It was Christmas time again. I knew a big box filled with gifts for everyone in my family would soon arrive at my door. Among them, a square-shaped object wrapped in colorful holiday paper would be a special one for me. It’s a Christmas gift from Denny Sapp, a close friend of mine who passed away seven years ago.

This year’s gift is no different. I unwrap it slowly, savoring the anticipation, and inside I find a custom photo wallet. It’s adorned with a picture of us from one of our many adventures together, a beautiful reminder of the bond we shared. As I hold the wallet in my hands, memories of Denny flood back, making me both laugh and tear up.

Also, this year as always, I put Denny’s gift—the latest version of Merriam Webster’s 365 New Words a Year calendar—next to my computer screen and once again, felt the urge to write down Denny’s story. His story touches on many aspects of teaching, learning and, most of all, living a life enriched by teaching and learning. He taught me many valuable lessons that I would like to share with you.

Denny was my student—the one who had achieved the most during his life. He had a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in architecture and a Ph.D. in structural engineering from the University of Illinois. By the age of 40, he had already achieved tenure and full-professor status and was chair of the civil-engineering department at Rose Hulman Institute of Technology, which was ranked the number one engineering school in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.

Denny was also the oldest student in my Chinese language and culture class. Seeing him, a seventy-some retired professor sitting in the first row of the class with a bunch of twenty-some youngsters, made my Chinese class very “American.” For someone of his age to tackle Chinese—which is often referred to as the most difficult language in the world for students of any age—was certainly a challenging task. But Denny was determined. He did everything possible to make himself a top student. He was always the first one to show up in class and the last to leave. He collected books, dictionaries, and tutorials beyond the required reading materials for the class. He carried his Chinese learning materials in a brief case—which he called his “Chinese brain”—everywhere he went. He even asked to meet with me after class for more instruction.

So, we started to meet for lunch every Saturday in a Chinese restaurant, where he would practice Chinese and I would bring him English-related questions that I encountered during the week. Thus, we became each other’s student and teacher. The meetings continued even after the Chinese class was over, and, as we meet more often, I realized that what I could learn from this man was beyond language. It was even more than knowledge. Many years after Denny died, I still remember vividly the life lessons I learned from him in dealing with the task of learning, in handling students and friends, and in reacting to fame and challenges. Here are just a few of my favorites:

“I think you should finish your dissertation.”

When my doctoral venture got into the ABD stage, Denny was the head of my “butt-kickers” committee. This committee was comprised of family members and friends, and it was their job to pressure me to get the dissertation done. Everyone who has been through the dreadful journey of a Ph.D. knows how easily this last swing could be dropped because of the freedom a doctor-to-be has in deciding whether or not to do it. At this point, there are no more deadlines given by anybody but yourself—unless you are as fortunate as I was to find someone who would police the process and kick butt to keep it going.

Denny was the one who did the kicking when my mind started to wander from writing my dissertation to dating and finding someone to settle down with. At the time I was well past the typical marriage age in my culture and the fear of missing the boat started to haunt me. I started to bring my concerns to our lunch table and asked Denny who I should date. He looked me in the eyes and said in a calm but firm tone, “I think you should finish your dissertation.” It was a short sentence but a big wake-up call to alert me to stay focused until the job is done.

“Let’s learn some real English when you finish your dissertation.”

Denny was the editor-in-chief for my dissertation, the one who read the first draft of every single page of my writing. In fact, I even brought to him articles or documents I wrote for work and research. He would read them, make changes with a pencil, read them again, erase his changes, and then re-edit. When I saw him re-editing my work for the third time around, it taught me what makes a truly good writer.

One time he noticed a straightforward sentence that he had edited had been revised by my doctoral committee chair into the “dissertation-style.” He frowned and said to me, “Okay, Sharon, let’s learn some real English when you finish your dissertation.”

Real English, in Denny’s eyes, was the type of English that’s simple and direct. To help build my vocabulary, each Christmas Denny would give me a one-word-a-day Webster calendar. He also taught me that if an idea can be expressed in a simple word, I shouldn’t use complicated ones. “No gobbledeegook,” as he would say. To this day, I still have a problem writing or speaking the word “pedagogy” because Danny had once asked me, “Why don’t you just call it ‘teaching’?” And I know that he wouldn’t accept, “Because it is a popular ‘P’ word in higher education,” as an answer.

In today’s world where so many of us strive to fancy our writing with jargon and buzz words, Denny pointed out a simple fact: good writing should always be simple and direct!

