Teaching Tips for Educators

Group Work that Works (Even in Large Classes!)

2011-02-01T09:54:00.000-08:00

Ah, November. Crisp air, leaves turning colors and the looming dread of mediocre group papers and tedious group presentations through which we will soon suffer. With finals on the horizon, we see rising levels of tension and resentment in our student groups, as good students assume more responsibility for their group’s final product, grinding their teeth as they feel forced to “carry” the slackers among them.

Next term, it doesn’t have to be this way.

There is a better design for group work that can stimulate the kind of engaged give-and-take discussion we want our students to have as they learn to use the intellectual tools of our disciplines.

We all want students to learn how to do our disciplines, but with exceptions like labs and field trips, the college classroom mostly prohibits us from involving students in real, raw disciplinary practice. What we can do in the classroom is give students practice making the kinds of decisions that we make in our disciplines—giving them what John Dewey calls “dramatic rehearsal” for real-world problem solving. Our disciplines are, after all, defined by the kinds of questions they ask and how they go about answering those questions.

Bottom line: effective group assignments do not require students to collectively author a paper or make a presentation. Writing and presenting are often individual tasks, and charging a group with these tasks, without special guidance on how to perform them, is to set up yourself (and your students) up for frustration and mediocrity. On the contrary, effective group assignments simply give groups a set of data and require them to make a difficult decision, much like a courtroom jury is given a great deal of complex information and asked to render a “guilty or not guilty” decision. In this format, student energy is focused on analyzing different pieces of evidence, weighing their merits against one another, and using the concepts from your discipline to argue toward a “best” conclusion together.

Instead of “group projects” think of these as “application activities” taking the form: “Given X, students must decide Y.” Of course, X and Y will vary based upon your discipline, topic and learning goal, but experience has provided a few basic principles for how these activities can best be carried out. Each of these principles starts with the letter S, so we have come to call these “Four S Activities.”

1. Significant Problem

Students should work on a problem, case, or question demonstrating a concept’s usefulness so they understand its impact. Instead of asking students to discuss some abstract set of conceptual distinctions, embed those distinctions within a set of concrete circumstances that would be likely to occur within your discipline. The idea here is to create a case study that grounds the experience in sets of details that would matter in your discipline.

2. Specific choice

Within the case, students should be required to use course concepts to make a decision (With which of the following three statements would Foucault most likely agree? Should the company buy, lease, or rent a fleet of trucks? Were Carnegie and Rockefeller “Robber Barons” or “Captains of Industry”? Which part of this bridge design is the most dangerous?). Groups can be required to generate short, written rationales for their choice, but groups must first be required to take a position.

3. Same problem

Students should all work on the same problem, case, or question so they will care about what other groups think about it and energetically engage each other around the course content. If my group had one question and your group had another, I’ll have invested no energy in the details of your question and will probably tune out while you talk about it. However, if our groups addressed the same question but came to different conclusions, then I will want to hear what thinking led your group down a different path than the one mine took.

4. Simultaneous reporting

If possible, students should report choices at the same time so differences in group conclusions are not smoothed out by “answer drift” and can be explored. It can be a powerful instructional experience when a minority of students in the room actually come to a better answer than the rest, and when answers are reported sequentially, students in the minority can be strongly tempted to change their answers as their minority status becomes clearer.

Simultaneous reporting can take many forms: from simple methods like pointing to one wall, the ceiling, or the other wall—to more sophisticated methods like having groups hold up cards indicating their choice (A,B,C,D), or even posting their answers and brief rationales on the classroom wall so they can “gallery walk” the thinking of other teams. ”Clickers” are used by many teachers to achieve the simultaneous reporting effect.

Simultaneous Report

The best application activities not only stimulate intra-team discussion, they also stimulate inter-team discussion once the groups have reported their decisions. When all groups report their decisions, the teacher’s job is then to facilitate conversation among the groups to compare how and why they thought differently and came to different decisions. This is why simultaneous report is so important: when groups report simultaneously, differences between decisions are candidly revealed and can be explored by encouraging teams to explain the rationales for their choices to one another.

Some teachers use cases that clearly have a right answer and grade teams accordingly, some teachers do not grade choices but instead grade rationales given, and some teachers use ungraded application assignments when they feel the discussion itself is valuable enough to have in its own right.

These application activities are part of Team-Based Learning (TBL), an increasingly-popular form of collaborative learning in higher education. Team-Based Learning interlocks and amplifies students’ social and intellectual experience of the classroom unlike any other form of group work. To see it for yourself, you can watch a video with real footage of TBL in action here: http://www.utexas.edu/academic/ctl/teaching/tblvideo.php

Do You Talk Too Much? Tips for Facilitating Classroom Discussions

2010-08-23T13:12:00.000-07:00

By: Maryellen Weimer in Effective Teaching Strategies

Discussion is a staple in most teachers’ repertoire of strategies, but it frequently disappoints. So few students are willing to participate and they tend to be the same ones. The students who do contribute often do so tentatively, blandly, and pretty much without anything that sounds like interest or conviction. On some days it’s just easier to present the material.

When describing the problems with discussion, it’s good to remind ourselves that all too often faculty are part of the problem. Our principal offense? We talk too much.
A chapter in the book referenced below offers six pointers—all aimed at helping us control how much we contribute while at the same time we improve the overall climate for discussion in a class.

1. Learn to draw out contributions—Ask a question and wait. Do not fill the silence with your opinions and views, thinking that your comments will prime the pump and get the class going. Rather, this action demonstrates that if students don’t speak, you will. Students will happily wait you out. Instead, you should wait and while waiting, look confident. Establish eye contact with whomever might be looking. Offer encouragement and let the question stand. If you feel as though the silence may be the death of you, ask a question about the question.

2. Learn to withdraw and attend to managing the discussion—Because we are leaders in the classroom and experts to boot, and because we regulate and control the flow of communication, we easily fall into being in charge of the discussion as well. “However, in the interest of fostering discussion, it will be better if much of the time you refrain from doing so, for nothing suppresses potentially fruitful discussion as quickly or as thoroughly as professors who hold the floor and treat student contributions as springboards for their own comments.” (p. 60)

3. Learn to hold back your own thoughts—Often the answers that students give to open-ended questions are not very good. The ideas are stated without a lot of clarity, the opinion is not supported with much evidence, or the viewpoint is not logically coherent. Teachers are very motivated to correct and improve those answers—that’s our job! But the climate for discussion is improved when a teacher asks the student to explain something in more detail or when the teacher defers to the rest of the class, asking, for example, “Is there anything anyone would like Sarah to clarify?” (p. 61).

Reference: Laing, D. “Nurturing Discussion in the Classroom.” In Smith, K., (ed) Teaching, Learning, Assessing: A Guide for Effective Teaching at College and University. Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press, 2007

Teaching and Grading Group Assignments

2010-03-09T16:38:00.000-08:00

Teaching and Grading Group Assignments

Group assignments are another area where faculty in our workshops raise many questions. When you assign several students to produce a major assignment together you will have to consider not only the quality of the task they complete but also the effectiveness of their interaction. If one of your course objectives is that students will learn to work altogether with colleagues, then teach them how. The steps are the same as for teaching and grading discussion:

* Provide criteria and instructions.

* Provide opportunities for practice and feedback.

Here are suggestions for guiding group processes:

* Begin with instructions and guidelines for group work. Address the ways in which groups could go astray.

* Construct a rubric by which the groups will be evaluated.

* Have groups compose and sign a written agreement, at the beginning of their work together, that details what all of them will be responsible for (for example, being on time for meetings, completing their share of the work by certain deadlines, communicating regularly with other group members) and what each will do (Mary will research this part; John will research this part; Ling-Chi will produce the first full draft; Jamal will edit the draft).

* Ask the group to appoint people to certain roles: record keeper, convener, and others.

* Ask the group for frequent feedback to you and to each other. At the end of each meeting, whether online or face-to-face, group members can write to one another what they thought was successful about the group meeting and what they thought needed improvement. Responses can be shared with you, and you can step in quickly if the group is struggling.

Ask a recorder to post or submit to you a record of the group's activities. When did they get together? Who was present? What did each person do? What progress was made? What problems arose, and how did the group address them? What do they need from you, if anything?

* Schedule a face-to-face or synchronous online meeting with each group at intervals to check the group's progress and interaction. At these meeting, anyone who feels another group member is not doing his or her
share should say so right here in the group so the issue can be discussed and you can facilitate.

We find in our workshops a number of faculty who want to grade students' contribution to the group as part of their grade for the project, but the faculty members don't know quite how to structure the grading. An obvious method is to ask students to report on, or even grade, other students' contributions. But think again whether this will supply the information you are looking for. Asking students to evaluate one another's contributions to the group can make you into the parent and the students into the tattling siblings. Group members may deliberately or subconsciously collude to cover up inequality of effort just to avoid conflict. Or the group may discount the contributions of women, historically underrepresented groups, or persons with disabilities--prejudices that turn up regularly in the research literature, so likely are present in your classroom as well. We suggest that you do not merely have students evaluate one another's group contributions at the end of the project. Spread the evaluation throughout the process, anchor it to behavior, be present as facilitator and listener, and help the group address any difficulties early on.

The guidance we have suggested helps you be the coach along the way, helps students raise workload and interaction issues while they can still be addressed, and results in ongoing, not just end point, information to you about how the groups are doing.

What If They All Get A's?

Faculty members in workshops sometimes raise the possibility that if they teach what they are grading. more students will meet the highest criteria for student performance. You'd think this would be a good thing, but some faculty operate in environments where they fear they will be in trouble if they give too many A grades. In this special kind of case, where grades in your own class are rising because students are doing better work, you have two choices. The first is to raise the standards so that it takes more to get an A. Students are getting better teaching, so they should be performing at a higher level. A second option is to keep the standard the same, give an A to all students who reach the standard, and then, if you are questioned about it, be ready to show your department head or promotion tenure committee some samples of your assignments and tests, together with student work that earned an A and work that earned a B. You can begin a discussion on this topic in which you are open to the other person's ideas, and the other person has a chance to see what you are doing.

University of Oregon

Teaching Effectiveness Program

Scheduling Course Work in Ways Which Encourage Students to Stay Up-to-date in Their Work

2009-12-07T10:40:00.000-08:00

by Michael Theall, Youngstown State University

Background

Faculty often express interest in having students learn basic knowledge, understand major concepts, develop problem solving and critical thinking skills, acquire professional habits and attitudes, and become committed to lifetime learning. One thing that is less frequently mentioned is the need to create conditions under which these objectives can be most effectively achieved. Within this general category, lies an important practical skill: time management, which is one component of "self regulation" (1). While teachers put careful thought into how to fill the available time in a course, they sometimes do not consider or accurately estimate the amount of time that students will need to complete the assigned work. For many students the ability to manage coursework and balance it against other activities is the difference between success and failure. In fact, a major review of research on the effects of college (2) considered the impact of working (holding a job) on academic performance. Interestingly, the finding was that while working reduced the time available to do coursework, there was no significant difference in academic performance between those who worked and those who did not. The authors attribute this lack of difference to the possibility that, "...employment provides a context in which they (students) acquire efficient organizational skills and work habits" (p.
133). Thus, the critical issue seems to be how well one manages one's time rather than how much time is available. It seems important then, that teachers provide structures and models of effective work that encourage students to carefully balance their course work and other obligations. To use the common expression, teachers should help students to "work smart, not just work hard."

Helpful Hints

Research on the dimensions of college teaching provides powerful evidence of the importance of helping students to organize their time. With respect to student achievement, the most strongly correlated teaching dimensions are organization and clarity. When teachers make clear how topics fit and how the assigned work can be efficiently carried out, they help students to construct accurate schemas and clarify the structure of the discipline. The result is better student learning and increased student satisfaction because that learning becomes more apparent. Provide an organizational structure that helps students plan and carry out coursework. This not only keeps students on task, but it is also motivational in that it demonstrates that the teacher wants to promote deep learning rather than busy work and surface learning. For example, break work down into manageable chunks and suggest progress benchmarks so that students have the greatest chance for consistent success. In Keller's description of a motivational design of instruction, key elements involve creating conditions that promote positive expectations and provide opportunities for success. Helping students to stay organized and on task are two such conditions.

A complete syllabus with clear timelines is a solid beginning. Reinforcing the syllabus with regular checkpoints via class dialogue, e-mail, or other communications will help. Personal contact with students who are lagging behind is absolutely necessary. Using collaborative or group work provides a way for students to help each other (as long as the group work is itself organized and supervised). A very useful technique is to ask students, from early in the course, how they plan to organize their time and what they will do to most efficiently carry out the work. An early exploration of these issues will enhance students' investments in the course and raise issues that might otherwise be
missed.

Assessment Issues

Assessments addressing this item are somewhat different than those used to determine more typical cognitive or affective outcomes. Angelo and Cross offer some methods for determining the success of assignments (pp. 343-361), but other options more specifically addressing workload, currency of work, and the extent to which students understand the "why" and "how" as well as the "what" of assignments can be very useful. Some research has demonstrated that when students understand the rationale for assignments and when they see value in doing the work, they are more motivated to do the work carefully. As this understanding increases, so do students' positive opinions about the course and the teacher. Three techniques can be helpful. First, an adaptation of the Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID) process can assess the degree to which students are keeping up. Second, the use of electronic communications available in course management systems can provide a way for students to report difficulties and for the teacher to monitor progress. Third, and most important, conduct regular dialogues with individuals and the class about progress. The instructor's personal involvement (in casual conversations, e-mail, or class dialogue) in keeping students on track demonstrates both concern for student progress and the importance of the work. It is necessary for students to "learn the material," but often it is equally important to provide guidelines for "learning how to learn," that demonstrate how to best manage course workload and meet deadlines.

References

(1) Pintrich, P. R. (Ed.). (1995). Understanding self-regulated learning. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 63. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

(2) Pascarella, E. J., & Terenzini, P. (2005). How college affects students: A third decade of research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

(3) Feldman, K. A. (1989). The association between student ratings of specific instructional dimensions and student achievement: Refining and extending the synthesis of data from multisection validity studies. Research in Higher Education, 30, 583-645.

(4) Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

(5) Entwistle, N., & Tait, H. (1994). Approaches to studying and perceptions of the learning environment across disciplines. In N. Hativa & M. Marincovich (Eds.), "Disciplinary differences in teaching and learning: Implications for practice." New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 64. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

(6) Keller, J. M. (1983). Motivational design of instruction. In C. M. Riegeluth (Ed.) Instructional design theories and models: An overview of their current status. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

(7) Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college
teachers (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

(8) Franklin, J., & Theall, M. (1995). The relationship of disciplinary differences and the value of class preparation time to student ratings of instruction. In N. Hativa & M. Marincovich, (Eds.) "Disciplinary differences in teaching and learning: Implications for practice. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 64. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

(9) Clark, D. J., & Bekey, J. (1979). Use of small groups in instructional evaluation. Insight Into Teaching Excellence. 7(1), 2-5. Arlington, TX: University of Texas at Arlington.

IDEA Paper No. 40: Getting Students to Read: Fourteen Tips, Hobson
IDEA Paper No. 41: Student Goal Orientation, Motivation, and Learning, Svinicki
IDEA Paper No. 42: Integrated Course Design, Fink
IDEA Paper No. 27: Writing a Syllabus, Altman and Cashin

©2005 The IDEA Center This document may be reproduced for educational/training activities.

Ideas for Quiet Discussion

2009-11-30T14:32:00.000-08:00

Passed- Paper Conversation

Students begin class by writing their response to a prompt (or prompts) on the board. (It helps to use an extra long piece of paper and provide students with a set of directions. See example) When a student is finished, they make eye contact with another student who is done and exchange papers. The student reads the paper she’s exchanged for her own and then writes her response, in the form of questions, connections, or observations. Then the process is repeated as many times as you like. Finally, the long piece of paper with this rich discussion goes back to the originator of the thread. Each student is responsible for writing a summary and synthesis of the discussion spurred by their initial response.

Example:

Directions for First Silent Activity (Read through all of the instructions before you begin.)

1. Please conduct this exercise in silence.

2. Beneath these instructions you will find a sheet entitled “Silence” containing three questions. Use the extra sheets attached for your answers. Answer each question on a separate sheet as others will be adding their written responses to what you say. Please put your name on each sheet.

3. When you are finished responding to the questions, silently exchange your papers with someone.

4. Read through your partner’s answers and add your comments and questions. Questions are particularly effective in helping this silent “conversation” go deeper.

5. If at any point you finish early, begin reading the two articles you will find underneath the sheets for our first activity.

6. When you have finished responding to a partner, exchange your papers again with someone else, read what is written, comment and question.

7. When this activity is completed, we will do a verbal debrief.

Paused discussion

This is very similar to a typical discussion, except that there is a pause of 45 seconds to a minute between each contribution. After a student is done speaking, everyone is silent. Students either write or think silently until the facilitator says, “ Okay,” and then another student can contribute. The advantage of this kind of conversation is that it allows students who process non-verbally to slow the conversation and gather their thoughts. It also allows verbal processors to develop their listening skills. They practice processing silently, writing down their reactions and often feel less urgent about sharing these reactions and more willing to cede conversation time to quieter students.

A Thousand Words

Every student brings or produces an object, image, sound, etc. that is representative of an important concept, relationship, or issue. The images/objects are displayed gallery style. At that point every student has “spoken.” There are several directions you can go with this exercise.

1) Each student could have a stack of post-its and they could write notes, commentary or responses about these objects and post them around the objects.

2) Ask students to pick one object or image and explain what they see as the connection to the concept .

3) You can begin a general discussion by choosing an object or image and asking, for example, “What does a rubber band have to do with the teaching/learning relationship?”

Teaching Effectiveness Program
University of Oregon

Constructing Evaluation Instruments

2009-05-21T07:34:00.000-07:00

The posting below gives some excellent advice on constructing evaluation instruments and their uses in testing and grading. The author is Stanford C. Ericksen.

Testing and Grading

Fair play is the first and final requirement in matters of testing and grading. Students will accept pressures for hard work but object strenuously and rightly so, to signs of unfairness in a teacher's assessment of their efforts. Being an expert in an area of subject matter and having the speaking skills required for teaching are quite different dimensions of professional competence than are the abilities to construct discriminating examinations and to assign valid grades. Improvement on the part of instructors in the areas of testing and grading is nearly always in order.

An important distinction must be made between evaluation and grading. Evaluation is information provided to the student about particular aspects of what was said or done during the effort to learn, to solve a problem, or to organize and integrate facts and concepts. As they move into unknown intellectual territory, students must have guideposts to confirm that they are moving in the right direction. The qualitative comments about particular aspects of a term paper are far more constructive aids for the specifics of learning and remembering than is the grade on the cover page. Evaluation, therefore, is indispensable to students for gaining understanding and to fix what is learned in memory. A grade, on the other hand, is a gross index which typically comes too late for the student to take corrective measures about the specifics of learning.

A few guidelines about testing and grading can help instructors to: (1) strengthen the process of instruction, (2) clarify the diagnostic value of testing, (3) make a fair assessment of what each student knows, and (4) report this achievement through grades.

Testing as a Tool for Instruction

Students tend to concentrate their study effort in preparation for an exam, and they structure this effort in anticipation of the nature of the questions they will be asked. If students anticipate the need to know unassimilated facts, they will concentrate on memorizing information; if they expect to be asked to integrate, extend, and evaluate information, they will try to prepare themselves along those lines. The management of testing is an opportunity for the instructor to underline the essential elements making up the course.

As a matter of fact, a program for the orientation and training of beginning college teachers could well be geared to the interdependence among: the objectives of a course, the sequence of topics (and their classroom presentation), and the manner in which this can be assessed by means of tests, papers, and special projects. I recall a science professor whose overriding goal was "to teach students to think like a scientist thinks" but whose tests were almost solely measures of how well students memorized. He changed his exams to emphasize integration of material, and everyone felt better about the course.

The Diagnostic Use of Tests

Placement testing is commonly used at the department and college level, but within our own courses we can also make effective use of similar testing for making a grade-free diagnostic appraisal of what information is already known by the students or is not known but should be. Diagnostic testing is an excellent instructional tool because when a student says, in effect, "I don't see why the question was scored that way," an inquiry is started toward unscrambling the false connections. In this close-up look, the teacher may note a pattern of mistakes showing a misunderstanding of a particular rule, procedure, or principle. It may also appear that a student has the right answer but for the wrong reasons.

A diagnostic test is a sort of intellectual X-ray showing the strengths and weaknesses in a student's inventory of information, understanding, and skill. The evaluative emphasis is on the responses to individual test items, on information prerequisite for understanding the larger concepts and procedures in this particular course of study.

When students realize the significance to themselves of grade-free probing, they are more likely to open up and reveal low points in their preparation profile, anxieties, misconceptions and deficiencies in knowing how to do certain tasks. A sprinkling of short, diagnostic quizzes early in the term suggests to students that the teacher cares about how they are doing and is taking corrective steps to help them along - an excellent climate for starting the semester.

Assessing Achievement

Although test scores in any setting are affected by students' aptitude, study skills, motivation, background preparation, and the influence of the teacher, our classroom examinations should be designed primarily to measure subject-matter achievement. To this end, the teacher and student seek the same wavelength within an assigned domain of knowledge. A frustrated student expressed a contrary state of affairs quite clearly, "I don't like to play the professor's game: I've got a secret, see if you can guess what it is."

Effective classroom instruction is central to student learning, but students are short-changed if the examinations are trivial, irrelevant, confusing and tangential to the substance of the course. College teaching is not complete without an accurate and fair assessment of students' achievement during the term and at its conclusion.

Objective Tests

Objective (machine-scorable) tests are almost mandatory in large classes, but constructing such instruments is a demanding task. Although it is tempting for teachers to make use of commercially available examinations, to pull old tests from the file, or to overuse test items taken from a teacher's manual, students are best served when their instructors develop exams tailored to their specific course and based on sound principles.

Two basic concepts need to guide the development of classroom examinations:

1. Validity refers to whether an instrument measures what it is supposed to measure. A valid test, therefore, samples what students should have learned from your course offering. It measures here and-now achievement rather than, for example, how well a student reads or how much information the student had gained outside the course. Test items about minutiae and footnote information are temptingly easy to put together but lack the validity of questions that elicit a student's understanding of key concepts, important factual data, and relevant procedures. A valid test is an unambiguous reflection of what is worth knowing and remembering.

2. Reliability refers to the consistency of an instrument's results. A good short quiz is better than a poorly constructed long test but, assuming equal quality of items, a 50-item test is more reliable (stable, consistent) than a 10-item quiz. The random errors due to ambiguous wording, idiosyncratic interpretations, distractions, and other flaws are more likely to cancel out in the longer test, resulting in a more dependable total score. Thus, the easiest way to reduce the unreliability in the measuring instrument is simply to increase the length of the test.

Objective tests come in many forms, but the multiple-choice format carries most of the burden. When carefully worded, multiple-choice items can probe a student's understanding of factual information, skills and procedures, concrete and abstract concepts, and the implications from different scales of values. (True-false items are altogether too constrained to be effective discriminators for most college courses.)

To strengthen the quality of the set of items used, a complete item analysis should be made of each new test. This test-of-the-test is mainly to determine and adjust the difficulty level of each item. It is normal to find that many of our carefully conceived questions turn out to be too easy or too difficult or just seem to ride along as excess baggage. Such items use valuable testing time but add little to the discriminating power of the test. They don't help to separate the top group of students from the bottom group of achievers.

Because ambiguity of meaning is a persistent problem, the wording of test items is critical. Careful editing of the draft exam includes close attention to such pitfalls as cluing the right answer, overlapping correct alternatives, or asking for a positive answer to a negative question. Good test items are parsimonious in meaning and simple in wording. It is surprising how quickly excess words can lead to double meaning or obscure the correct answer. It is appropriate, however, to expand the stem - the lead-in statement of the multiple-choice question - by using a relevant quotation or making reference to a particular body of factual data.

Score the test in a straightforward manner, e.g., in terms of the number of right answers. Trying to adjust (punish) for guessing may, in effect, simply open further sources of variability. Combining raw scores from different performance measures, i.e., tests, term papers, class participation, special projects, etc., can easily distort your original intention. The statistical solution is to convert the different measures to a common scale through the use of some type of standard-score scale.

Subjective Evaluation

The distinctive value of essay exams or term papers is the freedom they offer for students to probe and develop the personal meaning of ideas and to express these thoughts in their own words. To organize an integrated chain of thought, to elaborate on findings, and to communicate ideas to others are stronger tests of achievement than is the recognition or recall of isolated units of information.

1. Essay Exams. In an essay examination, the student is staring at a blank page and generating, from within, a complicated sequence of responses aimed at organizing a meaningful unit of knowledge. This ability to recall is a more demanding test of memory than simply to recognize something. As essay examination elicits the ability to retrieve information but with little help from presently given cues. The perceptive teacher (reader) can evaluate the strong and weak points in a written argument even when the student's perception of a question differs from the teacher's. Evaluative permissiveness can, of course, go only so far.

