eModule 4: SOAR for Students with Learning Difficulties
Objective:
- In this lesson, you will see how differentiated instruction may be used to teach the strategies effectively, taking advantage of the features, supports, and methods available to support students with learning difficulties.
Teachers can help struggling students process new information in working memory by focusing and segmenting new concepts and avoiding redundancy.
It takes energy to process new information. Unlike long-term memory, working memory is extremely limited. Cognitive overload occurs when there is too little energy to take in more information. The Web-based Student Toolkit, based on multimedia learning theory and principles (Mayer, 2001, 2003, 2011), is designed to reduce cognitive load and support the active processing of newly acquired information.
The executive functioning skills involving memory are often affected for students with specific learning difficulties, including students with specific learning disabilities such as dyslexia, executive function disorder, language processing disorder, non-verbal learning disability, and Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), as well as students in special education classes who may not have documented Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). These students struggle with working memory, cementing learned information into long-term memory, and retrieving learned information.
Watch the Interview with Mr. Thorsby, Part 2 Video. He explains how scaffolds (such as practice questions and immediate feedback) and a systematic approach benefits his students.
Now click on each of the four instructional strategies to see how you can help students reduce cognitive load and optimize working memory.
These approaches especially help students with learning difficulties, but also can significantly improve learning of online research methods for general education students. Gifted students may benefit as well, and can be more independent in their engagement with the Student Toolkit.
Review the Checklist of Key Principles for Reducing Cognitive Load ( PDF; MS Word). Make notes in the blank column about an instructional strategy or a classroom-based evaluation that you might use during SOAR instruction to address these key principles and help students avoid cognitive overload. Save and keep your checklist with your IPM and other lesson planning tools.
Checklist of Key Principles for Reducing Cognitive Load
| Key Principle | How to Reduce Cognitive Load | Notes |
| Before Teaching | ||
| Pre-training | Keep learners focused by teaching main concepts or tapping essential prior knowledge to create mental models for new material. | |
| During Lesson | ||
| Cognitive Load | Present at most 2-4 elements of new information at one time. | |
| Split Attention | Do not split elements in space or time. | |
| Redundancy | Avoid repetition. Ask yourself if the information is already explained or obvious. | |
| Coherence | Avoid extras. Ask yourself if an extra adds to the instructional goal. | |
| Modality | Think about how students can optimally learn with information on audio and visual learning channels. | |
| Signaling | Use cues to direct learners’ attention. | |
| Segmenting | Chunk information into learner-paced segments. | |
| After Lesson | ||
| Practice | Encourage active engagement with practice of newly learned concepts or skills. Practice can happen in the form of summative Try It! Assignments in the Student Toolkit. To support students’ continued learning after they have learned all nine strategies, provide additional practice with research topics from your curriculum. | |
Objective:
- In this lesson, you will focus on how the structured environment of the Student Toolkit supports self-paced learning and autonomous decision making.
As important as it is to reduce cognitive load for the struggling learner, it is also necessary to provide structures and scaffolds for students to gradually become autonomous and confident researchers and learners.
The Student Toolkit:
- Allows students to move at their own natural pace
- Encourages students to make and correct mistakes without embarrassment or stigma
- Keeps students focused on manageable activities by segmentation into discrete tasks and steps within tasks
- Delivers information in several ways, including closed-captioned video, audio cues, on-screen bullets, examples, and active Try It! exercises
- Allows students to work on real research questions even as they learn the research process
The Student Toolkit helps to promote confidence and manage learning, especially for students with learning difficulties. Watch the SOAR Manages Learning Video to see how the Student Toolkit can help students.
Special features have been built into the Student Toolkit to support students with learning difficulties. As you look explore these features, think about how you could use the strategies to reduce cognitive load. The Student Toolkit is:
- Strategic (provides strategies that are effective and lead to successful outcomes)
- Digital (the environment is flexible so that mistakes can easily be made right, and students can learn according to their own learning styles and paces)
- Visual (simple videos with avatars and not actual humans, along with voice-over narration, deliver instruction in a manner that is not distracting)
- Supportive (features such as text-to-speech, alternate content presentations, and the presence of only necessary, non-distracting website features help support student learning)
- Interactive (application of what students learn helps them to advance their skills)
- Authentic (real-world tasks that students would encounter outside of the classroom keep learning engaging, relevant, and transferrable to future activities)
Students who manage their own learning are more engaged and motivated. They take ownership of what they are learning and are more likely to produce a quality research project. Providing flexibility and choice within a structured learning environment is an essential key to helping students matriculate to Levels 3 and 4 on the Rosenberg Mastery Rubric.
In the video you have already seen, Mr. Thorsby touched on how the Student Toolkit includes features, scaffolds, and strategic approaches. He mentions that these approaches support students in organizing and conducting a research project. He talks about how this process helped his students to engage with curriculum content and the research process at a higher level.
Sometimes students with learning difficulties struggle with certain steps in the research process. For example, a student may have problems with spelling. A teacher can help by asking the student to always use spellcheck before turning in the digital notebook. Another student may struggle with forming Google-ready research questions. A teacher could help by having the student brainstorm key words, and then use those key words to form questions about the topic.
Think about a particular student with a learning difficulty in your class. What is the learning difficulty? What methods could you use to support the student, or teach the student to use? Write a few brief comments about this student and the methods you think may be helpful. Then look at the topics below. Choose one or more of these methods, and write a few more comments about how the method could assist the student’s learning of online research strategies.
- The Nine Strategies as a Research Partner
- Systematic Research Approach
- Digital Notebooks
- Practice Features (Questions, Quick Tip Videos, and Try It! Exercises)
- Design Features (Video Instruction, Text-to-Speech, Consistent Appearance)
Add any additional questions or concerns you may have regarding the struggling learners in your class and how they will interact with the Student Toolkit and strategies. Post your reflections to the teacher forum.
Please take the S-SOAR Teacher Pre-Implementation Survey before teaching with the Student Toolkit in your classroom!
Click to view the optional eModule 5: The Teacher Community Portal and SOAR’s Research Basis
