This is the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. The Transform Your Teaching Podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Hello, and
Ryan:welcome to the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. In today's episode, Doctor. Rob McDowell and Doctor. Jared Piles do a book review of Uncommon Sense Teaching, Practical Insights in Brain Science to help students learn. Thanks for listening.
Jared:Hey. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Ryan, for that astute intro. You know, it's hard to do these. Now that he's doing the intros, it feels weird to, like, just start talking as we record these.
Rob:Well, you can always just go ahead with your regular intro and then then feel feel normal. That way you're on a normal pattern.
Jared:I wanna break out of the norm. I wanna have something clean that Jacob can cut to if he needs to. And I'm sure all of this will go really well.
Rob:Actually, this is a great example of brain science.
Jared:Is it? Oh, is. You're right. Yes. Well, let's not get too far ahead of what we're gonna talk We have to kind of set the stage.
Jared:Alright. You know, this is our first book review that we've ever done. We're going to do as many of these as we can to prove that we can read and that we know how to read. Now after that, we can comprehend, but then apply those next levels of blooms is still questionable. But at least we can read and maybe analyze a little.
Rob:Well, and share what we're reading with those who listen, and maybe it might influence them or inspire them to do likewise. Maybe even share what they're reading. That would be great.
Jared:That would be great. But we are going to review a book that, I read and I have you had you read this before you recommended it to me?
Rob:I had.
Jared:Yes. Okay. Uncommon Sense Teaching by Barbara Oakley, Beth Rogowski and Terence Seznowski. I believe I'm pronouncing all
Rob:of You did a good job. I'm so glad you did that.
Jared:Thank you. I read it back when we were doing our series on active learning, Because as I've said several times on this podcast leading up to that series, when Rob and I were having many discussions, he kept asking me, Yeah, but do you really know what active learning is? And I was like, Yeah, totally I do. Then I read this book and I'm like, Actually, I don't think I do. So our goal of this episode is to give you a review of it.
Jared:We're gonna talk about some of the content and some key takeaways that we have. And then honestly, the end, a recommendation of what we think the book is. But here is a synopsis of the book brought to you by Chad GPT-four-zero. You ready for this? Go for it.
Jared:Uncommon Sense Teaching provides practical insights into how we learn, drawing from the latest neuroscience and cognition research. It emphasizes understanding learning from a neuroscience perspective in easy to understand terms. The book offers walkthroughs and worksheets to help translate abstract theories into practical classroom applications. It covers concepts such as the focused and diffused modes of learning, spaced retrieval practice, and how learning creates physical changes in the brain. Veteran teachers will find explanations to help facilitate more learning and practical tips to effectively address classroom challenges.
Rob:So I think just based on what you said right there, I think it is also maybe I don't know if I call it a critique as more as it is just being honest that this book tends to swing towards the k through 12 market.
Jared:Yes. That's one of my critiques I had.
Rob:More than I'm sorry. I didn't mean to steal your thunder.
Jared:No. It's fine.
Rob:I'm just trying to set the the bar from the get go so that people understood that. And I I really appreciated it because there hasn't been anything really in the popular market that's dealt with teaching and brain science, I think, made it clear for a whole lot of people like this book, I think, has done. Yeah. Now I may be wrong, and there may be people listening saying, well, what about
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:You know? Mhmm. If they do, I you know, please share with us if we're missing something. So it's been a most recent book, so it's gonna be up to date with where things are in neuroscience. So it brings neuroscience to bear Mhmm.
Rob:On how teaching and learning actually happens. So that is what led me to the book and my own personal desire to learn things. And is there something I can draw from this that'll help me do better? So the answer is yes. And I was able to also, you know, synthesize it with some other books that I've been reading along those lines to provide me with a even more this is foundational.
Rob:So I told you about it
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:And asking those questions. And so from your perspective, because I think you've you read it, what, back in October?
Jared:No. It was back in the it was back in early two thousand twenty four. So, like, March, April.
Rob:Was it March, April? Yeah. Okay. So I read it in December of twenty twenty three, I believe, during Christmas break, or should I say listened to it, but then I bought the book. Oh, you did?
Rob:I did.
Jared:Oh, okay.
Rob:So I thought I thought in terms of how it handled the concepts, like memory, I thought the way it handled the whole idea of memory was excellent. Mhmm. What about you?