A steady and unwavering evaluative state of mind is difficult to sustain when reading page after page through a set of exams. Three procedural controls help to reduce the evaluating drift: (1) turn under the front (name) page to forestall confounding effects from those students we particularly like or dislike; (2) read one question at a time through the entire set of exam booklets; (3) shuffle the order of the booklets periodically to balance the inevitable effects of reader fatigue or an emerging tilt toward one pattern of answers.

2. Term Papers. In some respects, the term paper is the essence of what a student has gained from the course. It sets forth what the individual student has learned and how the student has pulled together all the information for comprehension and understanding. This, in turn, serves to keep the knowledge available in long-term memory.

A written handout is a useful guide regarding the due date, length, use of references, comments about style, and any other restrictions or suggestions about the assignment. It may, for example, be helpful to remind students about the difference between describing versus analyzing events and ideas. The heavy task of reading these papers is counterbalanced, somewhat, by the satisfaction of reading the better papers - some of which can be truly exciting.

Grading a stack of exams and papers is a time consuming and pressured task because, throughout, the matter of fair play is squarely on the back of the reader. By way of evaluation, the teacher should indicate in some detail the rationale for assigning the gross grade, making specific reference to identified parts of the exam or paper. The instructional value of essay exams and term papers is practically wiped out if the student receives nothing back other than the grade.

Grading

Faculty standards for A-grade performance define the meaning of excellence within the university. We must guard the criteria of achievement, since everyone pays the price of academic inflation when these standards are lowered. Students work hard for grades because "making the grade" is personally rewarding and is an important basis for special awards, admission to advanced training, and employment prospects ' With such payoff potential it is unfair for a teacher to be casual or careless in assigning this index of achievement. Judgments about professional competence must take into account the quality of a teacher's procedures for testing and grading.

There are two basic options available to instructors for grading student achievement:

1. Norm-referenced grading, more commonly referred to as grading-on-the-curve, sets the scale of achievement by the average level of class performance. Students basically compete against one another in this approach.

2. Criterion -referenced grading has the teacher measuring the students against some absolute standard with respect to what they are expected to learn. The competition here is between the student and mastery of a finite body of knowledge.

In practice, these two approaches overlap and merge since a teacher's judgment about levels of achievement is influenced by the levels of student performance with which one is accustomed at a given school. Also, the departmental culture enters into the picture, because a teacher's procedures and standards for testing and grading are expected to fall in line with the traditions or policies of the home department.

The danger in grading-on-the-curve is its diminishment of the teacher's responsibility for evaluating the students' level of understanding against his or her preset criteria of subject-matter achievement. The final examination, for example, is a revealing statement sampling the information and skills the teacher believes should be carried from the course.

With criterion-referenced grading, there is the danger that the instructor may set the expected level of achievement unrealistically high or low, with the result that students perceive the exam as inappropriate and unfair.

Grades serve the academic purpose of showing intellectual achievement in a limited domain defined by books, teachers, laboratories, and the like. They are not designed to predict success in the off-campus setting where special weight may be given to information, aptitudes, and personal characteristics extending beyond the boundaries of teachers and their courses. Only indirectly or on occasion, do grades reflect a student's tolerance for stress, independent decision-making, congeniality in human relations, ability to cope with unexpected problems, and the like. Teachers can best sustain the credibility of the grading system by making their assessments reflect as fairly as possible how well each student has achieved the stated objectives of the course.

Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching

2009-05-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

from Chapter 12, Common Problems, in the book: On Course - A Week-by-Week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching, by James M. Lang

Q: How do I handle rude student behavior in my classroom-talking, laughing, getting up and down during class?

"No experience of new faculty as teachers," writes Robert Boice, "is so dramatic and traumatizing as facing unruly, uninvolved students-especially in the large, introductory courses traditionally assigned to newcomers" (81). Undoubtedly true; equally troublesome, with the omnipresence of laptops and wireless-enabled classrooms, are students spending class time shopping for shoes online, rather than taking notes (see following question).

Two major points here. First, rude student behavior often comes about because of what's happening at the front of the classroom. If students are talking and reading the student newspaper during the lecture, sending e-mails, or IMing their friends, your lectures may be boring. If students are chit-chatting with each other during the discussion, you may not be asking interesting questions. A well-taught class is the best preventive measure you can take to counter what Boice calls as "student incivilities." His research on this issue suggests that newcomers face student incivilities at much higher rates than highly rated teachers with years of classroom experience (81-98). Fortunately for you, you are doing the work right now to become a highly rated teacher, and following the prescriptions of this book-and other preparatory work you do for your first semester-will be the best measure you can take against poor behavior.

However students, like the rest of the population, can be just rude idiots, so sometimes your best teaching efforts won't be enough to eliminate such behaviors. You won't know always know about students surfing the internet in class, but you will certainly know about noisy and rude students. When that happens, you can either shame such students by calling them on the behavior in front of their peers, or you can find ways to discuss their behavior with them in private. My non-confrontational personality, coupled with a dozen years of teaching and raising children, have convinced me that the latter route is the better one for correcting poor behavior. When identifiable students are acting uncivilly in your classroom (however you may define such activity), you can stop them after class and give them the standard lines you would expect to give-that such behavior makes it difficult for you and other students to concentrate, and so on. You can also ask them to come see you in your office, and discuss it there, if you think they require a more serious dressing down. A third method that I have used is to append a P.S. to one of my final comments on their papers, addressing the behavior and asking them to improve it or to come see me in my office. Calling them on the behavior privately like this has always worked for me. If you try this and it doesn't have the desired effect, check with your chair; seriously persistent and disruptive behavior should be observed by a senior faculty or administrator so that you won't suffer for it in your teaching evaluations (and they may be able to intervene with the students).

Q: Students have their laptops, cell phones, PDAs, and what-have-you on in my classroom, and whenever I step out into the seats I can see that half of them are shopping for shoes or downloading music or text messaging their friends. Some students have cell phones going off in class. What can I do about this?

A: This is probably the most annoying problem we will all face in the future, so best to consider it now and decide how you want to handle it. The solutions seem to me different for different sized-classes. In small classes, twenty or thirty or less, you need to have a strong physical presence in the classroom. You should be using interactive teaching methods in classes that size, of course, and such methods give you an opportunity to move out into the seats, work your way around the classroom, and let students know that at any given moment you will be standing behind them, seeing whatever they have on their desk or laptop. Do not isolate yourself in the front of the classroom; you command the entire space of the classroom, and you need to make yourself felt at every desk. You don't need to be in constant motion, of course; student awareness of your mobility will go a long way towards keeping them on task.

In larger lecture classrooms and auditoria, you can still do some of this, but the problems will be worse here. So you have two choices, and neither of them are ideal: learn to live with a certain amount of technological distraction, or ban the technologies that are disrupting your classroom. If you choose option one, it doesn't mean you should do nothing. At the very least, you should discuss the inappropriate use of technology in the classroom at the beginning of the semester, and perhaps even include on the syllabus a technology warning like the one cited by Michael Bujega in a Chronicle essay on this subject:

If your cellular phone is heard by the class you are responsible for completing one of two options: 1. Before the end of the class period you will sing a verse and chorus of any song of your choice or, 2. You will lead the next class period through a 10-minute discussion on a topic to be determined by the end of the class. (To the extent that there are multiple individuals in violation, duets will be accepted).

Whether you use humor in such a warning or not, including an admonition on the syllabus gives you an excuse to discuss the use of technology with students in the classroom, and to help the conscientious (but perhaps clueless) students see how to comport themselves more appropriately.

However, if you are teaching in a large wireless classroom, facing a sea of laptops, and you are convinced that the vast majority of the students are not listening to your scintillating words, then don't hesitate to ban laptops, either outright or for specific parts of the session. No student has a constitutional right to bring a laptop to class, so you have every right to forbid them (you might announce that you will make special provisions for students with disabilities, however). Don't feel bad about it; students have been taking notes with pencil and paper for many hundreds of years; it won't kill them. A less stringent option would be to allow or encourage laptops for specific activities in class-asking students to join you in reviewing a website or program you have scouted for them in advance, or working with them on a program or problem-but then asking them to close the laptops for the fifteen-minute lecture module you have planned for the end of the class, when you will be summarizing the main idea of the day.

Remember-you are in charge. As Bujega concludes at the end of his essay on inappropriate technology in the classroom, "despite digital distractions, large classes, decreased budgets, and fewer tenured colleagues, professors still are responsible for turning students on to learning. To do so, we just may have to turn off the technology."

Q: Students are not coming to class, or they come late. Do I leave those choices up to them, since they are adults, or do I become an enforcer and start each class with a daily quiz?

An article on poor attendance in college and university courses, which appeared in the spring of 2007 on insidehighered.com and provoked a massive outpouring of responses, offered a bleak picture of this issue. The article included the following statistics on attendance and tardiness patterns:
A 2005 survey of first-year undergraduate students by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles showed that while a majority of college students spend 11 or more hours in class per week, 33 percent reported skipping class and 63 percent said they come to class late "occasionally" or "frequently."A similar survey showed that the proportion of students who report coming late to class has jumped from 48 percent in 1966 to 61 percent in 2006 - evidence, one could argue, of a growing indifference to class in general.

I'm going to start sounding like a bit of a skipping CD here, but the first principle is to ensure that you are creating a classroom experience which students could not duplicate by copying someone else's lecture notes, or by listening to a recording of your lecture. Students, in other words, should play a role in the classroom. If you are giving students a role to play-through discussions, group work, in-class writing, problem-solving, and so on-then you have every right to say that the success of the course depends upon the presence of the students, and to require that presence. If you are standing in front of a podium and lecturing for fifty minutes, then I'm with the tardy and missing students on this one-why should they come to class, when they can get the same material more efficiently, and in the comfort of their dorm rooms, from other means?

As long as you are offering a class worth attending, which depends upon students for its success, then you should not hesitate to drop the hammer on late and absent students. Take whatever measures seem appropriate to you, from locking the door at the start of class to giving daily quizzes at the opening of class, from calling tardy students to the carpet as they walk in the door to penalizing students who miss more than three classes on their final grade. Consult the article on insidehighered.com for more ideas on combating this problem, and especially the responses that follow.

Q: I have trouble remembering the names of my own children; the prospect of remembering the names of several sets of twenty or thirty or forty undergraduates each year just seems impossible. Can I call on them as "red baseball cap" or "kid who plagiarized" or "crewcut" just to keep things simple for me?

A: I did know a teacher who managed this successfully, actually. At the beginning of the semester he hit upon some aspect of a student's appearance or mannerisms, gave them a nickname linked to it, and then referred to him or her in that manner in class. He pulled it off because he was eccentric and had a great sense of humor, and did not use offensive or embarassing nicknames (i.e., no one was nicknamed "baldie" or anything). The potential ways in which this practice could go bad are so numerous, though, that I really wouldn't recommend it.

Mary McKinney, a clinical psychologist who counsels academics on career issues, addressed this problem in an essay for the online academic news site insidehighered.com, and described there more than a dozen techniques for learning the names of students-her list is worth consulting, and is available online for free (see below for reference). The one that I like best, number twelve, may be the simplest. Every time a student asks a question or speaks in class, ask them for their name; repeat the name somehow in the answer-"Jane asks an important question here . . ."-and if that question or your response to it comes up in class again, associate it once again with her name: "You'll remember that Jane asked us this question last week . . ." The more times you repeat the name, the more likely you will be to remember it. This technique has the bonus benefit of affirming the importance of student contributions in your classroom, making visible to them how their ideas are woven into the fabric of the lectures and discussions. Classes of fifty or more obviously do not require you to learn everyone's name, but don't abandon names altogether. Learn any names you can, but don't fret about not having comprehensive coverage.

- University of Oregon, Teaching Effectiveness Program

A Handout for Students on How to Study

2009-04-13T07:49:00.000-07:00

Adapted from How to Study by Ronald C. Blue

How to get started:

Survey:

Before you start your learning task, read over the major headings and summaries of the chapters in the textbook. This gives you a feeling for the whole picture and to what material you should pay attention to while reading the chapters. Research shows that students who do this make higher grades, and this simple step is the most powerful thing you can do.

Reading, underlining, and taking notes:

As you read the material, you must take written notes and underline. Use only the left half of the page. Transfer to the right side of the paper comments your teacher made about the material during lecture. You must always be ahead of your teacher in your reading.

Research shows that the more different ways you present information to the brain the easier it is to learn. In other words hear it, see it, say it, write it, practice it, highlight it, quiz it, etc. Underlining is a skill that must be developed. The tools of underlining should vary based on your preference. Use highlighters or colored pens. I recommend red and blue Flair pens. If you use these, you need a plastic ruler for underlining. Use a drafting plastic triangle and have it cut off at the three ends about one inch each.

Now spray paint the underlining ruler with flat black paint. This reduces or eliminates glare from light when reading and underlining. At first you should underline approximately 85 percent of material. Later on as your skill increases, you should reduce the material underlined.

Use red and blue Flair pens for underlining important material as you read. Use red for extremely important material or to offset important material, and blue for moderately important material. You should use a pink and yellow highlighter when reading the material the second time. The process of reading and deciding if the material is important enough to be underlined increases memory for that material. It is the decision and thinking that creates the memory. It is best to over predict your instructors at first. It is easier to cut back on the material to be learned than to increase the amount to be learned. Use stars to arrange the material in hierarchies of importance. Three stars (would be more important than two stars.

The 3"x5" card system.

Using the colors of red and blue, now make 3"x5" cards, putting the vocabulary of the course, long lists of items, experiments, and lecture on the cards. Key words should be written in red. If you have to be different, go with 1"x3" instead of 4"x6". One theory, concept, or vocabulary word per card. The biggest problem with textbooks and lecture notes is that we cannot separate the material that we know from the material that we do not know. Because of this, we waste hours studying what we already know, rather than concentrating our valuable time on what we do not know. The red tells your mind that this is extremely important material. Writing the material stores the information in the brain in a way that is not normally used. On the back of the cards is definition about the material on the front. After numbering the cards so you can put them back in order later on, you should start studying the cards until you feel you know the material.

Now then turn the cards over and try and answer your fill in the blanks orally. If you get the questions right, place the material into a "I know this material" stack. Now continue working on the material that you don't know until you can answer the questions on all the cards.

Review:

Now reread the material that you underlined in the book. Note that you do not read the material you did not underline. This is why over prediction is important.

As you reread the chapter, bracket and star the material you believe is extremely important. Sometimes use a yellow highlighter for critical information.

Now reread the material you have bracketed or stored and high speed review the material on the 3"x5" cards.

Audio option:

The more different ways that the material to be learned can be experienced the easier it is to remember the material. If you have time, read the material that you have underlined to a tape recorder. Then play back and listen to the material. Some people are so good at learning by listening that this is the only way they have to study.

Overlearning:

The more you overlearn the material the easier it is to take a test with confidence and in a relaxed manner. In addition, the more you overlearn something, the longer you will remember it.

Special problems:

Some people have reading difficulties. Current research suggests that blue or gray sunglasses may help dyslexic people process and learn to read. Self typing of the material is another way shown to have positive benefits for dyslexics. The key concept is that learning requires work. Good nutrition helps learning. Research suggest that zinc and B vitamins are essential for learning.

General Guidelines for Developing Multiple-Choice Items

2009-03-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

adapted from a longer article by Mary E. Piontek, Best Practices for Designing and Grading Exams

Multiple-choice items have a number of advantages. First, multiple-choice items can measure various kinds of knowledge, including students' understanding of terminology, facts, principles, methods, and procedures, as well as their ability to apply, interpret, and justify. When carefully designed, multiple-choice items can assess higher-order thinking skills as shown in Example 1, (below) in which students are required to generalize, analyze, and make inferences about data in a medical patient case.

Multiple-choice items are less ambiguous than short-answer items, thereby providing a more focused assessment of student knowledge. Multiple-choice items are superior to true-false items in several ways: on true-false items, students can receive credit for knowing that a statement is incorrect, without knowing what is correct. Multiple-choice items offer greater reliability than true-false items as the opportunity for guessing is reduced with the larger number of options. Finally, an instructor can diagnose misunderstanding by analyzing the incorrect options chosen by students.

A disadvantage of multiple-choice items is that they require developing incorrect, yet plausible, options that can be difficult for the instructor to create. In addition, multiple-choice questions do not allow instructors to measure students' ability to organize and present ideas. Finally, because it is much easier to create multiple-choice items that test recall and recognition rather than higher order thinking, multiple-choice exams run the risk of not assessing the deep learning that many instructors consider important (Gronlund & Linn, 1990; McMillan, 2001).

-------------------------------
Example 1: A Series of Multiple-Choice Items That Assess Higher Order Thinking:

Patient WC was admitted for 3rd degree burns over 75% of his body. The attending physician asks you to start this patient on antibiotic therapy. Which one of the following is the best reason why WC would need
antibiotic prophylaxis?
a. His burn injuries have broken down the innate immunity that prevents microbial invasion.
b. His injuries have inhibited his cellular immunity.
c. His injuries have impaired antibody production.
d. His injuries have induced the bone marrow, thus activated immune system.

Two days later, WC's labs showed: WBC 18,000 cells/mm3; 75% neutrophils (20% band cells); 15% lymphocytes; 6% monocytes; 2% eosophils; and 2% basophils. Which one of the following best describes WC's lab results?
a. Leukocytosis with left shift
b. Normal neutrophil count with left shift
c. High eosinophil count in response to allergic reactions
d. High lymphocyte count due to activation of adaptive immunity
(Jeong Park, U-M College of Pharmacy, personal
communication, February 4, 2008)
------------------------------

Guidelines for developing multiple-choice items

There are nine primary guidelines for developing multiple-choice items (Gronlund & Linn, 1990; McMillan, 2001). Following these guidelines increases the validity and reliability of multiple-choice items that one might use for quizzes, homework assignments, and/or examinations.

The first four guidelines concern the item "stem," which poses the problem or question to which the choices refer.

1. Write the stem as a clearly described question, problem, or task.
2. Provide the information in the stem and keep the options as short as possible.
3. Include in the stem only the information needed to make the problem clear and specific.

The stem of the question should communicate the nature of the task to the students and present a clear problem or concept. The stem of the question should provide only information that is relevant to the problem or concept, and the options (distractors) should be succinct.

4. Avoid the use of negatives in the stem (use only when you are measuring whether the respondent knows the
exception to a rule or can detect errors).

You can word most concepts in positive terms and thus avoid the possibility that students will overlook terms of "no, not, or least" and choose an incorrect option not because they lack the knowledge of the concept but because they have misread the stated question. Italicizing, capitalizing, using bold-face, or underlying the negative term makes it less likely to be overlooked.

The remaining five guidelines concern the choices from which students select their answer.

5. Have ONLY one correct answer.

Make certain that the item has one correct answer. Multiple-choice items usually have at least three incorrect options (distractors).

6. Write the correct response with no irrelevant clues. A common mistake when designing multiple-choice questions is to write the correct option with more elaboration or detail, using more words, or using general terminology rather than technical terminology.

7. Write the distractors to be plausible yet clearly wrong. An important, and sometimes difficult to achieve, aspect of multiple-choice items is ensuring that the incorrect choices (distractors) appear to be possibly correct. Distractors are best created using common errors or misunderstandings about the concept being assessed, and making them homogeneous in content and parallel in form and grammar.

8. Avoid using "all of the above," "none of the above," or other special distractors (use only when an answer can
be classified as unequivocally correct or incorrect).

All of the above and none of the above are often added as answer options to multiple-choice items. This technique requires the student to read all of the options and might increase the difficulty of the items, but too often the use of these phrases is inappropriate. None of the above should be restricted to items of factual knowledge with absolute standards of correctness. It is inappropriate for questions where students are asked to select "the best" answer. All of the above is awkward in that many students will choose it if they can identify at least one of the other options as correct and therefore assume all of the choices are correct - thereby obtaining a correct answer based on partial knowledge of the concept/content (Gronlund & Linn, 1990).

9. Use each alternative as the correct answer about the same number of times.

Check to see whether option "a" is correct about the same number of times as option "b" or "c" or "d" across the instrument. It can be surprising to find that one has created an exam in which the choice "a" is correct 90% of the time. Students quickly find such patterns and increase their chances of "correct guessing" by selecting that answer option by default.

-----------------------------
Checklist for Writing Multiple-Choice Items
* Is the stem stated as clearly, directly, and simply as possible?
* Is the problem self-contained in the stem?
* Is the stem stated positively?
* Is there only one correct answer?
* Are all the alternatives parallel with respect to grammatical structure, length, and complexity?
* Are irrelevant clues avoided?
* Are the options short?
* Are complex options avoided?
* Are options placed in logical order?
* Are the distractors plausible to students who do not know the correct answer?
* Are correct answers spread equally among all the choices?
(McMillan, 2001, p. 150)
----------------------

References (for full article)

Brown, F. G. (1983). Principles of educational and psychological testings(3rd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston.

Cashin, W. E. (1987). Improving essay tests. Idea Paper, No. 17. Manhattan, KS: Center for Faculty Evaluation and
Development, Kansas State University.

Critical thinking rubric. (2008). Dobson, NC: Surry Community College.

Grading systems. (1991, April). For Your Consideration, No. 10. Chapel Hill, NC: Center for Teaching and Learning,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Gronlund, N. E., & Linn, R. L. (1990). Measurement and evaluation in teaching (6th ed.). New York: Macmillan
Publishing Company.

Halpern, D. H., & Hakel, M. D. (2003). Applying the science of learning to the university and beyond. Change,
35(4), 37-41.

Isaac, S., & Michael, W. B. (1990). Handbook in research and evaluation.San Diego, CA: EdITS Publishers.

McKeachie, W. J. , & Svinicki, M. D. (2006). Assessing, testing, and evaluating: Grading is not the most important
function. In McKeachie's teaching tips: Strategies,research, and theory for college and university teachers (12th ed., pp. 74-86). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

McMillan, J. H. (2001). Classroom assessment:
Principles and practice for effective instruction. Boston:
Allyn and Bacon.

Seymour, E., & Hewitt, N. M. (1997). Talking about leaving: Why undergraduates leave the sciences. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Svinicki, M. D. (1998). Helping students understand grades. College Teaching, 46(3), 101-105.

Svinicki, M. D. (1999a). Evaluating and grading students. In Teachers and students: A sourcebook for UT-Austin faculty(pp. 1-14). Austin, TX: Center for Teaching Effectiveness, University of Texas at Austin.

Svinicki, M. D. (1999b). Some pertinent questions about grading. In Teachers and students: A sourcebook for UT-Austin faculty(pp. 1-2). Austin, TX: Center for Teaching Effectiveness, University of Texas at Austin.

Thorndike, R. M. (1997). Measurement and evaluation in psychology and education. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Wiggins, G. P. (1998). Educative assessment: Designing assessments to inform and improve student performance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Worthen, B. R., Borg, W. R., & White, K. R. (1993). Measurement and evaluation in the schools. New York:
Longman. Writing and grading essay questions.(1990, September). For Your Consideration, No. 7. Chapel Hill, NC: Center for Teaching and Learning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

How to respond to a question when you don't know the answer.

2009-02-10T10:06:00.002-08:00

What if I don't know the answer to a student’s question?

It’s curious that what students most fear is what teachers fear as well—not knowing. Our students hesitate when we turn from the board and say, “Any questions?” They don’t want to appear stupid, to let others know they still don’t understand.
Many graduate teaching fellows’ biggest fear in teaching for the first time is facing a question from a student that they are unable to answer. Some full professors have the same fear.

And yet not knowing is what learning is all about.
You might consider addressing this issue from the get go. Talk about a process your community of learners will use when a question arises that no one can answer. Talk about how exciting it is to discover a new area of learning. Talk about how a good learner approaches questions. Teach your students the skills of how to begin investigating what they don’t know, don’t understand, or cannot yet do. Where would you look? What resources are available to you? From what you do know, can you make an educated guess? Can you phone a friend?

Not knowing the answer to a student question once in a while is very different from not preparing well. You risk your credibility when you are poorly prepared and unable to facilitate the class well.

When you have prepared well and students are having a productive learning experience with you, they will accept that you don’t have answers for everything. They will appreciate your efforts to improve their skills in finding answers for themselves.

- University of Oregon Teaching Effectiveness Program

How to deal with apathetic students

2009-02-03T14:59:00.000-08:00

How do I deal with apathetic students?

* Try to build a relationship with these students. Take an interest in them to find out what is at the bottom of the perceived apathy. Learning students' names and using names in class can help students understand that you are interested in them and in their success in your course. Consider emailing a student who seems uninterested or unresponsive and let him/her know that you would like to help in any way that you can. Oftentimes their apparent apathy has nothing to do with the course. There may be personal matters that are dominating their attention. Some students are going through a period of depression which disconnects them from their studies. Showing a little concern can be very helpful.

