One of my favorite modes of procrastination is to go on Coursera and browse all the different free classes I can take. I've even registered for a few, including a course on Greek and Roman mythology taught by Dr. Peter Struck. Penn hired Peter when I was a senior graduate student and he was a member of my dissertation committee. He's also an award-winning instructor, prize-winning author, and all-around smart guy. I was intrigued to see what the experience of a MOOC would be like from the point of view of a student, and thought this was a good place to get started. I'm also taking BlendKit 2012, an online class about blended learning. BlendKit 2012 is a smaller group, looks to be more instructional design folks than professors, and is more likely to be people of relatively similar knowledge levels. Because I teach during the weekly, live webinar, I'm what they are calling an "asynchronous" participant.
Some first impressions from my return to the "classroom":
a. the quality of filming for the mythology MOOC is very high quality. Unlike many free online courses (e.g. Open Yale Courses) these lectures are filmed explicitly for the MOOC audience. The instructor is front and center; there are no random backs of students' heads. Perhaps most importantly, the framing of the shot creates the impression that I'm a part of things and not a voyeur lurking high up and far away from the instructor and the rest of the students.
b. in a typical class, the instructor makes a point of underscoring his/her accessibility and availability to the students. We encourage them to connect with us, particularly in larger classes where they might not otherwise feel a connection to us. In the MOOC, it is all about repeating that students should not expect contact from the instructor/instructional team because there are so many students (50,000 in this particular course). On the course syllabus and in the introductory lecture, it is made clear that the instructor's job is to deliver content. Everything else connected to the course will be done by computer (quizzes) or peer instruction (papers, discussion). On the one hand, I absolutely understand the need to make this clear. On the other, I found it weirdly off-putting. I'm not used to my instructors telling me not to bother them. I'm wondering how effective peer-instruction will be when the students don't know each other in person and, having done a lot of peer review of papers in my courses, I'm pretty skeptical about the ability of students to grade other student papers. I'm willing to be shown that my concerns are misplaced, however.
c. The MOOC is *a lot* of work. Several (5-10) lectures that are 15-20 minutes long + substantial readings of difficult ancient texts. It seems to pretty much Dr. Struck's regular Penn mythology class broken down into shorter but more frequent lectures. His Penn course may include more theory (I'm not sure) and obviously has exams, but otherwise the MOOC course seems pretty similar. As the course goes on, I'll be interested to see the level at which the lectures are pitched. So far, it seems pretty high. I'll also be interested to see what the completion rate is, especially relative to other Coursera courses; and the demography of the people who finish the class. I am going to try to be one of them.
d. In the BlendKit introductory webinar, I was struck by how many of the participants were instructional design folks. It is interesting to see the extent to which blended learning is still such a new frontier at colleges and universities, but also the extent to which the teaching specialists are working to become informed advocates of its principles. The sort of networking that BlendKit 2012 is facilitating is crucial to the wider implementation of blended learning techniques and to the development of "best practices".
e. I had to giggle at one aspect of the BlendKit course: badges. It seems that people never outgrow their need to have some sort of outward mark of their accomplishments! I am knee-deep in implementing my own blended learning course and mostly interested in lurking, doing readings when I can, and just hearing what people have to say. I will try to participate in discussions when I can, but I'm not sure how often that will be. I'm pretty sure I won't meet the requirements for my weekly badge and I'm ok with that. But I gather that collecting badges and certificates is going to be the Next Big Thing. Alas. [a great post on the disruptive power of badges: http://hastac.org/blogs/slgrant/2012/10/05/questions-about-badges-higher-ed#comment-20505]
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
An Exercise in Peer Instruction
I will confess that, before this semester, I had a lot of doubts about the utility of peer instruction. Like many faculty, I've used small group discussion in smaller classes pretty regularly; but often, it seemed more an opportunity for students to lose rather than gain focus on the course material. Still, I was willing to give peer instruction a go, particularly because it is the only kind of discussion possible in a 400-student class. In addition, I felt that I had enough training from learning specialists to find ways to make it more meaningful. Peer networks are at the heart of MOOCs and there's some good evidence to indicate that students can do a very effective job of teaching one another. They may not have the expertise that the instructor has; but once the content has been delivered by the expert, peer instruction is very effective in getting that content to stick and encouraging active engagement with and curiosity about that content.
