Category: Course Design

Taylor Halverson and Mike Johnson

On the trek of learning, many students have no idea whether they are in the first or the last wagon.  Without practice and feedback, students often are in the dark about how well they are learning—sometimes overestimating their comprehension and skill, sometimes underestimating them.

The Need for Practice and Feedback

According to instructional design expert Barbara Seels (1997), “Practice is the most important ingredient of effective instruction; it speeds up learning, aids long-term retention, and facilitates recall.  Instruction is less effective when there is no opportunity to perform the task or when practice is delayed . . . . Unfortunately, much of the instruction in our classrooms provides little or no opportunity for practice.” The more immediate the opportunity for practice and feedback, the more likely learning will occur.  

Providing Opportunities for Practice:        

• Paired in-class discussion: Pose a problem, question, or issue.  Ask students to turn to a neighbor and discuss.  Then call on a student to share his or her solution with the class. 
• Working problems in class in pairs or small groups: After each group has completed its work, you can invite one group to present its findings and results with the rest of the class, including the process that produced the solution.
• Homework exercises that reflect the skills or knowledge required for course mastery: Provide example problems (practice) and solutions (feedback).
• Low-stakes quizzes: Offer frequent, short quizzes (on-line or in class) worth only a few points, providing both you and your students with a “weather-vane” that indicates the direction of the students’ learning.  Again, the feedback must be rapid to be effective.

Providing Opportunities for Feedback

Feedback is essential to student success and can come in many forms.  But how does an instructor provide valuable feedback without spending every waking hour crafting such feedback? 

• Paired in-class discussion: After having students share their solutions, you should provide immediate feedback.  Other learners can self-assess, basing their judgments on the public modeling of feedback they just saw.
• Online quizzes: If you use online quizzes, feedback can be built directly into the quizzes to explain to students why certain answers are wrong or right, or why some answers are better than others. 
• Grading rubrics: These can also ease the time commitment required to provide substantive feedback. 
• Online Discussion Boards: These tools allow teachers and learners to create video-,  audio-, and text-based discussion boards. This is an excellent way for teachers to provide rich feedback to individual learners, specific groups in the class, or to the entire class. 

Conclusion

Building in multiple opportunities to practice new skills and receive feedback is one way to keep the wagon train moving forward with all members of the company participating, practicing, receiving feedback, learning, and improving.

Resources

• Barkley, E. (2010). Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Barkley, E., Cross, P. K., & Major, C. H. (2005). Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Davis, B. G. (2009). Tools for Teaching, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Seels, B. & Glasgow, Z. (1997). Making Instructional Design Decisions, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.
• Materials from the Carnegie Mellon University Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence: https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/principles/learning.html#LP04(items 4-7).

Taylor Halverson and Mike Johnson work at Brigham Young University’s Center for Teaching and Learning.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.  Image in the public domain

Brian Thomson, College of Engineering

Have you ever walked into your classroom with the utmost confidence during exam day, thinking “My students are going to do great on this exam.  We covered all the material so they are prepared.” Then, when grading the exam, you are shocked by the poor performance in the class as a whole. You think “Didn’t we cover this?”  I am sure after chatting with some of your colleagues you realize that you are not alone.

Active learning

There are so many skills students are asked to obtain and use during a single course.  In my circuits course, students need to sharpen their critical reading skills, learn how to identify circuit elements in a diagram, determine the desired outcome of each problem, and learn how to accurately use all the tools necessary to solve the problem (software, simulation, calculators, etc.). 

The bottom line is students learn these skills best when applying them with appropriate feedback, or in other words by doing active learning.  There is a wealth of literature that states the benefits of active learning. Even if you haven’t read the literature I think most faculty would agree that those “light bulb” moments typically occur when students are doing active learning.

Flipping your classroom as an active learning solution

There are many effective and simple approaches to active learning.  One particular approach I am using in my circuits course is the flipped classroom.  The concept is simple. I created videos for students to watch before class. These videos prepare students to do active learning in the classroom.  In my case, students were solving their homework problems during class, which makes it easier to sell to students. This model accelerates the student learning process.  They figure out what they don’t know during class time and can ask me questions to get immediate feedback. In the past, students would figure out what they don’t know at home when working on homework.  And if you students are like mine, this tends to be the night before the assignment is due.  

