Dr. Leddo’s Blog
Free and easy way to help your child get “unstuck” when learning or just be a better learner (will work for you, too!)
If your child has ever listened to a lecture in class, read a textbook chapter, watched an educational video or tried to do a school assignment and thought “I don’t get it.”, then I will show you how to help your child “get it” or, generally, just become a better learner.
For years, I’ve been developing an assessment methodology that measures what knowledge students have (which is different than can they give the right answer on a test) and the depth of their understanding (most people probably know that E= mc^2, but how many can explain what the formula means or can prove that it’s true?). I call this method Cognitive Structure Analysis (CSA) and have done a lot of research showing that if you assess students’ knowledge this way, you can predict with great accuracy how well they can solve problems. We also did research showing that if teachers assess students this way and remediate students’ knowledge, as opposed to asking them to “show all work” and correcting missed steps in the solution, there is an immediate 10 point or full letter grade improvement in student performance (this would be a good thing to share with your child’s teacher).
The most intriguing application of CSA is whether students can be taught to self-assess their own knowledge. In this way, when they learn (either in a class or when engaged in self-directed learning) they can figure out what they know and don’t know, so if they’re stuck, they understand what they’re not understanding. We found that if we simply give students a 1-page sheet that shows what a sample self-assessment using CSA looks like and then ask them to use that as a model to self-assess their own knowledge of a subject, they can actually produce very reliable self-assessments.
Our latest study shows that if students perform such a self-assessment and then go back and try to learn the knowledge they deemed themselves deficient in, they actually greatly raise their performance. In our study, two groups of students watched a scientific video. Afterwards, one group was told that if they felt they didn’t understand something, they could go back and rewatch the video. Another group was shown how to self-assess and was told to do the self-assessment. They were told they could go back and rewatch the video to fill in any gaps in their knowledge. Both groups then took a test on the video’s content. Those who were not taught to self-assess scored, on average, 68% on the test (a high D), with no student scoring above a B. Those who were taught to self-assess scored, on average, 83% on the test (a B), with no student scoring below a C. A 15-point average improvement just by giving students a 1-page sheet, showing them how to self-assess! Imagine if we could spread this to classrooms around the world or even to adults doing self-directed learning. We could finally ensure that all people succeed in their learning.
Below is the link to the 1-page self-assessment example we give students. Please share with your child and every teacher and parent you know to help your child and all the children around the world have brighter futures.