“Take that doctor thing off your voice mail greeting.”

After all the pains and sufferings I had been through for my degree, I was finally crowned with the title. One thing I did to highlight the change was to revise my voice mail greeting. Like many of my professors, I put the “doctor” prefix in front of my name, upgrading what was once just “Sharon Guan’s office” to “Dr. Sharon Guan’s office.”

A couple of days later, I met Denny for lunch. He said to me in a father-to-daughter tone, “Take that off, Sharon. You don’t have to include that.” I could think of many excuses to defend myself. As an instructional designer, I thought I needed that title to gain the respect of faculty, and I wanted to point out that others had ‘Dr. so and so’ in their greetings. Yet I didn’t offer Danny any excuses. Instead, I went back to the office and re-recorded the greeting, dropping that doctor. I did this because Denny had just shown me that respect is to be earned through your actions, not your title.

“Flip nine fingers…to confuse him!”

As a licensed airplane pilot, Denny drove like a pilot. He wouldn’t speed but the starts and stops were quite sharp. It had been fun to ride in his red Miata to our lunch place until one day we bumped into a guy who was annoyed by Denny’s way of driving. This guy “saluted” us with his middle finger while driving by. I was aggravated (This was in Terre Haute, Indiana, not Chicago). I told Denny that we ought to drive up and flip a finger at him. Denny said, “Well, next time, let’s throw nine fingers…” “What’s that for?” I asked, thinking it was another American gesture that I hadn’t been acquainted with. “To confuse him!” He cheered like a little kid who had just pulled off the perfect prank. His joyful attitude toward this awful experience told me that revenge is not a solution for someone with a big heart and a great sense of humor.

“You can’t burn down that building…because my office is there!”

Denny once told me a story about a paranoid student of his who got so extremely angry with the institution that he decided he wanted to bomb one of the buildings. When he accidentally mentioned his plan to Denny, Professor Sappy gave him a simple reason to quit.

“You can’t burn down that building,” Denny said. “Why not? Because my office is there!” And then Denny started to meet the “bomber” the same way he met me, sharing books and ideas about life and discussing ways to deal with problems. The student became a lifelong friend of Denny’s and later graduated from Rose Hulman with honors. Denny shared this story with me mainly to amuse me with his funny answer, but I saw what a powerful influence a teacher can have on a student. I also realized that a teacher’s influence often goes beyond the classroom.

It had been several years since I started to meet regularly with Denny when I heard that Denny had multiple myeloma, a type of cancer somewhat like leukemia. I shook my head in disbelief. For all these years, there hadn’t been a single sign of illness in this happy and active person. But then, the signs started to show as it got into the fifth year of his battle with this fatal disease. Thankfully, he was able to get spasticity cannabis treatments to ease his pain a bit. Behind his gentle smiles, I saw tiredness and exhaustion. Yet he maintained his sense of humor, telling me proudly the best compliment he received from a Chinese friend. “When I told XiaoMao maybe I was born on the wrong planet, you know what he said to me? He said, ‘No, you were born on the wrong side of the planet!” I know that to Danny, the right side would be China, where his view of life would be highly valued by many. And that explained why so many Chinese showed up at Danny’s funeral. They were the reason for him to study Chinese at the age of seventy because he wanted to communicate with these friends in their language!

In the spring of 2001, Denny died at the Regional Hospital of Terre Haute. The last word he said was “Ni Hao ma?” or “How are you?” in Chinese. He left behind his wife Helen, elder sister Margaret, and many friends, both Chinese and American. He didn’t have children because, in his words, “There are too many people in the world already.” He hadn’t published any books because he claimed, “There are too many publications already.”

Four people were selected to speak at his memorial services. Among them, I was the only one standing at the podium without a script in hand. I started my speech with the following sentences:

“It was such a privilege to me to be among these respected university professors and administrators to deliver a speech at this very special event. Being a non-native speaker and being the most inexperienced person in the group, it must have been very brave of me to stand here without a script. Well, that is not true. I did go to my office last night trying to type something up. Yeah, Denny knows what a last-minute person I am. But last night, when I fired up my word processor, all of a sudden I realized this is going to be the first article that I wrote that wouldn’t be edited by Denny… The screen then got blurred… and I could not finish my homework any more…”

