I think that this type of practice is very useful. I use Canvas quizzes to do the same thing Chapman et al. did in their paper. My course doesn't have these types of virtual quizzes ready made, so I have to make them. I make as many of them as possible formula problems. Mostly the students see different problems from each other. They are a beast to set up, but I should be able to reuse them from year to year, so it's worth the effort.
Like Chapman et al., I also make them infinite attempts and no penalty, but there is a hard deadline. (Usually I give them 3 days to work through the problems.) They are worth 10% of the grade. My goal was ~1 per week but I can't make them fast enough.
I call them "Practice Problems" rather than quizzes because students have an idea for what quizzes are. I have to tell them repeatedly at the start that these are practice and so they are *strongly encouraged* to get help if they get stuck.
The big downside to this is I have no way to give specific feedback on what they are doing wrong. But I do post the solutions after the assignment closes so they can check their work against the way I solved them.
"They are a beast to set up, but I should be able to reuse them from year to year, so it's worth the effort."
I'm working on case studies for the second edition of my flipped learning book and almost every single one says the same thing: It takes a ton of work to set up the pre-class materials like quizzes and videos, but it's a one-time investment with minimal needs for future updates, so later on profs just... teach.
This is interesting and genuinely thought-provoking, and yet there are a number of things about this model of deliberate practice that give me pause.
A quote from your opening:
"Deliberate practice involves breaking down skills into smaller parts, practicing them repeatedly, seeking feedback to identify weaknesses, and adapting methods to address deficiencies based on the feedback. Deliberate practice is highly demanding and not much fun. But there seems to be no shortcut around it if you truly want to learn something deeply."
And concerns I have/questions I find myself asking:
- While there are clearly situations where it can be helpful to break down complex practices into discrete skills, it seems equally clear that something is lost when we do so. To put this in the terms popularized by Daniel Pink, while training in "algorithmic" techniques may be a necessary part of developing a "heuristic" practice, such a practice can't be reduced to a corpus of such techniques. You need to integrate, you need to contextualize, you need to explore, experiment, and make meaningful decisions. It's not clear where this model of deliberate practice makes space for that, and this seems like a crucial blind spot.
- What are the conditions under which people will do things that are "highly demanding and not much fun" for a long enough period of time, with a deep enough focus, to develop high levels of skill and/or deep levels of knowledge? It seems like this would require either a very high degree of intrinsic motivation, a very high degree of extrinsic motivation, or some combination of the two. This presents several problems. First, the practical realities of the American education system make it very difficult to achieve and sustain the level of extrinsic motivation that would be necessary. Second, there's a very real risk that systems that are geared toward maintaining a very high degree of extrinsic motivation will end up degrading students' intrinsic motivation, and with it their ability to do work that involves higher-level thinking (as Pink has also argued).
- There is a seemingly puritanical strain in this account of deliberate practice: if you're having fun, you must be doing it wrong. I think this is a pretty fundamental misconception about how people get good at doing hard things. To be sure, there can be a significant amount of "this sucks" involved in playing guitar until your fingers bleed, say, but if there's not a correspondingly significant amount of "this is awesome", then why are you doing it and how long are you likely to keep it up? And all else being equal, isn't someone who *does* think it's awesome likely to get better?
- In the big picture, I'd argue that historically, the American education system has been heavily tilted toward "algorithmic" skills and extrinsic motivation. While there are things about deliberate practice that are meaningfully different and better, I'm concerned that the discourse around deliberate practice could reinforce this historic tilt, and it seems all too easy to see how it could devolve into doing things "the old way but harder."
To be clear, I'm not at all suggesting that *you* are doing this! What I would say, though, is that if we want to incorporate deliberate practice into our teaching, we need to think about how we can do that *within the context* of a larger approach that supports intrinsic motivation and "heuristic" learning.
>You need to integrate, you need to contextualize, you need to explore, experiment, and make meaningful decisions. It's not clear where this model of deliberate practice makes space for that, and this seems like a crucial blind spot.
