What is an ideal learning outcome?
I recently tweeted:
To which a friend disagreed with. We then went on to have a discussion around what counts for a good learning outcome:
A more general and over the top understanding of most material in course while not having a deep understanding of any particular sub domain, or
A deep understanding of any one or few part(s) of the course and less than optimal familiarity with other material
Also, whether this in fact is a trade off in the first place or not is a moot question. I am of the opinion that accounting for time constraints it is a trade off. You can either utilize your time to read laterally and cover more ground horizontally, or, you can trade off horizontal cover for vertical depth in any particular sub domain.
For example if I am studying competition law and there are three main concepts involved - hypothetical monopoly test, relevant market and network effects; covering more horizontal cover would be to read two or all three of these concepts broadly but because you have a limited time, not being able to go really deep into any one. On the other hand, trading horizontal cover for vertical depth would mean spending most of your time on understanding something particular, say relevant markets, and going really deep into it. Adjusting for time constraint, it would mean that you can only skim through other topics.
So - having said that, which is the better learning outcome? And why?
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Learning to learn v. learning the material
My concern that I highlighted in the tweet was that evaluating grades in a subject on a research paper is not a good reflection of the pupil’s understanding of the whole subject because the paper is written on a very narrow subset of the course. What the paper is a true measure of, is your understanding in that particular sub domain of the larger subject, and not of the subject itself. But the grade on that particular paper becomes your subject grade, and this is where my problem arises.
But that’s a problem because for me the imperative of learning is to learn all of what is in the course manual, or at least most of it. And getting a good grade on the subject by focusing on only one small section of the course is akin to cheating the system.
This is where Anasuya (my friend) argued that this assumption is not, or at least should not be the ideal learning outcome. Her argument is that the aim of a successfully taught course is to not merely familiarize the student with the concepts of the course, and that (assuming our hypothetical student is taking a political philosophy course) “The ideal learning outcome is if I (student) have the ability to understand, and critically engage with schools of thought within political philosophy. And anyway I don’t think holistic competence in a subject is achieved from familiarity with most topics in it. And if I can demonstrate this ability well in a research paper, then that means that I have achieved my learning outcomes”. To which I replied, considering I am the same individual learning about political philosophy - “If say I am too deep into Hayek’s work and don’t know much about Keynesian theories, and if both of them are listed in my course manual - that’s a sub optimal learning outcome. It is sub optimal because even though learning about Hayek will involve a survey of a lot of contemporary work in political philosophy which in turn would be quite vast, but it will still probably be narrower than what I would’ve learnt if I optimized for horizontal cover over depth”.
The way I see it, if I were an instructor administering a course - my first priority would be to equip my students with that least required vocabulary of knowledge which once accumulated, would let my students navigate the field largely on their own. What actually comprises of this least required vocabulary of knowledge is a very difficult question - one I do not expect most teachers to solve for. Not because most teachers are incompetent, but because it is actually a very hard problem. But for whatever it is worth, learning to learn is the only meta skill you need to teach your students. Once they learn that, you give them metaphorical wings to soar to any heights.
But going back to the horizontal cover v. depth optimization problem - whenever we talk about optimizing for horizontal cover, we run into the unboundedness of knowledge itself. There is always something more we can cover - how do we even decide when to stop? Well, one easy way is to distinguish learning all of the discipline versus learning the course. The discipline is endless, the course is not - at least on paper. Of course we will always be faced with the question of where to draw boundaries, but I don’t think it is an impossible task. It is quite feasible. Not to forget that the unbounded nature of knowledge is something you will encounter even while optimizing for depth - so there is no escaping that either which way.
The reason why I still prefer horizontal approach from an administration perspective is because the course is the minimum material that students taking the course should know about. So as a teacher, it is my job to make sure that everyone of my students covers as much lateral cover. Even in testing - A paper that tests for general and wide knowledge of the subject is a better reflection of the student’s competence with the subject as a whole, as opposed to a research paper which privileges the evidencing of narrow and deep knowledge instead of wide and general knowledge. Also a research paper requires more analytical skills than say your average wide and general paper would. Which brings us to the final question:
How does a teacher teach their students analytical thinking?
This is the central theme of education for me. Because this not only takes care of the ‘how to learn’ problem, but also tackles the ‘how to articulate what I have learnt and make connections between them’ problem.
I do not know how teachers can accomplish that in classrooms, but I do know of an activity that really helps with analytical thinking - debating.1
I thank Anasuya for her valuable insights.
Fun fact - both Anasuya and I have competitively debated during college.