* Measure the students' progress early and regularly, so they have a clear idea about where they stand academically. This may involve quizzes, short response papers, or some kind of weekly assignment which gives you some indication of their level of understanding. Your "apathetic" students may also be the students who are struggling with the class. They could also be students for whom the class is inappropriate. In either case, it would be good to find this out early, so you can arrange an appointment with the student to talk about how things are going and to possibly recommend dropping the class. Take some initiative here. Just saying— "Drop by my office if you need to see me"—as a general comment to the whole group may not be enough to get them in there (especially freshmen).

*Promote good will. Let students know when they have done well. This can be an occasional group email that says something like—“In looking over your homework last night I was pleased to see that so many of you are now understanding the connection between _____________ and ____________. If you are still confused about this, look over the examples I have included in this message.” It can also be an individual email that says—“ I really appreciated your comments in class today. They led to a very productive discussion.”

- University of Oregon Teaching Effectiveness Program

How to develop discussion questions

2009-01-26T12:15:00.000-08:00

What makes a question effective?
A good question is relatively short, clear, and unambiguous. Ask only one question at a time. Pouring out a string of questions (even if they are on the same topic) is likely to confuse students, who often won't know where to begin an answer.

Pay attention to the responses you get because they will tell you much about how effectively you have phrased the question. Sometimes when students don't respond or respond poorly, it's because the question has been worded either too vaguely or too broadly. It may help to think backwards: Begin with the answer you want to get and then devise a question that will lead to that answer.

What are the different kinds of questions I can use?
Researchers and teaching experts have devised a number of different "typologies of questions," but perhaps the best way to categorize questions for science and engineering classes is to think of them along a continuum of relatively closed or relatively open questions.

Closed questions ask for a very specific answer. In the Torch of the Firehose?, Arthur Mattuck describes "Are-you-with-me?" questions (relatively closed) that ask the students to supply some detail of a problem that is being discussed ("and the derivative of sin x is?").

Open questions require more thought. ("What would happen if the force were reversed?") There may even be a range of potentially good answers--you can ask students to judge which ones are better than others or which one is best . Then ask them to justify their choices. If you are asking a more complex question that requires calculations, write key elements on the blackboard or prepare an overhead transparency that provides necessary information.

One general piece of advice: Be careful about asking a question that is too easy. At best, your students may feel it's not worth answering; at worst, they may feel insulted at having been asked a question with an obvious answer.

Should I let the course of the class dictate the questions I ask, or should I plan out questions ahead of time?
Both. While you need to be flexible enough to allow questions to emerge spontaneously during discussion, you should also prepare questions ahead of time based on the key points you want to make in that class.

Think, too, about the range of answers you are likely to get to your questions and plan your response to each. This will help guarantee the answers you get wion't take you off on a tangent. Having anticipated the responses, you can determine how to get back to the business at hand in the most efficient way possible.
Should I "cold call" students?

When you "cold call," you ask students to answer a question even if they haven't volunteered. While cold calling can increase the level of anxiety in a classroom, one of its benefits is that it gives students the chance to practice speaking while under pressure, a skill that will be important to them in their professional lives. You can also "warm call" by asking a question of one or two students and then giving them five minutes to frame a response while you discuss something else.
Each of these techniques has its strengths and drawbacks. However, their success will be enhanced if you:

* Establish a norm early in the semester and stick to it. (In other words, don't start cold calling students after midterms!)

* Keep track of which students you have called on when so that you can be fair in your calling pattern. Ideally, you will come to know some of the strengths and weaknesses of each of your students (e.g., Sally is good at calculations; Mark tends to think intuitively and globally), so that you can play to their strengths when calling on them.

* Help students save face by responding to wrong answers with tact and generosity.

- UO Teaching Effectiveness Program

Motivating Students to Excel

2009-01-06T14:43:00.000-08:00

* Establish high and reachable standards of excellence and provide the time and resources to help your students reach the standards you set.

* Be clear about your expectations by telling your students, having this in writing in the syllabus and on your website, and providing sample/models of work that meets the standards you expect. Use rubrics

* Give your students frequent opportunities to provide evidence through small, weekly assignments that demonstrate their understanding, problem-solving ability, writing skills, etc. The assignments don’t need to be graded. They can contribute to a portion of the grade assigned as participation. They can be short online quizzes through Blackboard’s survey feature or half page response papers, paraphrases of key concepts and examples that illustrate understanding of the concept. Consider letting students work in pairs or small groups on these assignments. This can result in some excellent peer teaching.

*The feedback on these small assignments doesn't necessarily have to be individual. You can give general feedback at the beginning of class or through a group email. For example—"I've been noticing a few common mistakes that people are making and want to give you some tips on how to avoid them in the future." Or, “Based on Tuesday’s response paper I want to clear up some confusion on the difference between ___________ and _____________.”

* Design weekly (and less grade-damaging) assignments in formats similar to what they can expect in other more important assessments (formal papers, midterms, finals). Have these assignments demonstrate the level of critical thinking you expect in student responses to questions and problems and short answer identifications.

* These smaller, frequent, and less threatening assignments keep students accountable for staying current in the course. They allow you and your students to gauge progress in understanding. They prepare students for the level of rigor in your benchmark assessments.

* As often as possible relate the course material to something which is meaningful for your students, something to which they can relate. Use metaphors and analogies that help anchor important concepts for them.

How to get students to pay attention in class

2008-12-31T06:36:00.000-08:00

How can I keep students from getting bored and not paying attention during my lecture?

Students can become bored for many reasons.

* The instructor has not established good rapport with the class.

* The instructor fails to use relevant examples.

* Students may have no interest in the subject matter.

* The instructor has weak and ineffective presentation skills.

* The instructor reads from a scripted lecture with little or no contact with the audience.

1. The instructor has not established good rapport with the class.

The first day of class is an important time to begin building a relationship with your students. Tell them a little about yourself and about your research interests in this field--where your passion lies. Tell them why you think this course is important and how it will add value to their lives.

* Learn as many names as possible and use students' names in class whenever you can. For example, ask a student's name when you call on him/her. Refer back to students' comments when appropriate, ("That's in line with what Margaret said earlier, Jeff.")

* Be clear and fair about your expectations for students. Set high standards and provide the support and resources students need to reach those standards.

* Be friendly. Try to arrive early and stay a few minutes after class so that students can ask questions. Be in your office ready for students during your designated office hours.

* Provide a website for the course with useful resources--handouts, study guides, sample test questions, virtual office hours, a course FAQ etc.

* Demonstrate in as many ways as you can that you care about your students' success in your course.

2. The instructor fails to use relevant examples.

As often as possible center important ideas and concepts on something to which your students can relate. If you are explaining something about business practices, pick a local campus business as an example. Check area newspapers for events, editorials and other news stories that might tie in with the material you are exploring.

Use metaphors and analogies which tie difficult concepts to something that students more readily understand.

3. Students may have no interest in the subject matter.

At the outset, convince students that there is a good reason they should be studying and learning about this subject matter. Tell them how knowing this will make a difference in their lives. Be sure to be clear (in your syllabus and on your first day with students) about what students will know and be able to do as a result of this course and why that matters.

Use examples and illustrations which are relevant to your students' lives whenever possible.

Do not overload your students with content. Give them an opportunity to reflect, to apply what they have learned to other situations, to solve a problem and think critically about the material in the course.

4. The instructor has weak and ineffective presentation skills.

Consider being videotaped with a follow-up viewing and consultation with a member of the Teaching Effectiveness Program to assess the strengths and areas of improvement of your presentation style.

Pay attention to your pacing, the use and quality of your voice and gestures, your movement in the room, eye contact with your students, the amount of interaction you have with your audience, the variety of tools you use to present material: video, slides, overheads, visuals, music, storytelling, metaphors and analogies.

Examine the organization of the presentation, the use of multiple examples and illustrations to clarify concepts, how connections are made, the periodic use of internal summaries to help students understand the most important points you are trying to make.

TEP has an excellent video on how to lecture and speak effectively— How to Speak with Patrick Winston from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching Excellence at Harvard. Please contact Georgeanne Cooper ( gcooper@uoregon.edu ) if you are interested in viewing these tapes. They are now streamed on the Teaching Effectiveness Program Hub. If you have a current UO account, you can be added to this site to view several good teaching films.

5. The instructor reads from a scripted lecture with little or no contact with the audience.

Try to work from a good outline (using PowerPoint or Keynote) or present this as an overhead so that students can use it as an outline for your presentation. Make sure you use a 24 pt. type size and a readable font (simple serif fonts are best).

Don't make the entire focus of the class session a lecture. This puts all the pressure on you to perform. Think of ways to work with the material you want your students to learn in a variety of formats--presentation, small group work, individual reflective writing, video clips, slides, or appropriate web sites.

Classroom Etiquette

2008-12-16T14:42:00.000-08:00

Classroom Etiquette: A Guide for the Well-Intentioned Instructor
Alison Bailey and Maura Toro-Morn, Illinois State University

Even the most well-intentioned people make mistakes. As instructors, one of our jobs is to make the classroom a place where all learners feel confident enough to participate. This involves challenging our own assumptions as well as those of our students. One way to do this is to be aware of subtle behaviors that make some students feel unwelcome or excluded. Keep the following in mind when you interact with students.

1. Everyone has race, ethnicity, gender and nationality. Hillary Clinton is just as ethnic as Maya Angelou. To think of persons who are not of European descent as exotic or ethnic reinforces the idea that whites are the norm and all others are defined in comparison to this standard.
2. Don't mention a student's race unless it is relevant to what you're talking about. Unless you are making a point in which race is relevant, think about whether or not racially labeling is necessary.
3. Don't ask African-American, Latina/o, Jewish, Gay/Lesbian, Italian-American etc. students to speak for the people of their race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or nationality. No one wants the responsibility of having what they say being taken to be representative of the entire race, religion, or ethnic group. Students may also be uncomfortable having to defend their race, class, or sexual orientation.
4. Don't assume racial-ethnic students know their history. You wouldn't call on a white woman and ask her to tell you about Susan B. Anthony because she is a white woman. Don't assume that Black students would know biographical information about Malcolm X. (It does not follow that racial-ethnic students are not knowledgeable about their own lives and conditions. Instructors should not try to speak for them on these grounds).
5. Don't ask students of color to educate the class on racism. Don't ask women to educate the class on sexism. Don't ask gay/lesbian or bi-sexual students to educate straight students on homophobia, unless they volunteer, or unless you know the student well enough to ask them. These are everyone's issues.
6. Avoid stereotypes in hypothetical examples, unless you make it clear that you are using this example as a pedagogical tool. Not all African-Americans are on welfare, live in Ghettos, or work in the service industries. Not all Arabs are terrorists. Not all Doctors are "he". Not all single parents are "she." Not all Latinas/os speak Spanish. Not all whites are privileged or rich. HIV and AIDS are not confined to the gay/lesbian community.
7. Learn student's names and how to pronounce them. Don't Anglicize names unless the student does also. You might ask students if they Anglicize their name.
8. Keep your audience in mind when preparing lectures and assignments. Don't assume that you will be speaking to a homogeneous group of people. Not all students live in dorms, are supported by their parents , or own computers. Some students work, some have children, some come from single parent households, and some commute. Don't assume that a student's college experience is a reflection of your own. Check your assumptions about students. You may want to consider this when you plan projects or assign extra credit.
9. Be aware of non-verbal behavior between students and yourself. Are you calling on men more than women? Do you/other students tune out, or talk when students of color/returning students speak? Who is talking in the class? Do you feel that students silence themselves in your class? Are students rolling their eyes when one of their classmates speaks? Failure to address these behaviors contributes to a chilly classroom climate for some students.
10. Don't let racist, sexist, or homophobic language and comments in the class discussion or essays go unnoticed. Do comments of students have racist/sexist/homophobic undertones? Ask students what evidence they have for their beliefs and to question their presumptions. No name calling.
11. If you classes are small, spread your eye contact around At the same time, don't just address Black students during discussion about slavery or civil rights. Don't focus on the Jewish students if you are speaking about the Holocaust or Pogroms. Don't address comments on reproductive rights and sexual harassment only to women. Don't address questions of immigration to Latinos, Haitians, etc.
12. People are not hermaphrodites. Individuals are not he/she. Vary your examples using "he" and "she". If sex/gender is ambiguous, then use the plural.
13. When possible integrate questions of difference into your course content and class discussions. This does not mean adding a few authors of color, or women writers/scientists. Putting issues of diversity in separate units on the syllabus sends a message to students that issues of race, class, and sex separable from the main course content and have no place in discussions of the American Revolution, moral theory, Realist paintings, or scientific revolutions. If possible try to integrate issues of diversity into your main course content.
14. If you take attendance don't just notice that the students with disabilities, or students of color are absent.
15. Make it clear that your classroom is a place where all voices can be heard and that you make mistakes too.

Maintaining the Jazz in Teaching

2008-11-04T08:59:00.000-08:00

from Keeping it Fresh - Maintaining the Jazz in Teaching: A Panel Discussion with Stanford Faculty

Estelle Freedman, the Edgar E. Robinson Professor in United States History

How do you find renewal? "I got a curriculum grant to internationalize the course. Graduate students working with me, feeding me articles to read from around the world for every subject I did. It changed my teaching, it changed my scholarship.

Pedagogy: In some classes, I say one change a year only. There was the year I learned PowerPoint. This is the year I am doing iTunes. I am bringing music into my lectures. It kept me fresh, listening to music and trying to relate it to themes of my class . . . . Or this could be the year I am breaking open lecture into discussion at least one day a week.

Lying fallow: You taught [a course] enough times, give it a sabbatical, teach it every other year. . . . After the end of a lecture class, I have a file I open called 'thoughts.' I just debrief from the quarter, a stream of consciousness, the good, the bad, the ugly, and I read these thoughts when I start planning the next time."

How has the experience with your students changed your teaching? "I take course evaluations very seriously. I pore over them. . . . I hand out my own [questionnaire] and have students check off on the readings. I ask specific questions to help me rethink the class next time. . . . On the last day of class, I do 'the-most-important-thing-I-learned exercise.' I tell them: 'No name on the papers. This is not an assignment that is graded. Take time to write a paragraph on each question.' I read those not just when the class is over, but before I teach it the next time."

What resources do you seek out? "A short one is Rebekka Nathan's mind-blowing book My Freshman Year. An anthropologist, who goes native under a pseudonym, passes as a returning student and lives in a dorm as a freshman of the public university where she teaches. What I learned is how irrelevant we are to our students.
"Another resource has been the biggest renewal piece of my career. I hope others can learn from it as a model. When I started teaching US women's history over thirty years ago, it was the beginning of a new field. A colleague at UCLA got a grant from the NEH to have a curriculum conference for those of us teaching this new field. In 1978, 15 of us went to UCLA for a one-time, one-day teaching workshop-and we have been meeting for thirty years ever since. . . . We created a network and perpetuated this group that has now a cohort of 25 people. Every year, we volunteer to facilitate part of the day on a topic that we picked the year before and spend a whole day talking about how to revise our teaching. It was out of that workshop that my freshmen seminar emerged one day.

How to Avoid Stage Fright

2008-10-27T12:31:00.000-07:00

How can I avoid stage fright?

* Be well prepared! Have a comprehensive lesson plan with alternative back-up activities in case you finish early or some part of your plan does not go as you expected. Don't just wing it. This is not fair to your students. They have paid dearly for your time and expertise.

* If you are a GTF assisting a professor, present yourself as an experienced student rather than a teacher. You have majored in this discipline, attended the lectures, taken the tests, and written the papers. You are the primary conduit between the instructor and your students. You are there to facilitate their understanding of the material and to help answer their questions. You are not, in most cases, a content expert; you won't know the answer to every question your students ask. With your help, however, they can find those answers.

*Write your agenda for the class on the board to help you track what needs to be covered for the period. This way you are free to move around the room.

* Think in terms of communication rather than performance. Your students are not theater critics waiting for you to flub a line. They're probably more empathetic than judgmental, and if you take a moment here and there to refer to your notes, or back up and explain a previous point, you'll enhance the clarity of your presentation.

* The longer you talk, the more your nervousness will subside. Pay attention to the process: I'm better already. . . better yet. . . still better.

* Speak to one person in the classroom at a time. Make eye contact. Try smiling!

* Take it slow. Pause and give people time to catch up with you; they're working as hard as you are.

* Consider going through a practice run with a staff member in the Teaching Effectiveness Program. We can give you valuable feedback and suggestions on lesson plans, good icebreakers, lecturing techniques and overall course organization.

- University of Oregon, Teaching Effectiveness Program

Cooperative Learning Groups

2008-08-25T11:48:00.000-07:00

From the Teaching Effectiveness Program, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Many teachers will occasionally break their classes into small groups for discussions, but only a few use the technique as a fundamental teaching tool. A class can be divided into learning teams that are periodically given instructional tasks to complete, either in or out of class. Research has shown that, with careful planning, this technique increases the efficiency and effectiveness of learning.

Groups of six or seven work best because this size is small enough for everyone to participate in problem-solving or debate, yet large enough for a spectrum of views to be represented. To work successfully, groups require a wide variety of viewpoints and intellectual skills, so it is important to make them as heterogeneous as possible. The individual data cards that you collect on the first day of class can yield important information about your students' backgrounds and preparation and make it easier to create heterogeneous groups. A professor of political science who uses long-term groups in his class tries to insure that each team has someone with a math background and at least one political science major. He creates groups with maximum diversity with respect to major, gender, race, and other characteristics.

The tasks that you assign for group work should challenge students to analyze phenomena, solve problems, apply theories, exercise judgment, or perform some combination of these activities. Clearly-written instructions are vital to the success of this kind of exercise, which means that the teacher must analyze the task carefully and break it down into its component parts. During the exercise, the teacher moves from group to group, answering questions, clarifying instructions, giving advice, and observing the group process. Group exercises can be designed for 15 to 20-minute periods, and need not consume an entire period.

In a well-designed group activity, there should be little need for direct intervention by the teacher. It is true that many teachers are uncomfortable with the loss of direct control that accompanies small-group work, but remember that you still govern the process and outcome by the instructions you provide for the groups. Small groups can be used with a variety of other techniques, such as peer teaching, case studies, and simulations; imaginative teachers are discovering new ways to use the technique every day. At UNC, many English composition instructors have successfully structured their courses around cooperative learning groups, and teachers in some high schools are using the technique in math classes.

How to give lectures more impact

2008-08-19T08:49:00.000-07:00

From the UO Teaching Effectiveness website:

* Watch Susan Glaser's video on "Effective Lecturing." It is available through TEP, and you can arrange to check it out via email.

* Use visual images to describe your point -- a striking demonstration concerning physics or a visual analogy to describe a poem.

* Use language that appeals to the senses: "This smells to me like the Pythagorean Theorem!"

* Use many examples; they make lectures come alive. A vivid example has far more impact than accumulated data.
For example: no matter what Consumer Reports tells you, if your uncle owns a lemon of a Volvo, you will be wary of Volvos for a long time.

* Figure out ways to make lectures interactive. Get students bumping into each other to simulate particle diffusion, or have half of the class argue for an issue and the other half argue against it.

* If there are a few points in the lecture that are crucial to understanding the big picture, figure out how you are going to phrase the key concepts of an entire lecture. It might not be necessary to memorize the words you will use, but get familiar with the approach you will take.

* Begin with a simple story related to the topic of the day.

* Have outlines of your lecture available for your students either online or on reserve in the library. These do not need to be extensive, but should give students the structure of what you are going to present.

Increasing Student Participation

2008-08-04T14:58:00.000-07:00

From the hard copy book Tools for Teaching by Barbara Gross Davis, University of California, Berkeley; Jossey-Bass Publishers: San Francisco, 1993.

Make certain each student has an opportunity to talk in class during the first two or three weeks. The longer a student goes without speaking in class, the more difficult it will be for him or her to contribute. Devise small group or pair work early in the term so that all students can participate and hear their own voices in nonthreatening circumstances.

Plan an icebreaker activity early in the semester. For example, a professor teaching plant domestication in cultural geography asks students to bring to class a fruit or vegetable from another culture or region. The discussion focuses on the countries of origin and the relationship between food and culture. At the end of class students eat what they brought. See "The First Day of Class" for other suggestions.

Ask students to identify characteristics of an effective discussion. Ask students individually or in small groups to recall discussions and seminars in which they have participated and to list the characteristics of those that wereworthwhile. Then ask students to list the characteristics of poor discussions. Write the items on the board, tallying those items mentioned by more than one student or group. With the entire class, explore ways in which class members can maximize those aspects that make for a good discussion and minimize those aspects that make for a poor discussion.

Periodically divide students into small groups. Students find it easier to speak to groups of three or four than to an entire class. Divide students into small groups, have them discuss a question or issue for five or ten minutes, and then return to a plenary format. Choose topics that are focused and straightforward: "What are the two most important characteristics of goal-free evaluation?" or "Why did the experiment fail?" Have each group report orally and record the results on the board. Once students have spoken in small groups, they may be less reluctant to speak to the class as a whole.

Assign roles to students. Ask two or three students to lead a discussion session sometime during the term. Meet with the student discussion leaders beforehand to go over their questions and proposed format. Have the leaders distribute three to six discussion questions to the class a week before the discussion. During class the leaders assume responsibility for generating and facilitating the discussion. For discussions you lead, assign one or two students per session to be observers responsible for commenting on the discussion. Other student roles include periodic summarizer (to summarize the main substantive points two or three times during the session), recorder (to serve as the group's memory), timekeeper (to keep the class on schedule), and designated first speaker. (Source: Hyman, 1980)

Use poker chips or "comment cards" to encourage discussion. One faculty member distributes three poker chips to each student in her class. Each time a student speaks, a chip is turned over to the instructor. Students must spend all their chips by the end of the period. The professor reports that this strategy limits students who dominate the discussion and encourages quiet students to speak up. Another professor hands out a "comment card" each time a student provides a strong response or insightful comment. Students turn back the cards at the end of the period, and the professor notes on the course roster the number of cards each student received. (Source: Sadker and Sadker, 1992)

Use electronic mail to start a discussion. One faculty member in the biological sciences poses a question through electronic mail and asks the students to write in their responses and comments. He then hands out copies of all the responses to initiate the class discussion.

Build rapport with students. Simply saying that you are interested in what your students think and that you value their opinions may not be enough. In addition, comment positively about a student's contribution and reinforce good points by paraphrasing or summarizing them. If a student makes a good observation that is ignored by the class, point this out: "Thank you, Steve. Karen also raised that issue earlier, but we didn't pick up on it. Perhaps now is the time to address it. Thank you for your patience, Karen" (Tiberius, 1990). Clarke (1988) suggests tagging important assertions or questions with the student's name: the Amy argument or the Haruko hypothesis. Tiberius (1990) warns against overdoing this, however, because a class may get tired of being reminded that they are discussing so-and-so's point.

Bring students' outside comments into class. Talk to students during office hours, in hallways, and around campus. If they make a good comment, check with them first to see whether they are willing to raise the idea in class, then say: "Jana, you were saying something about that in the hall yesterday Would you repeat it for the rest of the class."

Use nonverbal cues to encourage participation. For example, smile expectantly and nod as students talk. Maintain eye contact with students. Look relaxed and interested.

Draw all students into the discussion. You can involve more students by asking whether they agree with what has just been said or whether someone can provide another example to support or contradict a point: "How do the rest of you feel about that?" or "Does anyone who hasn't spoken care to comment on the plans for People's Park?" Moreover, if you move away from – rather than toward – a student who makes a comment, the student will speak up and outward, drawing everyone into the conversation. The comment will be "on the floor," open for students to respond to.

Give quiet students special encouragement. Quiet students are not necessarily uninvolved, so avoid excessive efforts to draw them out. Some quiet students, though, are just waiting for a nonthreatening opportunity to speak. To help these students, consider the following strategies:

· Arrange small group (two to four students) discussions.

· Pose casual questions that don't call for a detailed correct response:

· "What are some reasons why people may not vote?" or "What do you remember most from the reading?" or "Which of the articles did you find most difficult?" (McKeachie, 1986).

· Assign a small specific task to a quiet student: "Carrie, would you find out for next class session what Chile's GNP was last year?"

· Reward infrequent contributors with a smile.

· Bolster students' self-confidence by writing their comments on the board (Welty, 1989).

· Stand or sit next to someone who has not contributed; your proximity may draw a hesitant student into the discussion.

Discourage students who monopolize the discussion. As reported in "The One or Two Who Talk Too Much" (1988), researchers Karp and Yoels found that in classes with fewer than forty students, four or five students accounted for 75 percent of the total interactions per session. In classes with more than forty students, two or three students accounted for 51 percent of the exchanges. Here are some ways to handle dominating students:

· Break the class into small groups or assign tasks to pairs of students.

· Ask everyone to jot down a response to your question and then choose someone to speak.

