Learning objectives have a bad reputation – they’re not fun to write, students don’t read them, they cramp our teaching style, they’re busy-work for accreditation, they’re a result of the assessment-driven, measurement-crazy education system – I’ve heard it all! And while I can’t deny that at various times I’ve believed most of these allegations, I recently made it my mission to repair learning objectives’ bad reputation. In fact, if pressed about the single thing that most faculty can do to improve their course, I now always suggest the process of developing or revising course objectives.
The act of reflection and recalibration can bring new focus to a course. By revisiting objectives, you can identify materials that have become outdated or irrelevant. You can examine your assignments in the context of your new goals, i.e. are you asking students to do things that will help them achieve your objectives? Above all, the exercise can breathe new life into a course and revitalize your passion for the subject.
When convincing faculty, particularly those of a skeptical ilk, to revise learning objectives, I like to break the process into two separate exercises – identifying the ‘essence’ of the course, and then building that essence into strong action-based, measurable objectives.
Step 1: Identifying the Essence
Working on objectives is less of a task than it is a process and as such needs a little time, space and distance from the course itself. The summer is therefore the perfect time to tackle this. Over the next couple of months, before you begin actively working on your syllabus, consider your fall course. Perhaps when taking the dog for a walk, enjoying a glass of wine on the patio, or even sitting in traffic, take a moment to ask yourself some of these questions:
1. What is a big, debated question that my course/discipline is trying to answer?
2. In five years’ time, if my students remember just one thing from my course, what do I want that thing to be?
3. If my students never take another [insert your discipline here] course, what is the one unique perspective they can take away and apply to life?
4. If my students are at a bar and the conversation comes around to a controversial topic in my discipline, what do I want my students to bring to the conversation?
The answers to these questions should be idealistic and can be intangible. Don’t be bound by past semesters or what colleagues have done. Don’t focus on the material; instead focus on the concepts. The answers should be the reasons you love to teach this course and should reveal the passion you have for your discipline.
In educational or instructional design terms, the concept of identifying an ‘essence’ borrows heavily from Wiggin & McTighe’s Understanding by Design’s idea of an ‘essential question’ (a great read if you’re interested in delving more into objectives and alignment). It is also repeated/modified throughout educational literature and practice including in Exploring Signature Pedagogies by Gurung, Chick and Haynie (another must-read, particularly if you identified with question three above).
In practical terms, you should take your answers to these questions and attempt to craft a single statement that represents the course. This statement should become your driving force, the philosophy you return to on a regular basis when writing objectives, choosing materials, and designing assessments. Post it prominently in your office, state it on your syllabus, write it on your whiteboard, shout it from the rooftops and, above all, share and restate it regularly to your students so that they can share your curiosity, passion and excitement.
Step 2: Writing the Objectives
So, you have the ‘essence’ of your course. How does this translate to the course objectives? Well unfortunately, this part doesn’t happen very well while walking the dog! This is when you need to look at your wonderful, idealistic, exciting essential statement, and think more about logistics. What concrete things do your students need to accomplish over this semester to lay the foundation for these bigger ideals?
Keeping your essential statement in mind, sit down with a blank sheet of paper or a whiteboard and begin to think about what you hope your students are able to DO by the end of the semester. Focus on observable, measurable behavior. When going through the process, consider the following:
-Use measurable action verbs
At some point you will need to assess (either for grades or your own curiosity) if your students have accomplished what you hoped they would. Using measurable verbs can help with this. There are many lists of verbs available online if you need some inspiration, including this one from the WTCS Foundation - http://www.uwgb.edu/catl/files/online/WIDS.pdf
Some verbs that are often used in objectives are not really measurable. For example, how do you know if a student ‘understands’ something? Beyond seeing the ‘light-bulb’ moment, we usually ask them to do something to demonstrate their understanding such as discussing the topic in a group, analyzing a case-study, or designing a research study. Other problematic verbs include ‘learn’, ‘appreciate’, ‘realize’, ‘explore’, and ‘be aware of’. If you find that you have used verbs such as these, ask yourself how you will know if your students are achieving these objectives to help yourself identify a more measurable verb.
-Don’t underestimate your students
A discussion of Bloom’s taxonomy is beyond the scope of this blog post, but many of the verb lists (including the one above) are organized into levels of understanding ranging from lower orders (remembering or knowledge) to higher orders of thinking (creating or evaluation). If you find that many of your objectives include lower-level verbs, consider revisiting your essential statement. Given that this statement has lofty ideals, your objectives should match these high expectations. Even in introductory courses it can be appropriate to ask students to aim for higher levels of understanding such as creation, analysis, debate, etc., as long as you support them and have realistic expectations.
Having offered these basic guidelines, I now urge you to not be overly-critical of your objectives at this point. Write freely and think outside the box. Try not to be constrained by traditional academic expectations. I see so much classroom innovation come from course objectives that are quirky, interesting and challenging. Closer to the start of the semester you can refine, combine and edit these statements into a manageable number of measurable objectives, but for now imagine what your students could achieve and then push things one step further.
Conclusion
Now that you have a list of strong, exciting, relevant objectives, use these as a road map for the rest of your course. Look critically at every aspect of the semester – readings, lectures, discussion topics, homework assignments, and final papers. Ask yourself if each of these support your objectives and move your students towards engaging with the essence of your course. If you’re interested in learning more about this “alignment” process, Wiggins and McTighe is a great starting point.
Finally, after all of this work, don’t let your objectives go stale. Like so many aspects of teaching, learning objectives should be dynamic and relevant. You should revisit, analyze and change these objectives as you see success and failure in the classroom, as you evolve as a teacher, and as your students exceed your expectations. It will keep you excited and interested in your course, and you too can then join my mission to repair objectives’ bad reputation!
Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2006). Understanding by Design. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Bio
Joanne Dolan is the Manager for Online Learning and Instructional Technology at Clark University, where she has worked for about a week. Her new role will allow her to work with faculty & designers to build innovative, new online programs. Prior to this, she has worked in a range of positions supporting faculty and students, including most recently, as an Instructional Design Coordinator for the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay.
Have your students ever been confused about the difference between operant and classical conditioning? Have they ever gone off track in their understanding of dependent and independent variables? Imagine you could use a single multiple choice item in the middle of class to actually improve learning! Here, Rob McEntarffer uses a real life case study to clearly explain how a simple but powerful new technique can be easily applied in the classroom.
