Teaching Welding Like a Language - Spaced Repetition
Teaching welding like a language what the hell is this guy talking about? Give me a few minutes to explain myself and the roadmap that I use. Maybe some method to the madness.
One of the first "weed out" tools that welding foremen or people hiring welders use is vocabulary, they all ask a series of welding related questions to figure out the knowledge level of the applicant. To the outsider these questions although asked in English will sound like a foreign language. Realizing that this is what my students are going to encounter in a job interview, as a welding instructor one of the most important tasks that I can undertake is helping my students build a working vocabulary in welding English. This is the end goal for my students as I know that the minute they step into a job interview for a welding position they are going to be tested on their use of the welding language.
How do we do that? How do we take a person with no welding vocabulary and give them a six or eight hundred word working vocabulary in welding speak? We do that by teaching welding like it is a foreign language and by using spaced reputation to help build that vocabulary.
Spaced repetition is an evidence-based learning technique that is usually performed with flashcards. Newly introduced and more difficult flashcards are shown more frequently, while older and less difficult flashcards are shown less frequently in order to exploit the psychological spacing effect. The use of spaced repetition has been proven to increase rate of learning.
Although the principle is useful in many contexts, spaced repetition is commonly applied in contexts in which a learner must acquire many items and retain them indefinitely in memory. It is, therefore, well suited for the problem of vocabulary acquisition in the course of second-language learning. - Wikipedia
My method for teaching welding is based on spaced repetition, throwing the same information at the students over and over again over the course of long periods of time. When teaching I don't use flashcards per se but I do keep giving the students the same material over and over, and I introduce more difficult questions more frequently when I cover newer material, while older and less difficult questions are asked less frequently as the course progresses. The key is to keep the original questions in the rotation and to keep asking them in order to exploit the psychological spacing effect.
Taking all that in mind one must not forget that the person walking through your door probably has no clue as to what welding is all about. To them it is smoke fire and some sparks - wear some funky clothing and get to work. Those of us that are welding professionals realize there is a heck of a lot more to welding than just smoke fire and really cool welding hats.
Welders need to be a crafts-person with a broad base of knowledge that covers math, chemistry, blueprint reading, metallurgy, welding defects and a whole host of other subjects. So how do we even start teaching all this material to someone that has a very cursory knowledge of the welding trade?
We need to start from ground zero and we need to start introducing vocabulary and concepts to the students. In a previous blog post I mentioned building filler questions for the question bank. The starch or carbohydrates that you use to fill up the people eating dinner while also teaching useful material to the student. This all gets back to teaching welding like it is a language and using repetition to help the students learn and retain the information that you are trying to teach them.
b. Oxygen
c. Argon
d. Helium
When we put our E7018 electrodes in the rod oven, what element are we trying to cook out?
a. Hydrogen
b. Oxygen
c. Argon
d. Nitrogen
e. Helium
1/16 + 1/16 =
a. 2/8
b. 2/16
c. 1/8
d. 2/32
None of the above are super complicated questions but they are an entry point to start introducing the student to language that we use in welding, construction and manufacturing. For example the first two questions are not complicated but they allow us to start talking a little bit about metallurgy and the need to avoid hydrogen in carbon steel welds. All welding language related.
In the big picture these are simple questions that will help your students pick up some information that they might not have been exposed to in other classes and at home and also to increase their vocabulary so that when they exit your program and try to enter the workforce they have a solid vocabulary. The following are a few examples that I use frequently in the daily quizzes.
When using spaced repetition as a teaching method a student can expect to see those types questions on and off for the whole welding course, the soon realize that the questions are not going to go away. Also with those questions there is no heavy academic lifting or back breaking material that is going to demoralize the student, but all of the above questions contain information that is a ground level building block type stuff that we can build up with later questions.
Bottom line is that I think that a lot of welding instructors focus too much on the welding and burning rod and they neglect the book work and vocabulary side of the welding trade for any number of reasons. The use of spaced repetition and asking a lot of simple questions over and over in my experience has proven to be a very successful tool in helping welding students to develop welding language skills to find employment after graduation.
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