Jared:Yeah. I I'm telling you, I was one of those people that saw brain science as an abstract. Like, okay, whatever. You know, it's one of those things, I know the brain can do these things, but honestly, it's way too far over my head like you were saying. But the practicality and the way that it broke it down, and I remember this was an audiobook.
Jared:And I usually, I've talked to you about this, Rob, many times. Audiobooks to me are just a way of ingesting information. I rarely apply what I hear through an audiobook. If I want to tangibly remember something and keep it, I tangibly have to hold the book in my hands. I don't know why.
Jared:I'm sure it has to do with like, you know, how I learn or something like that. But the way that this book articulated through audio alone, just the words alone, was remarkable. And I was sitting there listening to this while driving going, Oh, that makes perfect sense.
Rob:Yep.
Jared:And, Okay, that makes sense. And then the immediate practicality of it, like you were talking about working memory or short term memory and long term memory, how that uses the idea of the octopus. Yep. And the octopus can only hold. And we talked about this a bit in the active learning series that we did.
Jared:The octopus can only handle so many things at once. Four things. Yeah. And you the octopus can juggle it, and that's the new memory through short term. Yeah.
Jared:At some point, it's gotta either let something go or it's gotta throw something to the back of the long term
Rob:Mhmm.
Jared:And making those connections. That octopus lives in my head now. Like, it it is the image that I use when it comes to memory. And just this book is just it's immediately applicable. And then I bought the physical copy just for us to do this book review.
Jared:I then left it in my office, which was really smart. But you look at the actual physical book inside and the the diagrams and the pictures bring it even more to life.
Rob:Yeah. Visuals.
Jared:It makes those connections for you.
Rob:Well, what's amazing to me is the linking it. I mean, it's very simple.
Jared:Yep.
Rob:So linking and some things, I think that some, if they read it, they'll be like, of course. Especially those who have been teaching for a long time. They understand repetition. Mhmm. Right?
Rob:I think what's really helpful with this is that they break it down in terms of repetition, and they also talk about what they call race car learners and hikers. Yep. So analogy, doctor Oakley would say analogy is probably analogy and metaphor are some of the best ways to remember things. So that's why story is so important to us. So, you we've toyed with that before.
Rob:We talked about that when we did objectives. If you remember, we talked about creating a map or thinking about going on a trip and how we would conceptualize just the process of creating objectives in a way that we understood visually, like going on a trip using a map. Yep. That's probably stuck with a lot of listeners just because we've created those pictures in their head, and that's what good learning does. Because what we've learned and what we learned through this book and through neuroscience is that we're very good spatially reasoning visually, like, internally in our heads.
Rob:You know, not necessarily with our eyes, but what we see with our eyes, the information that comes through our eyes, we can remember things spatially, you know, by, say, for instance, where somebody was sitting. Like, if you can tie a name with where a person is sitting in a room
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:With something off the wall that will make it stick, as they say here, you know, make it stick, link it so that it's easier to retrieve, when you think about that location, they'll immediately come to your come to your mind. Right. Because you have this visual idea and you know it's linked to that name. And you're like, oh, yeah, that's so and so. Yeah.
Rob:And so everybody's mind works like that to some degree or another. And there are different types of learners. The race car learner and the hiker, I think were good themes that they talked about. What were other themes that grabbed you?
Jared:Well, learn it link it, like you just said, was something I wrote down that I immediately had connection to, was that idea of it. Also, how they talked about active learning and the procedural and declarative memory, that kind of blew me away a bit because you start talking about, okay, well, as you learn to write, you write with your right hand, okay, that becomes, it's procedural at that point where it's like, do it out of muscle memory, habit, whatever. As soon as you switch to your opposite hand, then it becomes declarative because you have to think through the process. Yes. We want to get our students to a point where the information that we're giving to them becomes procedural or becomes something they can immediately recall and pick up right away.
Rob:Immediately what came to mind is a visual of the brain and that the temporary working memory is over it's up on top of the edges of our brain. It's up top. Right? And this idea is as we create those neural links, which are like physical neurons that start interlinking with each other. And the stronger they become, they also actually start working down into the middle of the brain.
Rob:And what's the middle of the brain is where our what we learned from Kahneman Tversky, right, is where our system one works, our subconscious. And so things just fire there. Those are the focused patterns of thinking that oftentimes we don't even have to think about, like you were talking about with writing. Right? Yeah.
Rob:If I'm a right handed writer, you hand me a pen and pencil, I don't think about how am I going to write, I just do so because I have gone through the declarative process, learned the patterns
Jared:Correct.
