'Teaching Tips'
Lecture, arguably, is the most common method of teaching in higher education. It is not uncommon to walk into any classroom and find students can be busy trying to keep notes on what their instructor is saying. In the latest issue of Science, Eric Mazur, a physics professor at Harvard University, offers his own perspective on how he made the shift from lecturing as the prime modality for teaching to a more student-centered approach.
Mazur explains how throughout his schooling the lecture method was the way students were taught. The reliance on lecturing continued, Mazur says, until he felt that the method was not the most effective and meaningful approach to teaching. Despite earning high evaluations from courses he taught, Mazur made significant changes in his classes. “The traditional approach to teaching reduces education to a transfer of information,” Mazur says. He also describes how using what he calls the “clicker method” has allowed him to explore new pedagogical approaches in his courses.
Here are other quotes from “Farewell, Lecture?”:
“My lecturing was ineffective, despite the high evaluations.”
“The traditional approach to teaching reduces education to a transfer of information.”
“The responsibility for gathering information now rests squarely on the shoulders of the students. They must read material before coming to class, so that class time can be devoted to discussions, peer interactions, and time to assimilate and think. Instead of teaching by telling, I am teaching by questioning.”
“However, it is not the technology [clickers] but the pedagogy that matters.”
Please read the brief article for yourself and share your thoughts and/or comments below (just click on the COMMENTS link).
Other “Clickers” resources include:
CTL’s Clicker Resource page
http://www.bgsu.edu/ctlpage49370.html
Tom Haffie (University of Western Ontario) presents Clickers at Queens University (11/2006)
http://sunsite.queensu.ca/vmp/clickers/index.html
January 6th, 2009
A group of several BGSU instructors, from tenured professors to a graduate teaching assistant, attended the “Science of Learning” discussion session last Friday. The discussion centered on Diane Halpern’s keynote from earlier this spring at the 2nd Annual BGSU Teaching and Learning Fair. She began her keynote with the quizzical, yet rhetorical question:
If I taught something and no one learned it, what happened?
(In other words, can I say that I really TAUGHT it?)
Some of the key points the group discussed during the session were the nature the science of learning and importance of faculty knowing about the implications for their courses and the students they teach. Halpern encourages faculty to think about the big ideas of their course (Ten years after your course, what do you want students to remember or be able to do?); be clear about learning outcomes, and encourage/foster a learning environment that allows for practice at retrieval of knowledge and establishes challenging learning opportunities that addresses and transforms their mental models.
Furthermore, it’s important for students (and faculty) to realize that learning is “effortful,” yet rewarding – often most difficult initially, then easier with more efforts and practice… like most things in life. The diverse group of participants provided and discussed examples from foreign languages, musical performance, and the sciences.
Later, participants reviewed Halpern’s list of 25 principles (full list with citations available here or as MS Word file) and selected individual principles that are essential for student success, such as:
• Perceptual motor grounding
• Testing effect
• Spacing effect
• Stories and Example Cases
• Discovery Learning
One concern brought up in Halpern’s address as well as in this discussion session that is an important question for all teachers – (paraphrased) “So, if these methods lead to better, durable learning, don’t these take up more time in the class? What goes and how do we choose?” A great question for all instructors, department chairs, and deans as well!
Halpern suggests focusing your planning on students’ lives today and in the future – What are or will be their needs? What skills and knowledge will best prepare them for a world that doesn’t exist yet? These questions will continue to be explored and certainly more will be generated as additional findings emerge from the “learning sciences” discipline, as well as from the cognitive and neurological sciences.
For the BGSU community, to view this keynote, visit the DVSS (digital video streaming server), log in, and search for “Halpern” — the video is approximately 70 minutes.
For those who attended this session or just want to leave a thought), click on the Comments link below this post to share your thoughts on the keynote, this discussion session, or any related issues.
December 16th, 2008
While the Internet has opened us to a world of information and sources, it can also cause problems in our classrooms. The Internet has provided our students with a wealth of websites that will sell, barter and even give away research papers, English papers and essays. How do you combat this in our classes?
In a recent article in T.H.E. Journal titled “e-cheating: Combating a 21st Century Challenge,” Kim McMurtry provides us with a list of 8 suggestions to combat this type of plagiarism:
- Take time to explain and discuss your academic honesty policy
- Design writing assignments with specific goals and instructions
- Know what’s available online before assigning a paper
- Give students enough time to do an assignment
- Require oral presentations of student papers or have students submit a letter of
transferal to you, explaining briefly their thesis statement, research process, etc
- Have students submit essays electronically
- When you suspect e-cheating, use a free full-text search engine like AltaVista or
Digital Integrity
- Consider subscribing to a plagiarism search service, like Plagiarism.org or
IntegriGuard
Read the entire article by clicking here
How have you dealt with e-cheating in your classes?
November 24th, 2008
Collaborative skills are essential skills that students must learn in order to succeed in their chosen fields. How can we teach students collaborative skills? Through group projects.
