Nine Ways to Improve Class Discussions

September 30th, 2015

By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD

I once heard class discussions described as “transient instructional events.” They pass through the class, the course, and the educational experiences of students with few lingering effects. Ideas are batted around, often with forced participation; students don’t take notes; and then the discussion ends—it runs out of steam or the class runs out of time. If asked a few days later about the exchange, most students would be hard-pressed to remember anything beyond what they themselves might have said, if that. So this post offers some simple suggestions for increasing the impact of the discussions that occur in our courses.

1. Be more focused and for less time – It’s easy to forget that students are newcomers to academic discourse. Academics can go on about a topic of interest for days; hours, if it’s a department meeting. Students aren’t used to exchanges that include points, counterpoints, and connections to previous points with references to research, related resources, and previous experience. Early on, students do better with short discussions—focused and specific. Think 10 minutes, maybe 15.
2. Use better hooks to launch the discussion – Usually discussion starts with a question. That works if it’s a powerful question—one immediately recognized as a “good question.” Prompts of that caliber require thoughtful preparation; they don’t usually pop into our minds the moment we need them. But questions aren’t the only option. A pithy quotation, a short scenario that requires content application, a hypothetical case or situation, a synopsis of a relevant current event—all of these can jump-start a discussion.
3. Pause – Stop the discussion and ask students to think about what’s been said so far, or ask them to write down what struck them as a key idea, a new insight, a question still unanswered, or maybe where they think the discussion should go next. Think short pauses, 30 seconds, maybe a minute.
4. Have note takers – Ask whether there are two or three students who’d be willing to take notes during the discussion. Then post their notes on the course website or otherwise distribute them. This should count as class participation! It gives introverts a way to contribute comfortably. You might encourage some extrovert who has tendency to over-participate to make your day by volunteering to quietly take copious notes, which he or she could use to summarize the discussion when it ends.
5. Talk less or not at all – Too many classroom discussions are still dominated by teacher talk. You will talk less if you assign yourself a recorder role. You’ll key in on the essence of comments, record the examples, and list the questions. You’ll be listening closely and will probably hear more than you usually do because you aren’t thinking about what to say next. Or you can function as the discussion facilitator. Recognize those who are volunteering. Encourage others to speak. Point out good comments that merit response. Ask what questions the conversation is raising. Challenge those with different views to share them. Do everything you can to make it a good student discussion.
6. End with something definitive – Return to the hook that launched the discussion. Ask some students to write a one-sentence summary of the discussion. Ask other students to list the questions the discussion has answered. And ask a third group to identify unanswered questions that emerged during the discussion. Finally, use what students have written to help them bring closure to the discussion.
7. Use the discussion – Keep referring to it! “Remember that discussion we had about X? What did we conclude?” Refer to individual comments made during the discussion. “Paula had an interesting insight about Y. Who remembers what she said? Does it relate to this topic?” And if you really want students to listen up and take discussions seriously, use a comment made in the discussion as the frame for a short essay question on the next exam or quiz.
8. Invite students to suggest discussion topics – If the suggestion is good, reward the student with a few bonus points and ask him or her to launch the discussion by explaining why it’s a topic that merits discussion.
9. Discuss discussions – Briefly is fine. “Why do teachers use them? What keeps everyone listening? How do they help us learn?” Or do a debriefing of a discussion that just occurred. “So, the discussion we just had, say we’d like to improve it. What would you recommend?”
I welcome your suggestions for making the most of discussions. Please share in the comment box.

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Exploring the Advantages of Rubrics