In a 2006 article Wylie and Ciafolo describe a technique called “single diagnostic items” that may be a great tool for teachers to use to gauge the impact of classroom demonstrations. Single diagnostic items focus on one important concept and “diagnose” student misconceptions about that concept. Imagine using a single item to determine what your students are learning! Wylie and Ciafolo define these items as “single, multiple choice questions connected to a specific content standard or objective. They have one or more answer choices that are incorrect but related to common student misconceptions regarding that standard or objective” (p. 4). The incorrect responses indicate a specific misconception about the concept, so that student responses identify specific misconceptions.
I wanted to see how single diagnostic items worked in a real classroom so I asked an instructor of an introductory psychology class at a local small liberal arts college for permission to work with one of her classes. She and I decided to focus on the topic of working memory. The text for the course did not cover this topic thoroughly and the instructor had not yet discussed this topic with the class.
My experience with single diagnostic items in the classroom
After introducing myself and explaining the goals of the research project, I asked the class to respond in writing to the prompt: “In a few sentences, please briefly describe working memory.” Then I conducted a working memory demonstration: Students closed their eyes and mentally counted the number of windows in their house. After they finished, they closed their eyes again to “count the number of words in the sentence I just said.” After they finished this task, students indicated whether they had to use their fingers to count when I asked them about the number of windows in their house (none of the students raised their hands). Then I asked how many used their fingers to count the number of words in the sentence (almost all the students raised their hands). Then I projected a single diagnostic item on the screen:
Why do most people use their fingers when they count the words in the sentence, but not when they count the windows?
A. Windows are visual, and visual things are easy to process.
B. Most people are visual learners.
C. The windows are in long term memory, but the words are in short term memory.
D. Familiarity - I'm more familiar with my windows than I am the words in that sentence, so that task is harder.
E. I can picture the windows but I can't picture the words, and that has something to do with it.
F. Working memory must process words and pictures differently.
Students then indicated their response to this item (using their cell phones and the website Poll Everywhere: http://www.polleverywhere.com/). We briefly discussed the diversity of their responses, shown here:
In our discussion the students pointed out that at least one student in the class chose each of the possible responses. We discussed the frequency of the different responses : most students chose answer C (“The windows are in long term memory, but the words are in short term memory”) or answer E (“I can picture the windows but I can't picture the words, and that has something to do with it”). We briefly discussed the diversity of responses and concluded that the data indicate that the class doesn’t yet have a common explanation for why the word counting task required almost everyone to count on their fingers and the windows counting task did not.
Then I explained the origin of the task: Baddeley and Hitch (1974) established that working memory is an active system made up of separate elements that deal with different kinds of information differently. To complete the “counting the windows” task, first working memory determines that the windows need to be pictured and then counted (“central executive” function). Then working memory activates the element that handles words and numbers in order to count the windows (“phonological loop”), and the element that can picture each window visually (visuo-spatial sketchpad”). When faced with the “count the number of words in the sentence I just said” task, the central executive encounters a problem. The phonological loop has to repeat the words in the sentence, but the visuo-spatial sketchpad can’t count, so most people have to use their fingers to complete the task.
After explaining the working memory research and terminology to the class, the students again wrote answers to the writing prompt “In a few sentences, please briefly describe working memory. “ They also again used their cell phones to vote on the correct answer to the diagnostic item:
The class discussed these data and agreed that the memory demonstration and explanation changed their conceptions and understandings about the nature of working memory. Almost everyone in the class agreed in the end that answer F “working memory must process words and pictures differently” was the most correct answer. We discussed the two previous most common answers (C and E) and the class was able to describe in what ways those responses were correct and incorrect.
Later I analyzed the students’ written responses to look for other evidence of changes in understanding of the working memory concept. I created a short rubric to use to score students’ pre and post writing responses:
Each student response was scored by me and a colleague who did not know which responses were “pre” and which were “post.” These scoring data also indicate changes in understanding the working memory concept.
Single diagnostic items like this one could be used to assess the effectiveness of the classroom demonstration about operational definitions. These “effectiveness data” could be used to make decisions about which demonstrations are most effective and which need to be modified. These same data could have multiple formative purposes: Teachers can regroup students into discussion groups based on their responses and ask groups to process the rationale behind their answers. Heterogeneous discussion groups might be useful, each student discussing their different answer with the goal of the group moving toward a consensus conclusion. Teachers could use the two most common answers and use other classroom demonstrations/activities to focus on those misconceptions directly. All these formative uses of the assessment data share a common characteristic: data from this one item are used to focus specifically on student misunderstandings about this important concept. This focus on the misconceptions these students demonstrate address student thinking actively and directly. The assessment data informs instruction by the teacher and metacognition by the students.
How to develop Single Diagnostic Items
Developing single-diagnostic items does require teachers to invest time in the item development process, but can save time in the classroom by efficiently providing valuable information about student misconceptions. One item-develop process is described below
1. Gather teachers who teach the same/similar content. Writing single-diagnostic items requires “deep” content knowledge, and is best done with a group of experienced teachers.
2. Choose a “big idea” to focus on. Single-diagnostic items take a while to write, so the group should spend its time focusing on an idea/concept/etc. that is a “big deal.” Some authors call these “hinge” or “threshold” concepts: ideas that students need to understand well in order to make progress in the discipline.
3. Ask the group to list misconceptions about the “big idea” (another way to phrase this task is to ask “How do students go wrong about this idea?) List all the misconceptions the group develops, then look at the list and collapse any similar ideas into appropriate categories.
4. Write a stem for the single-diagnostic item that will require students to use the “big idea.”
5. Write options for the single-diagnostic idea, one option per misconception and one possible correct answer. Note: multiple correct answers can be included, and the group should end up with one (and only one) option for each misconception. Ideally, if a student chooses an incorrect option, teachers should be confident the student did so because they are laboring under that specific misconception.
6. Test the item with real students. Participating teachers should use the item in class, and ask students who choose an incorrect response WHY they chose that response to test the relationships between incorrect options and misconceptions.
7. Revise based on feedback.
References:
Baddeley, A. D., & Hitch, G. (1974). Working memory. In G.H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory (Vol. 8, pp. 47-89). New York, NY: Academic Press
Wylie, C., & Ciofalo, J. (2006). Using diagnostic classroom assessment: One question at a time. Teachers College Record, Jan. 10, 2006, 1-6.
[Rob McEntarffer taught Psychology, AP Psychology, and Philosophy for 13 years at Lincoln Southeast high school in Lincoln, NE, and was involved with the AP Psychology reading for many years. He became interested in educational measurement issues, and got his Masters degree in Educational Measurement (Qualitative and Quantitative Methods) from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln in 2003. Rob started his work as an Assessment/Evaluation specialist with Lincoln Public Schools in 2005, and works with the district on large scale and classroom assessment issues. Rob earned his Phd in Teaching, Learning, and Teacher education in 2013, focusing his research on how teachers make room for formative assessment processes in their classrooms. Rob lives with his wife, two kids, dog, and cat in Lincoln, NE and works for Lincoln Public Schools.]
