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Effective Learning through Practice, Skill-building, and Feedback

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

Flipping the Classroom

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.

Connecting Writing, Revision, and Thinking in the Classroom

Ali Aslam

Two printed pages, a magnifying glass, a pencil, and a pen

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:

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.
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.
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).
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.

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 courtesy Pixabay.

Everyone Can Contribute to Student Well-Being

Wellness Resource Center

The scope of the faculty role is changing. Complex topics may come up more frequently and students expect that they will be discussed. Mental health and well-being is a growing concern among college students and is receiving national attention. While this larger conversation about mental health is helpful in reducing stigma and encouraging more folks to seek help, it also creates new challenges for faculty.

Talking about mental health, or other personal topics, may be outside of one’s experience and comfort level. Regardless, we know that many aspects of life impact how students show up in the classroom. According to the National College Health Assessment^[1], there are many factors that impact students’ academic performance including, but not limited to, stress, anxiety, difficulty sleeping, depression, sickness (cold, flu, etc.), and extracurricular activities. When faculty acknowledge these factors and share support resources, student experiences can improve.

Ultimately, faculty can only control what happens in their classroom, but the good news is that there are ways that they can contribute to a community that cares about well-being and student success. Here are a few examples:

Help students build life skills.

Encourage students to take care of themselves and resist the idea that they need to be productive 24/7. For example, make assignments due at 9:00 pm rather than midnight. This can help students develop time management skills and prioritize sleep. Students may have to think ahead a bit more, but once a course policy is established, students are likely to abide by it.
Provide clarity around what expectations they can have about communicating with you. You can provide boundaries around email response time. If you have a statement in your syllabus that says students shouldn’t expect a response from you after 10:00pm on weeknights, hold yourself to that when possible. This also helps to model what boundaries can look like in regard to communication via various virtual platforms.

Build your skills to feel more confident responding to concerns that arise.

Training is available through the Wellness Resource Center with the aim of supporting colleagues interested in promoting student wellness and resilience. Training topics include how to have effective conversations with students, suicide prevention, and contributing to creating a safer campus environment for students who have experienced sexual assault. Learn more about training opportunities here.
Refer to the Student Safety Nest guide for faculty, instructors, and staff. It includes guiding principles, observable signs of concern, and information about accessing campus resources. This resource can be helpful in expanding on some of the information in this post, as well as how to navigate campus resources.

Normalize help-seeking.

Share that there are many pathways to seek help and provide information about campus resources. Seeking support looks different for everyone. Sources of informal support can include friends, family, and practicing self-care. Formal support can include seeking counseling or therapy, consultation with a health provider of some type (nurse, doctor, dietician, etc.), or academic assistance such as tutoring or mentoring. There are many opportunities for support at Temple, some of which students may not be fully aware of. Receiving information about sources of support from faculty can remind students of what exists.
Encourage students to be self-advocates and access campus resources when they need support. Some students may not have experience navigating larger institutions like Temple, or even making appointments for themselves. Encourage them to be persistent and proactive in accessing services and resources that can help them succeed and be well. By doing this, faculty can help build students’ self-efficacy and reduce any lingering stigma around help-seeking.

Faculty can support student mental well-being in the classroom and do so in ways that remain within ethical and professional boundaries. Content expertise isn’t necessary either. By creating an inclusive environment and encouraging students to build life skills, all faculty can contribute to creating a community where well-being is a priority.

The Wellness Resource Center (WRC) is Temple University’s health promotion office. The WRC offers a variety of intentional learning opportunities to promote well-being and cultivate community. Services include peer-led workshops, campus-wide events, staff and faculty training, wellness consultations, and safer sex supply sales. Learn more about these services and how to request programming at wellness.temple.edu or connect with the WRC on social media (Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook) @BeWellTU.

Photo by Giuseppe Milo, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.

^[1] American College Health Association. (2019). National college health assessment: Fall 2018 undergraduate reference group executive summary. Retrieved from https://www.acha.org/documents/ncha/NCHA-II_Fall_2018_Undergraduate_Reference_Group_Executive_Summary.pdf

Making Time for Formative Feedback

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.

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.  Photo by Nic McPhee,  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.