September 9th, 2015

By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD

“I don’t believe in giving students rubrics,” a faculty member told me recently. “They’re another example of something that waters down education.” I was telling him about a study I’d just read that documented some significant improvement in student papers when students used a detailed rubric to guide their preparation of the research paper. I wasn’t very articulate in my response to him and decided I’d use this post to explore some of the issues involved in sharing rubrics and grading criteria with students.
“I don’t understand what you want on this assignment.” It’s one of those comments teachers don’t like to hear from students, and rubrics, checklists, or the grading criteria offer constructive ways to respond. They identify those parts of an assignment or performance that matter, that if included and done well garner good grades and learning. If teachers don’t identify them, then students must figure out for themselves what the assignment needs in order to be considered good.
The objection to sharing rubrics is not groundless. If you give students a detailed rubric, behaviorally focused, like the one used in this study, you’ve essentially deconstructed (a descriptive term used by the study’s author) a research report. You’ve broken it down into multiple small pieces, enabling the student to do each piece, patch them together, and have a research report. In the study, research reports written using the rubric were significantly better than those written not using a rubric. It is fair to ask whether use of the rubric improved their research report writing in general or only this one time on this one assignment.
Not knowing how the work will be assessed definitely adds challenge to an assignment. But what’s challenging the students? The time and energy necessary to figure out assignment criteria or the intellectual richness of the work itself? If students get sidetracked by trying to figure out what the teacher wants and that ends up taking as much or more time than dealing with the content, then I don’t think that makes an assignment challenging for the right reasons.
A lot of students are obsessed with trying to figure out what the teacher wants. From their long years in school, they’ve learned that different teachers want different things. It’s not all random whimsy; there are any number of criteria that most of us would agree are relevant to particular kinds of assignments. But there’s lots of variation among us at the level of detail—appropriate fonts, number of references, and whether the first person can be used in essays, for example. Students mostly see this as a guessing game, and there’s not a lot of enduring, transferrable learning that comes from trying to answer questions that revolve around what looks to students like personal preference. I’m not advocating uniform standards here. Personal preference has its place, and some of what looks like personal preference to students isn’t.
I think rubrics have value if teachers use them to get students past what the teacher wants to what criteria make papers, projects, and performances excellent. First, seeing that delineation on a rubric is certainly more efficient than trying to figure it out on your own, and using a rubric often garners secondary benefits. In the second study reported by this author, students used the rubric to grade another student’s report. Their feedback was not shared with the report’s author. But that assessment activity alone was enough to enable 60% of the students to rewrite their own paper and receive a significantly higher score.
We continue to keep students out of the assessment process. No, we can’t let them grade their own work, but assessment should be thought of more holistically. It’s the ability to figure out what criteria others will be using to judge your work. It’s about being able to identify what’s good and what isn’t in your own work. Being able to accurately assess your work and that of others is one of those lifetime skills that separates successful professionals from those less so.
The ultimate goal should be students who don’t need teacher-constructed rubrics. The question is when and how we develop that level of assessment skill.
Reference: Greenberg, K. P. (2015). Rubric use in formative assessment: A detailed behavioral rubric helps students improve their scientific writing skills. Teaching of Psychology, 42 (3), 211-217.
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The Eight-Minute Lecture Keeps Students Engaged

