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The Best Ways to Ensure Mastery

How do you best ensure students master cognitive, psychomotor and affective skills? It depends on the type of learning you want to achieve.

Mastering Cognitive Skills

Among the most persistent myths about cognitive learning — at least among dive educators — is that how much students learn is directly proportional to how much instructors teach.

In other words, if an instructor lectures for ten hours, his students will learn ten times as much as the students of the instructor who only lectures for an hour.

This is a nice theory, but it has no basis in fact. The fact is, a traditional classroom lecture is among the least effective ways to transfer cognitive skills. Learning is far more dependent on the tools and methods an instructor uses than it is on how long he runs his mouth. Therefore, if the instructor who only lectures for an hour uses better methods and tools than his long-winded counterpart, his students may actually learn more. (They certainly will be less bored.)

Classroom

Yet another myth is that, “Since you can’t count on students to read the book, you have to lecture them anyway.” The fact is, there are steps you can take to ensure that the highest percentage of students possible completes all the necessary self-study materials prior to class — such as spelling out student responsibilities clearly in your enrollment agreement, and maintaining contact with students prior to class by phone and e-mail. In so doing, you can help ensure your students learn better. You simply have to be willing to make the effort.

Additionally, there are more effective tools you can use to help students master cognitive skills than simply having them read a textbook. Experts generally rank the effectiveness of cognitive learning tools in the following order:

1. Computer-aided instruction (most effective).
2. Watching a video.
3. Reading a textbook.
4. Traditional classroom lecture (least effective).

Of course, the actual effectiveness of these learning tools depends on their quality. For example, while classroom lectures are generally less effective than reading textbooks or taking part in computer-aided instruction, a well-crafted lecture could be more effective than a poorly-written text or a computer program that merely puts that text on a computer screen, where it is harder to read. Fortunately, most textbooks, videos and computer-aided instructional programs are vastly better in quality than the typical classroom lecture.

Additionally, while these rankings reflect how the general population learns, individual learning abilities can vary widely from one person to another. For example:

People whose learning disabilities make reading difficult will most likely learn better from classroom presentations and videos.

The key to the effectiveness of any cognitive learning tool is the degree to which it engages the student. For example:

…all lack effectiveness because they ask nothing of the student and have no means of assessing whether or not learning has taken place. In contrast:

…are all examples of learning tools which are more effective because they engage students directly and assess whether or not learning has taken place.

You’ll read more about the most effective means of transferring cognitive skills shortly.

Mastering psychomotor skills »

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