On Monday in the Rome class, the students had been asked to watch a recorded lecture covering the 1st and 2nd Punic War (up to the Battle at Cannae). This is complex material and, since they have an exam on Wednesday that includes this material, I wanted to be sure that they got a chance to practice it and ask questions about it. I prepared a 45 minute review consisting of i>clicker and "talk to your neighbor" questions. Just before class, I got an email from the Echo guru at UT letting me know that about 25% of them had at least opened the lecture. Of course, this information is not a perfect indication of how many were prepared: I don't know how carefully they watched the lecture; I don't know if groups of them watched it together; I don't know how many read the textbook but didn't watch the lecture. Still, it is a good rough estimate of what I can expect when I walk into the class. So I knew that about 25% of them had some idea about the material.
I started with a few i>clicker questions, some easy ones and some more difficult ones. They were all intended to highlight "stuff you should be sure you understand." The class was quite good at narrowing the answer down to two options but on several polls, it was a close vote. In those cases, I had them break out into peer discussion for 1-2 minutes and then re-take the poll. Inevitably, there was a substantial shift to the correct answer. The students all oohed at this and I smiled at the power of peer instruction at work. I also made a point of pointing out to them how effective it was to talk to their fellow students.
By the end of the class, we had reviewed all the key points of the lecture. Students who had done no work prior to class were forced to engage actively at every moment. I kept my direct comments about the material to a bare minimum and used the Socratic method as much as possible. I also did everything I could to keep them on their toes, moving from i>clicker to peer discussion to short class discussion and back to i>clicker. In this way, those who had done some preparation before class got to practice the content and teach it to others. Those who had not done any preparation got some exposure and some sense of how well they will need to know the material by exam time. Most of all, though, everyone came out of the class knowing that they could turn to their neighbor (see Julie Schell's blog Turn to Your Neighbor for much more on the power of peer-based education).
On Monday in the Rome class, the students had been asked to watch a recorded lecture covering the 1st and 2nd Punic War (up to the Battle at Cannae). This is complex material and, since they have an exam on Wednesday that includes this material, I wanted to be sure that they got a chance to practice it and ask questions about it. I prepared a 45 minute review consisting of i>clicker and "talk to your neighbor" questions. Just before class, I got an email from the Echo guru at UT letting me know that about 25% of them had at least opened the lecture. Of course, this information is not a perfect indication of how many were prepared: I don't know how carefully they watched the lecture; I don't know if groups of them watched it together; I don't know how many read the textbook but didn't watch the lecture. Still, it is a good rough estimate of what I can expect when I walk into the class. So I knew that about 25% of them had some idea about the material.
I started with a few i>clicker questions, some easy ones and some more difficult ones. They were all intended to highlight "stuff you should be sure you understand." The class was quite good at narrowing the answer down to two options but on several polls, it was a close vote. In those cases, I had them break out into peer discussion for 1-2 minutes and then re-take the poll. Inevitably, there was a substantial shift to the correct answer. The students all oohed at this and I smiled at the power of peer instruction at work. I also made a point of pointing out to them how effective it was to talk to their fellow students.
By the end of the class, we had reviewed all the key points of the lecture. Students who had done no work prior to class were forced to engage actively at every moment. I kept my direct comments about the material to a bare minimum and used the Socratic method as much as possible. I also did everything I could to keep them on their toes, moving from i>clicker to peer discussion to short class discussion and back to i>clicker. In this way, those who had done some preparation before class got to practice the content and teach it to others. Those who had not done any preparation got some exposure and some sense of how well they will need to know the material by exam time. Most of all, though, everyone came out of the class knowing that they could turn to their neighbor (see Julie Schell's blog Turn to Your Neighbor for much more on the power of peer-based education).
Creating Communities of Learners
In their origins in the 12th and 13th centuries, the university--a name derived from the Latin word universitas--were not places; they were groups of people. Specifically, they were guilds comprised of students and their instructors. Sometimes students paid the instructor directly (as they did in the Roman period. St. Augustine, for instance, traveled to Rome from Carthage in the hope of finding less rowdy students who would actually pay their tuition bill. No such luck...). Othertimes, the Catholic Church or the state served as an intermediary between students and teachers. Not surprisingly, it was this latter method that gained a foothold and serves as the model for our current system of tuition paid to an institution rather than directly from student to instructor. The key bit of information that history has to tell us, though, is that universities are not about the brick-and-mortar campus; they are about the people who inhabit them. Their aim, originally, was to bring together communities of learners with the instructor serving as an expert guide/personal trainer.