On the seventh day after Denny passed away, Panda Garden, the Chinese restaurant where Denny regularly visited was crowded with diners. People waiting at the door couldn’t figure out why there was a table in the corner set up with plates and chopsticks but not being used by anyone… This table at which Denny usually sat was reserved for him by Allen Yan, the owner of the restaurant. It was reserved for Denny because of an ancient belief among Chinese that on the seventh day, the spirit of those who died would come to visit their favorite places. And Allen knew that his friend Denny wouldn’t forget to stop by his restaurant…

It took a few hours to drive from Terre Haute, Indiana to the cemetery in Illinois where Denny was to be buried. The drive was extremely dreadful for Allen’s three-year-old son Jimmy who kept throwing up during the trip. I asked Allen why he insisted on bringing his son along knowing he would get car sick. Allen answered with his voice trembling with sadness and anger, “I want him to remember Grandpa Denny! I want him to remember who named him!” In Chinese culture, it is a privilege to name a newborn, and that privilege was given to Denny by Allen Yan’s family, new immigrants from Taiwan who survived in a small town in the Midwest because of the support of people like Denny. Denny named Allen’s son after his favorite president, Jimmy Carter.

With little Jimmy standing straight beside him, Allen took out a bag of dirt that he had brought from Taiwan and poured them onto Denny’s casket before the burying. The dirt was from the other side of the planet, and Allen said it would accompany Denny on his next journey.

When Christmas came in 2001, my family received a big box of gifts from Denny’s wife Helen and sister Margaret. Among them, I spotted a squared-shaped object wrapped in holiday paper. I knew what it was because I had been getting this gift for many years. Through glares of tears, I read the little note attached to it:

Sharon,

This is really a gift from Denny. Margaret and I had the pleasure of mailing it to you!

Love, Helen.

And the gift has continued to arrive every Christmas—so precious, like the memory of Denny.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Computers and Advanced Technology in Education conference in Beijing, a city where I went to college 20 years ago. To me, it felt a bit strange to hear the familiar subjects—new instructional tools and pedagogical methods—being discussed in an ancient city of China, which has become so modernized that I could barely recognize it. At the conference, the clear divide between the technical and pedagogical tracks reminded me of the disparity between modern technology and the historical cultural roots of China. Almost all of the presentations delivered by Chinese scholars focused on technology, and most of the technologically focused papers seemed to shy away from any deep analysis of the pedagogical impact of these technologies. This made me wonder, ‘Where were those insightful learning theories developed in China thousands years ahead of the west? Where was Confucius and his philosophy of teaching and learning?’

An interesting thought came to my mind as I was wandering through those technology demonstrations: what if Confucius were given the opportunity to teach online? Would he be as resistant to technology as many of our conservative faculty are? Or would he be willing to use the Internet to serve his mission of perfecting human beings through education?

As someone who taught through dialogue and observation, Confucius would very likely to be skeptical about teaching online. Yet, if he were to take advantage of online technology (as many faculty are doing now), I would speculate that his way of teaching would be dramatically different from most online instructors. Since I cannot easily anticipate what Confucius would do, I would just venture to list a few things that I believe would not happen if Confucius were to teach online:

1. There would be no learning objectives.
2. There would be no learning modules.
3. There would be no “instructors” in the class, but “coaches” and “mentors”.
4. There would be no tests and exams.
5. There wouldn’t be any “course” or “courses.”
6. There wouldn’t be a green light allowing every student to study online.

Now, here are my rationales for the would-not-happens.

1. No Learning Objectives
Confucius believed that through “studying,” one proceeded to reach the stage of human excellence. In this regard, the goal of education was to cultivate and facilitate self-improvement. Such improvement, in his opinion, was personal and could only happen through individual engagement in learning. Since humans differ in nature, Confucius suggested that instructions ought to be tailored for each individual student. The Analects of Confucius recorded that once a question was asked about whether the student should immediately put into practice something he was taught. To one student who Confucius thought was particularly zealous, he recommended that the student first consult his father and older brothers. To the other student who Confucius thought lacked enthusiasm, he said yes, put it into practice right away (The Analects of Confucius).

This story makes Confucius the earliest practitioner of constructivism. One could easily infer from his thoughts and practices that he viewed the paths to achieve the ultimate learning goals as being different from one student to another. In this sense, he would oppose putting any milestones on the journey of learning because people were traveling at different routes and even their own routes might change during the process. In developing online learning, we label those milestones as “learning objectives,” which were set by the instructors and given to students as common targets that move them along “a well-trod and clearly marked road.” The main challenge of learning, in this perspective, is to keep students moving down the road on schedule. (Ron Weigel, 2005).

These milestones or learning objectives would certainly be removed by Confucius.

