Hi everybody, this is Dr. Honora Wall welcoming
you to the What in the World is Dyscalculia podcast.
I'm making an audio version and a video version
of today's podcast. So if you're watching this
on YouTube or one of the social media outlets,
probably at some point we'll post it to the website.
You can see the video portion with it. If you're
listening to this on a podcast, then you're just
going to get the audio. And we'll try to do both
every once in a while with these podcasts as
time and recording options permit. But the What
in the World is Dyscalculia podcast is brought
to you by Educalc Learning. And at EducalcLearning
.com, you can find all sorts of teacher training,
workshops, either in person or online, and our
graduate course credits. You can earn three graduate
credits taking teaching students with dyscalculia
or teaching differentiated math. Those credits
are given through Colorado State University Pueblo
who we partner with and keep an eye out we've
got a lot more graduate level classes in the
works that are in development right now. Super
excited about those but I'll bring you more information
about that at a future time because what I want
to talk to you about today is a clash of the
titans, instructional design versus cognitive
load. So here's where this came about. I work
with students across the country. I see a wide
variety of math curriculums and programs, which
is part of why I developed my own, which you
can find at eduCalcLearning .com or the DTRI
.org if you're using the It's Just Math program
in your school. And I did them because I saw
how my students with dyscalculia, dyslexia, dysgraphia,
ADHD, etc. were really struggling to make themselves
fit into, I will say, a traditional or standard
online math class. And one of the big places
where students have a real issue is when classes
have those longer projects. So that's what I'm
talking about today. Now there's nothing wrong
with having a long project and there's nothing
wrong with project -based learning. There's a
ton of research behind both of those and they
can be really engaging and exciting for kids
and get them really plugged into the content
you're talking about in the right circumstances.
Now I am also not going to talk badly about the
best practices around instructional design. There
are some great things happening in the world
of instructional design both for K -16 students
and it's used a lot for onboarding or ongoing
training in the corporate world and there's some
really exciting software out there that can make
the training or the course come alive and that's
what these longer projects are really designed
to do. However, just because something is great
doesn't mean it's great all the time for every
student. And as you know, if you've listened
to the podcast or seen any of the reels I put
up, when you're working with students who have
dyscalculia, it just needs to be different. It's
really like the difference between nutrition
and exercise advice for a type 2 diabetic versus
a type 1 diabetic. They're just different. So
you want to take a really specific approach for
the type 1 diabetic because it's really crucial
that you get it right and you want to take the
absolute correct approach for a student with
dyscalculia because otherwise it's not going
to work and Here's why I want to break it down
for you I'll use a recent example with an unnamed
student using an unnamed online math program
that we've been helping her out with and working
through with her. And I'm not naming the program
because many of them come from the same kind
of skeleton, the same original program anyway,
or there's a lot of replication. You just see
the same thing in a lot of different programs.
So you get one or two spots throughout a semester
where you have a longer project. In this case,
the project online in the course with some beautiful
instructional design, some really great little
videos, some interactive pieces. Those are super
fun to make and super fun to play around with
where different kinds of information can pop
up and it goes along with a PDF with the questions.
A lot of scaffolding, a lot of breaking things
down into smaller parts, tons of research behind
that being a best practice for teaching. So why
is any of this a problem? Here's why. The student
logs in, opens up the project, there's a ton
of buttons, there's a lot of things to click.
It's not really clear which thing you're supposed
to click, so you do a lot of hovering and trying
to click to see what kind of things are gonna
open up. Is there a video component? Is there
an audio component? Are there little dots or
stars and you hover and it gives information
or you click sometimes and it gives information.
They're all different and sometimes you get different
elements within one project. Okay that's one
type of cognitive load and if you're not familiar
with cognitive load theory please go read up
about it. I will definitely do more episodes
where we take a deep dive into the three types
of cognitive load, how they interact, and how
that changes the student experience. But all
you need to know for today is that cognitive
load is how much our brain can handle at one
time. The really short abbreviated version of
cognitive load theory, which is a fantastic thing
to read about and research. It's really interesting.
It can really impact student performance when
you get that cognitive load piece right. And
what cognitive load theory tells us in a nutshell
is that once we overwhelm the system, there's
no learning going on. We're barely keeping up
with what we're doing as far as finishing an
activity. We're not comprehending. We're not
moving to short or long -term memory. We're not
retaining. We're losing a lot of the information.
And that's a shame because we're losing the math.