Gain valuable real-world experience to apply to graduate work.
Create a second source for letters of recommendation from professionals in your chosen field.
Add semester’s worth of improved grades to your transcript.
Allow time for your senior project or thesis to be submitted in full with your graduate school application.
Become familiar with the work you plan to do in the future and see if it “fits.”
Most importantly: Allow time away to be sure that you want to go to graduate school.
Reality Check: Don't let these things be your prime motivators
DO NOT GO FOR YOUR PARENTS
DO NOT GO BECAUSE A FIELD SOUNDS IMPORTANT AND IS RESPECTED
DO NOT GO BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO
DO NOT GO BECAUSE YOU WANT TO HELP PEOPLE AND YOU THINK THIS IS THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN DO THAT
DO NOT GO BECAUSE YOU WANT TO BE CALLED DOCTOR
DO NOT GO BECAUSE YOU GOT GOOD GRADES
None of these motivations can sustain you through a grueling process that is a minimum of 2-3 intense years (professional Master’s & law school programs) to the typical 5-7 years it takes for a Ph.D.
Q: But, what do I tell my aunt when she asks me what I’m doing after graduation? It sounds much better to say that I’m going right to grad school.
A: Tell your aunt, “I am making a meaningful gap year plan to prepare myself for graduate school in the future”
Some Possibilities:
1. Get a “job-job” to pay the bills and volunteer in the type of setting where you think you’d like to work in the future (e.g., research lab, human services agency or organization, schools)
2. Recharge yourself and/or travel. It’s a great time in your life to do that and it can help prepare for the next, more intense phase of your education by going in with a fresh mind and rested body.
3. Find a full-time job in a research lab.
4. Find a job as a psychiatric technician, group home worker, or a host of other bachelors-level positions where you can get experience in the social services field.
5. Work with your undergraduate advisor and other mentors to develop ideas for what other types of experience will help you prepare.
Many students say, “I need to go to graduate school right away, otherwise I won’t want to go or won’t have the motivation to go later.” You should only go to graduate school because you really want to go and/or need to go to do the work you really want to do and know that it’s the work you want to do from first-hand experience.
This needs to be a “fire in the belly” kind of feeling. You need to feel like you have to go because it is really what you want to do and because it involves subjects and work about which you feel nothing short of passionate!
[Jen Simonds is an associate professor of psychology and department chair at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. She took meaningful time between multiple degrees and found work she absolutely loves in the process.]
He who asks a question feels a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question is a fool forever. – Chinese Proverb
Growing up, I always hated when teachers said, “There’s no such thing as a stupid question.” Clearly those teachers hadn’t been around for the high school chemistry class when I asked: “Now, how many seconds are in a meter?”
Facepalm.
As a current, PhD graduate student in social psychology, I’ll still dwell on that blunder before asking a question during a presentation. I don’t want to look stupid. I don’t want to waste people’s time with a pointless question.
Still, I often don’t understand what’s going on. And when that happens, what starts as me just being a little confused, usually turns into me daydreaming about being a secret agent—who is now even more confused.
Fortunately, though, the field I study has some insight into overcoming this question-asking fear.
She who hesitates . . .
Pluralistic Ignorance
In class the other day, we were talking about a very complicated statistical procedure that was way above my head. That is, five minutes into the lecture, I began doodling some of the best circles and butterflies (just so you know, I’m like really good at these) that I have ever drawn.
Then, when the teacher paused to take questions, I waited for someone else to express their confusion. But not a single hand went up. Clearly, I thought, I must be the dumbest person in class for not getting the material.
However, when I talked to my friends afterward, they were just as lost and confused as me! But because they, too, saw no one else raising their hands, they, too, assumed everyone else already understood the material.
Pluralistic ignorance, then, is when people mistakenly believe that they themselves feel differently than their peers (i.e. I don’t understand the stats but everyone else does), even though everyone is behaving similarly (i.e. everyone, myself included, wasn’t raising their hands).
Therefore, even though I didn’t understand the material, I assumed everyone else did—but by not raising my own hand, it looked like I understood the material myself!
The best way to deal with pluralistic ignorance is to recognize that other students are just as confused as you may be. In fact, when researchers have taught students about pluralistic ignorance, students end up feeling more comfortable about speaking up and asking questions—questions that many other students had but were too afraid to ask!
The Illusion of Transparency
Part of the reason that pluralistic ignorance is so commonplace is because we’re concerned that by asking questions, people will somehow see how deep our misunderstanding may run.
For example, I was in a research meeting when a fellow colleague was discussing a topic I had never heard of before. However, the way she was talking about the topic, it seemed like everyone should already know about it.
At first afraid to ask something because I worried everyone would recognize my complete ignorance, I finally mustered the courage to squeak out a question.
So what happened?
Her answer helped me understand what was going on, and when I asked my friend later if he could tell I was lost, he said he would have never guessed.
The illusion of transparency is the belief (wrongly) that our internal states are more apparent to others than is actually the case. In regards to speaking up in class, then, we often fear that by asking a question, it’s going to reveal how little we may actually know. But research has shown that no matter how much someone internally thinks he or she seems nervous/stupid/confused, other people never perceive those emotions to the same extent.
I mean, other than my dad when asking who ate his last slice of pizza, who can read minds? Just because you yourself recognize how confused you are on a topic, it doesn’t mean that others can see those thoughts to know so, too.
The Spotlight Effect
Recently, I was invited to present some of my research at a prestigious competition on campus (this set-up was not meant to brag, only to set the mood…okay, and brag a little). Up on stage, at the critical revelation of my findings, my voice made a noise similar to a walrus trying to cough up a squeaky toy.
Needless to say, I was mortified.
However, after the presentation, I lamented about this incident to a friend who had been watching, and she had no memory of it even happening. I was stunned. But then I recalled: Oh yeah, the spotlight effect.
The spotlight effect is the finding that people overestimate the extent to which their actions and appearance are noted and remembered by others. For example, researchers had participants wear an embarrassing t-shirt and then walk through a classroom.
Although the participants themselves thought for sure most everybody saw them wearing it, when the researchers actually asked those peers if they in fact did, the vast majority had no memory of the shirt whatsoever.