August 31st, 2015

By: Illysa Izenberg

In the 1970s, my mother, a fifth-grade teacher, would lament, “The TV remote has ruined my classroom! I can almost feel the kids trying to point a clicker at me to change the channel!” Little did she know that college students today don’t need to wish for a remote control to switch from their professor to entertainment—an endless assortment of distractions are all on their smart phones.
Numerous studies have demonstrated that students retain little of our lectures, and research on determining the “average attention span,” while varying, seems to congregate around eight to ten minutes (“Attention Span Statistics,” 2015), (Richardson, 2010). Research discussed in a 2009 Faculty Focus article by Maryellen Weimer questions the attention span research, while encouraging instructors to facilitate student focus.
When I began teaching in 2006, I assumed that students could read anything I say. Therefore, my classes consisted of debates of, activities building on, and direct application of theories taught in the readings—no lectures.
But I noticed that students had difficulty understanding the content in a way that enabled accurate and deep application without some framing from me. In short, I needed to lecture—at least a little. This is when I began the eight-minute lecture. If you’re worried that eight minutes is too long, I discovered that when students experience many short lectures throughout the semester, they learn to focus in those bursts, in part because they know the lecture will be brief.
How to implement the eight-minute lecture
1. Prepare students – Early in the semester, explain your teaching methodology and your rationale for doing things a certain way. This helps manage students’ expectations. Most of my students study engineering and expect to mostly listen to lectures and take notes. They are less accustomed to an active learning environment that involves lots of debates on the readings, small group discussions and report-backs, short reflection papers, quick multiple choice clicker quizzes, problem sets, and/or short lectures.
2. Redesign/rewrite lectures – Review your lectures to identify natural breaks. Where can you pause without losing meaning? How can you use students’ knowledge from their homework and previous learning as a scaffold?
Next, look for areas in your lecture where you talk about something that instead can be learned from an image, video, or interactive activity, and substitute accordingly. Cull through the content until you have eliminated two-thirds of your lecture material.
An example from last semester
Toward the end of last semester, I began a module on global business. The learning objectives for the first 50-minute class period on the topic were to be able to discuss the origins and benefits/costs of globalization and to test global business theories against existing corporate outcomes.
In preparation, students read a textbook chapter delineating the history and theories of success in global business, and completed either an interview with a manager working internationally or an analysis of global business news (their choice).
With this preparation, they came to class with a firm grasp of global business terminology and context. Further, as this class period came toward the end of the semester, students had a basic working knowledge of management and leadership theory; Western business history; and the interaction of business, government, and the global economy.
I started out by asking a question related to their preparation. I then began my first eight-minute lecture, introducing them to the concept of balance of payments while displaying current numbers up on the screen. Once I explained trade imbalances, I asked questions that weren’t answered in their reading or my lecture, but were answerable with careful reflection on both.
For example, “How might you incorporate your previous learning on the supply and demand curve to understand how exchange rates influence global business?”
Once this topic was fully explored, I gave another eight-minute lecture, and then engaged them in a new activity that taught the next learning objective. At the end of class, I tested to ensure that the objectives had been met by asking students for a one-to-three-sentence note card summarizing their learning. The success of this method of interspersing mini-lectures with activities, discussions, and time for reflection was validated by the final exam scores achieved by the students in this class, which surpassed those of previous semesters.
References:
Statistics Brain Research Institute. “Attention Span Statistics.” April 2, 2015. Retrieved from http://www.statisticbrain.com/attention-span-statistics/.
Richardson, H. “Students only have ‘10-minute attention span’.” News.bbc.co.uk. January, 2010. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8449307.stm.
Wilson, K. and Korn, J. H. “Attention during lectures: Beyond ten minutes.” Teaching of Psychology 34, no. 2 (2007): 85–89.

Illysa Izenberg is a lecturer for the Center for Leadership Education in the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

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The First Day of Class: A Once-a-Semester Opportunity

August 19th, 2015

By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD

There’s only one first day of class. Here are some ideas for taking advantage of opportunities that are not available in the same way on any other day of the course.

• It’s students’ first introduction to the course content. Catalog descriptions of courses may be accurate, but they aren’t all that good at conveying why the content is important, relevant, and useful; why students just may find it interesting; and why a few in the past have actually fallen in love with it. A good introduction provides a bit of background; it builds connections by identifying shared experiences and common interests. The details offered in a good introduction motivate continued conversation.
• The first day gives you the chance to explain why this course and the content of this field matter to you. Of all the potential majors, you chose one in this field—how did that happen? Did you choose well? Why?