While most students grumble at the announcement of group work, there are ways to make group work more rewarding and effective. In an article titled “Collaborative peer evaluation: Best practices for group member assessments,” Lisa Gueldsenzoph and Gary May provides a useful checklist for effective peer evaluation. This includes:
- Make sure students understand the who, what, when, why, and how of the assessment BEFORE the group project begins.
- Create a peer evaluation tool that is specific to the purpose, goals, and tasks of the group project.
- Be the “guide on the side” as a resource to students and to ensure whole group participation.
- Ensure content of the quantitative peer evaluation form is measurable to discourage popularity points.”
- Use formative (mid-process) evaluations not as a grading device, but to keep the group on track and to resolve problems as they occur.
- Use summative evaluations that allow students to evaluate their own role in the group as well as each of their group members.
- At the conclusion of the group project and evaluation process, seek students’ input to assess the overall experience.
Gueldsenzoph and May also include a peer evaluation form that can be adapted and used with your group assignments.
If you would like to learn more about creating effective group projects in you classroom, the Center is hosting a discussion titled, Designing Effective and Meaningful Group Projects on Friday, January 9 from 10-11:30. Register for this workshop here.
Gueldenzoph, L. E. & May, L. G. (2002). Collaborative peer evaluation: Best practices for group member assessments. Business Communication Quarterly, 65(1), 9-20.
How do you design group projects?
November 7th, 2008
The November “Teachers on Teaching” session is on professional practice and authentic assessment. Facilitated by Drs. Vincent Kantorski and Sandra Stegman from the College of Musical Arts, this session aims to provide instructors with practical assessments centered on authentic, professional skills and tasks. For more information, we asked Vincent and Sandra a few questions about their upcoming session:
Q: What exactly is “professional practice”?
A: Professional practices are tasks, activities, reasoning, etc. that are reflective of how real-world practitioners work within their field. Teachers can then assess those authentic activities to determine how well prepared students would be to do similar activities as novice professionals.
For example, in Dr. Stegman’s Choral Methods course, students analyze a piece of music that they then introduce and rehearse in class. The rehearsal is video-taped for self-assessment in addition to the verbal and written feedback that she provides. Students prepare vocal warm-up cards that they use in actual practice with their field site students. Feedback is offered from their cooperating teacher.
In another example, Dr. Kantorski has students in a music education class write a letter to a newspaper editor urging readers to vote against a hypothetical levy that, if passed, would result in drastic cuts to the school district’s music program. Students are required to provide rationales, based upon research and the benefits they derived as music students in the school district, for each point of their argument.
Q: Why is PP&AA helpful/important for faculty and/or their students?
A: Professional practice and authentic assessment provide relevancy to course information, assignments, etc. They connect students to the real world of work and life outside the classroom. They can be helpful and important to students because they actually practice, rather than simply discuss or read about, activities they will be expected to do as professionals. This process can be especially valuable to students because they receive their teachers’ feedback and suggestions for improvement and self-evaluation.
Q: Is PP&AA something instructors can implement right away or is there a fairly steep learning curve?
A: It can be introduced in small doses immediately; however, ideas for how to do so are not always quick to arise. That is the benefit of sharing methods and strategies with colleagues from same and different disciplines, as will be the case at the November 12 session.
This discussion session, “Let’s Get Real: Authentic Practice and Assessment,” will be held on Wednesday, November 12 from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. in 201 University Hall. For the full description or to register, visit http://www.bgsu.edu/ctl/page57568.html or call 372-6898.
November 7th, 2008
Are you trying to find a way to make your classroom environment more engaging? In a College Teaching article, Tara Gray and Laura Madson provide the following 10 tips for engaging students:
Always
1. Maintain sustained eye contact.
2. Ask before you tell.
3. Create a structure for note taking.
4. Let the readings share your lectern.
Sometimes
5. Use the pause procedure.
Pause so that students can compare and discuss notes for 2 minutes.
6. Assign one-minute papers.
7. Try think-pair-share.
Hold Students Accountable Daily
8. Quiz daily.
9. Use clickers
10. Call on a student every 2-3 minutes.
This article provides great tips and give good examples on how to apply these techniques in your classroom.
Find the entire article through BGSU’s Library. Search for:
Gray, Tara and Laura Madson. “Ten Easy Ways to Engage Your Students.” College Teaching 25.2 (2007): 83-87.
How do you engage your students?
October 15th, 2008
Instructors in any discipline probably have had to deal with the procrastinating student. For one reason or another, these students have a hard time with getting their work done on-time and/or have a habit of underachieving because they rush to complete assignment.
Marty Nemko, a Guest Blogger for The Chronicle of Higher Education, offers some tips for Helping Your Procrastination-Prone Students.
CTL would love to hear from any instructor and how they try and help their procrastinating students.
How do you deal with procrastination-prone students?
October 2nd, 2008
CTL would first like to say thank you for the participants who did come to the workshop. Your input, time and effort are more than appreciated. We’re really looking forward to our next discussion and are planning on seeing all of you again.
