on april 1, the cft held a conversation on teaching titled “teaching first-year students: cognitive challenges of the first year<\/strong>.” \u00a0 about twenty-five faculty, staff, and graduate students participated in the discussion.\u00a0 panelists at the session were doug christiansen<\/a> (dean of admissions), susan kevra<\/a> (french, american studies), and adam list (chemistry).<\/p>\n

one of the questions posed during the discussion was the following: if memorization is shallow learning, then what does deep learning look like in various teaching contexts?<\/strong> below are answers suggested by workshop panelists and participants in response to this question, as summarized by cft assistant director derek bruff.<\/p>\n

panelist adam list pointed to the difference between algorithmic <\/em>problem solving<\/span> and applied <\/em>problem solving<\/strong>.\u00a0 algorithmic problem solving involves accurately following known procedures to solve problems of certain types.\u00a0 students can often succeed at this kind of problem solving by following \u201crecipes\u201d they have memorized.\u00a0 applied problem solving is that which requires more than just following procedures.\u00a0 it involves selecting appropriate procedures and adapting those procedures to work in the context of particular problems.\u00a0 we might call this creative<\/em> or adaptive<\/em> problem solving.<\/p>\n

one participant claimed that high schools focus too much on teaching algorithmic problem solving and not applied problem solving.\u00a0 this poses a challenge for first-year students making the transition from high school to college.\u00a0 some will say things like \u201cthat test question wasn\u2019t on the homework!\u201d<\/strong> as a complaint because they don\u2019t see the difference between these two types of problem solving.<\/p>\n

panelist doug christiansen noted that some students approach their admissions essays algorithmically, trying to follow some kind of a pattern likely to get them into vanderbilt.\u00a0 doug noted that the admissions team looks to \u201ctriangulate\u201d evidence of a student\u2019s potential<\/strong>, comparing admissions essays with letters of recommendation and the roles the student played in high school organizations.<\/p>\n

other phrases used in reference to deep learning included conceptual learning, writing skills, intellectual curiosity, and critical thinking.\u00a0 in the sciences, critical thinking sometimes means being able to ask and answer the question \u201cdoes this answer make sense?\u201d at the end of a problem.\u00a0 in other disciplines, critical thinking implies the ability to construct an argument for a position.<\/p>\n

for more on teaching first-year students, see the cft’s teaching guide on first-years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

image: “diving in<\/a>” by flickr user powerhouse museum \/ creative commons licensed<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

on april 1, the cft held a conversation on teaching titled “teaching first-year students: cognitive challenges of the first year.” \u00a0 about twenty-five faculty, staff, and graduate students participated in the discussion.\u00a0 panelists at the session were doug christiansen (dean of admissions), susan kevra (french, american studies), and adam list (chemistry). one of the questions…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":452,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[73,27],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411"}],"collection":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/452"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}