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ELIZABETH BOESE

My goal in life was to not become my mother. Now, my mum was a grade school teacher. So I got a degree in computer science. And after a couple of years, somehow I found myself in the role of teaching. And I thought to myself, oh, no. Am I becoming my mother?

Now, my mum was really passionate about always improving the educational process every year. She cared so much about her kids. And by "her kids," I mean not just my brother and me. And now that I've been teaching computer science for over 10 years, I realise I thought I had figured it all out. I had all the right ways on how to help students learn best, my kids I cared about.

And I figured it all out. And I had this formula. And it worked. But then my students started to challenge me. And they would ask, why should we learn it when we can just google it? I was horrified. How can they think this? Why can't they just learn what they're supposed to learn? Why aren't they following my formula?

And then I started to think about this. And when I have a problem to solve, I don't go read a whole book on the topic. I just find the information that I need to solve that problem. And this is called a just-in-time learning model.

So why do we expect students to learn through the just-in-case model, learning everything upfront in the hopes that they're going to need it and actually remember it later? Why not let students follow the just-in-time learning model? It's much more motivational. It's how we all do it. And it prepares them better for the workforce.

And honestly, we don't have much of a choice but to change. It's the students who are getting us to realise this. And they're saying it very loudly. Most people just complain about how difficult and frustrating it is to work with millennials. And that's because their generation does not fit our mould of what we expect.

We are still doing things the old way, the way things worked before the internet. Maybe it's our attitude that needs adjusting. We need to change. It's their future. And change is long overdue. The internet has killed education as we currently know it. I believe it's time we fully adopt the just-in-time learning model. This is how the world works today. And this is what students are doing anyway.

And so what exactly is the just-in-time learning model? This is when students no longer read the full background on a topic. Instead, they find just the information they need to answer a question or solve a problem. This gives them a focal point for their reading and answers that critical motivation question, the why. Why learn this? And now they have a reason. It's because to answer this question or solve this problem.

So there are four parts to this just-in-time learning model. The first is realising that the textbook is dead. Now, I'm saying that as a textbook author. Students no longer sequentially read through a 400-page book. My students don't even buy the book anymore.

So I asked my software engineering class how many of them had read the chapter. Now, this is a $35 book. And you can find a version of it online on the internet for free. And in a class of about 80 students, none of them raised their hand.

This is the "just google it" era. That's what students are doing. But that brings us with thousands and thousands of search results. And not everything you read on the internet is true. So how do you know? If we no longer use a textbook and we rely on the internet for our learning, how do you know if what you're reading is accurate?

The best example of this problem is work that was done in communications. And it's been widely misquoted in websites and in published books about communication. In Mehrabian's work, what he found was that 7% of communication is through the words that you say. 38% is through the tone of your voice. And 55% is through the body language.

But if you read the paper more closely, you find that this is only applicable when talking about attitudes and feelings. Yet tonnes of business books have cited this incorrectly that it's for all communication, like business meetings, phone calls, emails.

So this leads to one of the other problems we get when we rely on "just google it" for our information. We lose context. And context of information is becoming just as important as the information itself. This is the second part of our just-in-time learning model. We need to help students learn how to vet the information they find.

Now, we can do that by having them go through multiple websites and looking for the most reputable ones. This also includes reading the comments on articles and blog posts to find out if there were any errors in that post and different ideas on that solution. The nice side effect about vetting the information is that you really get to know and learn that material by seeing it presented in multiple different ways.

Now, this is important because I always demonstrate to my class what happens when they rely on just my lecture for the topic and they don't read anything about it. So here is how much there is to know about a topic. Here's how much the book usually covers.

Here's how much I can really cover in a lecture. And this is how much you tend to retain from a lecture. So understanding the context of information is just as important as finding the information. And vetting the information helps you really learn it.

The third part of the just-in-time learning model is supporting creative student ideas. Students become so much more invested and engaged when they're working on their own unique, creative ideas.

An example of this is when I taught a non-major's introduction to programming course. And there are two student project examples up on the slides. The first was a Jeopardy game. And I still use this in my classes today as a great and fun way to review the material. The second is a fully functional two-player board game that runs on the internet.

My students would typically report working well over 100 hours on their projects, well beyond anything I'd ever ask or require. They were so engaged in making their idea work. And seniors who were computer science majors were jealous of what these freshmen non-majors produced.

And this leads us to the fourth and final part of the just-in-time learning model, the role of the teacher. We are no longer lecturers, imparting our wise knowledge about a topic. That's the internet's job-- to be the disseminater of information. Our role now is that of tutors, guides, facilitators, helping students learn and learn how to learn.

Now, if we include all four of these just-in-time learning model into education, there's no longer the concept of cheating. Think about it. If students are working on their own unique problems, they're allowed to just google it, and we encourage collaboration, then how can students, quote, "cheat"?

If we educators and parents are helping students learn how to solve problems, think critically, make really good decisions, and communicate effectively, then we have succeeded. That's real education. And we can do that by embracing the internet and including the just-in-time learning model.

Now, my mum was really passionate about improving the educational process every year. And I am just as passionate about that as well. And I am proud to have become just like my mother. Because by improving the educational process with the just-in-time learning, my students no longer come up and ask, why should we learn it when we can just google it? Because now, by googling it, they are learning it. Thank you.

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