2. No Learning Modules
Break the content into bite-sized chunks to make it easy for students to digest! Carefully label each chunk with instructions and dates for it to be consumed! Place them in a good sequence so that they are completed by the students in the right order!

None of these design tips would have found their place if Confucius were to teach online.
Confucius, even in his own time, never used structured class to teach. Because of this, one can hardly imagine him using modules to break knowledge into discrete pieces.

Confucius saw learning as a process of observation, followed by reflection, and internalization or implementation. His thought infers a clear distinction between information acquisition and the formation of knowledge and wisdom. He would leave it to the students to observe and to acquire information without interfering and would never limit what students could “observe” by storing things in a fixed module.

3. No Instructors but “Coaches” and “Mentors”
Confucius’ methods of teaching were striking. He didn’t discourse at length (no lectures either!). Instead he posed questions, cited passages from classic texts, used apt analogies, or simply just listened and waited for the students to arrive at the right answer. He would not be there to tell students when to finish what assignment or what’s right and what’s wrong. Instead, he was to coach and mentor them on an individual basis.

4. No Tests and Exams
Confucius never use structured exams to assess the progress of student learning. Instead, he seemed to care more about how students reflected upon what they had “observed” and transformed these observations into knowledge and wisdom.

Confucius once asked a student, “Do you think that my way of acquiring knowledge is simply to study many things and remember them?” The student said, “Yes, isn’t that the case?” Confucius replied, “No, I have one principle which I use like a thread, upon which to string them all.”

His answer demonstrated his awareness of his own thinking process, which we now define as “metacognition.” Metacognitive capabilities can never to be mined through pure retrieval of information, nor would they be assessed by tests and exams.

5. No More “Courses”
Although Confucius did have a curriculum for subjects like music, speech, poetry, literature, and history, none of these was offered in isolation. Instead, he took a holistic approach by cross-referencing all subjects.

Without the boundary of walls, online learning has the great potential to enable multidisciplinary curricula, which I believe Confucius would like to use. In this regard, the concept of “a course” or “courses” would disappear.

6. Survival of the Eager and Willing
How many online instructors are struggling with keeping students on task? How many are frustrated by the fact that no matter how hard they try, there are always some that just won’t learn? Well, Confucius would not let himself be bothered by this problem because he would not teach “dullards,” and would “only teach those who were bursting with eagerness for enlightenment” (The Analects of Confucius). He would certainly apply this principle to online learning, which requires more enthusiasm and self-motivation to complete.

In reviewing Confucius theories, I see some limitations in his thinking (such as the unchallengeable acceptance of traditions). However, there are many of his ideas and practices that may still provoke useful thinking about what we do today. I think reviewing his way of teaching would at least make us aware of the overuse of the behaviorist approach in online teaching, which has a tendency to downgrade learning to one or a collection of short-term trainings.

Let me start by asking you some questions:

• Do you take notes while listening to a lecture?
• Do you multi-task thinking that you can get more things done with less time?
• Do you try to address as many learning styles as possible in the learning material you’re developing?
• Do ask your students to practice again and again, thinking that more practice will ensure greater learning?
• Do you use various media when designing learning materials in order to meet the needs of visual learners, auditory learners, and students with disabilities?
• Do you use the teaching cycle of giving students an example and the asking them to solve a similar problem by themselves? Do you repeat such a cycle as a way to build on students’ skills?
• Do you think helping faculty master Blackboard would prepare them to learn another course management system?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, read on to get a glimpse of the cognitive load theory and Ruth Clark’s book Efficiency in Learning. If you are as open and “persuadable” as I am, you may join me in identifying some more myths.

To me, cognitive load theory is like an analogy of the computer vs. the human brain: the hard drive is your long-term memory while the RAM is your working memory. The RAM of your brain or the working memory is a determinant in how quickly you can learn. As your brain gets “booted up” for a learning process, there are three kinds of workloads it has to take:

1. the necessary load or the “intrinsic cognitive load,”
2. the unnecessary load or the “extraneous cognitive load,” (This includes distractions or confusion caused by bad instruction.)
3. and the load that helps connect learning with your own experiences or the “germane cognitive load.” The goal of instructional design is to manage the intrinsic load, minimize the extraneous, and promote the germane load.

I believe that instructional design is a science of “common sense”—the most direct channel to make people “get it.” However, there are a few practices that seem to be based on common sense, but are merely myths when you plug in the cognitive load theory. Here are seven of them I’d like to share with you:

Myth 1: Taking notes helps reinforce learning.