· If only the dominant students raise their hand, restate your desire for greater student participation: "I'd like to hear from others in the class."

· Avoid making eye contact with the talkative.

· If one student has been dominating the discussion, ask other students whether they agree or disagree with that student.

· Explain that the discussion has become too one-sided and ask the monopolizer to help by remaining silent: "Larry, since we must move on, would you briefly summarize your remarks, and then we'll hear the reactions of other group members."

· Assign a specific role to the dominant student that limits participation (for example, periodic summarizer).

· Acknowledge the time constraints: "Jon, I notice that our time is running out. Let's set a thirty-second limit on everybody's comments from now on."

· If the monopolizer is a serious problem, speak to him or her after class or during office hours. Tell the student that you value his or her participation and wish more students contributed. If this student's comments are good, say so; but point out that learning results from give-and-take and that everyone benefits from hearing a range of opinions and views.

Tactfully correct wrong answers. Any type of put-down or disapproval will inhibit students from speaking up and from learning. Say something positive about those aspects of the response that are insightful or creative and point out those aspects that are off base. Provide hints, suggestions, or follow-up questions that will enable students to understand and correct their own errors. Billson (1986) suggests prompts such as "Good–now let's take. it a step further"; "Keep going"; "Not quite, but keep thinking about it."

Reward but do not grade student participation. Some faculty members assign grades based on participation or reward student participation with bonus points when assigning final grades. Melvin (1988) describes a grading scheme based on peer and professor evaluation: Students are asked to rate the class participation of each of their classmates as high, medium, or low If the median peer rating is higher than the instructor's rating of that student, the two ratings are averaged. If the peer rating is lower, the student receives the instructor's rating. Other faculty members believe that grading based on participation is inappropriate, that is, subjective and not defensible if challenged. They also note that such a policy may discourage free and open discussion, making students hesitant to talk for fear of revealing their ignorance or being perceived as trying to gain grade points. In addition, faculty argue, thoughtful silence is not unproductive, and shy students should not be placed at a disadvantage simply because they are shy.

There are means other than grades to encourage and reward participation: verbal praise of good points, acknowledgment of valued contributions, or even written notes to students who have added significantly to the discussion. One faculty member uses lottery tickets to recognize excellent student responses or questions when they occur. He doesn't announce this in advance but distributes the first ticket as a surprise. Tickets can be given to individuals or to small groups. Over the term, he may hand out fifteen to twenty lottery tickets. In a small class, you maybe able to keep notes on students' participation and devote some office hours to helping students develop their skills in presenting their points of view and listening to their classmates (Hertenstein, 1991).

Teaching with Clickers

2008-06-30T14:23:00.000-07:00

What Do Students Appreciate Most about Clickers?

In a class of several hundred students, it is virtually impossible for each student to participate and interact with the professor. I like the

Quizdom system because it allows each student to actively participate and thus gauge their comprehension.

They allow me to interact with the material and make sure that I understand the lecture. They force me to apply what I've learned, also

ensuring that I will be better able to remember it in the future.

Using the clicker gives me a chance to think about what I'm actually writing down in my notes, rather than just having a collection of

incomprehensible formulas scattered through my notes.

Sample of student survey responses (Zhu, Bierwert, & Bayer, 2006, 2007)

What Is a Clicker?

A clicker system consists of three components:

1) clickers: wireless handheld transmitters that resemble small, TV remote controls;

2) receiver: a transportable device that receives signals from the clickers; and

3) software: an application installed on the instructor's computer to record, display, and manage student responses and data.

Although radio frequency transmission seems to have become the standard for now (Duncan, 2006), infrared transmission is also still in use. The design of clicker pads varies widely, and the different clicker systems -Classroom Performance System (CPS), Audience Response System, Qwizdom, TurningPoint, H-ITT, Classtalk - are incompatible.

How Are Faculty Using Clickers in the Classroom?

Since the 1980s, the use of clickers has proliferated on college campuses. Faculty from various disciplines such as biology, chemistry, history, mathematics, political science, law and psychology have introduced clicker systems into their classrooms. Faculty use clickers for various purposes depending on their course goals and learning objectives. The most common uses of clickers include the following:

Assessing students' prior knowledge and identifying misconceptions before introducing a new subject

Prior knowledge is necessary for learning but can be problematic if it is not accurate or sufficient. It is a good practice for faculty to assess students' prior knowledge of a subject and identify common misconceptions in order to find an appropriate entry point for introducing a new topic. By using clicker multiple-choice questions, faculty can quickly gauge students' knowledge level. For instance, in a Fall 2006 Chemistry class at U-M, the professor started each lecture with clicker questions asking students to identify new concepts or distinguish between various new concepts discussed in the assigned readings.

Checking students'understanding of new material

Clicker technology makes it easy for faculty to check students' mastery of lecture content. The immediate display of student responses enables faculty and students to see how well students understand the lecture. As a result, faculty can decide whether there is a need for further instruction or supplementary materials. By seeing peers' responses, students can gauge how well they are doing in relation to others in the class and determine which topics they need to review or bring to office hours.

Using Peer Instruction and other active learning strategies

Peer Instruction (Mazur, 1997) and Think-Pair-Share (Lyman, 1981) are cooperative learning strategies that faculty often use to probe students'understanding of lecture content and encourage them to discuss, debate, and defend their answers during lecture. The strategy entails posing a question to students, giving them time to think and discuss their responses with a partner, and then describing the results to the whole class.

Clicker technology makes the use of these strategies feasible and manageable, even for large classes. For example, the instructor will plan for each lecture several concept questions that focus more on the analysis and evaluation of information than simple recall, rote memorization, or calculation. Students are asked to share and discuss their responses with partners. Some faculty ask students to respond twice to difficult questions, once right after they read the question and then again after they talk to their partners. The faculty member then reviews and explains students' different responses, helping them clear up their misconceptions.

Research in physics (Crouch & Mazur, 2001) shows that students' cognitive gains from peer instruction are significant: students' scores on tests measuring conceptual understanding improved dramatically; their performance on traditional quantitative problems improved as well.

Starting class discussion on difficult topics

The anonymity of responses facilitated by the clicker technology allows faculty to initiate class discussion and debate on sensitive topics that might otherwise be difficult to explore. For example, questions on controversial issues in a political science course can sometimes be met with absolute silence (Abrahamson, 1999), but the use of clickers can help change classroom dynamics. Faculty can start the class lecture or discussion by posing controversial questions and offering "common-sense" multiple-choice responses. Students' responses, and their questions about their peers' responses, can provide an opening for class discussion. When students recognize their own opinions and co-direct a class discussion, they may feel a greater sense of ownership over the lecture and discussion. As a result, they will be more engaged in and responsible for their own learning. Also, instead of drawing conclusions from the most vocal students, the faculty member receives

a far more accurate overview of opinions from the entire class. Most important, the anonymous feature of the clicker system ensures that viewpoints that might not otherwise be expressed during class discussion are given a voice.

Administering tests and quizzes during lecture

The relative ease of managing students' responses has made the clicker system a helpful device for testing and grading during lecture. Features such as automatic scoring and record-keeping for each student enable faculty to administer all sorts of tests and quizzes in large lecture halls. For example, in one physics class at U-M, students' responses to questions posed during lecture are scored. Students who answer the questions correctly earn points that count toward a small percentage of the course grade (allocating too many points to a clicker quiz can increase the likelihood of cheating). Moreover, with instant feedback from students, faculty can adjust the pace of a lecture and the amount of content presented, assist students in identifying their knowledge deficiency, help students re- evaluate their study strategies, and determine what additional resources they might need to provide.

Gathering feedback on teaching

With clicker technology, faculty can gather anonymous feedback on their own teaching by asking students to respond to questions regarding the lecture, class discussion, homework assignments, group activities, or the overall learning experience in the course. If used early in the term, faculty can make changes to the class that benefit students before the end of the term.

Recording class attendance and participation

Taking attendance in a large lecture course is usually daunting, if not impossible. But with a system that recognizes each student, it is feasible and convenient for faculty to take student attendance in a large lecture. For example, students' responses to questions asked at the beginning of the lecture often serve as a record of their attendance. The instructor can easily run reports on student responses and find out who is present or absent from the class.

Admittedly, faculty hold different views on student class attendance. Some firmly believe that being in class and listening to a lecture is an integral part of learning, making class attendance a must; others think it is not essential for learning and it can be left to the students to decide. Similarly, student opinions about mandatory class attendance vary. Some U-M students surveyed in 2006 and 2007 responded negatively when clickers were used only to check class attendance (Zhu, Bierwert, & Bayer).

There are many other creative ways clickers are being used in classrooms. Draper, Cargill, and Cutts (2002) list three: Students can use them to give anonymous feedback on their peers'class presentations by responding to a brief post-presentation survey. Faculty can create a sense of community and group awareness by clustering people's hobbies, habits, and preferences through student responses to anonymous surveys. Faculty may also use clickers for psychological experiments. Kam & Sommer (2006) note the use of clickers for campaign simulation and polling research, as well as the technology's ability to monitor and facilitate individual and group games. In summary, the only limitation on innovative applications of clickers is the creativity of the instructor.

Online Tutorial for Designing Effective and Innovative Courses

2008-06-11T07:27:00.000-07:00

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Online Tutorial for Designing Effective and Innovative Courses

Is it time to really shake the tree and do something about one of your courses? Do you have a great idea for an innovative course but aren't quite sure where to start in designing it? If so, you might try using the following online tutorial designed to provide practical and effective help for faculty members interested in designing or redesigning a course:

http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/coursedesign/tutorial/index.html

This tutorial is an on-line version of a face-to-face course design workshop developed and taught to literally hundreds of undergraduate faculty in a variety of disciplines for over 12 years by Barbara Tewksbury (Hamilton College) and Heather Macdonald (College of William and Mary). While the workshop was originally designed for geoscience faculty, the tutorial provides examples from other disciplines, including those of you outside the sciences, and offers an easy-to-apply strategy for designing courses in any discipline. This tutorial is designed to give you a way to get your arms around what is typically a daunting task and will guide you through a practical, effective strategy for designing or redesigning an effective and innovative course.

Overall philosophy

We believe that a course should do more than provide students with a strong background of knowledge in a field. We believe that a course should enable students to use their strong backgrounds to solve problems, and that a truly valuable course should focus beyond the final exam to add to students' future lives, abilities and skill sets and prepare students to think for themselves in the discipline after the course is over. Designing such a course is a challenge and involves providing not only opportunities for students to master content but also opportunities for students to practice thinking for themselves in the discipline so that they will be prepared to do so after the course is over.

Why use our tutorial?

This tutorial provides a pathway through what can look like a big, amorphous, overwhelming task and presents a logical way to proceed from the glimmer of a good idea toward a new course while avoiding too much blundering in the dark. Using this tutorial lets you avoid wasting energy on reinventing the wheel. We provide links to hundreds of activities that can be used either directly or indirectly as templates, plus examples of goals and syllabi that can be used as catalysts for your own work and that were developed by other faculty.

We know that the design strategy in this tutorial works. Workshop participants comment that our course design process helped them to develop rigorous, effective, and innovative courses and to make thoughtful choices about what and how to teach. In a follow-up survey of workshop participants, 90% of respondents followed through to teach the rigorous, goals-based, innovative course that they had begun to develop at the workshop. Furthermore, 80% of respondents found our course design process so useful that they followed it again when designing or redesigning another course.

Who is this tutorial for?

Most of the examples in this tutorial come from undergraduate courses in the geosciences, although some portions have links to examples from undergraduate courses in other disciplines. Despite the focus on geoscience, the process is generic, and we've used simple examples. If you are interested in designing a course outside the geosciences, you should have little trouble using the tutorial.

The tutorial itself

Course context. Teaching a course involves making choices about what an instructor will ask students to do and why. External factors such as course size, context, student demography, and support structure are significant and should influence the choices that need to be made during course design. We begin the tutorial by having you articulate who your students are, what they need during the course, and what they might need in the future.

Setting overarching goals. The heart of the tutorial involves having you set student-focused goals that enable your students, at an appropriate level, to think for themselves in the discipline, not just expose them to what professionals know. You will set goals that focus your course on developing students' abilities to think for themselves and solve problems in the discipline while still addressing mastery of content.

Setting ancillary skills goals. Before proceeding to content and course plan, you will set one or two ancillary skills goals for your students (e.g., improving writing, teamwork, oral presentation).

Choosing content to achieve overarching goals. Every field is awash in more than a semester's worth of content, and every one of us faces decisions about what content to include and what content to omit. You will make decisions about content by considering what general content topics could be used to achieve the overarching goals you have set for your students, rather than by making a laundry list of content that students should be exposed to.

Developing a course plan. A course plan includes not only the goals and the content topics, but also the order of content and concepts in each broad content topic, and how students will receive goal-related practice with increasing independence as they encounter content and concepts. You will choose appropriate classroom, assignment, and assessment strategies that both help students learn effectively and allow you to evaluate whether students have met the goals.

For Faculty Developers

We now have a complete description of how we run our course design workshops, including links to all of the materials we use to run our workshops, a detailed schedule, tips for adapting or adopting our workshop format, and suggestions for how to use our course design tutorial with faculty. You can find these materials on line at

http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/coursedesign/tutorial/for_developers.html

This course design tutorial is part of a larger web collection of professional development resources developed for undergraduate geoscience faculty through the NSF-funded program On the Cutting Edge ( http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/index.html ).

Writing to Learn

2008-05-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

Writing-to-Learn Activities

by Bette LaSere Erickson and Diane W. Strommer

Traditionally, writing assignments assess what students have learned. Writing-to-learn serves a different purpose. In these exercises, students write to and for themselves in order to collect their thoughts and get them down on paper, where they can be examined and revised. Typically, writing-to-learn exercises are short: a few sentences, perhaps a paragraph or two. Although faculty often collect and skim what students have written in order to see what they are thinking, writing-to-learn exercises are usually not graded.

Writing-to-learn assignments, like small group discussion activities, can serve a variety of purposes. Beginning class, for example, by asking students to write a one-paragraph summary of the previous class helps to connect learning. Pausing periodically during lecture or discussion to ask students to summarize the main points helps avoid overloading working memory and keeps students actively involved. To prompt deeper processing of material, stop from time to time during class and ask students to jot down an example from their own experience, write about another context in which the material might apply, describe the way in which they would go about solving a problem, or react to an interpretation or conclusion. (For additional ideas see Bean, 1996; Sorcinelli & Elbow, 1997.)

Similar writing-to-learn assignments encourage more active and thorough reading of assignments outside class. Because paraphrasing is an important step toward processing information deeply, assignments that ask students to write summaries or explanations as if they were writing to a relative or to a friend are good prompts for deeper study. Depending on the nature of the reading, faculty might ask students to write about an experience they have had related to the reading, provide an example not discussed in the reading, imagine how the author might respond to a current event or issue, think of a possible exception to an author's ideas, or write questions they would like to ask the author. The possibilities are many; the idea is to move students beyond verbatim memorization to deeper processing of their reading. Bean (1996) devotes an entire chapter to using writing to help students read difficult texts.

Small group discussions and writing-to-learn activities provide a good beginning repertoire of instructional methods. Simply by changing the tasks and questions, both methods can involve students in practice for a variety of objectives. They are especially potent for encouraging students to process information more deeply. Even a two- or three-minute discussion or writing-to-learn activity engages students in paraphrasing, summarizing, or thinking of other examples. They work in any size class, even very large ones. By alternating these methods or using them in combination, we accommodate both students who learn by talking things through (extraverts) and students who prefer thinking things through before they engage in activity (introverts).

Teaching evening classes and nontraditional students

2008-05-14T10:17:00.000-07:00

Teaching Large Evening Classes

They've been working all day, they're tired, and there are scores of them-how do you reach them all?

By Oscar Wambuguh

High enrollments, conflicting student work schedules, and the sheer convenience of once-a-week classes are pushing many colleges to schedule evening courses. Held from 6 to 9 pm or 7 to 10 pm, these classes at my institution are typically packed, sometimes with more than 150 students in a large lecture theater. How can faculty effectively teach, control, or even simply keep awake the students in such classes, many of whom start their days very early in the morning with family responsibilities?

Evening classes bring special teaching challenges. Evening students tend to interact socially more than day students, necessitating frequent instructor interventions to maintain calm and order, and many come to class overwhelmed, hungry, and tired. In addition, there are the usual challenges: poor lighting conditions in many large lecture theaters; lack of, or poor-quality, audiovisual equipment; and distractions caused by student electronic devices such as cell phones, iPods, or laptops. Under such conditions, even the most ardent instructor can become frustrated.

In my large evening classes, I always have a mix of students, ranging from the highly motivated to the couldn't-care-less types. I teach environmental health classes focusing on attention-catching topics such as global warming and climate change; air pollution; epidemiological issues like SARS and Asian bird flu; toxicology, especially of heavy metals in our water and food; biodiversity loss; and food concerns. Over the years, to enhance student engagement and maintain interest, I have incorporated strategies such as combining audiovisuals (PowerPoint presentations, short video clips, and transparencies) and class discussions and activities. Doing so is challenging in large classes set in "lecture-only" theaters. However, I have found four strategies that maintain student engagement and interest throughout what might otherwise be a long evening.

PowerPoint Presentations

I start my lectures with a two- to three-minute video clip about current course-related issues. Then I lecture using PowerPoint slides for about an hour and a quarter. Although PowerPoint isn't exactly a brand-new technology, it works well for my classes. Many students are relatively fresh at the beginning of class and likely to remain attentive through the whole lecture. I use illustrations and pictures interspersed with text slides as much as possible. I time myself carefully and always stop after seventy-five minutes, after which students take a ten-minute break to recharge for the next session.

Intergroup Questions

Before the first class meeting of a semester, I organize students in groups of eight to ten and post group numbers and the names of group members on a Blackboard site, where students can access them. I end up with fifteen to sixteen groups for a class of 150 students. During the first meeting, as I call students' names, I ask them to move into their groups for a "get-to-know each- other" session and information exchange. To maintain regularity, I ask group members to stay with their groups at the same location in the lecture theater in future meeting sessions. The groups are responsible for generating five short-answer questions (typed, with answers) for each class meeting. Within their groups, students take turns developing questions each week and circulating them among other group members for feedback through Blackboard before class. Once we begin intergroup question time, two groups are chosen to answer two questions asked by each of the other groups.

Here's how it works. When the first session begins, groups 1 and 2 are ready to begin answering questions. The first question comes from group 3, which asks group 1 one of its five short-answer questions. Members take turns each week reading the questions aloud as everyone in the class listens. One member from group 1 (members take turns) responds briefly (taking no more than two minutes total) to the question asked. If I judge that a concept is not clear, I add to the answer given. Then group 3 asks group 2 its next question, after which group 4 asks groups 1 and 2 questions. The process continues for between forty five and sixty minutes until all groups have been reached. Satisfactory answers are given two points each, recorded next to the question asked. Throughout, I maintain order and monitor timing. At the end, I collect all the groups' short-answer questions for grading and record the points earned by the two chosen groups. At the next meeting session, groups 3 and 4 will be the chosen groups, and so on until the last group is reached.

This system works well in a number of ways. It encourages students to read course material ahead of time; helps the instructor cover course content and explain concepts and material that are not clear during the question-and answer session; keeps students motivated and energized by requiring individual responsibility, attention, and group commitment (no one wants to be blamed for letting the group down); encourages active participation among students, allowing them to develop and polish their oral communication skills; gives students a sense of owning the questions and the learning; and creates excitement and a sense of achievement, especially if group members answer their questions correctly.

Article Time

Another part of our evening class deals with current articles in the field. Each group will have had a week to choose and summarize an article from the media (newspapers, newsmagazines, science magazines, journals, or the Internet) dealing with a topic covered by the course. Summaries, which are usually about half-a-page long, must be typed and must include the names of all the students in the group. Group members take turns choosing and summarizing the weekly article on behalf of their group.

During article time, the member of each group who chose and summarized the article stands up and tells the class the title of the article and the reasons why he or she chose it and then reads aloud the typed summary. The groups report in order of their group number, taking about two to three minutes each for a total of forty-five to sixty minutes. Everyone, including the instructor, listens, and the class is free to comment briefly after each article has been read. At the end of the session, the instructor collects the fifteen summaries for grading. This happens each week. Reviewing each article and its summary is quick, taking an average of about ten minutes (a total of just two-and a- half hours a week for the ten instruction weeks of the quarter).

I have found this process beneficial in many ways. It encourages literacy about current events in the field among everyone present, including the instructor; improves student reading and analytical and comprehension skills by requiring students to summarize two-to-three page articles in about half a page; improves students' confidence in their oral and written communication skills while also enhancing those skills; helps keep students engaged and motivated at a late hour of the evening as topics spin from one area to the next; and allows students to appreciate the practicality, complexity, and interdisciplinarity of some of the material covered by the course.

Short Quiz

While it is debatable whether college-level students should be required to physically attend every meeting session, I have made it hard for students to miss class unless something unavoidable happens (like an illness, a baby sitter not showing up, a transportation problem, or a family emergency). In such cases, students must call my voice mail or send me an e-mail and present a note at the next class meeting explaining the reasons for their absence.

What motivates students to be sure to come to my class? During the last ten to fifteen minutes of each evening session, we have an optional extra-credit quiz worth ten to fifteen points. If a student misses class but leaves me a voice or e-mail message and gives me a written note, I prorate his or her points based on a simple ratio of the total points earned for all prior quizzes divided by the total expected, multiplied by the total points for the quiz missed. The quiz, which is multiple choice, is given on a projection screen (eliminating unnecessary copying). Students complete it silently on fifteen- question Scantron forms- machine-readable forms designed for multiple-choice tests-without using class notes or text. I advance the questions on the projection screen as students answer them. I use a $20 sensor that works with PowerPoint and Word, which allows me to advance the questions remotely from anywhere in the room.

All the points students accumulate over the weeks are put into a "point savings account" that students can see on Blackboard. The "fatter" the account gets, the more motivated students become to keep it high. The account can swell to an average of about eighty-five points for most students. But they understand that no matter how many points they "save," their total is prorated so that it does not offset more than 10 percent of the overall course points, usually eight hundred. For example, if a student has accumulated twenty five points before the first midterm, he or she can miss up to twenty-five questions on the exam, which usually has a total of a hundred questions. If by the second midterm, the student has a total point savings of fifty-five, those points can offset the total points missed on the two midterms. Similarly, if by the final, the student has accumulated an overall total savings of eighty-five points, he or she can offset the total points missed on all three exams (subject to the 10 percent cutoff).

The quiz is very popular and has obvious benefits. It allows students to monitor their understanding of the lecture session's material right away; it gives the instructor feedback about the quality of instruction and student understanding; it motivates (or forces) students to stay for the entire class, as the quiz is administered at the very end; it encourages students to pay attention to the material presented (because of the pressure of immediate assessment); it allows the instructor to monitor daily attendance; and it saves the instructor's time, because some of the quiz questions can be rephrased and used on midterms and the final.

In addition, the quizzes encourage students to stay on top of the course material, because they have to review an evening's material ahead of time so that they can fill the "holes" as we discuss the same material in class. This, many students believe, provides an extra edge as they are not encountering this material for the first time before the quiz. Perhaps most important, the points students earn on quizzes give them a sense of hope that they can miss some questions on the midterms or final without penalty. The quizzes also allow them to remain optimistic about the course even after a devastating performance on the first midterm exam. Students quickly forget the optional nature of the quizzes and soon start taking them as a matter of priority and survival (some students who have missed an entire session have shown up the last fifteen minutes of class so as not to miss this quiz!).

During quizzes, the instructor has to remain vigilant, moving around the room to discourage students who whisper to each other, exchange Scantron forms, or check their notes. The instructor must also be sure to collect and secure all Scantron forms before taking time to chat with students after class.

Over the years, I have had positive evaluations about the quizzes. Many students are pleased that they get immediate feedback about their comprehension of course material, allowing them to take advantage of the period in which they can drop the course without penalty. Do the quizzes contribute to grade inflation? Hardly, given the 10 percent cutoff for the number of quiz points counted toward the final course grade and the fact that the questions are not "giveaways"; they are real exam questions, requiring advance preparation, sustained attention, and understanding.

The quizzes do not help all students. I find that some routinely miss class despite the cost to their grades, while some perform consistently on the quizzes. Most students actually look forward to taking the quizzes. On the rare occasions that my schedule doesn't allow me to prepare a quiz by the end of a class meeting, I can see disappointment on most students' faces. They consider they have been "robbed" of the opportunity to accumulate point savings and improve their grades.

Today, with an increasing number of nontraditional students returning to school, we are challenged to develop creative and innovative ways to make our classes work for them and to make our course material relevant to their daily lives. Evening classes, which afford these students flexibility and convenience, are one way to meet their needs, and I hope my experience with evening classes will help others find ways to make them work for this diverse and dedicated group of students.

