting in which I learned in or even a close adjacent context, it had some positive effects on if students learned something. It had no effects on if they remembered, right?

So we're talking about recall or post course retention is what we called it. And then we also found that the further we push students to transfer. So the far context and the longer we practice. So over the semester, the more time they had practicing transfer those concepts, the better they got at transferring to very distal concept context.

So that was kind of the big aha moment. Almost what we expected, right? Not overly groundbreaking, kind of what we may expect, but we still need to see if we just apply what we learned in the same context over and over. You're notching it.

You're notching it. You're notching. Then all I'm going to learn is you're notching. But if as a teacher, I don't prompt my students to transfer this concept further and further than they have no utility for it.

And I don't know how to apply it. I haven't taught how to apply it to a further concept context. And so that's kind of the big aha moment is, you know, we forget sometimes it's not just us to us to teach the concepts. We have to teach our students how to apply those concepts to other contexts if it's going to be useful.

I think that's really great stuff, Brad. And one of the things that I don't want us to miss was you had a long-term goal. You kept as a teacher. Sometimes we get distracted and kind of keep wanting to do different things, but you kind of knew the long-term where this particular course was going and that intentionality.

And maybe spend a little time talking about what did you learn about that the importance of a teacher being intentional as they're working through all the kind of things and what kind of tips do you have for us as we're trying to apply what you learned? Sure. Yeah. And I thankfully got to work with some instructors at UF.

They learned their course to me. So I wasn't the instructor of this course. What was really neat, the aha moment at the end was a lot of what we were doing. They had talked about what we wanted.

We have these opportunities for reflection. We usually have them penciled in, but sometimes we always forget to do it. Or we haven't thought about having students transfer concepts before, but now that we've done it in this class for the sake of your research, we're going to keep this. We're going to retain it.

And so the big aha moment for me is we talk about planning being key, but I think intentional planning is key. And so it's not just this idea of, and we hear this phrase all the time, and I'm guilty of using it to bell to bell. We need to teach bell to bell. And we do that because idle hands are the devil's hand you work.

You don't want to give students. And that's great. I get why we say that. And so we're going to talk about what we put in that time, bell to bell.

I think we can. Right. And so why aren't we rom-ting reflection? And so it's as simple as getting students to write their thoughts down or talk with another person or do a combination of both right.

Think about it myself. Talk with another person and share out to the whole class or gallery walk silently right around some reflective questions first and then break into small groups and talk about it. That takes nothing to facilitate that as an educator, but could have huge effects on our students and on their learning and is really intentional. I think what we saw in Mrs.

Planning is giving ourselves the luxury to slow down. We get into this busy like, how do I feel this time? How do I teach bell to bell? But it's really planning is that space of getting out of survival mode out of minute to minute decisions to say, here's what I'm going to do.

Here's where we're going to slow down. Here's where I'm going to ask students to work to do the work. Here's where we're going to pause and reflect. And I think when I got to the point where I could reframe of like, this is a luxury.

I'm giving myself. So my classes do not feel so frantic all the time. And I'm not constantly just feeling like I'm in this scramble. Like that really changed how I thought about what I was actually able to do in 50 minutes.

And it's a different type of work, particularly for students. And I think the other piece is over several episodes. You hear me say this from time to time, but who's working harder? And are we facilitating the action where the students are really working hard cognitively?

Maybe not hands on, but they're really starting to process and thinking about things and keeping them engaged there. And when you're talking about reflection, you're talking about transfer, you're really talking about that. Minds on work that we really want students to do. And that's where the learning takes place.

Yeah, and that minds on work too can be coupled with hands on experiences. How many times did I miss an opportunity where, well, you know, it's going to be kind of a half day here. What could we do? Oh, I don't.

We could do. We could just take the students out to the greenhouse. They can check plants, water, maybe pulling weeds or whatever. And that's what we'll do today.

Okay, great. Well, why can't that be an educative experience? Right? Why can't we just save five minutes and come back inside and ask students two questions, right?

Think about what we did today. Why was it important? And then the second question, how can we use what we did today or what we learned about what we were doing today elsewhere, right? It may have seen as simple as water and plants and pulling weeds, but like what might we have learned today or done today?

Where can we use this in real life? And so maybe just even prompting some simple questions, right? I missed those opportunities so many times because, like Becky was saying, I was just backed up and planning. What really hit me, Brad was when you talked about the reflection of those other instructors that, you know, in the animal science courses that they're going to start to keep these ideas now because I think all of us in education, we know this stuff.

We know this stuff. We can sit here and answer the truth, the multiple choice question on what is the expert learning, what are the parts, what are you supposed to do, but how many times have we just not done it. And we have, because we've gotten busy, we're like, oh my gosh, we're running around for one class to whatever else. It's like, just do it.

Just make sure and be honest with ourselves, actually live out what we know is the way and we see the results that you found here like, wow, it was worth it. I think without giving, I would love to have Brad talk a little bit about the practicality of this, because we talk about it as a luxury. There's the other side of it where it's a luxury plan. I don't have that luxury of time to plan like that.