To make navigating this new learning format easier, the schedule for students was shown on the course homepage so they could easily find the videos and associated assignments.

The results have been more learning and better questions during class time.  There are so many small issues (How to find a component in simulation, how to run a simulation, etc) that we address early in the semester that opens the door for more thought provoking questions by the students.  By the end of the first semester, students were working together in groups organically without me organizing them! Click on this link to see my flipped classroom in action.

So what are the challenges?

By this point you may be thinking “Wow this sounds neat, but I can think of a lot that could go wrong with that approach.”  Believe me I was reluctant too, but here are my responses to some of the typical hesitations for implementing a flipped classroom.

1)  What if my students don’t watch the videos?

This was probably my biggest fear.  There is always going to be a crop of students who don’t watch the videos, just like there are some who don’t do assignments properly.  I think students are more likely to watch the videos if you demonstrate its value and hold the students accountable. You can demonstrate value by making sure the videos are important and closely connected to the classroom activities.  You also do not want to do a lecture that repeats information from the videos. Students can be held accountable through some sort of pre-class quiz or another exercise.  

2)  Will this be double the work?

As long as you stick to not lecturing and keep the videos short, the workload can be very similar to a typical course prep.  See my tips below for more information.

3)  But I can’t cover all the material.

Is it better for students to know fewer pieces of information very deeply or know very little about a breadth of information?  If students learn core critical thinking skills, then they are more likely to transfer those skills to new applications or material.  Therefore I trim my course content and focus of teaching students the core fundamentals skills and theories.

Tips for getting started on your flipped classroom.

• Don’t flip your classroom if you have not tried active learning first.  There are plenty of simple and easy activities to try in Teaching and Learning STEM by Felder and Brent.
• Keep the videos short.  I recommend six to ten minutes. If necessary, break up larger concepts into several smaller videos.  Students have been clear that they prefer watching three six minute videos over one eighteen minute video.
• Choose the right recording tool.  For me it is best to use a tool with screen sharing and video editing so I can cut parts where I make a mistake and pick up where I left off.
• Limit your class prep time.  Felder and Brent (link above) recommend two hours of class prep time for each hour of class time.  Do the same with creating videos. Resist the temptation to make the perfect video at the expense of long prep time.  Our lectures aren’t always perfect so videos don’t have to be either.

A flipped classroom may not be for everyone, but I would encourage you to consider some active learning in your classroom.  Even some simple exercises that promotes active learning can really benefit your students. I do believe that regardless of what is done in class, the best learning happens when students (and expert learners) do preparation work prior to class time.  That may take the form of a flipped classroom or some other format.

Thanks for being here.  Feel free to contact me at brian.thomson@temple.edu and I’d be happy to offer any support in your teaching endeavors.

[Editor’s Note: Temple Faculty interested in flipping a course, unit, or even a single lesson are always welcome to contact us at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching.  We’ll be happy to help!]

Acknowledgements

Yael Branscom | Eric Horvath | Jeff Rients

Brian Thomson is Assistant Professor of Instructor at Temple University’s College of Engineering and a recent graduate of the Provost’s Teaching Academy.

Ali Aslam

Frequently, students encounter course work in which writing and revision practices are not integrated into the work of the classroom.  These tasks are left to students to undertake independently and this approach reinforces a belief that writing and revision are separate from learning and understanding content.  The aim of this set of techniques is to forge a stronger connection among writing, revision, and thinking practices so that students see these as continuous across the parts of a class, from lecture, class discussion, writing drafts, revising, and producing final papers.