Rob:Repeated those patterns over time to the point where I don't even think about them because they have been, you know, they have been enforced so much, and they literally get larger in your brain.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:Right? The more you use something, it gets larger, and the pathways from your brain to whatever it is, like my right hand, become larger as well. And then your body marshals resources to make those things happen. It's just it blows my mind how God created us.
Jared:Yeah. It's really cool. But immediately, what's great about this book is that it immediately goes into practical applications of
Rob:it. Yes.
Jared:It doesn't stay this high up above and say, this is what active learning is. Then immediately puts into practice and says, okay, now you try this and you do this. Here's some examples you can use in class. Something I also enjoyed is there's a whole section on direct instruction and talking about how it is still okay to present information to students from the front of the classroom, but don't do lecture stuff. It's pretty interesting how they go through it.
Jared:I think some people will be like, I don't know about that. Well, it
Rob:was more about scaffolding. Right?
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:It was scaffolding for your hikers. Right? So the hikers are those that take longer to learn things. But what's interesting is your hikers who don't get the concepts immediately, they're the ones that have to go on a journey.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:Right? They have to go through the wilderness, so to speak. It takes them longer. But if if we can be patient with them, if we can scaffold things for them, the reality is they will go probably far and beyond our race car drivers, our our race car learners, the ones that can seem to get the concepts immediately. Like, they're just, boom, they've got it.
Rob:Right? And they're moving on. They need something else. You gotta feed them something else. Yep.
Rob:But the hikers, they have a potential of excelling beyond, you know, the race car learners.
Jared:Right. They break that down using the I do, you do, we do. Yeah. Where it's like, okay. When I was reading this book, I was designing a course here that I was the chief subject matter expert on.
Jared:And I'm like, I gotta find a way of getting this stuff to them. And I read the chapter on I do, you do, we do. And I was like, that's it right there. So I built out lesson plans with that idea in mind to introduce these new concepts. You know, I do is the teachers up front introducing the new material.
Jared:My case, was like diagramming sentences or ways of using pronouns effectively or adjectives, whatever it was. And then it's the you do, where the students then go practice it individually. And then the we do is the class together. And the entire time the instructor is circulating and they're helping the students and everything else. Here's what's great about it.
Jared:You know, they also do like think pair share, turn and learn, all those things that I have heard as an educator.
Rob:Active learning.
Jared:Active learning. All these terms that I have heard as an educator. And I'm like, that's a really cool way of, you know, doing an activity in class that breaks up the monotony of me just being up there upfront. I didn't know the brain science behind it. Yes.
Jared:And this book made it make more sense. It's like, oh, okay. The reason you do think pair share is it gives the brain a break and they're starting to make connections with in their own brain and then by talking about it with others around them.
Rob:Yeah.
Jared:You know, this book talks about brain breaks a lot. And I think brain breaks got a bad rap as only a K-twelve or K-four thing that you do. Right. I remember seeing Ian, my youngest son, he was in kindergarten when COVID hit. So like first and second grade, he was learning via Chromebook.
Jared:His teacher would do brain breaks where they would come in and they would like she'd put a video on, he'd get up and move around everything else. To me, was like, oh, okay. It looks like it's a way for her just to break up the monotony, like I said, from her just teaching. But in reality, they're letting students start making those connections in the brain and letting that short term memory stuff go to the long term memory start making those Yeah,
Rob:start making the links.
Jared:I think it's applicable to higher ed as well, this idea of brain breaks. You don't have to call it that. Call it something more sophisticated, like lecture, I don't know, something cooler sounding for higher ed, if whatever you wanna call it. But the idea is giving them time to contemplate and make those connections. You know, the book talks about doing it like every six to seven minutes.
Jared:You know, something real like when you're the new information is coming in. Right. If you keep adding more information, the octopus is juggling these balls, it's gonna start dropping the new stuff and they're gonna forget about it.
Rob:Yeah. And that's exactly what I've seen over the years in the data, specifically video data. When we look to see what was the most effective, what students watched consistently a %, like a video link, was six to seven minutes. Yeah. Yep.
Rob:And it's interesting, you know, some of your great presenters knew this as well. Like Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs could do an hour and a half presentation. Right? But the thing, if you watch him and you watch what he does, each subject only lasts it lasts less than ten minutes.
Rob:And he's moving you on to something else. They take a break, and they move you on to something else. And so, you know, you might come back around to it later and summarize it in his presentation. So Tim Cook, you know, takes that same page from Steve Jobs. You'll see him.