I would say that everything you just mentioned is part of deliberate practice itself. It flows from having a goal orientation to what one is doing and getting feedback. For example when I am learning a piece of music, I have a goal in mind -- to perform it musically, with minimal mistakes, and to evoke an emotional reaction from my audience. Sounds like it cannot be broken into discrete tasks, but it can be, and building the parts into a whole is a lot of what practice is about. And getting feedback as to whether what I am doing is musical and expressive, not just correct, is important.
>What are the conditions under which people will do things that are "highly demanding and not much fun" for a long enough period of time, with a deep enough focus, to develop high levels of skill and/or deep levels of knowledge?
>There is a seemingly puritanical strain in this account of deliberate practice: if you're having fun, you must be doing it wrong.
It's hard to explain perhaps, but it's possible to enjoy something without having fun doing it in the moment. I have never once had fun doing leg presses at the gym. All the same, I like doing them because I know I am accomplishing something important and moving myself in the right direction. I enjoy doing diatonic scale exercises on my bass even though I have literally fallen asleep doing them before! I guess "fun" is superficial while "enjoyment" is deeper.
I appreciate the thoughtful reply, and I hear where you're coming from. There have been times when I've run 400s until I was tasting pennies and had fun doing it.
But honestly, these examples speak to the point that I was trying to make. Playing scales and running quarters were things that we did because we *chose* to do them as part of endeavors that were meaningful for us. In the context of those endeavors, our deliberate practice could become purposeful, integrative, exploratory. But it's crucial to recognize how our choice enabled the depth of our practice.
The question, to me, is how we can encourage our students to make that kind of choice in the context of their studies, especially when they haven't previously experienced school as a place of meaningful endeavor and/or when their previous motivations have been primarily extrinsic and transactional.
Thanks for sharing!
I think that this type of practice is very useful. I use Canvas quizzes to do the same thing Chapman et al. did in their paper. My course doesn't have these types of virtual quizzes ready made, so I have to make them. I make as many of them as possible formula problems. Mostly the students see different problems from each other. They are a beast to set up, but I should be able to reuse them from year to year, so it's worth the effort.
Like Chapman et al., I also make them infinite attempts and no penalty, but there is a hard deadline. (Usually I give them 3 days to work through the problems.) They are worth 10% of the grade. My goal was ~1 per week but I can't make them fast enough.
I call them "Practice Problems" rather than quizzes because students have an idea for what quizzes are. I have to tell them repeatedly at the start that these are practice and so they are *strongly encouraged* to get help if they get stuck.
The big downside to this is I have no way to give specific feedback on what they are doing wrong. But I do post the solutions after the assignment closes so they can check their work against the way I solved them.
"They are a beast to set up, but I should be able to reuse them from year to year, so it's worth the effort."
I'm working on case studies for the second edition of my flipped learning book and almost every single one says the same thing: It takes a ton of work to set up the pre-class materials like quizzes and videos, but it's a one-time investment with minimal needs for future updates, so later on profs just... teach.
This is interesting and genuinely thought-provoking, and yet there are a number of things about this model of deliberate practice that give me pause.
A quote from your opening:
"Deliberate practice involves breaking down skills into smaller parts, practicing them repeatedly, seeking feedback to identify weaknesses, and adapting methods to address deficiencies based on the feedback. Deliberate practice is highly demanding and not much fun. But there seems to be no shortcut around it if you truly want to learn something deeply."
And concerns I have/questions I find myself asking:
- While there are clearly situations where it can be helpful to break down complex practices into discrete skills, it seems equally clear that something is lost when we do so. To put this in the terms popularized by Daniel Pink, while training in "algorithmic" techniques may be a necessary part of developing a "heuristic" practice, such a practice can't be reduced to a corpus of such techniques. You need to integrate, you need to contextualize, you need to explore, experiment, and make meaningful decisions. It's not clear where this model of deliberate practice makes space for that, and this seems like a crucial blind spot.