And we're losing what the instructional designers
spent a lot of time putting into some nice graphics
and interactive elements. So the student goes
to the PDF, opens this up. Well, unless you have
the kind of nice software that lets you type
in a PDF, you're not going to be able to type
in this document on your computer. It has to
be a PDF because otherwise, A student could open
something up and change it. So we have to maintain
the integrity of the document. That makes perfect
sense, too. All right. So we can't type in it.
Now what is the student going to do? Maybe they
can open it in Google Docs if they have that
program. If it opens properly and if it opens
in a way that allows you to type in it, it should.
But for this student, it did not. All right.
So we cannot access it that way. What else can
we do? Well, we could try opening it as a Word
document. Ooh -wee! That messed up the formatting
to the point where it was completely unreadable
and completely unusable. Okay, now we're not
going to do that. Let's see what else we can
do. Maybe we can print it. Well, the laptop she
does her math homework on was not connected to
the home printer. All right. Can we send it to
mom or dad? See if they can print it. Well, it
wasn't really working. Not sure why. Mom and
dad weren't in the session. So I have no idea
what happened there, but it wouldn't print. Okay.
So what else can we do? Well, she managed to
find some printer that was hooked up to her phone.
Now she had to save it, send it to the phone,
find it on the phone, send it to the printer,
print it out. Thank goodness the printer had
ink and paper at that time. So this takes up
an incredible amount of time during our session
where we're supposed to be talking about math
and the concept in this project. We haven't done
any of that because we're still dealing with
the technology piece and how we're going to get
this project done. She could have written out
the questions by hand. It was a four -page PDF
document. She was not interested in writing all
of that out by hand. I don't blame her. So we
had to put this whole project to the side, pick
it up in a different session so that we could
actually talk about some math. So now we've extended
the work. Now she's passed a deadline for the
project. This really increases her anxiety. It
was just very difficult. If you've worked with
struggling students, You know the kind of frustration
I'm describing and we're not going to get a whole
lot of learning done When we're in that heightened
emotional state Okay, we get through some math
we come back to this project at a later session
So now this is costing the family more money
To hire me for a session and get through these
topics. All right, but we have to get it done.
So we get the PDF She's got it printed. We're
going through the questions. Now we have to go
from the question back to the computer, open
up the project again, find it. That took forever.
Open it up again. Now we're opening up all of
the different elements within the project. And
the instructional designers did a beautiful job.
It was lovely to look at and fun to interact
with. What question did it answer? Where did
we find? What are we looking for? What's important
when we click these buttons? I don't know. We
have to keep going back and forth. Every time
we're shifting from the computer to the paper,
we're losing a little bit of her focus and attention.
Now we go to the paper to find out what we're
looking for. Go back and click all the interactive
elements to try to find that again. Write that
thing down. Now as we're going through the project,
because it's broken down into little steps, which
is best practices for teaching to break things
down into manageable chunks it ended up being
question I'm gonna make these numbers up but
question 23 fill in this number from question
7 and this number from question 12 and then do
this operation with it and we're flipping back
and forth it was like completing your own tax
form use line 33 which comes from schedule C
which comes from line 18 after you filled out
the table. It was just an overwhelming amount
of searching and finding and retrieving. Is this
the right number? Who knows? Did she go to the
right question? I don't know. We're working virtually.
I can't really see what number she's grabbing.
She's telling me I'm trying to remember what
she said back when we were on question seven
discussing and it just went on and on and on.
By the time we got this project finished, I don't
think she had really retained any of the math
part of that lesson. We had a separate discussion
after we had finished everything, and she had
her work put aside so she could finish her summary
later and get her work turned in. And we just
discussed what the topic was about, what they
were trying to get across, and calming her down
because her frustration level was very high.
So we have to mitigate the cognitive load of
being overwhelmed with these multiple inputs
of information, managing her emotional state,
the cognitive load of what made sense to her
previously about this project and what we had
to create to make sense and how we had to talk
about that. It was just a lot. It also took two
or three different sessions before we really
got through discussing everything. Did she learn?
I'm not even sure. Did she engage further with
the real -world scenario? I don't think so. Did
she take anything away from it that later she
can think, oh, that reminds me of the time I...
No. So we had some beautiful instructional design
that completely clashed with what we know about
cognitive load theory, especially for a student
with a learning disability. especially for the
math learning disability, dyscalculia, and it
came together into a perfect storm. So why am
I bringing this up to you? Because if you're
working with students or if you are a student
who has dyscalculia, I want you to understand
that the frustration and the aggravation and
doing all of this work, investing all of this
time and energy and not getting a mathematical
return out of it is not about you. It's not really
about the student. It's about these external
factors, which is one of the parts of cognitive
load. This situation involved all three parts
of cognitive load, but it was really difficult.