Here’s how one might integrate writing, revising, and thinking into the class period:

1. Begin by having students write individual responses to a discussion question grounded in the course readings (5 mins). These responses may take the form of a position with or against the author’s argument, statement of doubt about a key claim, question about the reading, or something else.  The important feature is to have students explain why and how they came to their conclusions or questions.
2. Have the students share their individual responses with a partner (5mins).  This move stages the larger class conversation by giving students a chance to test their ideas.
3. Before inviting students to have a larger class discussion, ask them to fine tune their initial response given the conversation they just had with their partner.  Again, ask them to explicitly identify both how they are modifying their initial response and how their conversation prompted the change (3 mins).
4. Facilitate the larger class discussion on the question you posed to students.  Leave time for students to write in their notebooks at the end of class about how their thinking about the reading changed by virtue of listening and taking part in the class discussion (5 mins).  Encourage them to identify specific remarks made by their classmates that nudged them to reconsider their initial responses and/or perspectives they had not considering in their initial evaluation of the reading.  Once again, encourage students to be explicit about how the introduction of new ideas prompted to revise their thinking.

Finally, take a moment to go “meta”—that is, address the meta-learning that these practices are meant to enforce either at the beginning or end of class, or ideally at both the start and end.  The purpose is explicitly connect the thinking, writing, and revising practices in the classroom to how these same practices should be employed by students working independently on writing and reading assignments.

Ali Aslam is Professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke College.

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Katherine Miscavige

The time commitment necessary to give high quality feedback on drafts can make it seem impossible, especially when papers are long or classes are large. Yet, as Ambrose et al. suggest in How Learning Works, formative feedback is essential to learning.

Try collecting a rough draft, but just before they hand it in, ask students to identify a short passage they are struggling with and would like feedback on. It could be a paragraph or a page or more, depending on the length of the assignment. Confine your comments to that section, but try to make them broadly applicable. More often than not, it will be clear even from a small section what areas need improvement.

In addition to saving you time, charging students with applying your feedback to the rest of their project puts the burden on them to actually learn from your comments as opposed to just mindlessly accepting your corrections.  Furthermore, if a student is seriously struggling, you have the opportunity to intervene. If many students have misunderstood your assignment or there are broader class-wide concerns, you can address them together during class time.

Use this method in conjunction with other forms of feedback, such as peer review or self-reflection, to create even more chances for students to have an audience and receive constructive feedback on their work.

For more on grading and feedback, check out:

• Gottschalk, K & Hjortshoj, K. (2004). The elements of teaching writing: A resource for instructors in all disciplines. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
• Walvoord, B., & Anderson, V. Effective grading: A tool for learning and assessment. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• Temple CAT resources for Assessment & Feedback

Katherine Miscavige is an Educational Developer at the University Teaching & Learning Center of The George Washington University.

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Pete Watkins

As the semester winds down, I know that many of us (including me) are buried in grading.  However, before you leave for winter break, we would like to share with you a tip for next semester about using reading prompts to help ensure that your students are getting the most out of assigned readings. 

This teaching tip comes from Zeenar Salim of Aga Khan University.  If you are looking for more information on how to use reading prompts in your course contact the CAT or your institution’s teaching center. 

Happy Holidays!

Using Reading Prompts to Promote Students’ Academic Reading

Do you have concerns around students attending classes without pre-reading? Ever wondered how you can make them read? Students in higher education are expected to comprehend the text, connect their prior experiences with the text, evaluate the text, and consider alternative viewpoints to the text. Reading prompts are considered a way to motivate students to read. They improve students’ comprehension and critical thinking skills by engaging them actively with the reading material.

Provision of reading cues/prompts helps the learners to actively read and analyse their own thoughts during and after reading to expand, clarify or modify their existing thinking about the concepts or ideas at hand. The reading prompts can be categorized into six categories a) identification of a problem or issue b) making connections c) interpretation of evidence d) challenging assumptions e) making applications, and f) taking a different point of view. Sample questions for each category are as follows:

• What is the key issue/concept explained in the article? What are the complexities of the issue? (Identification of problem or issue)
• How is what you are reading different from your prior knowledge around the issue/topic? (Making connections)
• What inferences can you draw from the evidence presented in the reading? (Interpretation of evidence)
• If you got a chance to meet the author, what are the key questions that you would ask the author? (Challenging assumptions).
• What are the lessons that you have drawn for your practice from this reading? (Application)
• Write a letter to your friend who has no expertise in this subject area, explaining the theoretical concept presented in the article. (Taking a different point of view)

Generally, students are asked to complete the reading prompts before the next class by writing a paragraph-long response to each question. The instructor may choose questions depending upon the learning objectives of the session and may adapt the question(s) to gauge specific information around the text. For sample questions and detailed literature around reading prompts, please read Tomasek (2009).