When it comes to speaking up in class then, even if you ask a question you think is foolish, more likely than not, no one will ever remember you even asking it. As an example, think to yourself: How well can I recall other people’s “bad” questions? My guess is not very well.
Ask Away!
As I’ve discussed, there are multiple reasons for why we may think a question is dumb which in turn prevents us from asking it, but as long as you’re confused about a point, it’s nearly guaranteed that someone else is just as confused as you—yet at the same time won’t think you’re that confused at all.
And even if you believe you asked a question like “how many seconds are in a meter?” I’m certain you’ll be the only person still thinking about it later.
Well, unless you bring it up in a blog post for strangers to read.
References
Gilovich, T., Medvec, V. H., & Savitsky, K. (2000). The spotlight effect in social judgment: an egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one's own actions and appearance.Journal of personality and social psychology,78(2), 211.
Prentice, D. (2007). Pluralistic ignorance. In R. Baumeister, & K. Vohs (Eds.), Encyclopedia of social psychology. (pp. 674-675). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Savitsky, K., & Gilovich, T. (2003). The illusion of transparency and the alleviation of speech anxiety. Journal of experimental social psychology, 39(6), 618-625.
[Jake Teeny is a PhD student studying social psychology at The Ohio State University. Here, he researches persuasion and social influence, specifically, when and why people try to convince others of their beliefs. Like he did in this post to you. So in a sense, Jake studies himself. More of his introspection on social psychology can be found at www.jaketeeny.com]
When was the last time a student turned in an exam and then begged the professor, “That was so much fun! Would you let me take it again, but next time, please, make it a little more difficult!”? No? Well, that happens all the time in game design. In fact, the extravagant promise of game design to higher education is that we can induce academic persistence even in students labeled as “unmotivated,” “poorly prepared,” or “just not ready for college.” Many of those same students will hurry home after class in order to spend the next eight hours playing a difficult video game, learning from and teaching fellow players, managing complex on-line relationships, and figuring out constantly changing rules. They’re doing all the stuff we want them to do for a grade while they are working much harder to experience the pure joy of a hard-won achievement. Higher education has a lot to learn from game designers.
What is it about playing games that creates such extraordinary persistence? A mash-up of definitions produces the idea that play is the voluntary expenditure of exuberant energy in an aimless activity: voluntary, energy consuming, and pointless. The definition of a game is just as important: A form of play that creates arbitrary obstacles to make it more difficult to achieve a specific goal: rules and goals. My cousin and I were just “playing” when we kicked an empty box down the sidewalk of a New York City street; but we starting “playing a game” when we invented a competition to see who could kick the box the farthest. What, specifically, can professors and curriculum designers learn from game designers? Here are four principles of game design that can get you started:
1. The Experience. A game designer delivers an experience. None of the other game mechanics (and there are many!) matter if the overall experience doesn’t work. I once saw an independently produced movie with some actor friends. They suddenly started laughing in the middle of a serious scene because they had both spotted a boom mike dipping into the tippy top of the screen. But they still loved the film because it delivered a satisfying experience even though some of the filmmaking mechanics were sloppy. The overall experience of a course is more important than the mechanics of the delivery system.
2. Onboarding. Game designers recognize that onboarding is the single most critical moment in a game – and there are many critical moments. But onboarding is the moment that initially grabs the person’s attention; it makes players want to play and students want to learn. Some professors already design the first moments in the same way that a skillful writer engages a readers. Onboarding is a creative opportunity to make a sticky first impression.
3. Flow Zone. The flow zone of a game gradually ratchets up the level of difficulty and accomplishment by balancing rewards against discouragement in ways that shift the experience from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation. Many classic games, such as Tetris, create a flow zone by gradually speeding up play. The flow zone is how we gradually move students to higher levels of achievement.
4. Useful Failure. In higher education, failure leads to threats – of a lower grade, an embarrassing trip to the Dean, or being expelled. Even our point systems promote a fear of failing because every wrong answer on an exam “lowers” your grade. But that’s not how humans learn! Toddlers learning to walk experience repeated, painful failures but they persevere probably because a) walking looks like fun; b) walking gets them more of what they want right away; and c) everyone else is doing it. Game designers can help educators use the experience of failure more effectively.
For those who are new to game design, let’s pause in order to clear up three common misunderstandings. First, we are not interested in turning higher education into a giant game of Jeopardy – students (and professors) may not even know that they are being influenced by principles of game design. Second, a game-based course does not dumb down course content – to the contrary, a game-based course is more difficult because it moves students further faster, and with more creativity and enthusiasm. Third, think of game design as engagement science – a cognitive exercise that uses scientific principles to manipulate and sustain attention for an extended period of time.
In sum, games are only good for one thing in higher education – but it does that one thing extraordinarily well: motivate. Games motivate in dozens of different ways (called game mechanics) but games don’t teach – they motivate learning. Games also can’t assess – but they can measure learning (in new ways) from motivated students. Here are some of the topics for future blog posts. We will . . .
introduce you to many of the people, laboratories, and graduate programs already working in applied game design,
review the meanings of play in the psychological literature,
demonstrate how the language of game design matches established principles of psychological science,
describe some easy-to-understand game mechanics that can reframe a course without anyone knowing that the course has been “gamified,”
describe the many ways that higher education is already a poorly designed game,
help you create authentic, game-based assessments measured by TAPAS that relegate multiple choice tests to the minor role they deserve to play,
share the unfolding empirical research about game designs such as points in a syllabus – a simple game mechanic that professors can immediately apply to their courses,
alert you to common traps that others have fallen into by foolishly slapping on rewards and badges without the benefit of good data and critical thinking, and
encourage you to conduct and share the results of simple experiments that can refine and secure the developing knowledge base about games in higher education.
In 2015, the APA is offering a symposium of game-based applications to diabetes management, aging, education, assessment, and much more. Game labs are popping up independently and in universities. Game conferences are proliferating. So, if you are thinking about or playing with game design to improve the art of your teaching and learning, then watch this space…
[Tom Heinzen is a professor at William Paterson University, works in game design for higher education, has authored with Susan Nolan a statistics textbook, and is an interdisciplinary methods geek He has published peer-reviewed articles as experiments, case studies, quasi-experiments, focus groups, surveys, theoretical models, novels about teaching psychology, several book chapters, academic books, a history about Clever Hans and facilitated communication, and even edited a book of poetry by nursing home residents. Game design is especially appealing because it is a natural home for interdisciplinary applications.]