• Most courses develop important skills—concrete ones like how to calculate the Doppler shift and less specific ones like how to evaluate evidence or construct a persuasive argument. The first day is a good time to let students know what they will be able to do—or do better—as a consequence of this course. Too often we focus the conversation on what the course covers and what students will know by the end of the term. That’s important, but we shouldn’t leave out how the course develops skills—some of which students will use for the rest of their lives.
• Courses have been known to change lives. Most don’t, but why not introduce the possibility on the first day? Adult educators call it transformative learning. It happens when we learn something that not only changes how we think, but also changes what we do; indeed, who we are. Sometimes these big changes occur incrementally; other times they hit like lightning—with a burst of light and a thunderous revelation. It’s been known to happen in all types of courses and with all types of students.
• You can talk about your commitment to teaching. What are your favorite things about teaching? What do you need from students in order to do your very best teaching?
• You can talk about your commitment to student learning. How will you support their efforts to master the material? What can you do to go beyond “I’m happy to answer questions” and “I have regularly scheduled office hours”?
• You can explore students’ commitments to learning. Yes, most often their first commitment is to grades and getting good ones, but there’s an opportunity missed if you talk only about grades and don’t mention learning. Could you compose a potential course theme song? “Grades matter, but learning matters more.” You’ll be singing it solo, but if students hear it often enough, you may get some accompaniment by the end of the course.
• It’s the first chance to find out about your students in the course: year in school, major, prior course work, current jobs, career objectives, characteristics of courses in which they’ve learned a lot, teacher feedback that is and isn’t helpful, peer contributions that support learning—whatever information you might need to connect with them as learners. Collecting this information is the first step in building constructive relationships with students and discovering concrete ways you can link course content to student realities.
• It’s a new course and, for most, the beginning of a new academic year. Optimism prevails. Teachers and students want the same things on the first day—a good course, a positive constructive learning environment, the chance to succeed—and at this point everyone still believes these things are possible.
• Students may look passive and not especially interested, but don’t be fooled. In most cases, it’s a facade. Who among us hasn’t tried to look calm, cool, and collected when we’re feeling scared, uncomfortable, and afraid of looking stupid? On that very first day, get students connected with each other and the course content. Let students wade around in some intriguing content details, collectively discovering that the water’s warm and feels good. Maybe they’ll be motivated to dive in and swim out toward deeper water.
• It’s the day in the course when it’s easiest for the teacher to genuinely smile. You have only good news to share, so let them hear it.

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How Do You Learn?

August 12th, 2015

By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD

We are definitely way more interested in learning than we used to be. In the early years of my teaching and faculty development work, it was all about teaching: improve it and students will automatically learn more. Now the focus is on how students learn and the implications that has for how we teach.
Lately I’ve been wondering about the learning practices of those of us who teach—what we know about ourselves as learners and how that knowledge influences the decisions we make about teaching. I’ve been trying to recall what I’ve thought about myself as a learner when I was in college. I think I self-identified as a student. I took courses and learned content. I liked some subjects and didn’t like others, which was sort of related to what I thought I could do. But the concept of learning as an entity was pretty much a big amorphous fuzz.
In a workshop on using reflection to promote professional growth, I asked participants to spend some time thinking and writing about what they knew about themselves as learners. When we moved to a whole-group discussion, people talked about learning in general, not about themselves as learners. I didn’t have much luck getting the group to make it personal. Did it feel too risky? That didn’t seem right. This group had been working together for almost eight weeks. Was the question unclear? Or was it simply that these college teachers hadn’t thought much about themselves as learners and didn’t have any good answers at the ready?
Many of us have done the learning styles bit. We’ve got some broad parameters. I learn from text. If findings are explained in the text, I get it. Make me get the conclusions from a table and I struggle. I like questions that generate an array of answers without definitive right ones. I’m better with details and don’t always see how they can be assembled into a big picture. I’m betting you can come up with your own descriptions for how you like to learn, but these are all general characteristics, starting points. The wave of neuroscience research is making it clear that learners are unique, that understanding and sense-making is very much an individual process. Our thinking about how we do it needs to be more precise and specific.
I also tried to get my workshop group to talk about the relationship between what we study and how we learn. We find our way to these disciplines where knowledge is configured, organized, shaped, and structured in particular ways. Do we feel at home there because those ways of dealing with content fit with how we manage material—or is it the other way around? We get into these disciplinary domains and they start shaping how we think, question, analyze, discover, and learn. Or, maybe it’s some synergistic relationship that we have yet to figure out.
It’s interesting to try to learn something new and unlike what you know well. That takes most of us outside our comfort zones, and pretty quickly we start looking and acting a lot like our students. I’m trying to learn how to kayak this summer. A phys ed teacher who lives next door has been helping me. I hear myself telling her that I’m a motor-skills moron and may be too old to learn. My kayak mostly moves in clumsy circles. She glides around smoothly and with such precision that I’m embarrassed to be in her presence. I apologize for my stupid questions. The learning strategies I rely on to read, write, think, and make presentations simply don’t work with this learning task.
I’m convinced that how we learn influences the decisions we make about how to teach. It starts with the commitment to teach the kind of course we’d like to take. Many of us talk a lot when we teach because we learn well by listening. We assign lots of reading because that’s how we master new information. But those are the easy, obvious connections. I suspect there are others that are more subtle and complex. How we learn and its effects on how we teach are intriguing. It’s important because it affects how students learn. I’m wondering if the kind of teaching that helps students learn begins with a clear understanding of how learning works for us.