Reference:

Tomasek, T. (January 01, 2009). Critical Reading: Using Reading Prompts to Promote Active Engagement with Text. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ896252.pdf

Cliff Rouder, Assistant Director of the CAT

Believe it or not, there’s a lot of humorous research–I mean, research on humor–40 year’s worth, give or take.  Everything from theories of humor to the benefits of it in an educational setting has been explored.  Too bad I didn’t know about this when I was choosing my dissertation topic.  “Sorry I missed your final, professor, but I was out until 4:00 a.m. at the comedy club doing my dissertation research.”  Ahh, to dream.

Okay, let’s get serious about humor for a moment.  A review of humor in educational settings published in 2011 and spanning 4 decades revealed that appropriately used humor can do a number of pretty great things in the classroom, including:

• Creating or strengthening a bond between students and professor
• Easing stress or tension
• Enhancing students’ understanding of the material
• Creating a sense of wonder
• Making the content more relatable and helping students remember things better

I’m sure you can think of a time when humor had one or more of these positive effects in your classroom.  But what kind of humor has this power?  Here we can look to Instructional Humor Processing Theory (IHPT).  The theory is two-fold: 1. The mere act of students recognizing the humor will increase students’ attention, and 2. Students need to perceive and then figure out some type of incongruity in the humorous message.  

There are many different ways IHPT can be put into practice.  Google “types of humor” and you’ll see lists ranging from seven to 20 types.  I’m going to pick two that I’ve used in my own classroom that had at least one of the positive effects above (based on comments from my students each semester).  Which benefits do you think my students mentioned?  

Self-deprecating humor: I would tell my students the story of when I began my dietetic internship program.  I was rotating in the pediatric unit and was asked to check out a child’s eyes and nose–or at least that’s what I thought the dietitian had said.  I went up to the child’s bed and tried desperately to think of what nutrition-related issue may be affecting his eyes and nose. After a few minutes of not seeing anything wrong with the child’s eyes and nose, I had to confess.  Bracing for the worst, the dietitian instead burst out laughing.  Know why?  She had actually asked me to check his “I’s and O’s” (fluid intake and fluid output), not his eyes and nose!  

Physical humor:  I was role-playing a less-than-professional hospital dietitian pretending to assess a patient (played by a brave student).  I “plopped” the medical chart and all my notes on her bed, hitting her leg.  I then asked her questions while looking in the mirror combing my hair; I made a ghastly facial expression looking at her pureed dinner, and to add insult to injury, I made sure to trip over her IV lines.

Other types of humor you can try are plays on words (one of my favorites), improvisational, and observational, to name just a few.  

“But what if I’m not especially funny?” you may be asking.  If you are really uncomfortable using humor when it’s not natural to you, no worries, there are other ways to engage students. But if you do want to try your hand at humor but need a little help, without too much effort, you can find online or print humor that can apply to your course content.  You can also harness the humor of your students.  However, before turning your classroom into a Comedy Central TV special, note that there are some types of humor that should be avoided in the classroom.  Here are some handy guidelines:

When in doubt, leave it out.  If there is even the slightest chance that the humor could be perceived as inappropriate or offensive, then leave it out.  Think bodily humor, blue humor, and topical humor like political humor.  Remember, though, if something slips out that evokes a less-than-desirable verbal or non-verbal reaction, address it on the spot.  Sometimes eating a piece of humble pie is just the ticket to show that you are human and can take responsibility for your mistakes.  