Finding the Joy in Teaching

Stephanie Fiore, Assistant Vice Provost

I’ve been thinking a lot about joy lately and, in particular, the desire to find real joy in our teaching work. Joyful work can be energizing, inspiring, and affirming, while joyless work can be enervating, tedious, and dispiriting. I’m not talking, of course, of perfection; in teaching, as in all things, there is no such thing. What I’m thinking about here is instead a soul-satisfying sense that you are doing the work you want to do and that you are doing it well. As teachers, it means also that you see the impact you are making on your students. Perhaps they are learning new things or are discovering new passions, all because you have introduced worlds to them that pique their curiosity, answer questions, or challenge them to think deeply about important and interesting issues. Maybe they are able to pursue a successful career in the field of their choice because you mentored them along to excellence in some real way. Or perhaps you have learned new things from them, and it has re-energized your own thinking and process of discovery. All of these moments can be downright joyful, yet I have discovered in my role at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching that some faculty do not live the joyful and purposeful life of teaching, but instead live that part of their professional lives with trepidation, dread, or ambivalence. I’m here to tell you that, if you have not found that joy in teaching, it is within reach, by thinking hard about how to teach in a way that motivates students and helps them to learn.

Dean McManus, in his book Leaving the Lectern describes his journey to joy. In his earlier faculty days, he wore his lab coat to lecture to hide the sweat stains which were a natural result of the anxiety and dread he experienced in teaching. Research was natural to him; teaching was not. When he reflected on his teaching, explored new ways to think about his teaching and how students learn, and then worked at implementing new teaching practices, he found that his students learned, and were even excited at the learning that took place.

A student walked into the computer room, greeted another student, and said, “Man, that pattern looks nothing like what I got yesterday.” He apparently pulled out his map and the two students proceeded to discuss what the differences in the two patterns at different times meant. And they knew what they were talking about. To me they were expressing self-assessment of their learning. I leaned back in my desk chair with a limitless smile, punched my fists at the ceiling, and hissed to myself, “Yes-s-s-s-s!” They had learned it. I was doing something right. Oh, the joy of it! The pure joy! (McManus, 2005, p.97).

McManus points us to the steps he took on his journey of instructional transformation: accept risk, use feedback, reflect, adapt and be flexible, establish a partnership, accept that you are teaching in a different world, and welcome the joy (McManus, 2005).

At the Center for the Advancement of Teaching, we can be your partners in this journey. We have consultants who can sit with you privately and discuss your teaching challenges or your ideas for innovation. We have a multitude of workshops, trainings, and discussions about teaching where you will have the opportunity to discuss teaching with other faculty from across the university, learn what the evidence tells us about how people learn, and explore strategies to improve student learning. You will find resources at your disposal, either on our website, at our lending library of books on teaching and learning, or simply by asking us for them. Most of all, you will find an ear, support, and someone who understands your desire to feel joy at work.

We are waiting for you. Come join us at the CAT!

Stephanie Fiore serves as Assistant Vice Provost at Temple’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Image by lena dolch from Pixabay

Using Reading Prompts to Promote Students’ Academic Reading

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

Lang and Yearwood on Teaching Excellence

Jeff Rients, Senior Teaching and Learning Specialist, CAT

The 17th Annual Faculty Conference on Teaching Excellence was held January 9th and 10th at Temple University’s Howard Gittis Student Center. In previous years, the Conference was a one-day affair, with a second event, the Teaching with Technology Symposium, occurring late in the semester. This year, the two events were combined to better reflect our evolving understanding of the inseparability of our teaching and the tools we use to make learning happen.

The first day of the conference featured a keynote by Dr. James Lang, Director of the D’Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College in Worcester, MA, and a leader in the field of teaching and learning. Dr. Lang’s address, Small Changes, Big Impact, was based in part on his latest book, Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. He shared several easy-to-implement teaching strategies that better reflect what cognitive science tells us about how learning works. Some key takeaways included:

Don’t underestimate the power of small changes to a class — there are many things that could make a difference in how students learn and engage with courses that require minimal changes to the overall course structure and workload for the instructor.
With so many ideas on how to enhance classrooms, deciding what to do next can be overwhelming. Instead of doing an complete overhaul of your course, try to do one small thing at a time. When changes are manageable, instructors can focus on doing them well.
Practice is powerful. Before asking your students to tackle a big project, break it down into the individual skills necessary to succeed at the task. Incorporate opportunities to practice all of these skills into your lesson plans before assessing the students.

For the second day of the conference, our plenary speaker was Dr. David Yearwood, Professor in the School of Entrepreneurship and past chair of the Technology Department at the University of North Dakota. His highly interactive plenary address, Using Technology to Promote Connection, Engagement, and Empowerment, challenged us to reconsider the role of technology in our classrooms. Crucially, Dr. Yearwood warns us not to add new technologies to our classes unless they serve a specific need in the course design.

Dr. Yearwood’s CEE (Connection/Engagement/Empowerment) model gives us a framework for interrogating whether a new technology is right for our students. Does the technology allow the student to connect the new material in the course with past learning? Does it help the student engage with the instructor, the course content, and/or the other students? Does the technology empower the students, allowing them to feel confident in their new abilities and take charge of their learning? These questions can help us assess the value of new tools before we deploy them in their courses.

