[MUSIC, Title: "The Paradox of Self-Focus"] [Barb] As we described in the last video, when you go in front of the camera, you are not only a mental athlete conveying your subject matter— you are also, in a very great sense, a PHYSICAL athlete. Your athletic skill is the ability to exude passion and excitement through your face and hands as you interact with your students, either live or via recorded video. So, here is a relevant fact. Studies of athletes have shown that the more athletes might focus on THEMSELVES— their own thoughts and feelings— the worse their performance. Focus on yourself can cause what's called "micro-choking" episodes, which results, as prominent sports scientists Gabrielle Wulf and Rebecca Lewthwaite note, in widespread inefficient activation of muscular systems, and disruption of automaticity. It's important to maintain an EXTERNAL focus on your intention. That is, a focus OUTSIDE your body, not an internal focus on your body and how your body will implement that intention. It seems that focusing on yourself puts your brain in conscious, declarative mode, which is what causes the choking. If instead you focus on your EXTERNAL goal—in this case, ensuring students share your enthusiasm as well as your mental models and schemas— your external focus switches you into fluent, fluid, procedural system mode. To paraphrase an old expression, "Let go—and let goodness." Your focus when teaching should be on teaching to your camera— that is on teaching your STUDENTS, who can only see you through your camera. Don't forget that if you have an online room of say 25 students, your students only perceive you as looking at them when you're looking at the CAMERA. If you want to, you can skim your students' faces on your monitor, which will usually be at a slightly different location from your camera, but remember to talk to the camera, not to the monitor. [David] On a side note, if you're fairly certain your framing onscreen is good, it's okay to turn off your own picture, if the platform allows, so that you don't see yourself. Looking at yourself for prolonged periods, as it turns out, is a very unnatural act that seems to be one of the sources of "Zoom fatigue" experienced by those of us who spend a lot of time online. Simply knowing you're on camera, watched by others, can be another source of Zoom fatigue. The reality is that having many faces staring at you, more or less in close-up, intruding on your personal space, can be exhausting. It can be a delicate balancing act for both us and our students to take advantage of the directness of a live camera interface without being overwhelmed. These ideas of external focus on your goal— and not internal focus on your feelings or how your body is moving or feeling—are also helpful for any kind of public speaking. It's not that you want to stare unblinkingly at your students— we sometimes naturally tend to look away because it helps us formulate our thoughts. But you don't want it to seem like there's something clearly more interesting going on off camera drawing your attention. [MUSIC, Interlude: "Crutch Words"] [Barb] Many people really dislike watching videos of themselves. If you're like that, well, join the club. I'm like that too— in fact, most of us are. All I can say is, occasionally watching your videos with a critical eye can do wonders in helping you improve your delivery, and in particular, catch your use of "crutch words"— those verbal expressions you use to soothe yourself, but which can become burdensome for your students. Common crutch words or sounds include: "uh," "right," "okay," "you know," "actually," and "absolutely." Unfortunately, you can get so used to your crutch words that you don't even hear how often you use them. So you don't realize how irritating it can be for students, who, of course, will almost never tell you what they might be chuckling about behind your back. As we mentioned in the first week of this course, actively seeking out discomfort by watching videos of your teaching is a surprisingly good way to experience personal growth. We often use crutch words because we think there should be a sound when we're "commanding the stage," so to speak. But silence, instead of crutch words, is what gives you strength as a speaker. Learn to embrace those one-second pauses! [MUSIC, Interlude: "But Do We Really HAVE to Show Our Faces?"] [David] Now, you may think of Sal Khan of Khan Academy, who draws and explains verbally, but never shows his face in his educational videos. If he never shows his face, then why are Sal's videos still SO popular? Here's the thing. Students flock to Sal's videos because they are trying to figure something out. And Sal provides fantastic explanations with an upbeat, encouraging voice. In other words, the students who watch Sal Khan's videos are ALREADY motivated. And Sal helps keep them motivated with his easy-to-understand drawings and cheerful, inspiring intonations. Once students watch Sal's explanations, they appreciate the usefulness of his videos for many other things they're trying to learn and understand. [Barb] That's right David. As one of my daughters—now a successful statistician— has mentioned, "I couldn't have learned calculus without Sal Khan." [Terry] The impact of motivation on what students learn is HUGE. That's why we've repeatedly returned to the idea of student motivation. Barb's and my MOOC "Learning How to Learn" is immensely popular— millions of learners have found it useful. But can we conclude that "Learning How to Learn" made a significant difference in their ability to learn? Not necessarily. This is because students sign up for the course because they are ALREADY motivated. "Learning How to Learn" is based on teaching insights from the top educational researchers about effective learning. Without doubt, it helps motivated students to learn better. Motivation drives learning. But what we don't know is whether "Learning How to Learn" helps UNMOTIVATED students to learn better. The best way to find out would be to randomly assign students to either take the MOOC or some other unrelated course, and then see how well the two different groups do afterwards. In medicine, this is called a "randomized controlled trial." It's the gold standard for determining whether a drug is effective. [David] So, you may still wonder why we put so much emphasis on showing yourself as a teacher and on your expression and your gestures. After all, Sal Khan has probably taught more people than anyone else in human history and he rarely appears on screen. Shouldn't we just be focusing on student learning, and on specific tricks like retrieval practice, to help students improve their ability to grasp the material? Let's step aside for a moment and imagine a skyscraper. Constructing a skyscraper is incredibly complicated, including lots of things you would never think about. But no matter what is going on in the skyscraper, you need one thing— something that's easy to take for granted. And that is the foundation. Now for us, the foundation is MOTIVATION. Showing yourself is the best way to help kickstart student motivation. [Barb] As FBI behavior analyst Jack Schafer has noted in his book "The Like Switch, an Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting and Winning People Over," people sometimes are not aware of nonverbal signals they send that can warn others off. These inadvertent "foe signals," like having a surly downward set to your eyebrows and a set to your jaw, can be beneficial in some less-than-friendly environments. But in educational settings, they signal students that you are not an approachable, welcoming sort. To combat this, use simple signals such as an eyebrow flash— which people automatically do when welcoming others. And genuine smiles, which include not only the mouth, but add happy wrinkles to the corner of the eyes. Head tilts can also be a signal of friendliness. At first, perhaps because of your past habitual facial poses, these sorts of expressions can seem unnatural. But ultimately, they can make a surprisingly positive difference in how you're perceived. Keep in mind that your face and your eyes can be powerful activators for your students—which can be good, but also sometimes almost too good. This is part of why we suggest setting yourself back from your camera, so that students can see your hands as well as your face. In this way, your face isn't oversized, as David had mentioned earlier, in a way that unnaturally dominates the screen and contributes to Zoom fatigue. Instead, you can come across as a genuine person with feelings that emerge through both your face and your body language. The bottom line is, if you're teaching online courses with students who are all already highly motivated, showing your face and upper body may not be so important. But if SOME of your students need encouragement, your own expressive demeanor can serve as invaluable foundation for motivating them. And if you want your students to bond with you as their teacher, nothing beats showing your enthusiastic self. But as we'll see in the next videos, these ideas are important not only with relation to you as the teacher, but also with students as they engage with one another. [Barb] I'm Barb Oakley. [David] I'm David Joyner. [Terry] I'm Terry Sejnowski. [All] Learn it, link it, let's do it!