Too much, Jerry. Too much.  This line from the sitcom “Seinfeld” highlights two potential problems: overdoing the humor to the point of distraction, and referring to outdated or obscure sources of humor.  Speaking of which, what about the title of this piece?  How many of you knew this was a take-off on the classic line, “Take my wife…please!” from the popular comedian Henny Youngman back in 1950’s and 60’s?  

I know what you’re thinking: So what’s the big deal if they don’t get the reference?”  Well, I’m sure you’ve experienced humor that went over your head.  It made you feel a little alienated or even downright embarrassed, right?  So let’s avoid putting our students in that situation.  You may be asking, “What if I preface or follow the humorous reference with an explanation?  Would that help?”  It may, but having to explain it kind of kills the spontaneity.

Perhaps the best litmus test for whether to use humor (and what kind and how much) is to ask yourself, “Will the humor enhance learning?”  As with many things in life, moderation and thoughtfulness are key, so when you see an opportunity for humor to enhance learning, use it judiciously and respectfully.  Otherwise, your classroom “show” may get cancelled.

For more on the benefits of humor and guidelines for effective use in the classroom, check out a few resources here, here or here.  

What has been your experience as a professor using humor in your classroom?  Humorous minds want to know!

Johanna Inman, Director of Instructional Technology for Teaching and Learning, CAT

I have a confession to make: I used to think nothing of substance could be accomplished on the first day of class. Instead, every semester I engaged in a first-day ritual that included taking attendance, reading the syllabus, and facilitating an icebreaker to help me learn students’ names. But over the years, I’ve come to realize that the first day of class can be an essential part of setting up a successful semester. Implementing an icebreaker on the first day of class is a step in the right direction, but research suggests additional ways to use that time to engage and motivate students through activities and strategies designed to accomplish more than basic introductions. On your next first day of class, consider using these strategies to take advantage of the first-day energy and get your course and semester off to a great start!

1. Use a positive tone in your syllabus.

A common complaint among college instructors is that students don’t read the syllabus. And yet, our syllabi are sometimes more challenging to read than the fine print on credit card applications. Over the years as we experience issues or problems in a course, we tend to add a policy or a note about it in the syllabus. Then the next year we underline it, maybe bold it the following year, then the next year we make it red. We keep stressing various parts of the syllabus until students aren’t quite sure what to do with it. Although there is no denying that the syllabus is a vital tool to communicate information about the course, learning goals, assignments, grading policies, and other university policies, it is definitely underutilized as a tool to build rapport and motivate students.

The good news? Small changes to your syllabus can have a big impact. For example, simply altering terms like “instructor” and “students” to “I” or “me” and “you” or “we” can personalize the writing and help build a connection. Also, adding a few questions the course will explore can pique students’ curiosity, getting them excited about the semester to come. If you’re looking for a more dramatic change to your syllabus, you might consider writing a “Promising Syllabus,” one that revises the goals, assessments, and evaluation language into promises and discusses how the instructor and students will both fulfill the promises throughout the semester.

2. Communicate the value of your course.

In How Learning Works (2013), the authors of explain that one of the factors contributing to student motivation is value for the task at hand. Generating value for a course can be fairly easy or extraordinarily challenging depending on several variables including the course content, and whether the course is a first-year university requirement or an upper-level course within a major. Regardless, the first day of class is a perfect time to begin intentionally aligning your course with students’ personal, professional, and academic goals. To do this, implement an activity that you plan to use throughout the course such as a small group discussion about course expectations or an individual reflective writing activity about students’ hopes for the class–you might even add a few clicker questions about the way the course will be taught. Not only will these activities help students focus on the value of the course, they begin to prepare students for what is to come. In addition, explicitly outlining the relevance of course activities and assignments also helps students answer that ever-present question, “Why are we doing this?”

3. Give students a little autonomy.

Lastly, you might consider allowing students to have some say in the decision-making within the course. This could be as simple as giving students a choice in which assignments they complete or how those assignments are weighted. You might even consider using the first day of class to collaboratively write portions of the syllabus such as late assignment policies or classroom etiquette.

Let’s Exchange EDvice!

What strategies do you use on the first day of class to get the semester off to a running start?