Over the past two weeks, I've been collecting students to help by being subjects in my experiments. After getting consent signatures and separating 8 students into 2 groups of 4, I conducted both parts if my first experiment, and this is how it went.
Group 1
-note taking group, had take notes and represented task by doing myself and them watching but did not have them do it themselves.
Comments made by students:
“This is like watching a teacher then trying to do it yourself for the first time on a quiz”
“I'm not going to be able to remember how to do this”
“Can I please make it with paper the instructions don't make sense to me”
I noticed a surprisingly high level of confusion and even stress. It was hard for the students to follow and understand instructions that needed to be physically understood.
Group 2
-Hands on group, was able to make origami while i demonstrate to them how it was done.
-Group had zero difficulty, barely made comments or remarks, seemed to absorb information and feel comfortable with it
-Asked the group if they would be able to remember in a bit of time, they said easily with no problem
The group had so little difficulty that they had almost nothing to comment on the task. It was as they they absorbed the material and had no issues learning how it was done.
About a week from now I will come back to the same groups and ask them both to replicate the task they were previously asked to complete. The results of this experiment will prove or disprove a theory on the effectiveness of strategies of teaching. I will include a further conclusion on the results of this experiment in my next blog post.
