Well, learning, from a behaviorists standpoint, is a persistent and measurable alteration in an organism’s behavior. We know we can measure the alteration in behavior fairly easily in our own test subjects (i.e. students). Give them some form of assessment and “see” if they picked anything up in the last 3-4 weeks. It’s that persistent piece that becomes the problem.

How long should it persist? We typically only measure learning once anyway. Then maybe once more at the end of the semester. But are we really measuring learning or just an ability for students to memorize and retain some information for a short while to spit it back on an exam? If that is true, we are not truly in the business of learning. What we then need to focus on is not so much the chaff of each of our respective disciplines. We need the best of the best. What is it students really need to know about our fields? This is a tough question and hard for me to think about paring down one of the most intriguing subjects on the planet.

Imagine that this is the only time most students are ever going to even peer into your subject. (Actually, that is probably the case.) What is it that you would want them to know? In doing this exercise, I realized that it was large swaths of high level info that were important. Not the really cool, trivia bits that I get excited about. But it certainly is easier to test those trivia bits.

Weirdly, when I started this blog post, my aim was to talk about how fun learning should be. We should treat school more like a game and an assemblage of really cool stories. But then I went back to my animal behaviorist roots and thought of a definition of what learning is supposed to be. That really took me off track. I think both stories are important. Learning should be fun, and significant.