12 Essentials for Success: Competencies employers seek in college graduates

2008-04-07T12:11:00.000-07:00

12 Essentials for Success: Competencies employers seek in college graduates
http://careernetwork.msu.edu/pdf/Competencies.pdf
From the Career Services Network at Michigan State University.

Students often want and need ways that they will be able to “use” what they have learned in courses. The competencies outlined in this publication are not new but are the kinds of skills just about any course can enhance. (Note: the actual PDF is beautifully done and makes a fine resource.)

Working in a Diverse Environment
Learning from people who are different from you—and recognizing your commonalities—is an important part of your education and essential preparation for the world you will join.

Managing Time and Priorities
Managing how you spend your time, and on what, is essential in today’s world. Learn how to sort priorities so you stay in control of your life.

Acquiring Knowledge
Learning how to learn is just as important as the knowledge itself. No matter what your future holds, you’ll continue to learn every day of your life.

Thinking Critically
Developing solid critical thinking skills means you’ll be confident to handle autonomy, make sound decisions, and find the connection between opportunities you have to learn and how those opportunities will affect your future.

Communicating Effectively
Developing listening, interpreting, and speaking skills is just as important as reading and writing.

Solving Problems
You may only have thought about problem- solving when you’re faced with a crisis. Understand the process and mind-set of successful problem-solving and you’ll more easily handle the bigger challenges that come your way.

Contributing to a Team
In the workplace each person’s contribution is essential to success. Having the ability to work collaboratively with others is vital. This includes identifying individual strengths (yours and others) and harnessing them for the group, building consensus, knowing when to lead and when to follow, and appreciating group dynamics.

Navigating Across Boundaries
Life is filled with boundaries—good and bad. Discover how to avoid the boundaries that become barriers so you don’t hamper the ability to collaborate with other people.

Performing with Integrity
It only takes one bad instance to destroy years of good faith and good relationships. It’s important to develop a code of ethics and principles to guide your life.

Developing Professional Competencies
The end of college is the beginning of a new education. Build on what you already know and keep learning new skills—your job will challenge you to grow and develop in ways you haven’t imagined yet.

Balancing Work and Life
You’ve got a lot to accomplish in limited time. How do you get it all done and still stay sane? The key is maintaining balance among the different parts of your life.

Embracing Change
Just about every aspect of life is in a constant state of change. Sometimes it may seem that no sooner do you get caught up than you have to start all over again. No matter how you feel about change, you have to learn to deal with it.

Great Beginnings: Things to do early on in your class

2008-04-01T09:27:00.000-07:00

Great Beginnings: Things to do early on in your class

http://ctl.stanford.edu/handouts/PDF/great_beginnings.pdf

From the Center for Teaching and Learning at Stanford University

First Impressions

Arrive early and put information on the board

Start class on time

Hand out an informative and user-friendly syllabus (if it’s your own class)

Let your students see the enthusiasm you have for your subject

Building Community

Greet students at the door and chat with students as they arrive

Introduce yourself and your interest in the class

Tell about your current research interests and your own beginnings in the discipline

Take attendance to learn names

Use an icebreaker to help students learn each others’ names

Make collaborative assignments for several students to work on together

Course Logistics

Tell students what will be expected of them with regard to attendance, grading, participation, assignments, and late work policies

Tell students what they can expect of you with regard to office hours, reading drafts, calling on students, accessibility at home

Explain the difference between legitimate collaboration and academic dishonesty

Organize your class and provide structure by posting the day’s “menu” on the board or overhead

Challenging Students

Have students write out their expectations for the course and their own goals for learning

Hit the ground running on the first class with substantial content

Relate course material to students’ interests and experience

Give students two passages of material containing alternative views to compare and contrast

Have students apply subject matter to solve real problems

Ask students to fill in an index card telling you something about their backgrounds

Encouraging Active Learning

Have students write their questions on index cards to be collected and answered the next class

Encourage group work and active discussion to accomplish specific objectives

Put students into pairs or “learning cells” to quiz each other over material for the day

Move around your classroom

Give students a take-home problem relating to the day’s material

Remember the Golden Rules of Teaching:

Be prepared

Be honest

Be creative

Setting Boundaries

2007-11-13T09:02:00.000-08:00

Setting boundaries is a way of protecting yourself from the small percentage of students who will suck up your time and emotional energy.

The 90/10 Ratio of Troublesome Students

In most areas of life the 80/20 rule prevails. This rule reminds us that that 80 percent of life's hassles come from 20 percent of our problems.

However, in the classroom, the 80/20 ratio shifts to 90/10. In other words, when we are teaching, 90 percent of our headaches come from 10 percent of our students. Every semester there are a few needy, or defiant, or obnoxious, or pathetic, or complaining students who cause the vast majority of our problems. Prepare yourself in advance for these difficult students by preparing in advance.

1) Know when and how to refer students to other campus resources .

Be aware of all the helpful campus resources available for problem students. Keep cards with the phone numbers and locations of the resources to hand out when needed. Be ready to refer students who ask you to solve problems beyond your area of expertise or responsibility. These resources include: Counseling and Psychological Services; Health Services; Writing Centers; Academic Services; Learning Disabilities Centers; Deans and Department Chairs. Don't become your students' counselor or writing teacher.

2) Establish clear policies about how you handle email .

Have clear policies for yourself about when and how frequently you will respond to your students' email messages. You would not allow your students to call you at home at 11pm, would you? Then why do you open and respond to their emails late in the evening?

You are not required to be available to students 24/7!

I recommend waiting to read and respond to all student email messages until pre-set email "office hours" - and no more than 2 or 3 times per week. If you can refrain from reading their e-queries, great. If this restraint is impossible for you, then at least keep from answering the messages. Don't train your students to expect email replies from you within minutes or hours. Treat email more like your in-person office hours: a teaching responsibility that is scheduled for specific times of the week. Beware of emails that take a long time to reply to: if a student asks you a question that will take more than 3 minutes to write a response, reply by asking the student to come to your office hours. Decide on your policy regarding email in advance and outline it in the course syllabus. Go over your email policy in the first class and as needed over the course of the semester.

3) Set limits on how much of your time to devote to specific students . All of us have had a few students who became regulars at our office hours, showing up each week with one problem or another. Let these students know that it is unfair to their peers to take so much of your time. Suggest that they find a way to deal with their problems more independently by: seeking out other campus resources; working with other students in the class; or withdrawing from the course. Check with other professors in your department to find out whether they have had problems with the same students - often, particular students become notorious because they wreak havoc in all of their classes. Find out how other professors have dealt with the person who is giving you problems, or how they have handled similar issues.

4) Establish clear and consistent policies on late papers and missed exams.

Talk with other professors in your department about how they handle late and missed assignments. Establish clear and specific policies and state it in your syllabus and early class lectures. Try to avoid becoming the judge of your students excuses. For example, you may want to set a policy that requires a note from health services if students miss exams or deadlines because of illness. If students know about this policy in advance, they can get the required doctor's note and you will never be asked to diagnose flu symptoms again. Beware of making your policies too rigid or punitive: each semester there will be excellent and honest students who face true life crises or serious illnesses and your policies need to account for legitimate excuses in a compassionate and reasonable way.

5) Learn respectful, professional ways of managing student incivilities.

Robert Boice, in his book Advice for New Faculty Members does an excellent job of talking about how to prevent and manage "student incivilities" such as late arrivals to class, obnoxious verbal challenges, etc.,. Many books about teaching give tips for keeping discussions for straying on unproductive tangents and for managing students who talk too much. Develop personal strategies for coping with these common difficulties.

No matter how rude a student is to you, always remain calm and respectful. Growing visibly angry in class will undermine your authority. Never be afraid to give yourself time to think about a situation. When a rude student makes a complaint or a demand in class, avoid giving an answer or making a decision in the heat of the moment. Let's say that several students loudly proclaim that your mid-term was unfair and that the class grade average should be raised significantly. Rather than making a hasty response that you may later regret, say that you'd like time to consider their request carefully. Then get back to the planned class content. Learn to gracefully cut off unproductive class discussions. Never put down or disparage your students. Sarcasm in the classroom will always get you in trouble.

6) Don't over-prepare.

Decide on how much time you should devote to class preparation, keeping in mind your other academic responsibilities and priorities. Then schedule specific hours for preparing lectures and try to keep within your budget. If you consistently find yourself "overspending your budget" for class prep time, then carefully assess the problem. Are you being a perfectionist? No class is ever perfect and no class is superb the first semester it is taught. Realize that you will do well to provide an adequate educational experience the first semester you teach a new class. It takes time to develop an optimum curriculum and teaching methods. Don't expect to be wonderful at first. Allow yourself to teach a "good enough" class.

7) Avoid trying to cover too much.

Most new teachers try to cover about twice as much material as they should. It is much more important to cover the essentials well than to try to squeeze in everything. There are several quick ways of deciding whether you are being overly ambitious in the amount of content you hope to cover. If you consistently run overtime in your class lectures you are trying to cover too much. Students resent teachers who run late. Always try to end five minutes early. Leaving a few minutes at the end of class for questions is an easy way to increase your popularity. If you fall behind on your syllabus then you are trying to cover too much. Don't be afraid to revise your syllabus and cut out sections of material if you find yourself running behind. Go through your notes and cull all but the essential points.

8 ) Request student feedback on a regular basis.
Don't wait until the end of the semester to find out what your students think of you and your class. Instead of relying on final, official evaluation forms, sample your students opinions throughout the semester. There are many ways of getting feedback. Perhaps the easiest is to ask students to write one minute evaluations throughout the semester. Pause during the class, or reserve time at the end of a class, and ask your students to write about what they've learned, or what they think of the particular class, or what they think you are doing well, or how you might improve. There are many benefits of "taking the class temperature" on a regular basis. You'll get many great ideas for improving the course by asking your students for feedback. You'll become more popular because your students will feel like their needs are heard and considered. You'll catch dissatisfactions early and keep small problems from becoming large. You'll get a treasure chest of positive quotes from students that you can use in a teaching portfolio for your tenure review or a job application. You'll find out what the quiet students think - and not allow your course to be hijacked by the loud and demanding minority.

Teaching Early Morning Classes

2007-10-23T04:27:00.000-07:00

Teaching Early Morning Classes

by Robert Sommer, distinguished professor of psychology emeritus at the University of California, Davis

I wasn't unhappy when my summer school class in 2006 was scheduled for 8 AM. As a morning person, the hour was not a problem. I had avoided teaching early morning throughout my academic career because this was prime writing time. My head is clearest early mornings and ideas flow more freely. I'd estimate that over 90% of my writing has been done in the early morning. Because teaching an 8 AM class was a novel experience, I kept detailed notes.

An unforeseen advantage of the early morning class was greater thermal comfort. This geographic area has a Mediterranean climate with mild winters and hot summers. It gets very warm during the day in July and August but cools in the evening. Early mornings are always pleasant. Instructors who teach later in the day, especially in the afternoon, must travel to class and return in intense heat. At 8 AM my classroom was cool, clean, and the air was fresh. Later in the day, instructors faced stuffy rooms, smudged blackboards, chalk dust in the air, and floor litter. Teaching the first period of the day allowed me to come early and set up the A/V equipment without needing to rush the preceding instructor and students out of the room. A disadvantage of an early morning hour was difficulty in recruiting a Reader. Most preferred to come to campus later in the day.

Enrollment was significantly lower than in previous offerings of the same course at later hours. This is a popular class, often oversubscribed. Due to its large size, I relied on multiple-choice examinations scored by Scantron machines. My 8 AM class was under-enrolled with only 50 students, a size that allowed me to make the course more interactive and participatory. I included a required term paper and added essay questions to the examinations. Comparing enrollment to sections of the same class I taught the two previous summers at later hours, enrollment was 32% lower, and attendance on the last day (when the teaching evaluations were handed out, providing an attendance record) was 58% of enrolled students, relative to an average of 72% in the two sections of the course taught later in the day. Overall teaching evaluations for the course and instructor were virtually identical (4.2 average on a 5-point scale) in the 8 AM class and the two previous years when the course was taught at a later hour.

Student numbers in the 8 AM class were even smaller when attendance and punctuality are considered. Although I did not call roll, I counted the number of students in the room when class started and midway through the 2-hour session. Excluding exam days, attendance when the class began averaged 15 students, and midway through the period, averaged 24 students, which represented approximately one-third and one-half the course enrollment respectively. The early birds tended to be the same students every period and I made it a point to know them by name. There was another group of tardy but interested students, of whom I knew a few, and about half the class whom I barely recognized. I should point out that this course is highly structured and transparent, with syllabus, lecture outlines, and previous examinations with answers posted online, and lecture notes from previous classes available through a student-run note-taking service. Based on class evaluations and other indices, I am a good (but not outstanding) instructor who teaches a good course, so I don't take it personally when students skip class and pass examinations by reading the assigned materials and archival notes.

I saw myself as having two classes, one of motivated and interested students who attended lecture and a second class of phantoms who showed up primarily for examinations. For the first hour of the two-hour class, I had essentially a seminar with 15 students, and later in the period, a small class of 24 students. This was a welcome change from the large lecture courses I taught for so many years. Still, I was concerned about the number of students who came late or not at all. My laissez faire side said this was none of my business so long as students passed the examinations, but my values as a college teacher said that students who paid tuition should be attending classes. I could not increase attendance and punctuality through penalties, as these practices are explicitly prohibited by academic senate regulations.

My ambivalence about attendance came into play when I requested summer school teaching for the following year. I was torn between requesting an 8 AM class which would mean smaller enrollment and more personal instruction at the cost of poor punctuality and low attendance. For me to request later teaching hours would require other instructors to teach at 8 AM. The campus has room utilization standards and the registrar will not leave classrooms unoccupied because faculty don't want to teach certain hours. I can choose a class time that most instructors avoid in order to receive its benefits (smaller, more participatory class and greater thermal comfort) and accept its liabilities (lower attendance and increased tardiness) or not request the early morning hour and shift 8 AM teaching to other instructors for whom it might be more of a burden.

Accepting the campus prohibition against penalties for absenteeism, there are measures I can legally take to increase attendance. I could give "snap quizzes," thereby penalizing absentees. I could decrease the availability of course material through other channels (put less material online, deny the student note-taking service permission to cover my class; refuse to make previous exams available). I could deliberately introduce lecture material not available from other sources and increase examination coverage of lecture material. Instead of the existing 50-50 split between lectures and readings on tests, I could announce that exams would be based 75% on lectures.

I suspect that any of these measures would increase attendance, and together would have a significant impact. Yet adopting them diminishes my self-image as a college instructor. My role in the classroom has dual objectives- to teach a subject matter and to develop mature, responsible adults. To reduce the transparency of my course by withholding material seems irresponsible and immature on my part. From the start of my teaching career, I have made previous exams available, encouraged the campus note-taking service to cover my classes, and urged students to buy the lecture notes for classes they miss. I choose a comprehensive textbook and evaluate student response at the end of the semester, so I know it is a "good textbook." The idea of reducing coverage of textbook material to 25% of the exam seems poor pedagogy.

Postscript 2007:

I was asked to teach both summer sessions and requested my two classes at 8 AM. For interested students and for me, this will mean a smaller, more personal class with more frequent opportunities for interaction, greater thermal comfort, ease in setting up A/V equipment, and increased use of essay questions and term projects. The 8 AM time will also be a boon to the Registrar who wants to maintain occupancy standards during non-prime hours, and a favor to colleagues who aren't at their best during early morning hours.

Although I have reservations about capitalizing on student aversion to 8 AM courses in order to secure a smaller, more interactive class, my department and the registrar are happy about my decision since it increases classroom utilization. Yet I feel guilty about pandering to motives that I do not respect and choosing to teach at an hour that I know most student will avoid. This decision means less work for me and no complaints. What else should I want or expect?

Motivating Students to Attend Class

2007-10-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

Motivating Students: Attending Class
from The Center for Teaching Excellence, Kansas University

A study conducted by the Center for Teaching Excellence in Fall 1999 titled, Why Students Do and Do Not Attend Classes, examined the relationship between course characteristics, student characteristics, and the rationale of students for either attending class or not attending class on a daily basis. The study sought to answer the following four questions:

1. How do characteristics of the students relate to their attendance behavior?

2. How do characteristics of the courses in which students are enrolled relate to their attendance behavior?

3. What reasons do students give for their day-to-day attendance decisions?

4. How do these reasons relate to the number of their absences?

Variables assessed included gender, class standing, age, grade point average, employment, residence (either on campus or off), cost of tuition and who was paying it, and the number of credit hours the student was enrolled in. A total of 333 students participated in this study, and they had an average of 3.17 absences per class, with a range from 0 to 12.25 absences. Some of the reasons provided by students for why they attended classes included personal values, obtaining course content, fulfilling grade requirements, factors related to the teacher, and peer influence. Reasons not to attend class included being sick, participating in other school or non-school-related activities, participating in leisure activities, avoiding teacher- or class-related experiences, and having no incentive to attend. Results indicate that students who had higher GPAs had fewer absences than those students who had lower grades. Other student characteristics, such as gender, age, class, residence, method of funding education, or number of credits enrolled in, did not correlate with number of absences.

Students were more likely to attend classes that were taught by a GTA as opposed to those taught by a professor. The main reason cited for attending GTA-taught classes was that “absences above the minimum affect my grade,” and the one of the main reasons cited for not attending professor-taught classes was that “attendance is not taken or does not affect my grade.” Therefore, it appears that whether or not attendance is required significantly predicts whether students attend class or not. Students also said that they were more likely to attend class if the class size was small due to the teacher noticing if they were present, if their presence affected their course grade, and if they had the opportunity to participate in class discussion.

Overall, a combination of teacher and student influences affect class attendance, with a large factor being whether or not a penalty exists for missing class. The study concludes, “If students believe they should attend class, are not sick, not tired from having fun the night before, and like the subject matter, and if teachers notice when students are there, take their attendance into account for the course grade, and provide information students must be in class to get, attendance will be optimal.”

Resources:

Friedman, P., McComb, J. & Rodriquez, F. (1999). Why Students Do and Do Not Attend Class. The Scholarship of Teaching: Classroom Research at KU. Published by the Center for Teaching Excellence.

Lecturing and Presenting

2007-09-24T08:29:00.000-07:00

Lecturing and Presenting

From the Center for Teaching Excellence, Kansas University

William E. Cashin in his Idea Paper titled, “Improving Lectures,” provides several suggestions for effective lecturing and presenting of material. First, the appropriateness of the lecture format is dependent on the goals of the course, and the instructor should evaluate the course aims before determining whether a lecture-style course will most effectively achieve the course goals. The strengths of the lecture are that it “can communicate the intrinsic interest of the subject matter, and it can present the newest developments” (Walker & McKeachie, 1967).

Other strengths of lecture formats include their ability to restructure information into a unique manner, relevant to the course directions. Lectures are also useful in that they provide a large amount of material to many students at the same time. Finally, they can also be used as examples for how professionals approach an intellectual question.

Faculty lecturing:

The negative aspects of lecturing include the lack of feedback that students receive, the presumption that all students are learning the material at the same pace, and the problem that lectures are not as well suited as other teaching methods for higher levels of thinking, such as what is involved in synthesis and application. To overcome these hurdles, Cashin offers several recommendations for increasing the effectiveness of lectures:

*Fit your lecture to your audience, by gathering information about your audience beforehand.

*Prepare an organized outline with 5-9 major points, and decide which minor points you will include. Present this outline at the beginning of class.

*Present multiple sides to an issue, to make your audience aware of the various viewpoints, or to help strengthen an argument you are making.

*Repeat the points you are making in two or three different ways, and stress the points you deem most important.

*Look at your audience, include discussions, and solicit questions.

Another way to enhance your lectures is with effective visuals—using the blackboard, overhead, document camera, or computer. Students’ notes are often an exact copy of what appeared on the visual, with very few additional points or connections. Effective board work highlights and emphasizes the organization required in problem - solving or the evolution of an argument. Remember that even the best students will occasionally lose the thread of a lesson or forget the original objective of a discussion. The visual is their major, and often their only, resource for reentering the lesson unless you are making your presentation available before or after the lecture. Therefore, be organized, use headings, write clearly, and when solving problems on the board, show each step in a logical sequence. If at the end of a lecture, you can stand back, look at the board, and reconstruct the lecture using what is written, then you are developing good board skills.

If you want to encourage higher levels of thinking through lectures, consider this. In the book, What’s the Use of Lectures? Donald A. Bligh addresses how to promote thought using lecture. He recommends the following:

*Make sure the your lectures encourage application and discovery of the material as opposed to only serving as a platform for the presentation of material. In this way, students learn how to use the information provided to analyze novel situations.

*Second, ask questions throughout the lecture, focusing on questions that promote critical thought, not rote memorization.

*In order to assist student thought, provide a visual display of the presented material, include handouts so that students can focus on thought rather than note taking *Recommend that students pre-read the material so that lecture is not their first exposure to it, and watch the speed of your lecture.

Bligh (1974) found that students performed best with thought-provoking questions when the lecture material was presented at a slow speed, as compared to when the lecture was presented at a faster pace, because a slower pace allows students time to think about the material itself.

Resources:

Cashin, W.E. (1985). “Improving Lectures.” Idea Paper No. 14. Kansas State University: Center for Faculty Evaluation & Development.

Bligh, D.A. (2000). What’s the Use of Lectures? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Using Class Time Well: Classroom Interactions

2007-09-18T11:53:00.000-07:00

Using Class Time Well: Classroom Interactions

From the Center for Teaching Excellence, Kansas University

Wilbert McKeachie offers several suggestions for ways to encourage students to be active in classroom interactions. Create an expectation of participation early in the semester, by defining the various facets of the course and explaining why participation is valuable. Understand that boredom, lack of knowledge, passivity, cultural norms, and above all, fear of being embarrassed, may contribute to keeping a student from not talking in class. To reduce a fear of embarrassment, use small groups and help students get to know each other. Ask questions that have no wrong answers to help students get used to participating. Call students by name. Ask students to take a couple minutes to write out answers to questions. A shy person will be more likely to respond to being asked, “What did you write?” Get to know those students who don’t participate in class interactions
so you’ll find any special knowledge they may have; ask them to contribute it at appropriate times.

In some scenarios, students may assume some negative roles. If we deal successfully with these situations, we can preserve a positive classroom environment. If the student assumes the Prisoner role, be clear about the benefits of the course. Ask the whole class to brainstorm 12 reasons why they shouldn’t be there. Review this list with the class, and tell them that you can see why they may not want to be there. Then, promise you’ll do your best to make the course worthwhile, and ask students to meet you halfway. Sometimes asking the student to help (e.g. passing out handouts) to show that you trust them, or engaging in a one-on-one talk, will bring the student around.

If the student assumes the role of the Introvert, use small group projects or employ group-generated questioning. This will give shy students a chance to succeed, and may make them more willing to participate in a large group in the future. This can also be achieved by asking for written responses to a question or problem. Most importantly, allow students to participate at their own comfort level; forcing an introverted student into an uncomfortable situation will probably cause him or her to retreat even further.

Finally, if the student assumes the Domineering role, make sure that you establish ground rules that discourage domination. Use small groups and don’t give the floor to a domineering person; while in these small groups, rotate group membership and leadership. And be proactive about the situation; if you can tell early on that someone will be a monopolizer, speak privately with him or her. Say you’ve noticed that others aren’t participating much and ask for help drawing them out. This gives the student a positive role to play, rather than a negative one.

If a few of your students still refuse to participate in classroom interactions, after you have made numerous efforts to engage them, keep in mind that the majority of your students are engaged. “If some students opt out, don’t let it bother you – it’s their loss, not yours” (Felder & Brent, 2003). Focus on the fact that most of the students are engaged, and move forward.

Resources:

Felder, R.M. & Brent, R. (2003). Learning by doing. Chemical Engineering Education, 37 (4), 282-283.

McKeachie, W.J. (2002). Teaching tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers. 11th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Pike, B. & Arch, D. (1997). Dealing with difficult participants. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

The Important First Day: Starting Well

2007-09-07T14:26:00.000-07:00

The Important First Day: Starting Well

By Delivee L. Wright, Teaching and Learning Center, University of Nebraska

The first day of class is a very important time for faculty to establish a tone for what will happen the rest of the term. It is appropriate that a teacher reflect on just what climate and first impression she/he would like to establish. This article offers some ideas about that all important day.

Reflecting on the first day of class, McKeachie (1986) suggests that "... meeting a group of strangers who will affect your well being, is at the same time exciting and anxiety producing for both students and teacher." Research on the first day of class by Knefelkamp showed there was a real desire on the part of both students and teachers for connectedness, but neither group realized the other shared that desire. If the participants on both sides don't understand how to develop their relationships, learning will be diminished. If you have experienced some anxiety about this meeting, planning some specific steps can not only reduce that feeling, but can get students to share in the sense of purpose you hold for the class.