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What Kind of Feedback Helps Students Who Are Doing Poorly?

August 5th, 2015

By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD

Students perform poorly in our courses for a variety of reasons. Here are some students you’ve likely encountered over the years, as well as a few ideas on the type of feedback that best helps them turn things around.
The student who’s doing poorly because he isn’t trying. For whatever reason(s), he just doesn’t care to put forth any kind of effort and happily cruises along at half speed. I have to admit, these were the students I found most frustrating and challenging. Can you make a student care? Not often, my experience inclines me to think, but can you afford not to try? How many of us cruised along, at least in a few classes?
Here are two approaches I have used with students who weren’t trying (please suggest others). First, I tried to discover something that might interest the student, even if that meant offering different assignment features or alternative assignments. “What would make this assignment more interesting to you?” “Is there an assignment I could give you that would motivate you to do your best work?” Second, I would try the constructively in-your-face approach—privately, of course. “You are wasting your time and somebody’s money!” “When are you going to get serious about preparing for the rest of your life?”
The student who’s doing poorly because she has no self-confidence. These are the students who set out to prove what they believe. “I can’t write.” “I’ve never been any good in math.” “I’m not coordinated.” First and foremost, these students need teachers who believe in them. I admit, sometimes I have faked it a bit here. In my heart of hearts, I’ve wondered about their chances of success, but to their faces I am all about believing they can. I can’t do it for them and I’m not saying it will be easy, but I’m alongside them as they work to learn the content or master the skill.
The feedback these students need is specific and descriptive, not vague and certainly not evaluative. “Here’s what you need to learn or do next.” And what needs to happen next is a bite-size chunk. The feedback doesn’t assume or proclaim that it’s easy, because to this learner it may be the toughest thing she’s chewed so far. It’s focused feedback, and the focus is on the task at hand. It’s also feedback about progress and celebration, which the learner needs to note and celebrate. “Are you seeing any signs of progress?” “Where?” “What about in this part of the paper?” “How will you know when you’ve succeeded?” “How will you celebrate?”
The student who’s doing poorly because he doesn’t have the necessary knowledge or skills. It could be the student’s fault or where he went to high school, but who’s to blame isn’t the issue when it comes to the kind of feedback that will help. This student needs a clear (but not overwhelming) delineation of what he’s missing, and where that knowledge can be found or how those skills can be acquired. Here, too, it’s descriptive feedback, not evaluative. Realistic feedback is needed in cases where much that’s essential is missing. It’s about what the student doesn’t know or can’t do, not his ability to master what he needs to know or do. But when a student is missing a considerable amount of knowledge or skills, success in this particular course at this time is not likely.
The student who’s doing poorly because she isn’t getting a certain concept. She’s trying, attending class, asking questions, and showing up during office hours, but the light of understanding is not coming on. She is frustrated, angry, upset, feels like quitting, and thinks she’ll never get it. She needs teacher feedback about persevering. She needs to hear stories about how understanding sometimes descends unexpectedly—while taking a walk, when falling asleep at night, or perhaps a day or two later. She needs feedback, but not an overwhelming amount. In the study referenced below, students in clinical settings were underperforming. In their efforts to help, teachers provided more and more feedback—more explanations, more examples, more demonstrations, and more supervision. More didn’t always help. It’s better to keep the feedback focused and encourage her to consult others (including peers) who understand. Maybe they can help her find the switch.
Reference: Bearman, M., Molloy, E., Ajjawl, R., and Keating, J. (2013). “Is there a Plan B?”: Clinical educators supporting underperforming students in practice settings. Teaching in Higher Education, 18 (5), 531-544.
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First Day of Class Activity: The Interest Inventory