It takes a measure of humility for teachers to recognize that they are not the source of all knowledge that flows into the classroom. Students can be a valuable resource to teach their peers despite their inexperience as formal teachers. By allowing students to teach one another, students have an opportunity to share their learning as well as ascertain their own limitations in understanding. As a teacher, I have often told my students that a good measure of their understanding is their ability to teach a concept to another person.
According to Crouch and Mazur (2001), “Peer Instruction engages students during class through activities that require each student to apply the core concepts being presented, and then to explain those concepts to their fellow students.” In a typical peer instruction model, students first generate their own responses to questions posed by the instructor. Then, students share their answer with another student, or a small group of students, providing reasoning for their answer. As they do so, the additional perspective and reasoning from peer instruction allows them to eliminate incorrect answers and generally move in the direction of the correct answer. Peer instruction, in conjunction with other pedagogical techniques to better prepare students for class, significantly improved grades on a standardized Physics test (Crouch and Mazur, 2001).
Why does peer instruction work? Smith et al. (2009), in an undergraduate genetics course that used hand-held keypads (“clickers”) for classroom polling in conjunction with peer instruction, found that repolling students after a brief discussion with one another improved the chances of getting the same question (and, more importantly, a subsequent conceptually-similar question) correct, even when no one in the initial discussion group knew the correct answer. The improvement was most pronounced with difficult, rather than easy questions. Although performance on questions of all difficulty levels improved by about 16% after the initial round of peer discussion, performance on the most difficult questions improved an additional 22% (for a total of 38%) on the subsequent conceptually-similar question answered alone. Based on open-ended feedback from students, the authors suggested that it’s not necessary for a member of a peer discussion group to know the correct answer. Rather, through elimination of incorrect answers and deeper conceptual understanding that emerges from the debate, students are learning!
Instructors who are interested in using peer instruction with classroom polling have a full range of possibilities for collecting student’s responses in class.
Low-tech: One option is to simply ask students to raise their hands to indicate which answer they think is correct. Unfortunately, when students are unsure of their answer, they may not respond. Or, if they do respond, their choice of correct answers is likely to be influenced by social conformity when a sufficient number of other students’ hands are raised. Once a critical number of hands have gone up, you can witness the “lemming effect,” although the outcome is not as fatal. A few other simple methods exist including using color-coded index cards (e.g., red for answer 1, blue for 2, etc.) and having cards with difference answer choices written in large font (how good is your vision?).
High-tech: For instructors who wish to use technology to gather student responses, a number of options are available. Traditionally, clickers have been used in the classroom which students use to indicate their response by pressing a button that corresponds to their answer. The wireless radio signal sent from the clicker is received by a USB device on the instructor’s computer (gone are the days of infrared signals when you had to aim the clicker right at the receiver, yay!). The computer tallies students’ responses and displays them in a histogram chart. A number of integrated clicker solutions are available including TurningPoint™ and iClicker™. A variety of mobile device apps are also now available, turning students’ smartphones into mobile clickers. Some of these apps are free (e.g., Socrative), while others require a subscription (e.g., TurningPoint). Responses obtained through a mobile device are comparable to those obtained using a clicker, but because of the added degrees of freedom for technical errors, using a mobile device may result in a greater number of missing responses.
Regardless of the polling method, the suspense of waiting for the class’s responses is exciting, and the occasional large discrepancy between how well I thought I taught a concept and the students’ actual understanding can be surprising. If a large majority of the class (>75% or so) is correct after the initial question, there is not much to be gained by introducing peer discussion and the instructor may simply confirm the correct answer and proceed. However, after posing a question that results in fewer students getting it correct (50-60%), peer discussion can promote significant gains in student learning. Further explanation of the correct answer by the instructor may be necessary, depending on the results from the second poll.
Implementing peer instruction has some costs:
An additional amount of time is required for discussion, which comes at the expense of covering more material. However, given the gains in learning through peer instruction, this should not deter instructors from implementing it gradually into their lectures.
The costs of technology can be a burden to students and institutions. Yet, the arrival of free polling apps for smartphones (which are nearly universal among college-age adults) can make the transition into the digital polling relatively smooth.
Regularly assessing student learning in the classroom and providing the opportunity for students to teach one another blends personal responsibility for learning with the benefits of cooperative peer instruction. The process engages students in the classroom and, when used in conjunction with classroom polling, reveals accurate assessment of student learning and allows instructors to meet the real-time needs of students.
References
Crouch, C. H., & Mazur, E. (2001). Peer instruction: Ten years of experience and results. American Journal of Physics, 69, 970.
Smith, M. K., Wood, W. B., Adams, W. K., Wieman, C., Knight, J. K., Guild, N., & Su, T. T. (2009). Why peer discussion improves student performance on in-class concept questions. Science, 323(5910), 122–124. doi:10.1126/science.1165919
Stowell, J. R. (2015). Use of clickers vs. mobile devices for classroom polling. Computers & Education, 82, 329–334. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2014.12.008
Stowell, J. R., & Nelson, J. M. (2007). Benefits of electronic audience response systems on student participation, learning, and emotion. Teaching of Psychology, 34(4), 253–258. doi:10.1080/00986280701700391
[Dr. Jeffrey Stowell is a Professor and the Assistant Chair of the Department of Psychology at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, IL, where he teaches courses related to his specialty in Biological Psychology. His research interests are in the scholarship of teaching and learning and the role of technology in education.]
When you are in the midst of it, it is difficult to know when an idea is a fad and when an idea is a lasting, good idea. Although it might seem like the concept of a flipped classroom is new (the term is certainly new), some of the basic principles of flipping the classroom have been around for long time. For example, the notion of minimizing lectures during class so that students can actively engage in hands-on class activities has been around for decades. Good evidence-based outcomes about lecturing are emerging—lecturing is not evil, but chronic lecturing can be disadvantageous for your students (Freeman et al., 2014). So if you like the idea of still delivering content and you also like the idea of actively engaging your students during class time, then the flipped classroom approach may be an option to consider.
What is a flipped classroom? The essence is this—some of the traditional in-class activities (such as lecturing) are moved to outside-of-class time, and some of the traditional outside-of-class activities (such as reading or working on homework) are moved to in-class time. I teach a 300-level Research Methods course at Boise State University, and for about 4 years I have been flipping my Research Methods course. The traditional version of my “Tuesday-Thursday” course may have looked like this:
Now, in my flipped classroom, the same week of my Research Methods course might look like this:
As you can see, my “lectures” are now all on YouTube, and students are to watch the YouTube lecture prior to coming to class. In fact, all of my videos are available on my YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/rericlandrum/videos). If you are really bored, you can go there now and find some wonderful sleep aids. I use clicker questions at the beginning of each in-class session as my version of readiness assurance, and these clicker questions cover both the textbook readings and the YouTube videos. As for creating these resources, I’m a big fan of Camtasia (http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html?gclid=CIL92oOexsMCFQ8paQodwTIAZw) for creating the YouTube videos and Turning Technologies (https://www.turningtechnologies.com/) as my choice for clicker hardware and software.