- What are the conditions under which people will do things that are "highly demanding and not much fun" for a long enough period of time, with a deep enough focus, to develop high levels of skill and/or deep levels of knowledge? It seems like this would require either a very high degree of intrinsic motivation, a very high degree of extrinsic motivation, or some combination of the two. This presents several problems. First, the practical realities of the American education system make it very difficult to achieve and sustain the level of extrinsic motivation that would be necessary. Second, there's a very real risk that systems that are geared toward maintaining a very high degree of extrinsic motivation will end up degrading students' intrinsic motivation, and with it their ability to do work that involves higher-level thinking (as Pink has also argued).
- There is a seemingly puritanical strain in this account of deliberate practice: if you're having fun, you must be doing it wrong. I think this is a pretty fundamental misconception about how people get good at doing hard things. To be sure, there can be a significant amount of "this sucks" involved in playing guitar until your fingers bleed, say, but if there's not a correspondingly significant amount of "this is awesome", then why are you doing it and how long are you likely to keep it up? And all else being equal, isn't someone who *does* think it's awesome likely to get better?
- In the big picture, I'd argue that historically, the American education system has been heavily tilted toward "algorithmic" skills and extrinsic motivation. While there are things about deliberate practice that are meaningfully different and better, I'm concerned that the discourse around deliberate practice could reinforce this historic tilt, and it seems all too easy to see how it could devolve into doing things "the old way but harder."
To be clear, I'm not at all suggesting that *you* are doing this! What I would say, though, is that if we want to incorporate deliberate practice into our teaching, we need to think about how we can do that *within the context* of a larger approach that supports intrinsic motivation and "heuristic" learning.
Fun animated video reviewing Pink's arguments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
Thanks. Some brief replies:
>You need to integrate, you need to contextualize, you need to explore, experiment, and make meaningful decisions. It's not clear where this model of deliberate practice makes space for that, and this seems like a crucial blind spot.
I would say that everything you just mentioned is part of deliberate practice itself. It flows from having a goal orientation to what one is doing and getting feedback. For example when I am learning a piece of music, I have a goal in mind -- to perform it musically, with minimal mistakes, and to evoke an emotional reaction from my audience. Sounds like it cannot be broken into discrete tasks, but it can be, and building the parts into a whole is a lot of what practice is about. And getting feedback as to whether what I am doing is musical and expressive, not just correct, is important.
>What are the conditions under which people will do things that are "highly demanding and not much fun" for a long enough period of time, with a deep enough focus, to develop high levels of skill and/or deep levels of knowledge?
That was kind of the subject of my second article: https://gradingforgrowth.com/p/can-deliberate-practice-be-motivated
>There is a seemingly puritanical strain in this account of deliberate practice: if you're having fun, you must be doing it wrong.
It's hard to explain perhaps, but it's possible to enjoy something without having fun doing it in the moment. I have never once had fun doing leg presses at the gym. All the same, I like doing them because I know I am accomplishing something important and moving myself in the right direction. I enjoy doing diatonic scale exercises on my bass even though I have literally fallen asleep doing them before! I guess "fun" is superficial while "enjoyment" is deeper.
I appreciate the thoughtful reply, and I hear where you're coming from. There have been times when I've run 400s until I was tasting pennies and had fun doing it.
But honestly, these examples speak to the point that I was trying to make. Playing scales and running quarters were things that we did because we *chose* to do them as part of endeavors that were meaningful for us. In the context of those endeavors, our deliberate practice could become purposeful, integrative, exploratory. But it's crucial to recognize how our choice enabled the depth of our practice.
The question, to me, is how we can encourage our students to make that kind of choice in the context of their studies, especially when they haven't previously experienced school as a place of meaningful endeavor and/or when their previous motivations have been primarily extrinsic and transactional.