Why are They Satisfied with Cursory Understanding?

building a constructivist culture?

My friend, Gavin, turned me on to a book, “The Neuroscience of Learning and Development”, which has helped me crystalize a concern. The book, written by a student affairs professional, focuses on creating leaning environments. It wants educators to lower the silos between courses, use neuroscience to reduce anxiety, create learning communities, etc. I get that stuff, I think but it's not where my interest lies.

I want my students to remember what I've taught them or what they are learning on their own. Though I may be oversimplifying it, I think it is analogous to a weight training problem. My students seem to be satisfied with one rep which, as anyone who has tried to get stronger in the gym knows, won't work. I think maybe they are overconfident in their intellect but single trial learning rarely works because, well.. biology. If they understand an idea in the moment (single rep), they are satisfied.

I remember reading A Brief History of Time when I was in college. My experience convinced me in the moment that Steven Hawking had nothing intellectually on me. I understood exactly what he was talking about. That is, until I turned the page and had to apply whatever it was I had learned on the previous page. But, I couldn't. So, I went and played pool. I got to be really good at pool but cosmology has remained out of my reach. I was satisfied, too.

To encode a new idea in the brain requires making something grow. Nothing grows in nature instantly, at least not that I know of. And, I don't imagine neurons connect instantly either. Learning is a process not a mechanical connection that is opened or closed. But, that must be how they think of it. No matter how often it happens, they are surprised by the forgetting.

I know what it takes to get stronger in the weight room because people have coached me and because I've experienced it. I know repetition is important and I know there has to be the right amount of weight. Too much results in injury. Too little and you don't get stronger. Why do I ever think I could read something, understand it, and then own it in a single try?

Students seem to think that learning should not require too much work. I remember that feeling. I didn't want to do the work but I realized that I wouldn't learn anything either. At the time, I was willing to make that trade. Somehow, my students have come to the belief that the tradeoff is obsolete. Learning should be easy and, if it is not, they believe they don't have the capacity to learn whatever it is. They don't think that they just have to work harder.

They seem satisfied with the level of learning that is happening however muddy, imprecise, and ephemeral it may be. There is complete comfort with knowing just a little. The other day in machine learning class, I put a formula on the board for determining information gain as the result of the partition of a data set. Not a single one of my students asked me to help them understand it. When I asked them if they got it, I received a round of affirmative head nods. But, when I asked them to read it out loud to me, none could do it. I went around the room and offered goodies to whoever could do it. They didn’t know what the sigma symbol stood for or what probability the p stood for. When we read through it symbol by symbol it I could see the light of understanding going on. Why is there no discomfort with not knowing?

In my Python class, it’s the same. They will comment a block of code for building a pie chart but they won’t be able to tell me what any of the particular functions are actually doing. However, when we read the code line by line and I ask them to look up what each function and parameter is doing, it’s like a miracle. “Aha”, their faces seem to be saying to me. “Now I get it.” Why do they need me to make them make sense of what they see?

Same thing happens in my health informatics class. They see the phrase ‘data is a strategic asset’ over and over again. Yet, when I ask them why hospitals don’t want to share their data, it is the rare one who will remember and say ‘because it is strategic’. But, if I ask them what makes it strategic, not one will be able to answer. Not one of the probably 150 students I’ve had in this class has been able to answser that question. When I asked them what the implication would be for data governance, there were just blank stares. An abstraction on an abstraction is far to much to expect.

You might be thinking my students must be freshmen but they are not. They are grad students who have mostly had 3 - 5 years of work experience. I beg and plead with them to turn on their curiosity buttons. “Don’t be satisfied with a cursory understanding of something.” “Own it,” I say. Then I remember that they lack the framework for making meaning of these symbols, code, and terms. We have to start somewhere. So, we read the symbols, interpret the code and discuss the terms until I think we’ve gotten somewhere. Then a week goes by and it’s as if the last week never happened.

But, we are attempting to build habits that I hope will stick. I require that they have ChatGPT or Bard or Bing open during class and I ask questions constantly. At the beginning of the term, when I ask what the symbol or snippet of code or word means, they will just look to me for an answer. “Look it up”, I say. By the fifth week, I can mime it and they laugh and say the words for me. I don’t think it is translating out of the classroom, quite yet, but I’m hopeful. I think what I’m attempting is the building of a constructivist culture. I’m not too familiar with the term so I have some work to do, too.