Although I still expect my students to do the bulk of the reading outside of class, sometimes I will bring short journal articles or other items for them to read in class and then discuss in small groups following by reporting out to the class (and me). I suppose I could tell students to read this article or that report prior to class and tell them we are going to have a class discussion, but that has not worked well for me in the past. This way, with the flipped classroom approach, I know they have read the article prior to discussion because I gave them time, in class, to read the article.
Some educators have expressed concerns that the flipped classroom approach is about replacing teaching with videos and students doing work without structure (Bergman, Overmyer, & Wilie, 2011). But I will tell you that this approach allows me to see the benefits of active engagement firsthand. I truly have transitioned from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side.” I will share with you that this transition was challenging for me and was challenging for some of my students. I love to lecture, and with 20+ years of practice, I believed I had become good at it. Although my students still listen to my lectures on YouTube, I miss that classroom activity where I was center-stage and where I knew I had a great example in my hip pocket in case some students ran into a troublesome concept. Some of my students are uncomfortable with the flipped classroom because they enjoy a great lecture and they also enjoy the passive nature of absorption through listening to lecture taking notes; the flipped classroom causes more active interactions with peers and the instructor.
After some explanation and practice, most students positively embrace the flipped classroom. They appreciate the chance to work on homework, together, during class. They like working on tasks during class that they know they will need to master outside of class – to them, it feels like a good use of our time together. In fact, I think much more carefully (now) about our classroom time together and how I need to make the most of that time. Given the wealth of information freely available on the Internet, I believe that our chief role as undergraduate educators is no longer content delivery; our chief role is to help students develop skills (e.g., critical thinking, oral and written communication, ethical reasoning, problem solving) so that they can apply the content of psychology to their future workplace and everyday life. I’m passionate about skill development and how we need to do a much better job assessing our student’s skills—especially at graduation—but that’s a topic that will have to wait for another blog invite from Noba (but see https://thebluereview.org/teach-like-its-2099/). I do encourage you to think about the study habits of your students in and out of class. To paraphrase Gabriel (2008), someone who is teacher-centered thinks about what he or she will be doing during class; someone who is student-centered thinks about what his or her students will be doing during class. I encourage you to strive to be student-centered!
Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. PNAS, 111, 8410-8415. doi:10.1073/pnas.1319030111
Gabriel, K. F. (2008). Teaching unprepared students: Strategies for promoting success and retention in higher education. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.
Suggested Readings (if you want more information)
Albert, M., & Beatty, B. J. (2014). Flipping the classroom applications to curriculum redesign for an introduction to management course: Impact on grades. Journal of Education for Business, 89, 419-424. doi:10.1080/08832323.2014.929559
Estes, M., Ingram, R., & Liu, J. C. (2014, July 29). A review of flipped classroom research, practice, and technologies. The Higher Education Teaching and Learning Portal, 4. Retrieved from https://www.hetl.org/feature-articles/a-review-of-...
Wilson, S. G. (2013). The flipped class: A method to address the challenges of an undergraduate statistics course. Teaching of Psychology, 40, 193-199. doi:10.1177/0098628313487461
[R. Eric Landrum is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Boise State University. His research is chiefly concerned with college student success and what educators can do to facilitate that success. He is Past-President of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (Division Two of the American Psychological Association) and he is the co-editor of the APA journal Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology.]
Instructor-student rapport is a vital, but sometimes underappreciated, aspect of teaching. Rapport can lead to positive outcomes for both the student and the instructor. For example, potential benefits for students include a more positive attitude toward the course and instructor, increased motivation, and even higher grades. Instructors may enjoy benefits such as improved class participation and positive ratings of instruction. In the following sections, we outline definitions and characteristics of rapport as well as recommendations for establishing rapport with your students.
What is Rapport?
Generally rapport is characterized by positive thoughts and feelings of closeness. Perceptions of bonding lead to favorable interactions between those in the relationship. Researchers have investigated the nature and influence of classroom rapport while defining it in different ways. Benson and colleagues (1) , for example, provided students with dictionary definitions of rapport (eg. mutual trust, connection, emotional affinity) and then asked them to consider whether or not they had experienced rapport with their instructors. This study marks one of the first to explore and define instructor-student rapport from the students’ perspective.
Our own interest in understanding rapport between instructors and students led us to develop the Professor-Student Rapport Scale (PSRS) (2). We asked undergraduate students how they would personally define/describe rapport between themselves and their instructor. The student responses provided examples of how to encourage rapport and served as the basis for scale items.
What Encourages Rapport?
Let’s start with “immediacy.” The construct of immediacy closely relates to rapport and is defined as the presence of psychological availability. There are a variety of verbal and nonverbal methods of communicating to your students the idea that you are available to them. An immediacy scale includes items such as:
using personal examples
moving around the classroom during lecture
using humor
smiling (4)
Immediacy items focus specifically on professor behavior, which provides both an advantage and a limitation. The advantage is that teachers who struggle with immediacy in the classroom can practice both verbal and nonverbal actions to exhibit in the classroom. Teaching is similar to a play, and teachers learn their roles. However, a limitation lies with student perceptions of teacher behaviors. Students in a given classroom all view the same behaviors but perceive them individually, likely depending on their expectations as well as several other beliefs (e.g., expectations of instructor behaviors based on gender). Therefore, although an immediacy measure provides an excellent step toward assessing professor-student relationships, such scales do not address different student perceptions of the same professor based on behaviors. Also, immediacy and rapport may represent two constructs, with rapport capturing a broader idea.
Benson and colleagues (1) asked students to consider the instructors who established the highest levels of rapport. When the students were asked to list specific behaviors they believed led to the creation of that rapport, they most frequently listed these teacher qualities:
encouraging
open-mindedness
creative
interesting
accessible
happy
having a ‘good’ personality
promoting class discussion
concern for students
fairness (1)
As you can see in this list, teachers with specific qualities come across as warm, open, and caring. Your students will notice whether or not you display these qualities and will appreciate that you communicate to them that you care.