Thank you to both Dr. Lang and Dr. Yearwood for sharing their wisdom with us as we begin another semester!

Small Changes that Make a Big Impact

Pete Watkins

One of the great joys of working in a teaching and learning center is that I get to read books and articles by some of the leading thinkers in college teaching. One of my favorite writers is James Lang, author of several well-regarded books on college teaching including On Course: A Week-by-Week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching, Cheating Lessons and Small Teaching, Lang gives practical advice based on both research and his own classroom experience and does it in a lively and engaging way.

Lang’s book Small Teaching arues that there are small changes we can make to our teaching that have a big impact. When his book was published in 2016, he discussed some of these small changes in a series of popular posts for the Chronicle of Higher Education.

One of his suggested small changes is to make productive use of the first five minutes of class as a time to grab students’ attention and get them prepared for the exciting journey that lies ahead. He compares the beginning of class to the opening lines of a novel that hooks the reader.

He also gives some good suggestions about how to use the last five minutes of class. Instead of trying to cram in a few more points or offering reminders about upcoming assignments, he suggests using these last few minutes in a more intentional way, for example, distributing a brief classroom assessment such as a minute paper asking what you learned today and what you still have questions about. Alternatively he suggests using the last five minutes to help students make connections between what they learned and the world around them such as current events, campus debates or personal experiences. He also suggests that we can use the last five minutes to “close the loop” and go back to our opening. I like to start class with some big questions that we are going to explore together, so I think that based on his advice I might start using the last five minutes to circle back to the question(s) with which I started class. Of course the questions that I pose are not questions with definitive answers which is why I always say we will “explore, wrestle with or investigate” (not answer) these questions.

You can read Lang’s complete series on small changes to teaching at the Chronicle’s web site. And if his ideas and writing inspire you, then save the date January 9, 2019 when Lang will be the keynote speaker at our 17th Annual Faculty Conference on Teaching Excellence at Temple University’s Howard Gittis Student Center. Registration is not open yet, but send us an email at cat@temple.edu to be added to our mailing list and to be notified when registration opens.

This Summer, Make Lemonade Out of Lemons

Stephanie Fiore, Ph.D.

It’s summertime, when children all over the country will be squeezing lemons, adding sugar and water and sitting outside on the curb selling homemade lemonade. Think for a moment about lemonade. Isn’t it remarkable how something so sour can turn into a refreshing, sweet drink, one that conjures up visions of relaxing in the sun or picnicking with family? Before you go on that picnic, take a minute to think about how you can make lemonade out of any sour moments that happened in your classes this academic year. Did you have activities that flopped, readings that students just didn’t understand (or didn’t read at all), disappointing results on exams or underwhelming papers written by your majors? Did you experience hot moments in the classroom that you didn’t handle very well, or awkward interactions with students with whom you had trouble connecting? Did you find yourself short on time so that you had to rush headlong towards the end of the semester, dragging students on the ride with you? Were your student evaluations less than encouraging, or perhaps downright painful to read?

We all have times like these in our classes; sometimes, we have whole semesters that feel like this. I remember struggling through a class one semester that I had taught many times before with great success. No matter what I did, I just couldn’t smooth out the bumps and I was exhausted from trying at the end of every class. Those sour moments can be enervating, distressing and confusing. But they can be catalysts to great teaching too. We can reflect on those moments and take action to prevent them from happening again. If we put them in our rearview mirror too soon, we lose an opportunity to make lemonade and we risk becoming perpetually stuck with recurring sour moments.

Here’s my recipe for making pedagogical lemonade:

Identify the issues that are of most concern to you. When you think back on your semester, which issues stand out?
Squeeze those sour moments for information. What went wrong? Can you pinpoint moments when things went sideways? To help you think about it, try reflective writing, reviewing your own notes, examining student work, and reading student evaluations for clues.
Do your research. On almost any teaching topic, there is a wealth of helpful resources to help you find solutions. Start reading! Check out Temple’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching’s resources or those at any number of teaching centers across the United States. Search for assistance in online faculty development sources such as Faculty Focus, or the Teaching Professor newsletter. Think about investing some time this summer in reading some foundational texts for higher ed instructors, such as How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching or Tools for Teaching. (Some of these resources may be available through your university library.) Or just Google it. And don’t forget, your teaching center has consultants available all summer long to help you think out solutions.
Take Action. After doing your research, commit to making one or two changes to your classroom in the fall semester and then do it! Don’t try to change everything at once; incremental change is the best course of action for long-term success.

Not such a tough recipe to follow, right? Before you stretch out with that hard-earned lemonade, start working on this recipe. Perhaps next semester you’ll find that the sweetness of teaching overpowers the sour.