Somewhere along the line, higher education has lost sight of the fact that its primary function is to provide a physical space for communities of learners to form (and re-form in each class and in every new semester). Particularly at state-funded (or, really, poorly funded by the state) institutions like UT Austin, the university and its classrooms have tended to be places for students to crowd into lecture halls for 50-75 minutes at a time, to be talked at by an instructor. Now, many of our instructors are extraordinarily talented at delivering content clearly and in an entertaining fashion. The problem is, once students are done listening, they go off on their own and try to do their homework. They may well not know anyone from their class or have any idea how to get help. The Course Transformation Program at UT is addressing this issue head-on in some of our most important "gateway" courses--courses that teach several thousand students each year and serve as prerequisites for upper-division courses. In these courses, instructors are working closely with teams of learning specialists to provide extra support in class and encourage peer learning outside of class, among other things.
My Rome class, which has been dubbed the first of what will perhaps be a series of slightly different courses under the auspices of the CTP program (CTP 2.0), has at its center the belief that the classroom should be a place for supporting and encouraging the creation of communities of learners. From the first day of class, I have incorporated daily "talk to your neighbor" questions. I have encouraged them to use Piazza, a discussion board that strongly promotes peer-to-peer interaction. On their own, the students formed a FB group. Still, I really wasn't sure how much this overt shift in my teaching style, away from lecture ("sage on the stage") and towards a more student-centered and peer-focused approach was working.
The class has its first midterm exam tomorrow. In some sense, it is also the first real opportunity I have to see the effects of the "peer-centered" approach I have taken. I have taught large (100+ students) classes for several years at UT, including this Rome class twice before. About a week before the exam, I am usually inundated with emails and office visits. Typically, the students are either asking factual questions whose answers can easily be found in their textbook or in my lectures (but that would require them to have taken good notes); or they ask some version of "what do I need to know for the test". Test anxiety is particularly palpable here in Texas where standardized testing has had such a prominent (and, to my mind, harmful) status. This semester, I girded myself for the barrage and warned my TAs to be prepared. After all, I was now dealing with twice as many students as earlier semesters.
To my amazement, I have had no students ask me any version of "what do I need to know for the test". Not a single one. Neither have my TAs. They already know what the questions will be like because they've been practicing them in class every single day. I had one student come to my office hours with a couple of questions. She told me what she thought the answer was and then asked me to explain a couple of things that had piqued her curiosity. It was just the sort of exchange an instructor longs to have with his/her students. Instead of lining up outside our offices or shooting off emails, the students are posting questions on Piazza. Typically, someone has already answered it before I ever get to it and they are all smart, reasonable questions that show them thinking and really grappling with the material. It is truly remarkable. I am seeing a depth of thought, a willingness to wrestle with course content at a level I can't say that I have ever seen in a class other than a graduate seminar.
The students are forming study groups; they are egging each other on to work hard and ace the exam. There's no curve so there's every incentive for everyone to help each other. They have worked through the review questions I embedded in the recorded lectures as a class (it is posted on google docs). Two brothers used an app they created to generate study guides for every recorded lecture; other students did study guides for readings. Another student made e-flashcards for a list of terms I gave them and shared them with the class. I am fascinated by the altruism at work, but also at the spirit of collective "let's work hard, learn this material, and do well". The exam is written to reinforce this kind of behavior--after all, it is an introductory level course. The key is putting in the work. It's a lot of material, and I expect them to really know it. But it can be learned with some elbow grease. From all indications, they are doing just that. The thing is, some kids may not do the reading and may not watch the lectures. But they are still going to learn a ton from the distilled notes of their classmates. They aren't getting away with anything, really.
What I've witnessed in just a month of teaching a flipped class is a complete shift in student behavior. They have been trained to turn to each other for answers, to trust that their peers can teach them--and that is exactly what is happening as they prepare for this exam. Sure, I am still holding a review session. But honestly, I am feeling a little bit superfluous and left out. I'm not complaining, to be sure, but am shocked at how little I am needed once I have given them the tools to learn. These aren't the passive, helpless undergraduates I'm used to seeing (and helping to create when I, too, lecture at them). They are active, self-sufficient, curious, and engaged. It hit me that this is what a true community of learners looks like. It's a beautiful thing.
Somewhere along the line, higher education has lost sight of the fact that its primary function is to provide a physical space for communities of learners to form (and re-form in each class and in every new semester). Particularly at state-funded (or, really, poorly funded by the state) institutions like UT Austin, the university and its classrooms have tended to be places for students to crowd into lecture halls for 50-75 minutes at a time, to be talked at by an instructor. Now, many of our instructors are extraordinarily talented at delivering content clearly and in an entertaining fashion. The problem is, once students are done listening, they go off on their own and try to do their homework. They may well not know anyone from their class or have any idea how to get help. The Course Transformation Program at UT is addressing this issue head-on in some of our most important "gateway" courses--courses that teach several thousand students each year and serve as prerequisites for upper-division courses. In these courses, instructors are working closely with teams of learning specialists to provide extra support in class and encourage peer learning outside of class, among other things.