Some faculty avoid the "first day anxiety" by handing out a syllabus, giving an assignment, and dismissing the class. This only postpones the inevitable. It also gives students a sense that class time is not too important. Most of all, it loses the opportunity to use the heightened excitement and anticipation that students bring that day; the chance to direct that excitement toward enthusiasm for the class.

What can you do to establish a positive beginning? How can you make sure student's attitudes toward you, the course, and the subject matter will support a constructive learning climate for the term? The following ideas have been gathered to stimulate your thoughts about these questions.

http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/dayone.htm

Audiobooks Aid Challenged Readers

2007-08-28T11:39:00.000-07:00

I read this encouraging article in the April/May 2007 issue of AudioFile Magazine. I am an avid audiobook reader on my daily commute and I was gratified to see that educators are finding that the introduction of audiobooks to challenged readers has demonstrated significant improvements in oral fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

An excerpt from Listen! It's Good for Kids by Susie Wilde:

"Children today are bombarded with visual images and may not have many opportunities to stimulate their auditory imagination. During Dr. Teri Lesesne's 2006 presentation on audiobooks for the American Library Association, she noted several benefits audiobooks offer such young listeners. 'Audiobooks can help start the movie in the head', she says, 'and allow children to form their own visual images'.

They also serve as models for oral fluency, building both vocabulary and comprehension. 'Kids often lack verbal endurance because they don't read enough. Listening to audio helps develop verbal endurance,' says Lesesne.

Series are a wise way to start for children listening to their first novels, because exposure to one often leaves a newly minted reader asking for more. Choose series that have stood the test of time, such as Beverly Cleary's Henry books or Jeff Brown's Flat Stanley series. Familiarity with a series often gives readers courage to branch out to new stories and unfamiliar characters.

In classrooms across America, teachers worry about ways to develop cultural literacy. Audiobooks help bridge cultural gaps and educate children about their own history. Parents and teachers can use them as departure for discussion. A great example is Blues Journey by Walter Dean and Christopher Myers, a father and son who share a love of blues that they express in pictures and words. Live Oak Media has paired the book with a CD read by Richard Allen that accents the rhythms and allows plenty of room to introduce blues recordings or to talk about how poverty, chain gangs, and persecution gave voice to some of the greatest blues music."

The article goes on to discuss the impact of audiobooks on ESL students:

"Those teaching ESL find that audio helps students pick up cues about phrasing, pronunciation, and intonation. Listening also improves concentration in ADD and ADHD children and can be of significant help to any learner who processes information more easily through listening than reading print. Students with learning disabilities benefit from the support of multi-sensory experience that provides auditory cues to aid in decoding written words."

(Click Chart to Zoom In)

Using Class Time Well: Active Learning

2007-08-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

Using Class Time Well: Active Learning

from the Center for Teaching Excellence, Kansas University

Teaching is developmental rather than directive or presentational.

Active learning involves the implementation of “learning experiences in which the students are thinking about the subject matter” (McKeachie, 2002). It is based on the premise that students must do more than just listen to fully comprehend new information. They must read, write, discuss, and problem solve. By employing active learning in your classes, you will increase the effectiveness of your teaching and your students’ learning.

Reading

One suggestion for encouraging active learning is the use of the Treasure Hunt technique (Magnan, 1990). This strategy is based on the premise that if you’ve assigned a reading, there must be something valuable for the students in it. Choose several pages or sections, and then ask students to find the most important point, idea, or argument and write it down, along with a sentence or two justifying their selection. If you choose assigned passages well, you can increase understanding and participation immediately.

Writing

John C. Bean suggests several ways to incorporate writing into a class, including:

*Writing at the beginning of class to probe a subject: Ask students to write short answers to a question that reviews previous material or stimulates interest in what’s coming.

*Writing during class to refocus a lagging discussion or cool off a heated one: When students run out of things to say, or when a discussion gets too hot, ask students to write for a few minutes.

*Writing at the end of class to sum up a lecture or discussion: Give students a few minutes to sum up the day’s lecture or discussion and to prepare questions to ask at the start of the next class.

Discussing

While the most common approach to encouraging active learning in the classroom is the use of discussion, not all discussions are created equal, and there are other methods in which to achieve the difficult task of drawing students into lectures, discussions, and readings. One suggestion for engaging students in active learning is using the Thumb’s Up technique (Ukens, 2000). To implement this technique, ask students to form groups of six to ten people, with each group sitting in a circle. Participants will discuss topics within their groups. To keep everyone involved, each person is to extend his or her fist toward the middle of the circle. Once discussion begins, each member is to share, in any order, one idea or piece of information on the topic. As each person shares, his or her thumb will go up. A person may not share again until all thumbs are up. Then, members can begin again and continue the process. After about five minutes, stop the discussion. If you wish, repeat with new topics.

Another method to employ asks the students to frame the discussion, or determine the direction of the discussion. Ask students to identify one question from their readings that they would like to have answered in class. Ask them to share their question with three peers, and then have the group pick one of the three questions to present to the instructor. Allow each group to ask its question.

Problem-Solving

Invite students to use Think-Pair-Share: To help them better understand a lecture, stop for a moment. Ask students to think about a question or problem that relates to the lecture material, turn to a peer, and explain their answer or solution. This is a great way to apply and reinforce key ideas.

Resources:

Bean, J.C. (1996). Engaging Ideas: The professor’s guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

McKeachie, W.J. (2002). McKeachie’s Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers. 11th Ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Magnan, R., Ed. (1990). 147 Practical Tips for Teaching Professors. Madison: Magna.

Stocking, S.H. et al. (1998). More quick hits. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press

Preparing a Course: First Day of Class

2007-08-13T09:12:00.000-07:00

Preparing a Course: First Day of Class

From the Center for Teaching Excellence, Kansas University

We all have experienced some anxiety about the first meeting of class. Some faculty avoid “first day anxiety” by handing out a syllabus, giving an assignment, and dismissing the class. This only postpones the inevitable. It also gives students the sense that class time is not too important. Most of all, it fails to take advantage of the opportunity to use the heightened excitement and anticipation that students bring to the first day, the chance to direct that excitement toward enthusiasm for the class.

On the first day, make sure that you arrive at the classroom early, to ensure that the equipment is working properly and to engage in small talk with students. Greet students at the door as they enter the class. When students enter your classroom, they have any number of things on their mind. To help them focus, many teachers use a hook, or a three- to five-minute activity to engage students at the beginning of class. (Some instructors use hooks at the start of every class throughout the semester.) Ideas for hooks include playing music and asking students to think about how the lyrics relate to a class topic, presenting a question to the class to begin discussion, giving a brief demonstration of a principle you will be discussing that day, or projecting a photograph, cartoon, drawing, or chart related to the day’s topic.

Some other recommendations for the first meetings of a course include making sure you start class on time and take attendance. Make note of any absences, and follow up with these students after class by contacting them through phone or e-mail.

In addition, start to learn students’ names. To this end, there are several methods you can use to help learn the names of your students quickly:

*Have students give their name before they speak in class.

*Try to memorize a row of students every class period.

*Have students make name plates with 5” x 8” index cards. Ask students to fold the cards in half and write their names on them in large print. You can collect these name plates and hand them out at the start of every class, which will also serve as a means of taking attendance without using extra class time.

*Use students’ names as often as possible.

*If you’re teaching a large class, divide the entire group into smaller working groups. Give each group a short project, and learn the names of everyone in a particular group. Do this several times throughout the semester to learn each student’s name.

*Ask the students to provide index cards with their name, a photo, and an interesting fact about themselves. You can use these to study their names in between class meetings.

*Be honest with the students and patient with yourself. Your students have to remember the names of only four or five teachers every semester, while you have many more names of students to learn. Even if you call a student by the wrong name, the class will appreciate your efforts to acknowledge them on a personal level.

Other ideas for the early meeting of a course include asking students to write out their expectations for the course, as well as what they hope to learn this semester. Assess the students’ previous knowledge by distributing a pre-test over the material you plan on covering that semester, and provide feedback on their responses as soon as possible. Each day, provide the structure for the day’s material using an outline on the chalkboard, overhead, or PowerPoint slide. This will help students see where the lecture is going, as well as aid the organization of their notes. Use multiple types of media for the presentation of the material, including overheads, films, audiotape, and models or demonstrations.

To aid student participation early in the semester, have students write questions on index cards to be collected and answered during the next class period. Finally, gather student feedback regarding the beginning of the course. Ask the students to provide suggestions regarding ways to improve your teaching and their learning.

Preparing a Course: Building a Syllabus

2007-08-07T13:12:00.000-07:00

Preparing a Course: Building a Syllabus

From the Center for Teaching Excellence, Kansas University

Start with the basic information of the course, including the year and semester of the course, the course title and number, number of credits, and the meeting time/place. Provide your name, office address (and a map if it’s hard to find), and your contact information. Indicate whether students need to make appointments or may just stop in. If you list a home number, be specific about any restrictions for its use. Next, clarify what prerequisites, knowledge, skills, or experience you expect students to have or courses they should have completed. Suggest ways they might refresh skills if they’re uncertain about their readiness.

When discussing the course, outline the course purpose(s); what is the course about and why would students want to learn the material? Outline the three to five general goals or objectives for the course (see Course design for more information), and explain why you’ve arranged topics in a given order and the logic of themes or concepts you’ve selected. When discussing the course format and activities, tell students whether the class involves fieldwork, research projects, lectures, and/or discussion, and indicate which activities are optional, if any.

In regard to the textbooks & readings, include information about why the readings were selected. Show the relationship between the readings and the course objectives. Let students know whether they are required to read before class meetings. Also detail any additional materials or equipment that will be needed.

Specify the nature and format of the assignments, and their deadlines. Give the exam dates and indicate the nature of the tests (essay, short–answer, take–home, other). Explain how the assignments relate to the course objectives. Describe the grading procedures, including the components of the final grade and weights for each component. Explain whether you will grade on a curve or use an absolute scale, if you accept extra credit work, and if any of the grades can be dropped. Also explain any other course requirements, such as study groups or office hour attendance. Clearly state your policies regarding class attendance, late work, missing homework, tests or exams, makeups, extra credit, requesting extensions, reporting illnesses, cheating and plagiarism. You might also list acceptable and unacceptable classroom behavior. Let students know that if they need an accommodation for any type of disability, they should meet with you to discuss what modifications are necessary.

Include a course calendar with the sequence of course topics, readings, and assignments. Exam dates should be firmly fixed, while dates for topics and activities may be tentative. Also list on the course calendar the last day students can withdraw without penalty. Give students a sense of how much preparation and work the course will take.

Finally, a syllabus is a written contract between you and your students. End with a caveat to protect yourself if changes must be made once the course begins; e.g., “The schedule and procedures in this course are subject to change in the event of extenuating circumstances.” For more information, please see Ombud’s Website.

Resources:

Appleby, Drew C. “How to improve your teaching with the course syllabus.” APS Observer, May/June 1994.

Davis, Barbara Gross. Tools for teaching. San Francisco: Jossey–Bass, 1993.

“Syllabus Checklist.” (2002). Teaching Matters, 6 (1), 8.

This material is drawn from Eddy, Judy. (2001). Creating a Syllabus. Handout.

Preparing a Course: Course Design

2007-07-30T12:51:00.000-07:00

Preparing a Course: Course Design
From the Center for Teaching Excellence, Kansas University

Course design involves the planning of curriculum, assessments, and opportunities for learning which attempt to meet to goals of the course and evaluate whether those goals are indeed being met. The designing of a course can be adeptly performed through the use of backwards design, which is based on the principle of working first from the material and concepts you want students to master, in order to plan how you will assess whether this learning has occurred, and this information thus guides which resources and methods of teaching are employed in order to enact learning of this material.

Four questions from Wiggins & McTighe (1998) are suggested as a guide for condensing the course’s material into a few key topics:

1. To what extent does the idea, topic, or process represent a “big idea” having enduring value beyond the classroom?

2. To what extent does the idea, topic, or process reside at the heart of the discipline?

3. To what extent does the idea, topic, or process require uncoverage?

4. To what extent does the idea, topic, or process offer potential for engaging students?

Also consider the goals and characteristics of your future students. Some reasons that students may be taking your course include: to develop a philosophy of life, to learn to interpret numerical data, to understand scientific principles or concepts, to learn to effectively communicate, to learn to organize ideas, or to understand how researchers gain knowledge. As the instructor, you can use this information, along with your own goals for the course, to guide your course structure and teaching pace.

After having determined which material will guide the course design, the next step in backwards design is to establish the criteria you will employ to evidence student learning. Instead of using a lone cumulative exam to assess learning, however, backwards design is guided by the concept that understanding increases across time, as students process, reassess, and connect information. Therefore, assessments to measure this increasing level of understanding should be conducted throughout the semester, using a variety of methodologies such as discussions, tests and quizzes, projects, and assessments in which students analyze their own level of understanding. Once key concepts and assessment criteria have been decided upon, you can then focus on which teaching methodologies and activities you will use to help students reach these course goals. In this manner, teaching is driven by the concepts that are crucial to the course, rather than the course being driving by the teaching methodology itself.

Resources:

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by Design. Merrill Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Teaching for Transformation: From Learning Theory to Teaching Strategies (Part 1)

2007-06-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

Teaching for Transformation: From Learning Theory to Teaching Strategies (Part 1)

by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D. and is from the newsletter, Speaking of Teaching, produced by the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), Stanford University

No matter what you teach, you face the challenge of bringing students from point A- what they currently know-to point B-the learning goals of a course. In many courses, the distance between points A and B is huge, and the path is not obvious. Students must not only acquire new skills and information, but also radically transform their approach to thinking and learning. This newsletter explores theories and teaching strategies that address this universal teaching challenge.

The Challenge

Even though students may have no experience in your class or your field, they enter your classroom with a long history of academic training and life experience. For this reason, presenting new information is not enough to guarantee optimal learning. Students must recognize the limitations of their current knowledge and perspectives. This means that you cannot simply unload your knowledge on students. What is required is a true transformation of students' existing knowledge.

Instructors from all fields face this challenge. In the sciences and mathematics, it is common for students to have learned an oversimplified definition or approach in high school. Students making the shift from classical to modern physics, for example, cannot simply layer new information onto old understanding. In the humanities, students may, for the first time, be asked to develop original interpretations of texts or to consider conflicting interpretations of texts instead of seeking the one, instructor-approved, "correct" interpretation. This new approach must replace the approach that students have learned, practiced, and been rewarded for. In the social sciences, instructors often have the difficult job of helping students unlearn common sense beliefs that may be common but unjustified. In all these cases, students' previous knowledge must be completely revised, not merely augmented.

Transformative Learning Theory

Transformative learning theory (see Mezirow, 1997) addresses this common teaching challenge. The theory describes the conditions and processes necessary for students to make the most significant kind of knowledge transformation: paradigm shift, also known as perspective transformation. Mezirow (1991, p. 167) describes perspective transformation as: ...the process of becoming critically aware of how and why our assumptions have come to constrain the way we perceive, understand, and feel about our world; changing these structures of habitual expectation to make possible a more inclusive, discriminating, and integrating perspective; and finally, making choices or otherwise acting upon these new understandings.

Transformative learning is in clear contrast to the more common process of assimilative learning, the type of learning that takes place when students simply acquire new information that can easily fit into their preexisting knowledge structures. Whereas some college-level courses are aimed at assimilative learning, most courses require at least some level of transformative learning.

According to transformative learning theory, paradigm shift/perspective transformation is the result of several conditions and processes:

1. an activating event that exposes the limitations of a student's current knowledge/approach;

2. opportunities for the student to identify and articulate the underlying assumptions in the student's current knowledge/approach;

3. critical self-reflection as the student considers where these underlying assumptions came from, how these assumptions influenced or limited understanding;

4. critical discourse with other students and the instructor as the group examines alternative ideas and approaches;

5. opportunities to test and apply new perspectives.

When these processes occur, students are more likely to revise their underlying assumptions, adopt a new paradigm, and apply this new paradigm (Cranton, 2002).

Transformative learning theory also recognizes that changing one's perspective is not simply a rational process. Being forced to consider, evaluate, and revise underlying assumptions can be an emotionally charged experience. Students have successfully used their current paradigms to excel in school and understand the world. They may reasonably be reluctant to abandon what they believe is the right way to think, create, and solve problems. Resistance to perspective transformation is common, even among students who are motivated to learn (Illeris, 2003). For this reason, instructors who wish to facilitate transformative learning must create an environment that encourages and rewards intellectual openness (Taylor, 1998).

Teaching Strategies

The content of your teaching will necessarily make some strategies more suitable than others, but instructors of any field can make intentional use of transformative learning theory. Below, we consider strategies for each process involved in transformative learning and offer examples of what Stanford faculty members are doing to bring these strategies into their classrooms.

The Activating Event

The activating event can be anything that triggers students to examine their thinking and the possible limitations of their understanding:

* Understand your students' backgrounds. To create an effective critical event, you must anticipate what students believe and know. Invest some time at the beginning of each quarter to learn about students' backgrounds. In addition to basic classroom interactions, anonymous pre-tests, surveys, and early graded or non- graded assignments can all be effective tools.

* Provide conflicting viewpoints. Conflicting perspectives can motivate students to examine their own perspectives. You can provide these viewpoints in readings or in the classroom.

* Create a disorienting dilemma. Specifically, challenge what students believe. You can do this with a case study, quote, experiment, picture, demonstration, or story that does not fit their expectations. The goal is to confuse and intrigue students and thus increase their motivation to learn whatever you will be presenting in class.

* Set students up for failure. Failure-driven approaches to teaching recognize that students are most motivated to learn when their current knowledge is insufficient to solve an interesting problem. When students reach a problem- solving impasse, they should recognize that new information or a new approach is needed. It is not enough to hand students an unsolvable problem; you must convince them that the impasse can be resolved and create conditions that encourage their success. Instructors can present the missing piece in many ways; from a simple explanation to helping students derive an idea or approach themselves.

Identifying Current Assumptions

The best strategies for helping students identify their current assumptions all require that students explain their thinking:

* Use a critical questioning technique. Ask students to explain their reasoning and the reasons behind their reasoning. Help students identify their assumptions by offering counterexamples, alternative scenarios, or differing perspectives.

* Ask students to make a prediction about an experiment, event, or procedure. Have students explain their predictions, in discussion or as a quickly written exercise. This can be particularly effective when the actual outcome will provide a disorienting dilemma.

* Have students talk through their thinking or problem-solving strategy. This is particularly helpful if you use a failure-driven approach as the critical event. Give students a challenging question or problem and have them talk through the thought process. This can be done with partners, small groups, or through direct interaction between student and instructor.

* Ask students to evaluate a specific position, solution, or reading and justify their critique. This can be done as a small group discussion or as a written assignment. If you provide conflicting readings or alternative solutions, ask students to defend one and provide in-depth reasoning. Follow-up with a class discussion.

Creating Memorable Lectures Part 3

2007-05-15T13:03:00.000-07:00

How to Create Memorable Lectures (Part 3)

Give Students Opportunities to Review and Apply

Information becomes solidified in long-term memory when we have opportunities to retrieve, review, and reflect on that information. As an instructor, you have two main opportunities to make sure this happens: 1) Give students time, during lecture, to review and apply ideas. 2) Give students assignments that encourage them to review their lecture notes and use the lecture content.

Previously, we described how short breaks during a lecture can give students the opportunity to make sure they have correctly identified and recorded important information. To go beyond this simple fact-checking, give students time in lecture to solve a problem or discuss an idea. You can post the problem or discussion question on a slide at the beginning of the lecture, so that students attend to the lecture with the anticipation of applying the information. You can have students tackle the problem or issue in pairs at the end of the lecture, or work alone and then vote on a solution or position. You can also create a think-tank situation by inviting volunteers to talk through their thought processes as they try to solve the problem or respond to a question. The full class can then discuss both the process and outcome of the thought experiment.

Of course, your students' learning process does not end in the lecture hall. You provide a strong foundation for learning during class, but students typically are overwhelmed by other demands on their time and thoughts. Students rush from one class to the next, and spend time in extracurricular activities, athletics, jobs, and socializing. By the end of the day, any information that is not reviewed may not be accurately remembered.

We can increase students' learning by offering them the opportunity to review each lecture in a meaningful and timely way. It is not enough to hope that students will review their notes; create assignments that encourage or require it. For example, ask students to create a matrix, flow chart, table, or concept map based on the information presented in lecture (Titsworth & Kiewra, 2004, p. 450). Give students a problem that can only be solved using lecture material. Have students prepare a debate, a student panel, or a position paper on a subject related to lecture content (Frederick, 2002, p. 60). If an online discussion forum is part of the course, ask students to respond to questions related to the most recent lecture. By reviewing, interpreting, and applying lecture material, students are more likely to build lasting memories and develop higher-level thinking skills.

Students are also more likely to remember information that relates to ideas or experiences they are already familiar with. You can capitalize on this phenomenon by using examples from student life, current events, or popular culture. You can also ask students to generate their own examples from personal experience in class or as a written assignment. Whenever possible, tell students how new information relates to previous lectures in your course. Show students how specific skills can be applied to real-world problems. Create class activities or assignments that ask students to fit new information into the overall themes of the course. For example, have students compare two ideas, synthesize competing perspectives, or discuss the evolution of one theory to another. All of these techniques will make it more likely that students will remember the information from lecture, because students will integrate the material into already existing knowledge structures and experiences.

Teaching Strategies for Memorable Lectures

We have reviewed several teaching strategies that take into consideration how students learn new information in a lecture setting. We encourage you to apply these strategies to your own teaching, and find out what works best for your lecture content and personal teaching style. We also love to hear about innovative and effective lecturing strategies on campus. Please share your success stories if you have a found a particularly helpful way to keep student's attention, increase student understanding, or improve student performance. You can contact Mariatte Denman at mdenman@ stanford.edu.

Quick and Easy Ideas for Better Lectures

Provide students with a framework for each lecture

o Aim for three to five main points in each lecture.

o Begin the lecture with a high-level question that the upcoming information can answer.

o Prepare a handout of the lecture's main points.

o During lecture, be explicit about what students should focus on.

Don't overload students

o Give students short breaks throughout lecture to review their notes and ask questions.

o Include a formal activity or assignment after every 15-20 minutes of presentation.

o Don't use too many different types of presentation materials at once.

o Don't give students two conflicting things to attend to at the same time.

Students are also more likely to remember information that relates to ideas or experiences they are already familiar with.

o Use examples from student life, current events, or popular culture.

o Ask students to generate their own examples from personal experience.

o Tell students how new information relates to previous lectures in your course.

o Show students how specific skills can be applied to real-world problems.

o Create activities and assignments that ask students to fit new information into the overall themes of the course.

How to Create Memorable Lectures (Part 2)

2007-05-07T16:12:00.000-07:00

Direct Students' Attention

But even when students pay attention, they may fail to attend to the most important material in a lecture. Think of how much new content you share with students in just one lecture. Students need to absorb, record, and understand the steady flow of auditory and visual information. To do so, students must listen, view, think, and write, all at once. The juggling of these activities might explain why students' notes capture only 20-40 percent of a lecture's content. Because the content is new to students, it can be difficult for them to identify which ideas are critical and which are peripheral. How can we help students attend to the most important information, so that they understand and remember the key points of each lecture?

The solution is to provide students with a framework for each lecture, so that they can direct their attention to the most important information. One way to do this is to prepare a study guide for your course that describes each lecture's objectives, key concepts, and questions to consider (Schneider, p. 57). A handout with the lecture's major points will prepare students to listen and look for the central elements of the lecture. Skeletal lecture handouts, with room for students' notes, can also help students organize what they hear and see, and may be more effective than providing students with your full lecture notes (Kiewra, 2002, p. 72).As you prepare your lecture outlines, aim for three to five main points in each lecture, with clear links between each lecture topic and your main points.

You can also ask students to answer conceptual questions as they take notes during lecture. Each part of a lecture can be preceded by a high-level question that the upcoming information can answer. This encourages students to interpret and organize lecture content according to an important and useful conceptual framework. In one study, students who took notes trying to answer conceptual questions performed better on a recall test than students who took traditional notes that simply recorded information (Rickards & McCormick, 1988).

During lecture, be as explicit as possible about what students should focus on. Clearly introduce key concepts and definitions. Identify important themes as a way for students to sort through the content of the lecture. Use verbal and visual cues to highlight major points, categories, and steps of an argument. You can also direct students' attention to the most important points by asking them to review or explain those points during class. All of these strategies will help create a framework for students, so that they can quickly and accurately identify and understand the core ideas in your lecture.

Don't Overload the System

Once we have students' attention, we need to consider how quickly students can process information. Short-term memory requires time to process the sensory input we receive; students are not sponges and cannot immediately "absorb" new information. Give students short breaks throughout lecture to review their notes and ask questions. A short break that includes students' questions can also give the lecturer an opportunity to assess student understanding and adjust the remaining part of the lecture if needed.