Here are some of the reflections that we took from our discussion:
* Most of you appreciated that there is some kind of forum where you can talk about being a TA here at BGSU. And, you were all more than willing to share some of your experiences and insight that you have had here.
* Many of you would like to be able to hear more from other TAs. You would like to hear what other TAs are doing in their classes, how they deal with certain situations, integrating certain tools and methodologies into your classes, and some of you expressed that you would like to see about making your classes more interactive and lively.
* Some of you appreciated it when instructors are open to getting feedback from students, so some of you discussed how you do the same in your classes. In other words, you appreciate an instructor’s willingness to improve and adjust, and many of you are willing to make the same effort.
* Finally, many of like any further input you can get about teaching from any reliable source.
We are adjusting our next workshop to address and capitalize on these promising topics. We are actually thinking about having you all share different unique practices that you implement in your classes, which could only help one another, as TAs. Our next two workshops are October 14th @ 1:30p-2:30p and October 15th @ 10:30a-11:30a. These workshops will be the same format and topics. We just have added another day and time in case more TAs come and having some flexibility to work with your schedules.
Please do not hesitate to register for the Teaching Assistants are Links workshop series by e-mailing or calling us. If these next two workshops go as well as the first one, we will have a wonderful time.
What are some suggestions for TAs? What are some topics we could discuss in our next workshop? We would love to hear from current or former teaching assistants!
September 26th, 2008
On Tuesday,
Dr. Jodi Haney presented a discussion session at the
CTL entitled
Motivating “These Kids Today” and challenged participants to consider their role in creating an environment that will encourage and foster students’ motivation to learn. The bottom line she stressed was that:
“faculty CANNOT motivate students, as motivation is a personal construct and can only come from within… we can only set the scene and create a motivating environment for learning.”
Student Motivation is defined as a “student’s willingness, need, desire and compulsion to participate in, and be successful in, the learning process” (Bomia et al., 1997, p. 1). This includes extrinsic motivation, where a student engages in learning “purely for the sake of attaining a reward or for avoiding some punishment and intrinsic motivation, when a student is motivated from within, actively engaging in learning out of curiosity, interest, or enjoyment, or in order to achieve their own intellectual and personal goals (Dev, 1997).
One analogy presented was:
To Catch a Cat…
A. Pull the cat out from under the couch
Vs.
B. Entice the cat by dangling a string
(p.s. – our students are the cats!)
STRATEGIES — Ideas that WORK!! (GENERAL)
- Capitalize on students’ existing needs
- Make students active participants in learning
- Ask students to analyze what makes their classes more or less “motivating.”
- Instructor’s enthusiasm
- Relevance of the material
- Organization of the course
- Appropriate difficulty level of the material
- Active involvement of students
- Variety
- Rapport between teacher and students
- Use of appropriate, concrete, and understandable examples
Incorporating Faculty Behaviors:
- Hold high but realistic expectations for your learners
- Help learners set achievable goals for themselves
- Tell learners what they need to do to succeed in your course
- Strengthen learners’ sense of power (behavioral choices)
- Avoid creating intense competition among learners
- Be enthusiastic about your course
- Take time to GET TO KNOW learners, talk to them, and express enjoyment in your interactions
- Vary your teaching methods
Motivating Students to Do the Reading (some examples):
- Assign the reading at least two sessions before it will be discussed
- Assign study questions
- If your class is small, have learners turn in brief notes on the day’s reading that they can use during exam (Jodi’s “C option”)
- Ask learners to write a one-word journal or one- sentence journal summarizing the reading
- Ask non-threatening questions about the reading (fishbowl)
In summary… Create an environment that provides learners with a SENSE OF:
* POWER – I have control over my learning.
* CONNECTEDNESS – I am a valued member of a learning community.
* MODELS – I can do this because my peers can do it.
* UNIQUENESS – I am an original learner.
(Stevenson, 1992; modified by Haney, 2007)
Dr. Haney encourages all of us (including herself) to focus on incorporating just one or two of these strategies during a semester, reflect on the change throughout, and continue to analyze and build upon them in the future.
What are strategies you use to create an environment where students are motivated to learn? Any other thoughts or comments on this issue?
September 25th, 2008
If you haven’t heard of Google Jockeying, you will probably be hearing or reading about it soon. Its popularity is growing quickly in higher education.
Here’s a quick example of how Google Jockeying works in the classroom:
An instructor is doing their presentation on the American Revolution or some other topic. At the same time there is a pre-designated member of the class is “Google-ing” (the student doesn’t have to use Google either, they can use any search engine they want) the different terms or aspects from the presentation, which students may want to know about. They are doing this with a projector attached to their computer for the entire class to see while they participate in the presentation or listen to the lecture. So, in the American Revolution discussion, the “Jockey” may Google a name like Lord Dunmore or pull up an image of a British soldier or display online links for students to read the Declaration of Independence.
Many instructors are finding Google Jockeying helpful for their students. It’s popularity is growing.
Link to more information about “Google Jockeying”:
<http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAbout/39391>
August 7th, 2008
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