My Rome class, which has been dubbed the first of what will perhaps be a series of slightly different courses under the auspices of the CTP program (CTP 2.0), has at its center the belief that the classroom should be a place for supporting and encouraging the creation of communities of learners. From the first day of class, I have incorporated daily "talk to your neighbor" questions. I have encouraged them to use Piazza, a discussion board that strongly promotes peer-to-peer interaction. On their own, the students formed a FB group. Still, I really wasn't sure how much this overt shift in my teaching style, away from lecture ("sage on the stage") and towards a more student-centered and peer-focused approach was working.
The class has its first midterm exam tomorrow. In some sense, it is also the first real opportunity I have to see the effects of the "peer-centered" approach I have taken. I have taught large (100+ students) classes for several years at UT, including this Rome class twice before. About a week before the exam, I am usually inundated with emails and office visits. Typically, the students are either asking factual questions whose answers can easily be found in their textbook or in my lectures (but that would require them to have taken good notes); or they ask some version of "what do I need to know for the test". Test anxiety is particularly palpable here in Texas where standardized testing has had such a prominent (and, to my mind, harmful) status. This semester, I girded myself for the barrage and warned my TAs to be prepared. After all, I was now dealing with twice as many students as earlier semesters.
To my amazement, I have had no students ask me any version of "what do I need to know for the test". Not a single one. Neither have my TAs. They already know what the questions will be like because they've been practicing them in class every single day. I had one student come to my office hours with a couple of questions. She told me what she thought the answer was and then asked me to explain a couple of things that had piqued her curiosity. It was just the sort of exchange an instructor longs to have with his/her students. Instead of lining up outside our offices or shooting off emails, the students are posting questions on Piazza. Typically, someone has already answered it before I ever get to it and they are all smart, reasonable questions that show them thinking and really grappling with the material. It is truly remarkable. I am seeing a depth of thought, a willingness to wrestle with course content at a level I can't say that I have ever seen in a class other than a graduate seminar.
The students are forming study groups; they are egging each other on to work hard and ace the exam. There's no curve so there's every incentive for everyone to help each other. They have worked through the review questions I embedded in the recorded lectures as a class (it is posted on google docs). Two brothers used an app they created to generate study guides for every recorded lecture; other students did study guides for readings. Another student made e-flashcards for a list of terms I gave them and shared them with the class. I am fascinated by the altruism at work, but also at the spirit of collective "let's work hard, learn this material, and do well". The exam is written to reinforce this kind of behavior--after all, it is an introductory level course. The key is putting in the work. It's a lot of material, and I expect them to really know it. But it can be learned with some elbow grease. From all indications, they are doing just that. The thing is, some kids may not do the reading and may not watch the lectures. But they are still going to learn a ton from the distilled notes of their classmates. They aren't getting away with anything, really.
What I've witnessed in just a month of teaching a flipped class is a complete shift in student behavior. They have been trained to turn to each other for answers, to trust that their peers can teach them--and that is exactly what is happening as they prepare for this exam. Sure, I am still holding a review session. But honestly, I am feeling a little bit superfluous and left out. I'm not complaining, to be sure, but am shocked at how little I am needed once I have given them the tools to learn. These aren't the passive, helpless undergraduates I'm used to seeing (and helping to create when I, too, lecture at them). They are active, self-sufficient, curious, and engaged. It hit me that this is what a true community of learners looks like. It's a beautiful thing.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Student Engagement in a Large Class Setting
The aim of flipping a class--taking content delivery out of the classroom and devoting class time to application of content--is to foster a student-centered, active learning environment. Even the most charismatic lecturers will struggle to keep a class of 400 on their toes, actively thinking and engaging with the content of the lecture, for 50 or 75 minutes. Oftentimes, from our perspective on the stage, it will look to us as if the students are eagerly listening to our carefully crafted lecture, laughing at the jokes, answering the questions, and nodding in agreement. A few of them are, in fact, staying engaged; but one consequence of observing my colleagues in their large classes (and having others observe me in mine) is that it is evident from the perspective of the student in the audience that our perceptions are just that...perceptions. Students who look like they are taking notes are doing their math homework or buying clothes online or IMing with their friends. Students who sit on the edges of the room or in the back rows, out of my sight line (many of our auditoriums are very poorly designed), are napping or reading the paper. Of course there are always those devoted students who populate the first few rows who really are engaged. The challenge, though, is getting the rest of them engaged in a meaningful way (and I'd argue that simply tossing a few questions to the audience or having them talk in groups about something isn't necessarily meaningful engagement).