You can also include a more formal activity or assignment after every 15-20 minutes of presentation. For example, ask students to summarize or paraphrase the last few important points, either in their notes or with the person sitting nearest them. You can then review the points and move on to the next phase in the lecture. Giving students and yourself a break has another advantage. The audience's attention in a lecture drops dramatically after ten minutes of listening (Bligh, 2000, p. 53). Students can remember most of the first ten minutes, but very little from the middle part of the lecture. A short break will revitalize the audience's attention, and students will be much more likely to remember information from throughout the lecture.

A final consideration involves how lecturers present information. Lecturers are often encouraged to use a wide range of presentation materials, including audio, video, and written materials. While this can attract students' attention, it can also overload students' attention. Cognitive overload occurs when different forms of processing interfere with each other (Mayer & Moreno, 2003, p. 45). A common example is when students are presented with an illustration that also includes a written explanation. Students may be unable to process the information quickly, because looking at the illustration and reading the text both place demands on the same sensory channel (vision). Mayer found that replacing the written explanation with an auditory narrative, which uses another sensory channel, is more effective. Another common way to overload attention is to give students two conflicting things to attend to at the same time (say, a transparency on the overhead and a verbal narrative that does not directly relate to the overhead). Students must figure out which sensory channel provides the essential information, and they may not always guess correctly. You can avoid cognitive overload by maintaining a reasonable pace in your presentation and by carefully coordinating your verbal instruction with any other media.

How to Create Memorable Lectures (Part 1)

2007-05-01T15:10:00.000-07:00

How to Create Memorable Lectures (Part 1)

In general, students capture only 20-40 percent of a lecture's main ideas in their notes (Kiewra, 2002, p. 72). Without reviewing the lecture material, students remember less than 10 percent after three weeks (Bligh, 2000, p. 40). All instructors hope that their lectures will be the exception, but these numbers present a clear challenge: How can we guarantee that students learn and remember what we teach? How do we create and deliver lectures that stay with students long past the last few minutes of class? In this newsletter we take up this challenge, by considering how students attend to, make sense of, and absorb new information.

The Learning Process: From Attention to Comprehension to Integration

Cognitive theories describe three phases of the learning process (see Schneider for an extensive discussion of theories). In the first phase, we decide what to attend to. We cannot notice everything that is going on in our environment, so we orient our attention selectively. In the classroom, we hope that students are attending to us, but many things compete for their attention. If we want students to learn, we need to capture their attention.

In the second step of learning, we organize what we observe into a coherent mental pattern or structure. In the classroom, students are constantly interpreting what you say, what they read on the blackboard, and what they see on slides. Students must decide how to organize this information in their own minds (and notes). The more you can provide students with a framework for interpreting lecture material, the easier it is for them to understand new ideas.

These first two phases of learning create a short-term memory for new information. To fully "own" new information in long-term memory, we need to rehearse the new information and connect it to existing frameworks of knowledge. This gives new information meaning beyond the particular learning occasion, and makes it easier to retrieve. This final phase of learning begins in the classroom, with review and application, and continues out of the classroom through well-crafted assignments.

How can you use this information in your lecture? James R. Davis describes a simple approach to maximizing the first two stages of learning: "Get the students' attentionŠtell the students what to pay attention to... and don't overload the system" (p. 141). These three strategies address the initial learning environment- the classroom-and can help a lecturer communicate material effectively. To these basic strategies, we add one more strategy that takes into account the final stage of learning: Give students the opportunity to review and apply lecture material, both in class and between classes. This strategy guarantees that students will fully integrate the material and make the knowledge their own-and that is what makes a lecture truly memorable.

Get Students' Attention

Every lecturer hopes that the pure beauty and intrigue of ideas and information will captivate students. Before students engage with ideas, however, they must first be engaged by the instructor. Therefore, like any public speaker, the lecturer's first task is to capture the audience's attention. A lecturer must connect with students and draw them into the lecture.

This rapport can be accomplished in a variety of ways, from attention-grabbing gimmicks to highly thoughtful approaches. Most instructors are wary of gimmicks; a common concern is that any attempt to appeal to students' interests will lower the intellectual quality of a lecture. However, engaging students needn't be at the expense of high academic standards. As a lecturer, you don't need to be a performer or an entertainer; you simply need to keep your audience in mind, and find the most direct way to interest students in your material.

One of the most basic and direct ways to attract and keep students' interest is instructor expressiveness-the use of vocal variation, facial expression, movement, and gesture. This tactic can be applied to any lecture content, from Shakespeare to statistics. Students are more likely to pay attention to instructors who exhibit expressive behaviors, because expressive instructors are more interesting to attend to and easier to understand. For this reason, expressiveness enhances communication and facilitates student comprehension. Students also tend to interpret an instructor's expressiveness as enthusiasm for the subject, and enthusiasm in the classroom is contagious. Expressive behaviors intrigue students, and encourage them to actively consider the lecture material. For these reasons, expressive behaviors lead to higher levels of student achievement and satisfaction (R. P. Perry, 1985, quoted in Murray, p. 192).

The famous "Dr. Fox" experiments, first conducted by Ware and Williams in the mid-seventies, illustrate the effects of instructor expressiveness (see Murray, 1997). The experiments used six videotaped lectures, all given by a professional actor assuming the persona of "Dr. Fox." The topic of each lecture was biochemistry, but the amount of information in each lecture varied (low, medium, or high). In addition, lectures were presented with either a low or high level of "seductiveness." "High seductiveness" was defined in terms of expressive behavior: the use of movement, gesture, vocal emphasis, humor, and charisma. "Low seductiveness" was characterized by a flat, matter-of-fact style.

Students who watched the highly expressive lectures performed better on a multiple-choice recall test than students who watched the less expressive lectures. This suggests that expressiveness enhances students' memory for the lecture content. Students who watched the highly expressive lectures also gave higher ratings to the instructor, independent of the level of information provided in the lectures. The authors coined this last finding the "Dr. Fox Effect." Students may give high ratings to teachers who convey almost no content, but present their lectures enthusiastically. Lectures can be enjoyable but still fail to meet important teaching goals.

However, as Murray argues, there is no reason to believe that expressive behaviors "are in any way incompatible with more traditional criteria of effective teaching, such as content coverage and high academic standards" (p. 196). To avoid the Dr. Fox Effect, keep in mind that expressiveness is more about communication than entertainment. The key teaching goals of each lecture are still to increase students' knowledge and skills, not to entertain students. Expressiveness is simply a tool for engaging students with the material, not an end to itself. A good litmus test for whether expressiveness is effective, rather than merely entertaining, is whether it invites students to be active, rather than passive, learners. It is important to ask yourself: Once you have students' attention, what are you doing with it?

Expressiveness can be learned, through training and practice. The Center for Teaching and Learning provides a number of resources for instructors looking to develop expressive skills (including class videotaping and oral communication training). Expressiveness can also be enhanced by the instructor's own engagement with the material. Even though the material is familiar to you, you can rediscover its importance and appeal each time you share it with new students.

When we think back to those teachers who captivated our attention during a lecture, they undoubtedly used different strategies suited to their individual temperaments, styles, and disciplines. Some may have been more typically charismatic, and others less showy but deeply passionate about ideas. Some may have owned the lecture hall physically, acting out their lectures, while others may have kept us riveted with their ability to tell a good story. What they probably all shared, however, was presence. Not stage presence, but presence in the sense of being truly present: physically, emotionally, and intellectually. The expressiveness that follows from full presence is a natural attention-grabber-no gimmicks needed.

Helping your students cope with tragedy

2007-04-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

Helping your students cope with a tragedy like Virginia Tech

From Huston, T. A., & DiPietro, M. (2007). In the eye of the storm: Students perceptions of helpful faculty actions following a collective tragedy. In D. R. Robertson & L. B. Nilson (Eds.) To Improve the Academy: Vol 25.Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (pp.207-224). Bolton, MA: Anker.

Quick summary of Huston & DiPietro's (2007) results:

-On one campus, in the days immediately following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, students reported that only 62% of their professors mentioned the attacks at all; the remaining 38% went on with the course material as though nothing had happened.

- Many students typically found an instructor's complete lack of response frustrating or disappointing. A few students did not care whether their instructors did or said anything, and a few said "doing nothing" was appropriate. But most students wanted their instructors to show some acknowledgement.

- In most cases, students found it *helpful* whenever faculty tried to acknowledge the tragedy in some way (one minute of silence, a short or long discussion, offer to review the material again later, read an inspirational passage, mention counseling services, etc.).

- The only response that was truly *unhelpful* was when faculty" acknowledged that the attacks had occurred but said the class had to go on, with no mention of extra help." Students were often frustrated when faculty said "there is nothing we can do.”

The following excerpt is taken directly from the TIA article (Huston & DiPietro, 2007, pp.218-220)."Implications for Faculty. The results indicate that from the students¹ perspective, it is best to do something. Students often complained when faculty did not mention the attacks at all, and they expressed gratitude when faculty acknowledged that something awful had occurred. Beyond acknowledging a tragic event, faculty would be well-advised to take the extra step of recognizing that students are distressed and to show some extra support, such as offering to grant extensions for students who request them. Cognitive research informs us that working memory capacity is reduced in times of enhanced stress so students are less capable of learning new material (e.g. Arnsten, 1998).Offering extensions or the opportunity to review the material later is one-way to accommodate students¹ decreased capacity.

It is perhaps a surprising relief to learn that an instructor's response need not be complicated, time-intensive, or even personalized. Responses that require relatively little effort, such as taking a minute of silence or offering to review material later in the course are likely to be viewed as very helpful by most students, so faculty should not feel pressed into redesigning their course. Faculty responses that required high levels of effort were also viewed as helpful, so those who wish to use the lens of their discipline to examine the events surrounding a tragedy are encouraged to do so. A repeated issue that appeared in students¹ comments was that they appreciated when an instructor responded in a unique and humane way, so faculty should not feel pressured to homogenize their responses.

First Day Checklist

2007-04-10T14:37:00.001-07:00

Checklist For The First Day

adapted from Delivee L. Wright Teaching and Learning Center, University of Nebraska.

* Am I energized to be enthusiastic about this class?

* Do I have an ice-breaker planned? How will the students and I get to know each other and build trust?

* Have I started the students participating in a way I want to encourage all semester (ie, a discussion, if I want discussion, a brainstorm, asking questions, warm-up explorating for the upcoming topic, exchange of ideas, problem-solving, group work?)

* What class atmosphere and expectations about particpation and teamwork does my first day's lesson establish?

* Do I have a way to gather information on student backgrounds, interests, expectations for the course, questions, concerns?

* Is the syllabus complete and clear?

* Have I outlined how students will be evaluated?

* Do I have announcements of needed information ready?

* Do I have a way to start leaming names?

* How can I best use or adapt the physical arrangement of the classroom space to increase student engagement? (more chairs into a circle, ask students to move forward -- leaving the back rows empty)

* Is my name, course title, and number visible, on the chalkboard or elsewhere?

* When the class is over, will students know what they need to do, what their roles and responsiblities in this class will be?

* When the class is over; will students want to come back? Will you want to come back?

Engaging Evaluations: Helping Students Consider Their Learning

2007-04-10T14:17:00.000-07:00

Engaging Evaluations: Helping Students Consider Their Learning

Cassandra Fraser, Cavaliers’ Distinguished Teaching Professor, Department of Chemistry

(Teaching Concerns Newsletter - University of Virginia Teaching Resource Center)

"For several years I have been frustrated with the conventional approach to course evaluations, primarily because they didn't seem to fit what I was trying to achieve in the classroom. Traditional evaluation questions tend to focus on students' perceptions of course mechanics, suitability of the curriculum, and the extent to which these are delivered in a comfortably familiar manner. Yet I'm much more interested in providing students with a challenging learning experience, in establishing genuine connections, and in encouraging them to take an active, self-reflective role in their learning, by considering their particular talents, goals, and learning styles. In adapting recommendations from the Teaching Resource Center to my own course, I have developed a highly satisfying and informative process that you might modify for your own purposes.

In Fall 2003, I replaced my midterm and end-of-semester evaluation forms in CHEM 281 (Honors Organic Chemistry II; enrollment = 60) with a three-part invitation to students. The questions posed to students at the beginning, middle, and end of the semester are designed to help them think deeply about the course, their role in it, and how this learning experience relates to their broader goals and interests. Additionally, it gives me invaluable feedback on how well I'm teaching and on how well we are all meeting our goals, in terms of students' mastery of course content, problem-solving skills, and increased confidence when facing tough challenges. At the start of the semester, I asked students to respond to this inquiry about what they brought to CHEM 281 and hoped to get out of it:

1) Interests (Academic/Other)

2) Background, Experience, Personal Qualities: (What do you bring to this class?)

3) Goals: (Why are you taking this course? What do you want to learn? What

do you hope to accomplish? What would you like to work on?)

Students' detailed, honest responses clearly indicated their desire for engagement and their eagerness to connect the course with their lives more generally. Typically, I looked up individual photos on Toolkit as I read comments, so that I could associate faces with stories and names. I was so moved by their sincerity and all that they shared that I responded to each student's initial message, some with only a few words but many with substantive comments and additional back and forth. Thus I established a genuine connection right from the start, offering encouragement to students apprehensive about a demanding course, as well as academic advice about programs, grants and other special opportunities. More than one student expressed gratitude for the process:

I just want to say how impressed I was to get a reply from you . . . (I)t meant a lot to me to know that you really took the time to read about our interests and share your opinions. I look forward to getting to know you in the months to come. Your comments definitely made me feel like I am doing the right thing taking this class, even if it will be 'intense.'

Later, when students asked me questions and introduced themselves, I would say, "Please remind me of your story," to which they would reply, "I am the one who grew up in California, who plays hockey, who wants to study neuroscience, etc."

At the midterm, I asked students to think about the course in light of their personal goals, and they took this evaluation seriously, too:

1) Go back and review your goals for the class that you submitted at the start

of the semester. Also, think about the course goals that were presented to

you at the start of the semester. How are things going so far?

2) What can the professor do to better facilitate your learning?

3) What can the TAs do?

4) What can your classmates do to better assist your learning?

5) What can you do to improve your learning and ensure that you meet your goals for this course?

I established all-important trust by keeping students' comments confidential. Once they knew that I cared about them and their learning experience, they were honest and direct, even with criticism, without the need for anonymity. Quite the contrary, they wanted me to know who they were and what they thought!

In a tough course such as CHEM 281, I have learned that it is best to ask students to reflect on the experience after they have crossed the finish line and taken the final, not when they are at marathon milepost 25 at the end of the semester (a time students are especially stretched and tired and more liable to swing a few punches). So I sent out the evaluation request just after the final exam, giving students time to respond while we graded exams and telling them that I would not read their comments until after submitting the final grades.

1) Refer to your goals for the course stated at the start of the semester and your progress in your midterm evaluation. Now that the final is over and the semester has drawn to a close, assess how well you have done in

meeting your goals.

2) What have you found most challenging? What would you like to work on improving for the future?

3) What have you found most rewarding? What are your greatest accomplishments this semester? Of what are you most proud?

4) Regardless of whether chemistry will play a central role in your future career plans or not, has your

appreciation of chemistry and the value and explanatory power of a molecular-level understanding increased as a result of CHEM 281 and your efforts this semester?

5) Do you have any suggestions for the professor and TAs that might help us to become better teachers and to

improve this course for the future?

6) Other comments:

This timing gave them a chance to celebrate their accomplishments, breathe a sigh of relief, consider the entire course and how it affected them, and think about what they might work on next.

I assigned 1% of the final grade to successful completion of all three evaluations. This credit, together with my comments about the importance of this activity for their learning process, seems to have done the trick in terms of response rate: all but one of the students responded about their goals; over 92% answered the midterm and final questions—at two of the busiest times of the semester. More importantly, their genuine, lengthy messages were full of self-reflective comments and very good ideas for course improvements. When I encouraged students to complete the final evaluation, I pointed out the importance of evaluations generally, noting that they should approach them with the same maturity and seriousness with which they hope their profs assign grades. I pointed out that, just as grades mattered to many of them for admission to medical school or other graduate programs, evaluations were taken into account for promotion and tenure cases, raises, and award nominations. I think this impressed upon them the gravity of the exercise. Of course, by then, we'd already had two rounds and they had seen the benefits of thinking about the course in these ways.

I can't even begin to tell you how successful this exercise was in establishing a connection with students, in helping them focus on their goals, and in giving them a chance to reflect on their experiences. It has renewed my faith in course evaluations. When students trust that we take them seriously, reading and responding to what they have to say, that belief makes a huge difference to them and their experience in the course. One brave CHEM 281 student who is not even a chemistry major was particularly impressed: I really enjoyed this class as a whole. Even though it was incredibly challenging and really frustrating at times, I'm so glad I pushed myself through it."

Using Class Discussion to Meet Your Teaching Goals (Part 2)

2006-12-04T13:49:00.000-08:00

Using Class Discussion to Meet Your Teaching Goals (Part 2)

Trouble-Shooting

When students are not already heavily invested in a field, even important exercises can lack intrinsic interest. If students' participation is lackluster, it can help to have a basic discussion about what makes your field and its approaches unique. An instructor's enthusiasm for his or her field is probably the single biggest influence on whether students find it equally compelling. By focusing on the big picture, you may be able to interest students in the smaller details. You can also connect what students are doing to the activities of scholars or professionals or those in your field. Students often don't understand how skills learned in introductory, or even advanced, classes relate to the kinds of original scholarship or careers that they are interested in.

Develop Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is an important goal in most fields, whether it is used to analyze the logic of a philosopher or to find the potential problems with a proposed healthcare initiative. Discussion is an excellent tool for developing students' reasoning skills because it gives you access to their thought processes and an opportunity to guide students to a higher level of thinking.

Prompts and Exercises

Critical thinking can be applied to any text, claim, or open-ended question. Choose topics that are likely to provoke student interest but not necessarily topics that students already have strong and passionate opinions about. To teach critical thinking, you need a window of open-mindedness and curiosity.

Stir up controversy.

Provide students with a provocative or controversial quote from some expert in your field (possibly a guest lecturer or the author of a class text). Use the expert's claim as a challenge to students: Is this expert right? How would you decide? What information do you need? What information do you have? Payne and Gainey (2003) have developed a list of controversial claims in many fields, from marketing to medicine, that may be useful for your course.

Provide alternatives.

Give your students two competing claims, conflicting theories, or any set of alternative options. Instead of taking a vote, or asking students to immediately choose a side, start with a question that encourages open thinking. What is the issue here? or What is this really a choice between? can launch a deeper conversation than Which do you agree with? Ask students to describe the perspectives that inform each alternative and critically discuss those perspectives as much as the actual claims.

Guiding Discussion

Make sure students understand that discussion is not simply an invitation to restate their opinions. Remind them: The goal of critical thinking is to examine your own assumptions and evidence, not just to criticize the thinking of others who disagree with you!

Focus your attention on the quality of students' reasoning, not just the content of their reasoning. Instructors need to be able to recognize both common errors in reasoning (such as making unsupported assertions and using anecdotal evidence) and the signs of high-level reasoning (such as focusing on empirical evidence for a theory and the ability to integrate personal values with evidence). Greenlaw and DeLoach (2003) suggest that instructors spend time reflecting on what different levels of reasoning look like in their respective fields. What are the most common forms of uncritical thinking in your field? What is the gold standard for critical thinking applied to your field?

A discussion leader can then focus on guiding students from common reasoning errors or simplistic reasoning to more complex or high-level reasoning. When students make a claim, ask them for their evidence or logic. Then ask the class to evaluate the evidence or logic. Encourage students who disagree on a point to identify the source of the disagreement (i.e., trusting different kinds of evidence or weighing certain values more strongly) rather than simply the point of disagreement.

Encourage students to talk to each other, not just to you. Keep your own contributions content-neutral. Don't take a stance; simply probe students' thinking. If necessary, ask a student to play the devil's advocate role, rather than playing it yourself.

Encouraging Participation

Encourage listening as much as talking. Students often concentrate so hard on what they are going to say, and how to score points, that they fail to really listen to others (Hollander, 2002). To help students develop their listening skills, encourage them to repeat the last important point and then respond directly to it (rather than stating a new opinion). Encourage students to keep building on a particular argument or interpretation. Make sure that you reinforce all forms of helpful contributions such as asking good questions or connecting points that other students have made.

Students rise to the occasion when their peers demonstrate a high level of reasoning (DeLoach and Greenlaw, 2005). When critical thinking is the goal of discussion, it can be helpful to focus first on the "high contributors" in the class, rather than trying to equalize participation among all students. Encourage students who make high-quality contributions and acknowledge what made the contribution useful. Once a norm is established, other students will be more likely to maintain the high standard of discussion. If a few students monopolize the discussion, you can invite others to comment or break the class into smaller discussion groups.

If you have a hard time starting discussions with your class, ask students to rate their agreement with a claim on a scale of 1-5. Then ask them to write down five reasons that they agree or disagree with the claim. A student with a 2 rating writes two reasons that the claim is compelling and three reasons that the claim is not compelling; a student with a 5 rating needs to come up with five reasons that support the claim. This guarantees that students will have something to say and acknowledges thoughtful ambivalence as an appropriate position.

- UO Teaching Effectiveness Program

Civility in the Classroom Part II

2006-11-20T14:44:00.000-08:00

Civility (Part II)

Respect Students as Adults

Sometimes teachers unwittingly put down their students by treating them as children, by overlooking them, or by exhibiting impersonal kinds of behavior. We often hear instructors refer to their students as “my kids.” This is especially upsetting to younger students who are just establishing themselves as adults. Another way of showing your students that you think they are important is spending time with them informally. This could be in the cafeteria or in your office. Before and after class you can chat informally with groups. When you meet a student in the hall or on the campus, smiling and giving a personal greeting is very effective. Call the student by name; it makes a great deal of difference. This again shows students that you care.

Provide Specific Positive Reinforcement

Taking the time to compliment a student on something specific that he or she has done well can have tremendous payoffs for a teacher. The key here is specificity. Students will sense a lack of genuineness if you compliment profusely and generally, but if you can pick out one particular element of their work or one particular aspect of their attitude that you like, your comment will have much more meaning. A student who has written a paper that is not particularly effective but who has used a striking metaphor, for example, can be complimented on that use.

Make Yourself Available

Being available as often as students may need you can be difficult. However, it is important, particularly with students who may be struggling in the course.

You are serving as a role model to these students, and keeping reliable office hours gives them a sense of your commitment. Be on time. Spend as much time in the office as you have promised; if for any reason you won’t be able to be in your office on a given day, give your students advance notice. You have, in essence, made a contract with them and you should keep it.

The easiest way to be available to your students is to get to class early and stay after as possible (move out of the classroom, however, to allow the next teacher time to prepare for class). Email is also a way to increase your contact with students without investing huge amounts of your time. Set up clear guidelines about when you will be able to respond to student emails.

Make Your Class Safe for Your Students

Although you do not intend to humiliate students, you may inadvertently interact with them in ways that are embarrassing or that make them uncomfortable. Even if such embarrassment is subtle, it can discourage a student and make it difficult for him or her to come back to your class. Avoid sarcasm with students, as well as teasing could be interpreted as hurtful. Apologize immediately if you can see that your comment has been taken in a way you did not intend.

Be as Positive as Possible

Being positive is not easy when you are having a hard day, but some techniques can make you and your students feel positive. Voice quality, for instance, is extremely important. Be energetic and bright in your inflection. A monotone or a deep, tired voice will give away your lack of interest. Be willing to laugh in class, and use humor in your teaching if that comes naturally to you. Chatting with students will sometimes be therapeutic for you; if your energy level is running low, a few exchanges with students can energize you.

Read Inattentive Behaviors

We all have observed inattentive behavior in teaching situations. Some behaviors to look for are shuffling or shifting in chairs, persistent coughing by one or more students, glances at other students or watches, and stacking books when there are five minutes left in the class period. These behaviors indicate that you have lost student attention. Also notice posture, attitude, and lack of eye contact. The research on adult attention span tells us that attending to a single type of activity for more than 15-20 minutes can be difficult for many students.

When you notice that some students are drifting away, your response should be immediate and decisive. Changing the pace of the class can be most effective. We call this the “change-up.” For example, switching from lecture to small-group activity can wake up the class. Breaking the rhythm of your usual behavior can break the monotony. Using visuals or asking students to spend a few minutes writing their thoughts down to a provocative question can re-energize your group.

Plan your classes in 15- to 20-minute sections with a change of mode between each section. This will allow you to have the students’ fresh attention several times in each class, rather than just at the beginning. Changing activities can make a big difference in your students’ success.

Individual Conferences with Students

This may or may not be possible or practicial depending on the enrollment in your class. These conferences need not be long when the students do not have significant problems. They may simply be an opportunity to check in with how your students are doing in the course. This kind of conference, again, shows the student that you care. For students with significant problems, however, the conference is crucial. Sometimes you yourself can solve some of the student’s problems, or you can guide the student to someone who can help him or her. Surprisingly, many students are not familiar with the counseling services available at the university.

