Less Teaching, More Learning

“Less is more” has almost become a cliché in the world of education. We all recognize that the amount of potentially important content is increasing exponentially in every subject area. We also recognize that “coverage” does not equate with learning, but most of us still have the feeling that we at least need to “touch on” everything we consider to be important. A 10-year study tracking significant curriculum change at Michigan State University strongly suggests that this is completely counterproductive.

The first-year biology course at the university in the late 1990s was a very traditional format with weekly lectures and labs. Each lab was designed to illustrate a particular topic, and had relevant reading from the textbook attached. The lecturers themselves describe these labs as “cookbook labs.” The following changes were made to the curriculum:

1. Labs were made more inquiry-based. Initially they were changed to two seven-week inquiries, where students pursued a research question in the laboratory by designing a series of experiments with careful guidance from faculty. Students were then mentored, to troubleshoot and problem-solve around their laboratory work as the seven weeks progressed. Students still conducted two “cookbook labs,” initially as models before beginning their inquiry in groups. After some time, the two seven-week inquiries were reduced to a single, 14-week inquiry.

2. Textbook readings that had been attached to individual labs were reduced, to give students more time to read scientific publications related to their research topic and apply the findings to their own research.

3. New assessments, such as interviews, concept mapping, and peer reviews were introduced and quizzes and exams were modified to include more short answers requiring critical thinking and fewer multiple choice questions.

4. The lecture component remained largely unchanged.

The changes meant that far fewer topics were explicitly covered than previously. The reduction in content amounted to around 44 percent of what had been taught in the original biology course.

One constant measure was used to assess student mastery of content throughout the change process. This was an adapted version of a standardized test (the Medical College Admissions Test, or MCAT), which the university called the MAT. This allowed for comparison to a baseline throughout the change process.

Student opinions of the course were also collected using a course evaluation survey.

What were the results?

• Students who participated in the two seven-week inquiries performed significantly better on the MAT than those who participated in weekly labs, but those who participated in the 14-week inquiry version of the course significantly outperformed both other groups. The mode score on the MAT for the weekly cookbook lab students was 45 percent. This score rose to 65 percent for the cohorts who did the two seven-week inquiries and 70 percent for the cohorts who undertook a single 14-week inquiry.

• Results on the MAT were also analyzed topic by topic, and showed an improvement across all topics. This result was surprising, considering the fact that some of the topics on the test were no longer explicitly covered in any traditional way in the course.

• The original traditional course had a low response rate (<1 percent) to the course evaluation survey, and only 20 percent of the students who responded gave positive feedback. The response rate for the cohorts doing the two seven-week inquiries rose to 50 percent with 71 percent positive feedback. For the cohorts who undertook the single 14-week inquiry, the response rate was 86 percent and the percentage of positive feedback rose to 96 percent.

What does this mean for our classrooms?

The faculty at Michigan State attribute the increase in performance of their students across the 10 years to the fact that a reduction in traditional content coverage allowed more time for students to develop their own ideas and theories, and to problem-solve around challenging, ill-structured problems. They believe that the critical thinking skills acquired through these processes enabled students to apply what they knew to unfamiliar topics. Less teaching, in the traditional sense of covering content, did indeed lead to more learning.

The motivational aspects of this study are also important to consider. McCune and Entwhistle (2011) have studied how students acquire the disposition to understand something deeply. Some of the conditions they have found that support the cultivation of this disposition are:

• A classroom culture where the monitoring of understanding is valued and ubiquitous.

• Engagement with complex, authentic, open-ended problems.

• Scaffolding for students to develop a strong grasp of the thinking and inquiry processes of a particular discipline.

• Activities that allow students to develop a sense of themselves as contributors to the construction of knowledge.

The changes in comments from students on the course evaluation forms at Michigan State suggest that the reduction of content and the increase in inquiry created at least some of these conditions.

Comments prior to the changes were frequently a variation on “labs are boring and time consuming.” Following the changes, the feedback included comments such as:

• “… forced me to think a step further”

• “… forced me to know details and use conceptual thinking and troubleshooting”

The question we as educators are left with after considering the results of this study is not whether we should reduce content and increase inquiry; it is whether we should be asking ourselves questions like these:

1. What filters can we use to decide which pieces of content to strip out?

2. What strategies can we use to scaffold inquiry, so that students have sufficient space to build their own theories, but also sufficient guidance to do so without developing significant misconceptions or wasting enormous amounts of time floundering about in the hope of rediscovering things we already know?

References

Luckie, D., Aubry, J., Marengo, B., Rivkin, A., Foos, L. and Maleszewski, J. (2012) “Less Teaching, more Learning: 10-Year Study Supports Increasing Student Learning through less Coverage and more Inquiry” in Advances in Physiological Education 36, pp. 325-335.

McCune, V. and Entwhistle, N. (2011) “Cultivating the Disposition to Understand in 21st Century University Education” in Learning and Individual Differences 21, pp. 303-310.

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