The central goal of every class I am teaching this semester is engaging every student in the room at all times and as much as possible. As the instructor, my focus is completely on class. Yet, I know that it is easy for student attention to wander when they aren't "on the hot seat" (mine certainly does when I am in workshops or lectures that require me to sit still and listen to a presentation for 45 minutes). In my other class, an 8 student course for graduate students during which we read large amounts of Latin prose and work on improving their skills and speed, there are some relatively easy ways to do this. In the Rome class, with 388 students, it's a major challenge. I>clickers are a tremendous help, both in engaging students at a particular moment and in keeping them ready to be engaged. They never know when another question will be put up. I also use peer instruction at least once/class. I am working on ways of blending i>clicker pools and peer instruction so that they play off of one another.
We also do "class" discussion, during which students will offer answers or thoughts on a topic. There are myriad problems with this mode of discussion, however. First, it is difficult to hear. Sometimes I can't hear what they are saying and have to ask them to repeat it. I then have to repeat the comment for everyone else to hear. Often, that still isn't sufficient for kids in the back of the room. They can watch the recording after class to find what they missed but it is difficult for them to stay engaged during class itself. As well, the layout of the room makes it very difficult for me to see people on the sides of the room who are raising their hands. The stage is very shallow and a large swath of the room is completely outside of my peripheral vision. Moving off of the stage and around the room helps a bit but then I have my back to some section of students. Finally, "class discussion" is more of a 1-1 form of conversation. It works well (or at least better) in small, seminar-based classes. It is less than ideal in a very large class and I will be avoiding it as much as I can. It is too easy for the majority of the class to tune out, even if briefly.
I will be experimenting with some other ways of keeping everyone involved, such as using colored cards that they raise. In future semesters, I might allow them to tweet questions or responses. Figuring out how to keep everyone involved is the biggest challenge of teaching a large class, but it is essential to the flipped design. It will be the part of a course redesign that frustrates and stymies faculty like me who are accustomed to a lecture-based mode of teaching. It requires us to completely re-think what we do in class; and requires us to discover and arm ourselves with an entirely new bag of tricks. This is where support from a campus Center for Teaching and Learning will be crucial. I have been the lucky recipient of great support from UT's CTL staff in the form of one-on-one consultations and workshops. This fall I am participating in a Collaborative Consultation group on the flipped classroom. A group of faculty meets with CTL staff members twice/month for 90 minutes to talk about our experiences with flipping our classes, tools we have found, etc. I am expecting that this will be an invaluable resource, particularly for finding ways to keep every student as engaged as possible during class meetings.
The central goal of every class I am teaching this semester is engaging every student in the room at all times and as much as possible. As the instructor, my focus is completely on class. Yet, I know that it is easy for student attention to wander when they aren't "on the hot seat" (mine certainly does when I am in workshops or lectures that require me to sit still and listen to a presentation for 45 minutes). In my other class, an 8 student course for graduate students during which we read large amounts of Latin prose and work on improving their skills and speed, there are some relatively easy ways to do this. In the Rome class, with 388 students, it's a major challenge. I>clickers are a tremendous help, both in engaging students at a particular moment and in keeping them ready to be engaged. They never know when another question will be put up. I also use peer instruction at least once/class. I am working on ways of blending i>clicker pools and peer instruction so that they play off of one another.
We also do "class" discussion, during which students will offer answers or thoughts on a topic. There are myriad problems with this mode of discussion, however. First, it is difficult to hear. Sometimes I can't hear what they are saying and have to ask them to repeat it. I then have to repeat the comment for everyone else to hear. Often, that still isn't sufficient for kids in the back of the room. They can watch the recording after class to find what they missed but it is difficult for them to stay engaged during class itself. As well, the layout of the room makes it very difficult for me to see people on the sides of the room who are raising their hands. The stage is very shallow and a large swath of the room is completely outside of my peripheral vision. Moving off of the stage and around the room helps a bit but then I have my back to some section of students. Finally, "class discussion" is more of a 1-1 form of conversation. It works well (or at least better) in small, seminar-based classes. It is less than ideal in a very large class and I will be avoiding it as much as I can. It is too easy for the majority of the class to tune out, even if briefly.