And a lot of programs have something like this
that's overwhelmingly difficult for a lot of
students. This student was very lucky because
We already had a relationship where we've worked
together. We've talked about math before. She
knew we were going to reflect on it. We were
going to discuss it and pull it apart and make
that part make sense. A lot of students don't
have that, especially when they're doing online
work. If you're overseeing a student working
in a program like that, make sure you dive in
to those projects. Help them figure out how to
open the PDF or however they're making their
assessment, help them print it, help them get
their materials together, help them navigate
the computer and where to find things hidden
within this beautiful instructional design because
it's not very clear. Once we take some of that
frustration off the table, then they have a much
better chance of engaging with the real world
scenario, the story being told. within this project.
Don't assume that a student, especially one who
struggles, is going to make those connections
on their own and is going to engage that way
on their own. I mean, that's really what Vygotsky
told us how long ago. You got to have a more
knowledgeable other. I think Vygotsky's work
on the more knowledgeable other is much more
important than his work on the zone of proximal
development. That's my theory. We have to have
someone else we can discuss these topics with
and we can work out a problem with. A lot of
math is about problem solving, but unfortunately
for students doing this work on their own, the
problem solving is just getting through this
really frustrating experience. That's a big part
of why some of our students are just putting
it in a chat GPT, typing in the first half of
the first sentence. and boom here comes Brainly
and Chegg and quite a few other online programs
that already have the program or the project
in there and they're just grabbing what they
can or they're doing minimal effort on their
own because they're not really sure what's going
on or what you're asking of them and they're
not getting the grade they want. Now we don't
have mastery, we don't have comprehension, we
don't have engagement and we don't have a passing
grade. So we have a perfect storm for this struggling
student. If possible, I would recommend using
a program like mine or others are now starting
to move away from those discussion -based assessments
and the long projects and things like that in
an online course because we know students aren't
really engaging the way we want them to. or the
way we need them to. So find a program that doesn't
have that element if you have a student with
dyscalculia. Add in engaging projects and discussions
on top of the online program they're doing. If
you're using the It's Just Math program, we tell
you how to do that. We want you to use that as
a framework, as a basis, and then get the more
knowledgeable other down there with the student
engaging, enriching, expanding. if you are overseeing,
and I know a lot of teachers are overseeing online
instruction or students in online classes in
a media center or a library, and you might have
30 students in there logged into computers and
they're all taking different classes at the same
time, and you're probably the librarian or the
media center director or sometimes a para. So
you're not going to have the kind of content
knowledge in all of these different grade levels
and all of these different areas. That's incredibly
difficult. When you can, try to sit down and
have conversations with students while they're
working on those longer projects, help them out.
It's going to give them some support, help them
engage, help them stay on top of their pacing.
to get these things done by the end of a school
year or for grade recovery. There's lots of different
reasons why there are dates attached to this
work. So, long story short, I just want you to
be really aware of this. You can have a beautifully
constructed project online in a math course and
shout out to the instructional designers who
are making things very engaging and and truly
they're hard to code and they're hard to come
up with and you make a storyboard and a script
it's very involved hard work and shout out to
the students who are pushing through even when
these situations are very frustrating and overwhelming.
What I'd really like to see is more tutors interventionist
teachers parents, more knowledgeable others,
wherever we're finding them, getting down in
the trenches and helping students. You need to
understand that part of the problem is not just
the math. It's everything else going on in getting
this math project completed. When we sit down
with students and have a discussion and look
at what they're going through, we find that there's
a lot more involved than Boy, does this student
know math or not? No, there's a lot more to discuss.
So Clash of the Titans instructional design versus
cognitive load. Sometimes it's hard to find a
winner, but we can definitely find the loser
in the battle and it's usually the student. So
get in there with your students and help them
out. If you'd like to know more about cognitive
load theory, If you'd like to know a little more
about instructional design, that one you can
research. I don't have a lot of that on the websites.
There's some really important best practices
to follow in instructional design. If you'd like
to know more about dyscalculia, check out either
of the websites, eduCalcLearning .com or the
DTRI .org. If you have questions or comments
for me or a topic you'd like to hear about in
a future episode, please send me an email, honora,
h -o -n -o -r -a, at eduCalcLearning .com or
h0nora at thedtri .org. You can find me on all
sorts of social media as well and at some conferences
all over the country. And other than that, I
really appreciate your time today. Thank you
for listening to What in the World is Dyscalculia?
I hope that you got some good information that
will help you and your students and We will chat
again soon.