Telephone Students When High-Risk Patterns Develop

Examples of high-risk patterns are several missed assignments, chronic absences, and perpetual tardiness. Telephoning students can be an effective way of reaching them; students are often impressed that an instructor would take the time to call them.

How can I get Students to Come to Office Hours?

2006-11-14T12:59:00.000-08:00

How can I get Students to Come to Office Hours?

Call Them Something Else. By calling it “study table” instead of “office hours,” and holding them in the dorm cafeteria. Identify a problem area where you know many students are struggling and announce that - “Today from 2-3pm we’ll be going over additional examples of….”

Go Someplace Else. Students who may be reluctant to come to an office will come to the student union, dorm lounge or a coffee shop.

Make Them Come. Some instructors only return tests, papers, or drafts of papers during office hours. This gives you the chance to explain their strengths and weaknesses and help them to improve. Or you might just strongly encourage them to come; pass around a sign-up sheet in class, asking students to commit to coming at a specific time. This works especially well just before an exam day or when a paper is due.

See Them in Groups. Either study tables or sign-up sheets will let you see small groups of students at the same time. This is especially important if you teach very large classes.

Tell Them How to use Office Hours. Give them a handout on how to get the most from a visit; write down specific questions in advance, bring the readings with them with passages to discuss marked, etc.

Use Email.

This can be the most convenient way to communicate with your students. If possible, announce that you will be online in the evening once in awhile. This is when students are usually doing their homework and need help. Archive responses to student questions and use this material to develop an FAQ on your website.

- Teaching Effectiveness Program

University of Oregon

Civility in the Classroom

2006-11-13T13:23:00.000-08:00

Civility (Part I)

Affective Concerns of Teaching

Students who feel comfortable in a classroom and who have some positive rapport with the teacher are likely to speed up learning processes as the term goes on. In one Indiana University study, students reported that one important condition of their achievement in class is that they feel their instructor “cares about them.” In the long run, you will accomplish more learning by spending some time, especially in the first few classes, on creating a supportive environment.

Learn Student Names

This may seem like a simple suggestion, but it has profound results. All of us respond to being approached individually and personally, and the logical way to begin that process is calling us by our names. The immediate problem is how to learn the names of 100 or more students each term.

You can gather biographical information on students by asking them to fill out index cards or to complete a short survey at the beginning of the semester. This information can be valuable in helping you to assess “where your students are” in terms of their academic backgrounds, and may also alert you to opportunities where course material can be made more meaningful by integrating it into students’ personal experiences. The more you know about your students, the easier it is to remember their names.

Provide Nonverbal Encouragement

Provide a secure, reassuring, positive atmosphere. Several ways of encouraging such an environment do not involve the spoken word. Maintain eye contact with students. Move around the room. Be animated and expressive in your presentation. Try to identify and control nervous mannerisms (getting videotaped is an excellent way to become aware of this). Students may interpret fiddling with a tie or with a lock of hair to mean that you are not self-confident. Students react most positively to teachers who appear comfortable and confident about their role in the classroom

Avoid Judging Students

Without realizing it, teachers can exhibit judgmental behaviors that discourage students by making them feel even more inadequate than they already may feel. Do not judge students on the basis of appearance or dress. Do not allow yourself to be turned off by a student who is unkempt or who is wearing nontraditional clothing. You should also avoid gender stereotyping. Ask yourself if you unconsciously assume that females have a certain set of interests and males have another. Age stereotyping is another judgment trap. Do you unknowingly expect certain behaviors from people in certain age groups? For example, do you assume that older students are automatically more self-assured or serious about their work than are 18-year-olds?

Even though you may believe you are not prejudiced, racial or ethnic considerations can cause you to react subconsciously in ways that students find disturbing. Do you expect different attendance patterns from certain groups of students? Do you find yourself avoiding certain subjects in the classroom because you fear offending somebody? Do you tend to target your examples towards certain groups in your class? Do you assume that students have certain expertise based on racial or ethnic characteristics? Becoming aware of this type of judgmental behavior can help you avoid it.

Personalize Relationships

For some students, this is unnecessary, but other students find an “unapproachable” instructor difficult to learn from and intimidating. This strategy requires some effort and energy on the part of the teacher. Learning how many children a student has, what his or her personal interests and hobbies are, or what kinds of books he or she likes to read can help you establish fairly quickly a warm relationship with that student. Whatever your discipline, you should try to find ways to bring out students’ personal interests.

If you expect students to share with you, it is important for you to be willing to share parts of yourself and of your personal life with your students. You can accomplish this in easy ways. In classroom presentation, you can speak occasionally from personal experience. This will encourage students to respond to you not only as an authority figure, but as a person. However, make good choices about what personal information is appropriate to share with students.

- Teaching Effectiveness Program
University of Oregon

Collaborative Learning

2006-10-31T09:03:00.000-08:00

Collaborative Learning

No one strategy so profoundly changes the dynamic in the classroom as much as cooperative work does. When students work in groups, their learning is active and personalized. Collaborative work reflects the workplace, and it is refreshing for both students and teacher.

Collaborative learning gives students an chance to develop many skills:

negotiation and debate
responsibility and time management
teamwork and leadership
creative and critical thinking

Although not specifically linked to course content, these skills support lifelong learning in both personal and career situations. That's especially important in technical fields, such as computer science and nanotechnology, in which information quickly becomes obsolete.

When considering group work, you might feel more comfortable starting small. Start by asking students to chat with a neighbor after a short lecture to come up with what they consider to be the most important points covered in the lecture, or to formulate questions they still have.

From there, try using established cooperative learning strategies such as:

Think-Pair-Share

Students first think about or write answers to a question separately, then pair with a partner to discuss their answers, and share answers when called upon.

Jigsaw

This is a learning process that can replace lecture. Working in groups of four or more, assign two or more articles, but have each person on a team responsible for only one article. Each article should have a different content focus. The students then teach the content to their team members and try to analyze a case or solve a problem using the shared information.

Create Academic Controversies

Assign a topic with powerful pro or con positions, giving opposite positions to pairs of team members. After research and planning, students must convince their opposites of their positions. Then the pairs take the opposite position and argue that.

Starting the Term the Right Way

2006-09-25T15:36:00.000-07:00

STARTED IN THE RIGHT WAY

Adapted from the Center for Teaching and Learning, Indiana State University
Good teachers use the normal patterns of social interactions to draw students into academic work. Classroom anthropologists have identified patterns in social interaction that create expectations about how to work in the classroom. The tips for this week offer ideas that use these patterns to draw students into effective working relations.

Entering the Lesson Social encounters usually begin with some action that acknowledges everyone and establishes a welcoming tone. Learning interactions are no exception. Teachers can use the moments when students are entering the classroom to build a commitment to the class. Greet your students and set the tone for what will be happening in class today.

Start the Learning The transition from everyday social life to learning encounters requires a shift. Students may not be ready to start work when the teacher is. Use the following tips to shift their attention to the common work of learning your lessons.

Content Ice Breakers. Short activities can be used to introduce course content. For example, list several terms from an essay and have students get a signature next to each term that a classmate knows. Or, handout a set of index cards, each containing instructions for one step in a process– such as solving a math problem. Have students form a team with those whose cards contain the other steps. Give teams a problem to solve with each student responsible for the steps listed on his or her card. Debrief results.

Critical Reading Guide. Bob Votaw, a geologist from IU-NW, gives students a page for writing answers to key questions about the required reading. These are due as students enter the next class. By quickly reviewing a sample, he identifies common understandings and frequent mistakes. He adjusts his lecture to their responses.

Quick Quizzes. Give students a short quiz. The material will be fresh in their minds as you start your lesson. It is not necessary to collect and grade the quiz, but explain how their responses relate to success in learning the material.

Pre-Test. You can use a formal pre-test over the material to be covered. Informal methods are less intimidating but equally effective in connecting student to material. Have students write their own definitions of a term, ask them to write down their idea of a process or historical sequence, or make some guesses about statistical facts or likely outcomes.

Attention Grabber. Use a problem or a demonstration to capture students’ imaginations about what is to come. Often, an intriguing example will provide a guiding context for the material that follows.

Final Comments
Student participation is not simply a question of motivation but one of social relations too. People work better when they are noticed and guided into the working part of the lesson smoothly. Abrupt switches will inevitably leave some students behind. Build a welcome phase and a settling down phase into the first few minutes of your lessons and you will find more students are ready to engage in the learning activities you have planned.

Get To Know Your Students

2006-09-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

Getting to Know Your Students

Adapted from UC Berkeley (August, 2006)

One of the most important things you can do early in the term is to get a sense of who these people are who are sitting in front of you. What experience do they have in your field, what interest? Are you teaching a required course? An elective? Are there students from other majors in the course? A variety of levels? Information like this helps you to figure out not only how to present your material, but often what material to present.

Many faculty hand out a questionnaire or a quiz on the first day or second day of class. These can be used in various ways, the primary one being to find out students' background in or knowledge of the material. These surveys range from the very simple to the complex, from finding out what students know about the topic of the class to what outside interests they have.

Some faculty bring a digital camera to class and take pictures of all of their students or ask their GTFs to do this in section. One faculty member then puts the name on the back, and keeps a stack of them on the podium. He uses that stack to randomly call on students by name

In her large introduction to the English major class, Professor Kevis Goodman asks every student to come to her office and recite the first eighteen lines of the Canterbury Tales. Goodman says, "I know that it will make their own silent reading of Chaucer's fourteenth-century English less alienating in the coming weeks, but if that fails (it usually doesn't), then at least I know that by the next class I may seem less alien."

In addition to your getting to know your students, you should find ways to encourage them to get to know each other (Professor Marian Diamond asks them to introduce themselves and to chat for a few minutes with those sitting around them), to form study groups and, in general, to have someone to talk to about the ideas in your course.

You may also wish to find out what learning styles are preferred by your students.

Catherine Jester of Diablo Valley College developed a learning style survey for use with college students:

http://www.metamath.com/multiple/multiple_choice_questions.html

She also developed learning strategies for the four types of learning styles identified by her survey:

http://www.metamath.com/lsweb/fourls.htm

Improving Class Interaction

2006-08-30T14:31:00.000-07:00

Any Questions?
(Richard Felder, Chemical Engineering Education, 1994)

If I ask the whole class a question and wait for someone to volunteer an answer, the students remain silent and nervously avoid eye contact with me until one of them (usually the same one) pipes up with an answer. On the other hand, if I call on individual students with questions, I am likely to provoke more fear than thought.

No matter how kindly my manner and how many eloquent speeches I make about the value of wrong answers, most students consider being questioned in class as a setup for them to look ignorant in public—and if the questions require real thought, their fear may be justified.

I find that a better way to get the students thinking actively in class is to ask a question, have the students work in groups of two to four people to generate answers, and then call on several of the groups to share their results. I vary the procedure occasionally by having the students formulate answers individually, then work in pairs to reach consensus. For more complex problems, I might then have pairs get together to synthesize team-of-four solutions.

Following are some different things we can ask our students to do that can get them thinking in ways that "Given this fact, calculate that" never can.

Define a concept in your own words

Using terms a bright high school senior or your grandmother could understand, briefly explain the concept of vapor pressure (viscosity, heat transfer coefficient, ideal solution, etc.).

Explain familiar phenomena in terms of course concepts

Why do I feel comfortable in 65-degree still air, cool when a 65-degree wind is blowing, freezing in 65-degree water, and even colder when I step out of the water unless the relative humidity is close to 100%?

Predict system behavior before calculating it

Without using your calculator, estimate the time it will take for half of the methanol in the vessel to drain out (for all the water in the kettle to boil off, for half of the reactant to be converted).

Think about what you've calculated

Find two different ways to verify that the results you have calculated are accurate or that the formula you have chosen to solve the problem is the correct one. The computer output says that we need a tank volume of 3,657,924 cubic meters. Any problems with this solution?

Brainstorm

What are possible safety (environmental, quality control) problems we might encounter with the process unit we just designed? Once a list of problems has been generated, you might follow up by asking the students to prioritize the problems in terms of their potential impact and to suggest ways to minimize or eliminate them.

Formulate questions

Write on an index card two questions you could ask a classmate to verify that he or she read and understood the assigned material for today's class.

Envisioning Course Outcomes

2006-08-24T08:43:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest changes to occur in contemporary teaching is a shift in planning. Previously, teachers planned their activities, and then thought about what the goals of the course would be. We now know that effective planning starts with the course outcome. That is what the students should be able to do outside the classroom with the information that they have learned. Once the outcome has been determined, the teacher then selects appropriate activities.

When thinking about planning for outcomes, you need to consider:

The current demands of industry and any certification standards
How you can link your course goals with the larger program goals
How you can plan your course based on the intended outcomes
How you can create lessons that will lead the students toward the desired outcome

If learning means engaging in a task that builds personal capacity for the rest of life, then curriculum design doesn't begin in the classroom at all. Curriculum design begins outside the classroom with one important question: "What do my students need to be able to DO 'out there' (in the rest of life) that we are responsible for in this classroom?" It's a simple question; seeing the answer is more difficult.

If I am creating a course in information technology, I begin by envisioning what my students will DO differently in the community, the workplace, or the family as a result of this course. It is only after I am able to articulate this in a few clear and agreed-upon outcome statements that I can decide what content is necessary and how competence will be assessed. (Stiehl and Lewchuk. "Envisioning Outcomes Intended and Unintended." The OUTCOMES Primer)

Effective learning outcomes can take many forms, but each must:

Describe what the student will DO differently as a result of your course
Describe meaningful learning
Be measured/verified; i.e., you can measure students' ability to achieve them
Represent high levels of thinking, rather than trivial tasks
Be written in plain language students can understand

Here are two samples:

Demonstrate the addition of sine waves using physical devices, instrumentation, and graphs.
Use physical and chemical properties to determine the quality of paper samples and make recommendations based on specific requirements.

Types of Questions Which Keep a Discussion Lively (Part 1)

2006-08-02T12:09:00.000-07:00

From Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms, by Stephen D. Brookfield and Stephen Preskill

Questions That Ask for More Evidence

These questions are asked when participants state an opinion that seems unconnected to what's already been said or that someone else in the group thinks is erroneous, unsupported, or unjustified. The question should be asked as a simple request for more information, not as a challenge to the speaker's intelligence.

How do you know that?

What data is that claim based on?

What does the author say that supports your argument?

Where did you find that view expressed in text?

What evidence would you give to someone who doubted your interpretation?

Questions That Ask for Clarification

Clarifying questions give speakers the chance to expand on their ideas so that they are understood by others in the group. They should be an invitation to convey one's meaning in the most complete sense possible.

Can you put that another way?

What's a good example of what you are talking about?

What do you mean by that?

Can you explain the term you just used?

Could you give a different illustration of your point?

Open Questions

Questions that are open-ended

Questions that are open-ended, particularly those beginning with how and why, are more likely to provoke the students; thinking and problem-solving abilities and make the fullest use of discussion's potential for expanding intellectual and emotional horizons. Of course, using open questions obliges the teacher to take such responses seriously and to keep the discussion genuinely unrestricted. It is neither fair nor appropriate to ask an open-ended question and then to hold students accountable for failing to furnish one's preferred response. As Van Ments (1990) says, "The experienced teacher will accept the answer given to an open questions and build on it" (p.78). That is, as we all know, easier said than done.

Sauvage says that when facing moral crises, people who agonize don't act, and people who act don't agonize. What does he mean by this? (Follow-up question: Can you think of an example that is consistent with Sauvage's maxim and another that conflicts with it?)

Racism pervaded American society throughout the twentieth century. What are some signs that things are as bad as ever? What are other signs that racism has abated significantly?

Why do you think many people devoted their lives to education despite the often low pay and poor working conditions?

Ending Courses With A Bang!

2006-05-30T08:21:00.000-07:00

Better Endings:
What to Do in the Last Day of Class

Most Courses end for students with the final exam. (We leave it to you to determine if that is, for your students, a high note or a low one). However, an ending is not the same as closure, and teachers and students often leave courses with unanswered questions and unchecked emotions. Most of us have seen a number of tips on what to do on the first day of class, but we don't think about the importance of the last day as an opportunity for students to reflect on and fully synthesize their learning.

Here are some suggestions that might make the closing of your course as memorable as the opening:

* Use the syllabus as a tool for course review.

* Ask students to create a flow chart to graph relationships between/among concepts learned.

* Ask students to revisit the goals they set for themselves at he start of the course. This works best if, at the beginning of the semester, you have students write goals on a note card or send you a memo describing their goals.. Return the card/memo on t he last day and ask students to assess how ell they accomplished their goals, what means they used to do so, and the apparent outcome. They can discuss their accomplishments in small groups or an write their observations in a memo to you. Reflect aloud on what students may not have fully understood-explain the benefits and costs of NOT understanding something.

* Describe what YOU learned about teaching and about the subject of the course.

* Ask students to write you a letter three months hence, telling you one thing they learned that they have actually used.

* Ask students to write a letter to someone who will take the course next semester, providing a general introduction to the course, describing strategies that were worthwhile and those that caused problems, and offering advice for succeeding in the course. Seal the letters and deliver them randomly to students at the start of the next semester.

* Use a team game format (Family Feud, College Bowl, Jeopardy) as an exam review tool. Give prizes (like candy).

* Ask students to work in groups to construct a crossword puzzle using key concepts from the course. Exchange puzzles among groups for solving.

* Ask students to bring on the last day of class several magazines (that they are willing to cut up), scissors and glue. Instruct them to work in groups to create collages of pictures that summarize the ideas presented during the preceding weeks of the cou rse. Display the collages and ask each group of students to explain the one they created.

* Require the students to come to the last class prepared to present (either graphically or verbally) a metaphor for the subject of the course.

* Ask students to work in pairs or trios to write a concise and complete response to the question: What is (the name of your discipline)?

Compiled from suggestions found in:

Maier, Mark H., and Ted Panitz. 1996. "End on a High Note: Better Endings for Classes and Courses." College Teaching, Vol. 44, No. 4.

"How to End Courses With a Bang." 1995. The Teaching Professor, Vol. 9, No. 5. Source: Teaching at UNL, Vol. 19, No. 3, November 1997.

Instructional Style

2006-05-08T13:03:00.000-07:00

Your instructional style

It is important to remember that everyone tends to teach in the style in which they learn best. An instructor who has studied with a great lecturer may feel lecturing is the only way to teach. However, this might not be the best instructional style for all of your students. Be aware that individuals vary greatly in their learning styles, and your goal is to take them from wherever they are to the next level of development. Learn to teach the students you have rather than the students you want to have. All students can succeed when their learning needs are addressed. The following differences represent a continua along which different people have learning preferences. Some people:

*think symbolically, in words and numbers, while others are spatial, thinking in pictures and images

*are analytic, preferring to focus on details, while others are synthetic, preferring the “big picture”

*are intra-personal, preferring to work alone while others are interpersonal, preferring to collaborate

*are reflective, preferring to think about new information, while others are active, preferring to do something

There is no one “best way” to learn, no one right or wrong preference on the continua. Try to include activities that allow students to learn in a variety of modes. The more active involvement students have in the learning process (through discussions, question and answer sessions, group projects, problem sets, presentations, etc.), the more information they will retain and the more enjoyable they will find their learning experience in your course. Using an interactive teaching style may result in the following benefits for students:

-students become active rather than passive participants in the learning process

-students retain information longer

-interactive techniques are democratic processes and thereby give students experience in collaborating and cooperating with others

-problem-solving and critical-thinking skills are enhanced in discussion settings

-some students may learn better in a group situation

-self-esteem is enhanced by class participation

-students are given the opportunity to clarify their beliefs and values

-student motivation for future learning is increased

In general, considerable evidence indicates that teaching techniques that maximize interaction between students and teachers (and among students themselves) tend to emphasize cognitive tasks at the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy of learning objectives. In selecting an instructional style for your lecture, discussion, lab, or course, keep in mind what it is you think is most important for your students to learn. The ways in which your objectives are carried out will either facilitate or hinder what you are trying to accomplish with students. This is why it is important to “fit” your teaching style to both your course objectives and to your students’ varied learning styles.

The following are some interactive teaching techniques to help do this:

-have students write a question on a 3 X 5 card (or send an email) and turn it in for you to answer in a “press conference” format

-put students into pairs to quiz each other about the subject matter

-have students apply subject matter by solving real problems together in class as well as doing homework

-give students red, yellow, and green cards (made of poster board) and periodically call for a vote on an issue by asking for a simultaneous showing of cards. With larger classes consider using a personal response system (Contact Media Services for more info on this (6-3091)

-roam the aisles of large classrooms and carry on running conversations with students as they work on problems (a portable microphone helps in a large hall)

-ask a question directed to one student and wait for an answer (at least 7 seconds or more)

-do oral, show-of-hands, multiple-choice tests for summary, review, and instant feedback

-grade quizzes and exercises in class as a learning tool

-give students plenty of opportunity for practice before a major test

-give a quiz or test early in the semester, grade it, and return it at the next class meeting. Students need to clearly understand your assessment format and the level of knowledge you expect in their responses.

-have students write questions, collect them, and answer them at the beginning of the next class period or via e-mail

-allow students to work collaborative to understand new material

-assign written paraphrases and summaries of difficult reading

-have students write something

-have students keep three-week, three-times-a-week journals in which they comment, ask questions about or respond to course topics

-invite students to critique each other’s essays or short answers on tests for readability and content

-give students a take-home problem relating to the day’s lecture

- From the University of Oregon’s Teaching Effectiveness Program

The art of creating auditory content

2006-03-02T15:10:00.000-08:00

As podcasting becomes a more wide-spread distribution method for e-learning content, attention to the quality of auditory delivery becomes more important. I found this article offers tips that are helpful to instructors delivering live lectures as well as those who are considering the production of online multimedia presentations:

Excerpted from "Scripting for E-Learning"
by Laura Steinhart

Most e-learning content-- from simple PowerPoint slide shows to customized screens with text and images--is designed for reading. Some content also includes voice-overs, such as user instructions or character voices in a scenario. Occasionally, narration tightly integrated with animation creates engaging explanations of complex processes.

In e-learning that is heavily pictorial rather than textual, the learner’s attention focuses on the visual content and the voice-overs are secondary. This does not mean that the voice-overs or words on screen are less important to the instructional designer. You would typically storyboard all content at the same time. But, it does mean that you need a clear plan for the visuals with the voice-overs in supporting roles, much as you would create a comic strip or animated film.

Storyboarding

The multi-media storyboard typically has three sections: Visual sketches, production notes, and voice scripts. A producer integrates and times the voice-overs or narrations with the visual stills and animations.

Writing for the ear

Writing for the ear, rather than the eye, is fundamentally different and is a much less forgiving task. The ear notices and cringes at awkward shifts, pretentiousness, repetitiveness, and--in technical material--long strings of nouns used as qualifiers.

The beauty of auditory content is that it speaks directly to the mind. As infants, we hear and understand spoken language years before we learn to read. Our ears are perceptive to nuance. We naturally distinguish speech styles as sharply different as TV infomercial patter, voice mail instructions, and corporate promotions.

Writing for e-learning voice-overs also encompasses different styles. You can distinguish characters in a scenario by their speech as much as their appearance. The omniscient voice may give warm, encouraging user instructions or explain how things work in spare, neutral sentences.

Playback and timing

The single most important technique in scripting for e-learning is to record and play back a voice reading the material. If you close your eyes, you will notice abrupt shifts, omissions, repetitions, and other areas needing improvement.

Tips

Pay attention to flow. When scripting narrated explanations, unfold each fact or concept sequentially and naturally into the next with no backtracking and no jumping ahead. Explanations should describe processes stage by stage rather than define terms. The name of a concept may, in fact, follow its description.

Be aware of the strong emotional power of heard speech. The narrator can vary the same text to convey very different messages. Use this to strengthen the motivational effect of your material. Specify the narration purpose, style, and emphasis in the storyboard’s production notes or by adopting typographic standards in the script. For example, all caps might indicate a louder voice and ellipses might indicate a pause.

Unless e-learning chunks are segmented for modularity, transitions can be very helpful. Students appreciate, “In the previous section, you learned . . . In THIS section, we learn . . . Next, . . . ”

Use rhetorical questions, such as, “How does the body break down carbohydrates into sugar?”

Technical material often includes long strings of nouns used as qualifiers. When possible, try to avoid this in both print materials and scripts. Keep sentences simple and declarative. Except for necessary technical terms, use basic language.

Scripting is a very satisfying task. It involves the basic composition skills used for print or online writing, but extends those skills to develop our innate auditory awareness. One integrates the auditory and the visual for a single, powerful message and better retention of learning.

Laura Steinhart (laura@mla.mv.com) is a consultant specializing in the design and development of e-learning materials.