I will be experimenting with some other ways of keeping everyone involved, such as using colored cards that they raise. In future semesters, I might allow them to tweet questions or responses. Figuring out how to keep everyone involved is the biggest challenge of teaching a large class, but it is essential to the flipped design. It will be the part of a course redesign that frustrates and stymies faculty like me who are accustomed to a lecture-based mode of teaching. It requires us to completely re-think what we do in class; and requires us to discover and arm ourselves with an entirely new bag of tricks. This is where support from a campus Center for Teaching and Learning will be crucial. I have been the lucky recipient of great support from UT's CTL staff in the form of one-on-one consultations and workshops. This fall I am participating in a Collaborative Consultation group on the flipped classroom. A group of faculty meets with CTL staff members twice/month for 90 minutes to talk about our experiences with flipping our classes, tools we have found, etc. I am expecting that this will be an invaluable resource, particularly for finding ways to keep every student as engaged as possible during class meetings.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Close-Captioning of Echo Lectures
One of the coolest elements of the pre-recorded Echo videos is the close-captioning feature. Once we had a final cut of the content lectures, UT's Liberal Arts ITS department sent them out to be close-captioned (a not-inexpensive process). This way, all of the videos are accessible to hearing-impaired students. In addition, all students can keyword search the close-captioning of individual lectures. This allows them to find specific places in the lectures and review a particular concept. So, for instance, if they are sure what a term means, they only need to know what lecture to search in order to find my discussion of it. They cannot do global searches (so, they cannot search for all mentions of Caesar in the lectures). This is an amazing feature, and will be especially useful when they review for exams. I will be very curious to learn more about how they are using the close-captioning to access and review content and, more generally, to increase their mastery of the material.
I>Clickers
My colleague Deborah Beck has a great rule. She incorporates new teaching tools one at a time. This is her very wise way of ensuring that her teaching stays fresh but that she doesn't go nuts trying to learn and juggle several new techniques or technologies at once. I have tried to follow her advice with the Rome class. A lot has changed, but those changes happened over the course of many months. In class, I have changed my mode of teaching from primarily lecture to entirely student-centered. Thus, what I put on my PowerPoint slides is very different: now, instead of names and dates, it is questions for them to answer, talk about to a peer, think about on their own. The technology hasn't changed, however, except in one notable way. I am now using i>clickers.
Faculty at UT have been using i>clickers for several years to take attendance, get student feedback, and to advance discussion during lecture. I had thought about using them in the Rome class, particularly in 2011, but opted not to. Last fall was about learning the Echo360 technology. When I redesigned the Rome class to make it discussion-based, I realized that I needed to have a. a quick way to take attendance; and b. a way to keep 400 students simultaneously engaged. The obvious solution was to incorporate i>clickers. More and more classes are using them, particularly in the natural sciences and math/engineering. They are relatively inexpensive ($40 for the 1st generation model I require) and students can borrow them from a friend who is not in the class.
UT's Center for Teaching and Learning offers excellent support for faculty who want to learn how to use i>clickers. I met with Mike Wallace a couple of times to talk about the kinds of questions that work best to stimulate thinking and discussion; and for advice on how to use polls and peer-discussion together. Mario Guerra walked me through the technical side of things and helped me get everything set up for my class. When I walked into the classroom on the first day, I felt confident that I had the necessary tools to start experimenting with i>clicker polls. Three weeks into the semester, I am a total convert. I>clickers are excellent tools for keeping a large class thinking and also for getting discussion going or pushing it in new directions. I especially enjoy using questions to start a discussion and then asking the same question after they have discussed their views with one another.
I have experimented with how much time to give them on questions. They need more time on the first question, because they have to get their clickers out of their bags. For short, factual questions, 30 seconds is usually sufficient. For most questions, 45 seconds is enough time for even the more deliberate thinkers. My goal is to give everyone enough time to read the question, think about it if need be, and answer; but to avoid 30 seconds of watching the seconds tick away. One thing I repeatedly forget to do: start the poll. I assume that this will become second-nature eventually, but I seem to forget at least once/class and am reminded when the students start rumbling.
Next semester I will be more clear about a few things: first, it is their responsibility to have a functioning i>clicker by the second class meeting. Unless their is an obvious technical malfunction, it is their problem. Second, I will include specific instructions about how to use it, what frequency for 2nd generation clickers, how to delete a clicker registration and register a new one, etc. By far the most student questions about the course up to this point have concerned the i>clickers. I suppose this is to be expected since i>clickers are a relatively new technology. Still, for all the hassles, I can't imagine teaching a student-centered large class without them (or something like them).