The items in the PSRS reflect instructor characteristics as well, including the following:
helpful
understanding
reliable
enthusiastic
asking questions
replying to e-mails
spending extra time going over concepts when students need it
encouraging students to succeed (2)
We also worked to create a brief version of the PSRS because of redundancy in the original scale and the ease of using a shorter scale (3), particularly for repeated assessments across a term. Later analyses determined which items to keep, as indicated by the items below:
My professor encourages questions and comments from students
I dislike my professor’s class (reverse scored)
My professor makes class enjoyable
I want to take other classes taught by my professor
My professor’s body language says. “Don’t bother me” (reverse scored)
I really like to come to class (3)
Some of these items are similar to the instructor qualities students mentioned above, and others refer to specific teacher behaviors students appreciate. We consistently get the message that it is important for teachers to be open, engaged, and caring.
What are the Benefits of Rapport?
Benson and colleagues also found rapport to be associated with positive student perceptions (enjoyment of the subject and the professor) and behaviors (attending, studying, and paying attention) (1). This provides further evidence that rapport with students can lead to higher ratings of instruction. Also, the higher likelihood of paying attention in class would most likely lead to better classroom interactions and student participation during class.
Both the original and brief versions of the PSRS predicted student outcomes, including motivation, perceptions of learning, and final course grades(3). The finding that rapport predicts actual course grades is powerful support for fostering rapport with students. In addition, the scales predicted student attitudes toward the instructor and the overall course. These findings led us to the conclusion that establishing rapport with students may lead to higher ratings of instruction. Beyond encouraging an instructor for a job well done, end-of-semester student evaluations can potentially impact an instructor’s chances of promotion, merit-based awards, and future job prospects. Further, the PSRS showed enhanced prediction beyond immediacy, providing evidence that rapport is a separate construct.(2, 3)
Teaching is a social endeavor, and some measure of teaching and learning success rests on recognizing the importance of our relationships with students. The quality of relationships will be determined by both instructor and student behaviors and characteristics. Instructors can work toward establishing rapport by engaging in the behaviors discussed here and striving to communicate good will. Professor-student rapport will increase the likelihood of positive outcomes for both students and teachers.
References
1. Benson, T. A, Cohen, A. L. & Buskist, W. (2005). Rapport: Its relation to student attitudes and behaviors toward teachers and classes. Teaching of Psychology, 32, 237-239.
2. Wilson, J. H., Ryan, R. & Pugh, J. L. (2010). Professor-Student Rapport Scale predicts student outcomes. Teaching of Psychology, 37, 246-251.
3. Wilson, J. H. & Ryan, R. (2013). Professor-Student Rapport Scale: Six items predict student outcomes. Teaching of Psychology, 40, 130-133.
4. Gorham, J. & Christophel, D. M. (1990). The relationship of teachers’ use of humor in the classroom to immediacy and student learning. Communication Education, 39, 46-62.
[Rebecca Ryan received her B.A. in Psychology from Concord University and her Ph.D. in Life-Span Developmental Psychology from West Virginia University. She began her faculty position at Georgia Southern University in 2006 and was awarded tenure in 2011.
Janie Wilson received her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of South Carolina. Since that time, she has been teaching and conducting research at Georgia Southern University. She is President-Elect of Division 2 of the American Psychological Association, The Society for the Teaching of Psychology, and will serve as President in 2016.]
I teach abnormal psychology, and rarely does a day go by that I am not thankful for that fact. This is one of those classes that so often seems to do the work for me. Let’s look at some of the advantages to teaching abnormal psychology:
Students have some idea what the course is about;
Students already think it’s pretty interesting;
Students are almost helpless to stop themselves from making personal connections with the course material;
Students have been fed a relentless diet of misinformation and histrionic blithering about this course that borders on the satanic and slanderous.
You see what happened there? I snuck in some counterintuitive info there. Such moves are the bread-and-butter of psychology classes. If you teach social psych you get to show people how they are incapable of independently forming the simplest of thoughts or attitudes. If you teach perception you get to show people that they do not perceive reality so much as concoct it. If you teach abnormal psychology, your big counterintuitive is that people come to class loaded up with misconceptions that range from the daft to the dangerous.
In fact, my personal view is that my most important job is to give students the information and critical thinking tools they need to demystify and de-stigmatize psychological disorders. The symptoms, age ranges, incidence, and even the number of disorders floating around us changes over time, but people’s wariness and potent emotional reaction to the human experiences labeled “abnormal” seems to stay the same.
One of the startling things I realized as I first prepared to teach this course was just how erratic and herky-jerky society’s approach to disorders has been. A fairly frightening number of policies toward the rights and treatment of people with disorders have been decided by juries or angry constituents rather than experts, or even people who have taken the time to become informed. I want those juries and email writers to be stocked with as many rationally-equipped people as possible!
I think there are three teaching approaches . . .
The Orphan Puppy Approach
The first I’ll call the Orphan Puppy approach. The Orphan Puppy approach draws its name from TV commercials about abandoned and unwanted pets that pile up like snowdrifts until Sarah McLaughlin’s pleas to adopt them are heard. This approach uses pure pathos in an effort to emotionally sway us. I am a huge fan of empathy and compassion and think both are intrinsic to being a good person and citizen. I want my students to have empathy for what it is like to have a disorder but people become inured to suffering (and piano music) if they're overdone.
The Ted E. Ruxpin Approach
The second approach is the Professor Ted E. Ruxpin approach. The Professor Ted E. Ruxpin draws its name from the 1980s toy that robotically recited stories to perplexed or terrified children, kind of as if Aesop and Dr. Seuss had been born and raised in a Chuck E. Cheese. This approach uses an untiring litany of facts and figures to help people understand the scope and nature of disorders. I am a huge fan of facts and figures—without them we might as well still be performing exorcisms and seeing if suspected witches weigh as much as ducks. But the only way abnormal psychology can be a bad course to teach is through burying its elemental interestingness under a torrent of boring jibber-jabber.
The Will Ferrell Approach
This leads me to the conclusion that the best way to convey the agony, difficulty, social cost, and importance of abnormal psychology is through the third approach which I’m calling the Will Ferrell approach. Will Ferrell movies mostly are supposed to be funny, and I would assert that abnormal psychology classes are supposed to be a little bit funny, too. I mean, this class starts with “black bile” and “wandering uteruses” on its way to Froot Loop fetishes, clown phobias, and schizophrenia. You may be thinking that schizophrenia is not funny at all. But, in the end, it is exactly as funny as everything else. The ancient idea that a woman’s uterus would wander into her eyeball trying to find semen, rendering her blind, is funny not because ancient Greeks were so idiotic but because we modern people are similarly convinced that we are right. Froot Loop fetishes and clown phobias might seem funny because they are “weird” but they are actually funny because they are so familiar. In both cases, we can help students see that both sexual desire and fear are universal, varying from one person to the next only in degree, and sometimes target. Schizophrenia is not funny at all, except that with a little effort you can also show students that all of the symptoms we tend to think of as “bizarre” happen to everyone from time to time (and if you’re in my class, they happen to YOU in week 14). Ever feel confused? Ever think you heard someone call your name but they actually said “Starbucks”? Ever have your attention lag and miss something important? Sure, just like people with schizophrenia sometimes do. So the issue is not how “we” are different from “them,” it’s how all of us are working along the same continuum of human psychological experience. It’s a matter of degree. Occasionally mishearing your name, like occasionally feeling drained of motivation or joy, is a bit of a bummer. Frequently having auditory hallucinations or feeling hollowed out of all zest and motivation is harrowing.