July 20th, 2015

By: Jennifer Garrett and Mary Clement, EdD

The interest inventory is a simple tool to help you acquaint yourself with your students. Unlike the many icebreakers, the interest inventory is a paper-based activity and students do not have to give answers aloud in front of class. The interest inventory, therefore, helps you get to know your students privately and allows you to ask different questions than you would during oral introductions.
When creating your interest inventory, you need to consider what you need to know about your students in order to effectively teach them. The inventory is simply a list of questions about students’ interests and backgrounds, but you decide which questions appear.
The questions should always include students’ names and majors (or whether or not they have decided on a major). It is helpful to ask students their reasons for taking this course at this point in time, and what they would like to learn or get out of the class. These types of questions help you discover what their expectations are. Some fun icebreaker questions are valuable too. “What is the best book you’ve ever read?” “What kind of music is playing on your iPod?”
While the icebreaker questions might seem frivolous, they are helpful in building the classroom community and in establishing a warm, welcoming environment. Another strategy is to answer some of the icebreaker questions yourself. When you share information with students, it makes them more comfortable sharing information with you.

When creating your interest inventory, you need to consider what you need to know about your students in order to effectively teach them.

Keep in mind that although the interest inventory is private, you still want to use discretion with the questions. You don’t want to ask anything very personal or anything embarrassing. In addition, the interest inventory also needs to include questions that will provide information about students’ skills and preparedness. For example, you can have students solve some math problems or write a paragraph about a favorite book. This information will allow instructors to tailor lectures by addressing any general deficiencies or accelerating material if students are adequately prepared.

A Sample Interest Inventory

In creating your student interest inventory, ask questions that will not only help you get to know the student, but that also help you understand each student’s interest and background in the subject.
Get student background — name, major, year in school. Sample questions: How does this class fit into your major? What do you plan to do after graduation?
How do you learn best? What have teachers and professors done in the past that helped you to learn?
How many hours do you study outside of class? Where and how do you study? (by yourself, in groups, etc.)
Background in content. In this section, write content specific questions. This includes math problems to solve, or writing a paragraph about the subject matter. For example: In this field, there are many theorists. Name a theorist you have studied and describe why you are influenced by his/her work.
The fun questions that help us to get acquainted. What is your very favorite meal? Which restaurant is your favorite? List one hobby. If you have a completely free Saturday afternoon, how would you like to spend it? If I gave you $5,000 to spend on a trip, where would you go?

If You Dare

Also consider including “if you dare” questions in the interest inventory. These kinds of questions might require follow-up, so they are called “if you dare” questions because you need to be prepared for all kinds of answers and the work they might entail. However, these questions are intended to give you additional information that will help you maximize instructional efficacy.
For example, consider asking, “What did an instructor do last year that helped you learn?” Be prepared for mentions of instructors who provided exam review questions, three-hour review sessions, and pizza. You can also ask students what a teacher did that didn’t help them learn. The answers to these questions will also help you understand your students’ expectations of you.
Another valuable question is “What else do you want me to know about you?” Many times the answers will require that you take some kind of action. Some students might tell you that they have Attention Deficit Disorder or a different learning disability, that they need to see written notes to understand material, or that they need extra time during exams.
You will have to determine how to respond to the answers they provide, but it often is far more useful to have the information at the start of class so that you can work with each student appropriately. Most schools have different rules and procedures to handle special accommodations for learning disabilities, but the questions allow you to have the necessary conversations with students and to direct them to available resources.
Again, be prepared for answers you have not encountered in the past. For example, a student may request unique conditions for taking exams. Knowing the information early affords the necessary time to respond to student requests prior to any exams.
Note: Be sure to bring enough copies of the interest inventory and even pencils for the first day. While the pencils may seem excessive for college-level teaching, it is important to ensure that everyone participates. You can use it as a teaching tool and tell students that you did extra work for them on the first day of class, but that the first day will be the only time you will provide them with basic tools, such as pencils, paper, or books. Let them know that you expect them to bring their materials from that point forward. Remember to state your expectations clearly; don’t assume that your students know them.

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