So practically speaking, what does it look like to make the time to plan for that? How does somebody do that on a seven period day with one prep? How do they think about their day or their week to really practically plan for experiential learning? And for me, I mean, in my courses, I try to capture some of those notes.

I don't go full lesson plan template, right? And for those of you who've been put in front of a lesson plan template in our undergraduate education, I'm guilty of doing this with students too. And saying, you know, plan out this lesson from start to finish. And it's like with PTSD, like, no, I don't want to do it.

I don't want to do it. I don't want to. And I get that. And I get that because I don't do it per se either.

But what I do is kind of what I call sticky note lesson plans, sometimes actually on a sticky note, but later I'll transfer them to a Word document. And I try to capture those important components, right? Did students have a valuable experience? Did I have an opportunity to prompt reflection, right?

And where, and the key thing is when I'm prompting reflection as a teacher, it's different than the reflection students may have going on subconsciously about their learning experiences. I'm getting to steer their thought process. Did I provide an opportunity for students to draw connections with what they experienced today and what it means? And then did I give them a chance to apply that in some way, shape or form?

If I have those kind of four pieces now, when I'm planning, then I feel like I've done my part. And so it's as simple as that, right? And, you know, I know there's probably people ready to throw their tomatoes, right? You didn't talk about an interest approach.

You didn't talk about this. And we gosh, dang it. Where's that exit ticket? And it's like, yeah, I get those pieces.

But when you boil it down to its simplest form, those kind of four pillars, do we have an experience where we're able to reflect prompt guided reflection, right? Ask about what does it mean and then how can we apply it to future settings? We've got those foundational elements, then I think a lot of times we're covered. You know, I would agree.

And I think you did a nice job of kind of summarize it into four points for us, Brad. And for me, my push back on Becky is find in time. I think we have to create it as a habit of the mind. And so rather than it has to be less than plans or has to be this, how do we as teachers, just, it's part of our habit and as part of the mindfulness that we go through and planning in the process.

And hopefully if we practice and demonstrate it over time with our students, the students start picking it up as a habit of the mind as well. And so it just it's ingrained in us. And so it's not an extra activity where we have to go in and do lesson planning or we have to set time aside for it. It's just what we do every day.

We get up with shot where we brush our teeth. We do those things in the morning and it's just part of the habit. Yeah. And just two really quick last last last points for planning or tips, I guess.

For me, like I said, I capture anything that I've done with my students and a word document. I save it, right? So that way the next time I teach this, I just go back to it. I'm not replanting.

I can just make tweaks and remember what worked and what didn't. And then when it comes to developing some of those things, right? Like I mentioned case vignettes, I know some of us may be a little bit not familiar yet or even maybe a little concerned, but I use the machine, right? So artificial intelligence chat GPT to create a case vignette around the context and then the context that maybe I want students to transfer to.

Or if I can't even think about those ideas myself, gosh, I go there and that's where I get a lot of my ideas. If you're struggling to think of an opportunity for, well, how in the world are they going to apply? You're not seeing or administering vaccines or something to a far context. Get some help, right?

It's available not to be that guy, but chat GPT can help with some of that. Great. Great. They're absolutely the other thing.

You know, you're talking about the reflection and kind of the planning piece. And maybe even with the AI is you talk about guided reflection and guided prompted reflection. And I think sometimes people say, Oh, sure, I can come up with a question on the fly just to provide that reflection. But maybe just me, but asking good questions that lead to reflection is hard.

And to me, that's where I spent a lot of my time planning. What advice do you have for folks on how to develop good guided prompts to guide that reflection piece for the students in the classroom? Mine always tend to center around my objectives, right? What do I want students in?

Maybe even if I don't have explicitly written out objectives, right? And you're like thinking, OK, you just said maybe don't have a full lesson plan. We didn't talk about objectives and the three components and all six. I get it, right?

But we do have an in goal in mind. And so what do we want students to get out of it? That's usually where my questions are stemming from. I try to avoid binary simple one word.

Yes, no questions. Right? How does this work? What do we think as my question starters?

And then the last thing that I do, and I always tell my students this, if we're going to have some sort of sticky note plan or even a PowerPoint or guided notes or some sort of support that whether it's a worksheet, whatever the case may be, put those questions in there, right? And so if I've got a PowerPoint presentation that I'm using to kind of guide what I'm doing, I write the questions that I want to ask onto the slide because if I don't, I'll probably forget to ask them. And then or in the moment, like you're talking about Brian, I don't maybe off the fly or off the cuff come up with the best questions. But if I think about it ahead of time and write it down and put it in front of myself and the students, then it's there.

And so that's just another tip that I use. Well, Brian, this has been great. Really appreciate the work you're doing. You have been doing and sharing this with our folks.

I think it's a lot packed into what you shared with us today. Not just about experiential learning about just good planning and good preparation and hopefully folks have taken those kind of things are able to apply those in there. So really appreciate you coming and sharing this with us today on Al pellets tips for our teachers podcast. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Al pellets.

Check out our website for more information on this topic and to learn more about our guests. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to stay connected and be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you'll never miss an episode. For Mike and Becky, this is Brian here by the Al pellets saying thank you and we look forward to seeing you again on another episode of Al pellets tips for ag teachers.