Rob:He'll they'll do the same thing. They have each thing where they're moving the subject along. Right? And they're not gonna spend any more than ten minutes in one area. And then at the end, he summarizes it all, puts it together, and they're done.
Jared:Right. Right.
Rob:And you remember it.
Jared:Uh-huh.
Rob:Right? And I think the same thing goes with our learning. If we did if we structured it in that way where we programmed it according to time I used to have a mentor that said, Rob, make you know, match the task to the time. You You know you've got so much time. So I do this, and I know maybe others, maybe you do this, but when I first started doing, like, higher ed teaching, I brought some stuff from my training side where I learned how to be a trainer for Blackboard way back when.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:And one of the tools that we used was a timesheet. You know, basically, we took a Excel spreadsheet, put how long the thing was gonna be, like, was forty five minutes, then we had 45 rows each a minute. Alright? And so the idea was you program you knew what you had to cover, and so you had to program it time wise, and then that limited your content, made you be more focused, and also helped you see where you could just chunk your stuff and move, provide some reflection, provide some question and answer in there. And that was all brain science stuff.
Rob:And that's exactly what you were talking about. So Yeah.
Jared:Making the connection. Linking. Right. And I think back to I mean, this book fits well with our active learning series if you wanna go back and listen to that. But when we had Doctor.
Jared:Tracy Birdwell on, just talking about the new information that comes in, she mentioned something that has stuck with me, is that when she listens to a lecture on something she knows nothing about or she has no interest in, she can only stand it for five to six minutes. Right. But if it's something that she is in tune with or something she really enjoys, like active learning or education, she can listen for a full two hours without
Rob:breaking
Narrator:off.
Rob:She's engaging
Jared:with it. I think there's some application to that, to this as well. Like your students are probably not, if it's new information and if you're teaching a course that you know your students have to take because it's a requirement and then, know, some of them may not want to be there. You gotta keep that in I don't know, don't either. All my students love my courses.
Rob:They would choose to take it.
Jared:Yeah, exactly. But I'm just saying that if you have students out there that have no desire to be there or to So if you want them to adhere and stick to what is your teaching, you should maybe stick to the five to six minute thing. Or you make some sort of connection, some personal connection with them so it piques their interests. We always talk about Doctor. Quentin Schultz always talks about making those, doing those grab, attention grabbing things at the end of the story or something like that start garnering interest in what you're talking about.
Jared:Yeah. And I think that applies here as well. You can maybe stretch out those five to six minutes to a bit longer if you make some sort of interest connection with your students.
Rob:Yeah. Well, I think this has been excellent. I've enjoyed the book. Yes. In terms of critique, like I said earlier, and I think you said as well, you know, it's for a k through 12 audience.
Rob:If you wanted to maybe get a little deeper, I would say to our listeners, check out learning how to learn on Coursera. Doctor Oakley fronts that Coursera course and presents it probably in a light that's a little bit more universal to learners just in general because it's not really focused on maybe the K through 12 teacher.
Jared:Yeah. I read this book through the lens of, okay, how could I apply this to higher ed? And I think if you do that, I think it opens up the book a bit more for you as a higher education.
Rob:I would agree.
Jared:I would also say, and I bought the physical book because I want my kids to read it as well. Okay. Because there are stuff in there, talked about race car learners and hikers and stuff like that. It gives my kids a chance to see what kind of learner they are. Yeah.
Jared:Because of the profiles, they're like, okay, well Abby, my oldest, is probably more of a hiker, where Evie is probably a race car and so is Ian too. But they can read that and go, Oh, okay, well that makes sense. Because I was able to make connections with my own learning. And like, Well, that makes sense to me. So I need to approach procrastination this way, or I need to approach new content this way.
Jared:Right. And it makes sense because it's brain science.
Rob:It is. It's very helpful.
Jared:Big fan. We are going to release a full review of Uncommon Sense Teaching, and it's going to be on LinkedIn right around the time this episode is dropped. So be sure to check out LinkedIn for our full review of Uncommon Sense Teaching. This has been the Transform Your Teaching podcast.
Ryan:Remember, like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Please also connect with us on LinkedIn. Also, free to send us an email if you have any questions or comments or even ideas for the show, CTLPodcastcederville dot edu. You can also read our blog. It's found at cedarville.edu/focusblog.
Ryan:Thanks for listening.