The Will Ferrell approach strives for the best moments of the actors’ movies. My favorite aspect of Will Ferrell movies is how familiar he seems. Whether he’s dousing spaghetti with syrup (one of the four food groups according to the family-friendly movie Elf), awkwardly trying to get Snoop Dogg to go streaking (as in the raunchy Old School), or simply trying to stay alive and relevant (hmm, as in all the rest of his movies), he looks like us, and kind of acts like us, but more so. There is a human quality to his characters, as there is in the best comedic characters. We laugh because we can see ourselves doing the same thing, just maybe. We laugh because the plight is recognizable, the pain resonates, because we join with the comedian rather than exile him or her as a freak. Every semester, that is my goal, to invite my students to see themselves along a continuum of experience that links us all to people with psychological disorders.
Perhaps too often, psychology accidentally reinforces the idea that there is the right way and the wrong way. . . the right people and the wrong people. In abnormal psychology, and in every course, we can use humor as a gentle invitation to find the absurdity, surprise, and common connection in even the most difficult of our shared experiences. So, next time you are trying to entice your students to connect with the material you are presenting, think like Will Ferrell. Is there a movie or YouTube clip that shows a regular Joe or Jane fumbling with the issue, or baring all of the vulnerability and absurdity we all would feel in a similar situation? Is there a story you can share from your own life that shows your own vulnerability, and how you are able to integrate vulnerability into an authentic, richly textured life? Give it a whirl and share it. Because it is not about whether we are better or worse than other people, but instead is about how we are similar to them, it does not matter whether we get a roar of laugher or silence. We’ve all been there. But I think they’ll laugh.
[Michael F. Steger, PhD is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Colorado State University. His research seeks to understand well-being, health, and most centrally, what makes life meaningful for people.]
Students at all stages of academic development can benefit from concrete feedback about their performance. First year students are in even greater need for unambiguous feedback about whether their study strategies are on target to meet expectations.
First year students are in transition from high school environments and may not be fully aware of the expectations of the academic culture of a university. Assignments and exams students encounter in their first college courses might make more intense demands on learning than the work students completed in high school. For example, multiple choice exam questions in college courses frequently demand that students use information in more sophisticated ways, applying concepts to solve problems or analyze a case rather than simply recognize the correct definitions of concepts and correctly recall disciplinary “facts.” Similarly, students will be expected to support their assertions in essays and other written work with evidence-based reasoning and citations of scholarly sources rather than simply asserting their opinions and beliefs about a topic.
What strategies can help beginning university students succeed in their academic work? Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, Whitt, and associates (2005) identify several practices that promote academic success in university students. When faculty use these practices in their courses, students learn more and course retention rates improve.
PROVIDE EXPLICIT GUIDELINES
Describe the strategies that successful students use to learn course content and acquire disciplinary skills. Describe these strategies on your syllabus or in a handout. Discuss these strategies from time to time in class.
◘ Provide guidelines on how to take notes during class meetings, especially if students will encounter critical content during lectures that might not be found in assigned readings.
◘ If study groups and other forms of peer learning are valuable study strategies for your course, encourage students to form study groups. Give them guidance on how to manage group dynamics so that group study sessions stay focused on learning and do not devolve into social events.
◘ Explain the difference between casual reading and close reading required for learning in the discipline. If possible, model close reading during a class meeting.
DESCRIBE EXPECTATIONS CLEARLY
Rubrics are useful tools that describe the expectations for an assignment and articulate the standards for university-quality academic work that you will use when evaluating student sub-missions.
◘ When possible, give students a copy of the rubric when an assignment is made. Encourage students to use the rubric to evaluate their work before they submit an assignment for grading.
◘ Students who compare their work to the criteria in a rubric before submitting an assignment learn two important skills. They learn to monitor the quality of their work. And they learn to edit their work to meet standards. Instructors who use rubrics find that their students submit better work.
CREATE STRUCTURE BY ESTABLISHING MULTIPLE DEADLINES FOR GRADED WORK
The first term in college frequently presents first year students with their first experience with a complex social environment that includes new demands on life skills (doing their own laundry, managing their finances, coping with a roommate) and myriad attractive distractions (a social life independent of the structure and control of parents). First year students may not be skilled at setting and adhering to deadlines. Students frequently underestimate the time required to complete readings or assignments, which encourages them to procrastinate beginning this work.
◘ Create milestone assignments to help students manage a large assignment. Milestone assignments are intermediate assignments that represent critical activities that must be completed to produce a large-scale project. For example, completing a major term paper might be managed by completing the following milestone assignments: an annotated bibliography, a clear thesis statement for a paper, an outline, and an initial draft for peer review.
◘ Schedule 3 - 5 major exams on course content in lower-division courses rather than a midterm and final exam only. Multiple exams break course content into manageable chunks. The deadlines for a frequent exam schedule force students to read and study more often. Multiple exams help prevent extended periods of procrastination on reading.
PROVIDE CONCRETE FEEDBACK ABOUT ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE EARLY IN THE TERM
The feedback you provide to students on early assignments establishes your expectations for work quality and gives students concrete information about whether their current study strategies will enable them to meet these expectations.
REFERENCES
Kuh, G. D., Kinzie, J., Schuh, J. H., Whitt, E. J., & Associates (2005). Student success in college: Creating conditions that matter. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
*A version of this post first appeared on the University of West Florida’s Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment website. You can find it and other great teaching tips posts by Claudia Stanny by visiting - http://uwf.edu/offices/cutla/
[Claudia J. Stanny is the Director of the Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment and Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of West Florida. Dr. Stanny facilitates workshops and conference sessions on teaching strategies, faculty career issues, scholarship of teaching and learning, and assessment of student learning. Her published research includes work on assessment in higher education, applied aspects of memory and cognition, and the scholarship of teaching and learning.]