I can't quite imagine adopting a tool that requires them to have a web-enabled mobile device (like learningcatalytics.com) at the moment. I love the idea of being able to ask questions in forms other than multiple choice, but fear that the technology problems would outweigh the benefits--at least in a very large class and at least at this moment in time. My thought: if pressing a single button on a simple remote is so difficult for some of them, how would they manage a phone or tablet or laptop? I think I can require that they have such a device, but it will be some time before I feel like students can be counted on to operate those devices using interactive learning tools in a classroom setting. That said, I can't wait to try out the Learning Catalytics tools in a smaller class setting (e.g. a discussion-based seminar of 25-30 students, where tech problems are easier to manage). Perhaps, with some experience on my side, I will feel more comfortable introducing these more sophisticated, personal device-based tools in a larger class setting.
Faculty at UT have been using i>clickers for several years to take attendance, get student feedback, and to advance discussion during lecture. I had thought about using them in the Rome class, particularly in 2011, but opted not to. Last fall was about learning the Echo360 technology. When I redesigned the Rome class to make it discussion-based, I realized that I needed to have a. a quick way to take attendance; and b. a way to keep 400 students simultaneously engaged. The obvious solution was to incorporate i>clickers. More and more classes are using them, particularly in the natural sciences and math/engineering. They are relatively inexpensive ($40 for the 1st generation model I require) and students can borrow them from a friend who is not in the class.
UT's Center for Teaching and Learning offers excellent support for faculty who want to learn how to use i>clickers. I met with Mike Wallace a couple of times to talk about the kinds of questions that work best to stimulate thinking and discussion; and for advice on how to use polls and peer-discussion together. Mario Guerra walked me through the technical side of things and helped me get everything set up for my class. When I walked into the classroom on the first day, I felt confident that I had the necessary tools to start experimenting with i>clicker polls. Three weeks into the semester, I am a total convert. I>clickers are excellent tools for keeping a large class thinking and also for getting discussion going or pushing it in new directions. I especially enjoy using questions to start a discussion and then asking the same question after they have discussed their views with one another.
I have experimented with how much time to give them on questions. They need more time on the first question, because they have to get their clickers out of their bags. For short, factual questions, 30 seconds is usually sufficient. For most questions, 45 seconds is enough time for even the more deliberate thinkers. My goal is to give everyone enough time to read the question, think about it if need be, and answer; but to avoid 30 seconds of watching the seconds tick away. One thing I repeatedly forget to do: start the poll. I assume that this will become second-nature eventually, but I seem to forget at least once/class and am reminded when the students start rumbling.
Next semester I will be more clear about a few things: first, it is their responsibility to have a functioning i>clicker by the second class meeting. Unless their is an obvious technical malfunction, it is their problem. Second, I will include specific instructions about how to use it, what frequency for 2nd generation clickers, how to delete a clicker registration and register a new one, etc. By far the most student questions about the course up to this point have concerned the i>clickers. I suppose this is to be expected since i>clickers are a relatively new technology. Still, for all the hassles, I can't imagine teaching a student-centered large class without them (or something like them).
I can't quite imagine adopting a tool that requires them to have a web-enabled mobile device (like learningcatalytics.com) at the moment. I love the idea of being able to ask questions in forms other than multiple choice, but fear that the technology problems would outweigh the benefits--at least in a very large class and at least at this moment in time. My thought: if pressing a single button on a simple remote is so difficult for some of them, how would they manage a phone or tablet or laptop? I think I can require that they have such a device, but it will be some time before I feel like students can be counted on to operate those devices using interactive learning tools in a classroom setting. That said, I can't wait to try out the Learning Catalytics tools in a smaller class setting (e.g. a discussion-based seminar of 25-30 students, where tech problems are easier to manage). Perhaps, with some experience on my side, I will feel more comfortable introducing these more sophisticated, personal device-based tools in a larger class setting.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Lots of Moving Parts
Teaching a 100+ student class is a challenge. It's not the teaching part that is difficult for most of us but all of the classroom management issues, the degree of organization that is required to ensure that everyone and everything is in the right place at the right time, the time it takes to answer the inevitable logistics questions that arise for the students (despite the fact that you covered all of it in posted course documents and multiple times in class). Make it 400 students; add a team of 4 graduate student TAs and 2 undergraduate graders; and have both in class and outside of class activities to harmonize and the challenges become all the more apparent. There are a whole lot of moving parts and a lot of potential for something to go wrong. Three weeks into my adventure in flipping, I find myself mentally and physically drained by Friday afternoon (and, in truth, by Thursday morning). Am I getting old? Well, yes; but that's not the real cause of my bone-aching exhaustion. Rather, it's the fact that there's so much--and so many people--to keep organized. BlackBoard, UT's current LMS (Learning Management System), helps a lot; so does our class site on Piazza and the Echo recordings of every class session. Still, there's a lot to do this first time through.