Research cited in Ruth Clark’s book indicated that the effort of capturing what the lecturer is saying and recording it in a written format will only add more extraneous cognitive load to your brain. This leaves less room for your brain to process the content of the lecture. So, as a learner, it would be more beneficial to replace note-taking with jotting the key points during or after the lecture. As an instructor, you should prepare lecture notes for your students and tell them that instead of writing down what you’re saying, they should think about it and reflect upon it.

Myth 2: Multi-tasking makes the learner accomplish more.

Multi-tasking will work effectively if all or the majority of the tasks have become automatic behaviors. In other words, the tasks should be something that you have been doing repeatedly, making them embedded into your long-term memory so that they require minimal working memory to process. However, if you really are to learn something, you better free up your working memory as much as possible. So, tell your students that they can listen to the radio while driving, but stop text-messaging while doing their homework.

Myth 3: In designing learning materials, we should address as many learning styles as possible.

Now let me share with you the only note I’ve taken from Ruth Clark’s workshop: “… cognitive commonality overrules individuality.” I jotted it down because it is such a brave statement. As Ruth Clark said, “I am expecting rotten tomatoes thrown at me for saying this.” Not from me, Ruth. Actually, I am in concert with her in disclosing this myth. When you design a learning object or training tutorial, the attempt to ensure “no child is left behind” may actually leave everybody behind. Instead of accommodating every student’s learning preference, designers should focus their energy on addressing the cognitive commonality that has been scientifically approved, such as letting users control the pace of the learning. process. As for individuality, leave the options that can be controlled by the learner. For example, allow the learner to turn on the audio to hear narration instead of leaving it on by default.

Myth 4: Practice makes perfect.

Does this rule apply to things beyond playing musical instrument? Well, research conducted by learning scientists indicates that more errors are introduced when practice goes beyond certain timeframe. I think this is the way that your mind tells you “O-kay, I got it. Stop exhausting me!” So, think about the amount of practice you want to assign to the students. By the way, I wish I could send this information to my elementary, middle, and high-school teachers in China. If I had a dollar for every hour I spent writing each Chinese character 100 times, I’d be a millionaire!

Myth 5: Multimedia improves learning by addressing multiple learning styles.

Insert the images for visual learners, add the audio narration for the auditory ones, and don’t forget the text for people who like to read. (And be sure to make the text big and bold for the visually impaired). Oh, and what about some background music for today’s multi-sensory learners? Thanks to today’s technology, all these requests can be easily accomplished through multimedia. The question is: will this piece of multimedia help people to learn better? The answer is likely to be no because media redundancy distracts learners. It adds unnecessary workload (extraneous cognitive load) to the brain, leaving less room for it to process the information. So, instructional designers who are constantly tempted by various fancy tech tools ought to remember that making things simple and direct remains the rule of thumb.

Myth 6: Giving examples followed by practice, followed by another example, followed by more practice (“example + practice + example + practice + example + practice”) is an effective way to teach.

Although the effectiveness of this method is questionable, this was a method often used by my teachers. Today, I still rely on this method from time to time when I teach. When compared with this formula [(example + practice) x N], research found that another formula which provides various examples before asking students to practice (example + example + example +example…+ practice) proved to be a more efficient way to learn. However, providing students with examples on which to model their own work can be problematic in its own right. I often debate whether or not I should give students a completed sample of an assignment. On the one hand, it may help clarify my expectations. Yet, on the other hand, it may also lock students to a pattern and constrain their creativity. If you share the same concern, let’s try giving students a diverse variety of examples so that they don’t follow one pattern and can practice better and learn more.

Myth 7: Being an expert of one course management system makes it easier to learn another.

Research shared by Ruth Clark shows that when expert and novice chess players were given a random chessboard, the novice group actually remembered it better than the experts. Why? Because the experts are confused by the meaningless layout of the board and are subconsciously going through a process of differentiating the “new look” with the one that they are familiar with. Those who are familiar with the layout and navigation scheme of Blackboard face the same frustration when they have to learn another system that is structured differently. This finding brings an alert to decision makers to think more carefully in selecting or changing technology solutions for users, especially those who are already comfortable using one particular application. (This is true even if they also complain about it.) The finding also echoes Gerry McGovern’s call to end web redesign in his article “Web Redesign is a Bad Strategy.” McGovern advocates that designers put more energy into improving content and simplifying the existing structure instead of building a new one.

What’s next?

Feel free to share any teaching myths or miracles by leaving a comment.