A brief overview of the course's set-up: The class meets three days/week for 50 minutes (really, 45 minutes because our room is on the southside of campus and most of the students have class in the next hour on the other side of campus; rather than deal with a mass exodus at 45 minutes after the hour, I lopped off the last 5 minutes of class). The students are asked to do three types of work outside of class: read selected pages from the course textbook (A Brief History of the Romans); read selections from ancient primary sources (Livy, Vergil, Sallust, etc.); and view pre-recorded videos in which I digest, explain, highlight the content delivery of the textbook. During most weeks, class time on Mondays and Wednesdays is devoted to looking closely at a momentous event or action (e.g. rape of the Sabines; Tiberius Gracchus' land redistribution legislation). The assigned primary text reading generally provides an account and/or analysis of the event discussed in class.
Mondays are typically spent reviewing the major elements of the event (i.e. carefully working through the primary text to extract out important plot details and also identify potential reporting biases). The goal on Monday is to highlight the aspects of the case study that will help them to evaluate the ethical justifications for an ethically-questionable action. Typically, this means teaching them how to combine textbook "facts" with the close reading of a primary text. On Wednesdays, we engage in ethical analysis. Active and engaged learning is the focus of class both days and I use a variety of methods to support that (i>clickers; peer discussion; class discussion). On Fridays, a senior graduate student prepares a review of the textbook/video content. I work closely with her to have her review mirror the student-centered ethic of the class. She selects certain "high priority" content to focus on, and then writes i>clicker questions or poses questions for peer discussion. Her review is designed to elicit learning from the students and help them identify gaps rather than simply to re-deliver content. The material that they review on Fridays provides the historical background for the case they will work through the following week. Ideally, I'd have Mondays be devoted to review of content and the case study on Wednesdays and Fridays but at UT, during football season, well, that seemed unrealistic (though I do take attendance and attendance is 10% of their final grade).
Harmonizing: When I wasn't filming lectures this past summer, I was working on redesigning the in class part of the class. I had decided early on in the process that I would be doing case studies, but I struggled a lot with exactly how to do that, and how to create a clear connection between the Roman history component and the ethics component. I knew that a key to the flipped class's success was creating a clear relationship between the out of class and in class parts of the course. Still, it was difficult to see exactly how this might work. As the class has gotten underway, I've made a point of regularly and deliberately reinforcing that connection, whether by asking i>clicker questions about material from the lectures/textbook or by posing questions for discussion that require them to put together the specifics of the case study with the larger historical picture (e.g. Livy says the Tarquins were bad and yet we know that, under their rule, Rome became the most powerful city in Latium). I also made the decision to have the review session be held during regularly scheduled class time. I don't require attendance, but about 75-80% are attending. Thus far, I've been extremely pleased with how seamlessly these out of class and in class activities are coming together, reinforcing one another, and leading to much deeper learning and more sophisticated student insights.
A brief overview of the course's set-up: The class meets three days/week for 50 minutes (really, 45 minutes because our room is on the southside of campus and most of the students have class in the next hour on the other side of campus; rather than deal with a mass exodus at 45 minutes after the hour, I lopped off the last 5 minutes of class). The students are asked to do three types of work outside of class: read selected pages from the course textbook (A Brief History of the Romans); read selections from ancient primary sources (Livy, Vergil, Sallust, etc.); and view pre-recorded videos in which I digest, explain, highlight the content delivery of the textbook. During most weeks, class time on Mondays and Wednesdays is devoted to looking closely at a momentous event or action (e.g. rape of the Sabines; Tiberius Gracchus' land redistribution legislation). The assigned primary text reading generally provides an account and/or analysis of the event discussed in class.
Mondays are typically spent reviewing the major elements of the event (i.e. carefully working through the primary text to extract out important plot details and also identify potential reporting biases). The goal on Monday is to highlight the aspects of the case study that will help them to evaluate the ethical justifications for an ethically-questionable action. Typically, this means teaching them how to combine textbook "facts" with the close reading of a primary text. On Wednesdays, we engage in ethical analysis. Active and engaged learning is the focus of class both days and I use a variety of methods to support that (i>clickers; peer discussion; class discussion). On Fridays, a senior graduate student prepares a review of the textbook/video content. I work closely with her to have her review mirror the student-centered ethic of the class. She selects certain "high priority" content to focus on, and then writes i>clicker questions or poses questions for peer discussion. Her review is designed to elicit learning from the students and help them identify gaps rather than simply to re-deliver content. The material that they review on Fridays provides the historical background for the case they will work through the following week. Ideally, I'd have Mondays be devoted to review of content and the case study on Wednesdays and Fridays but at UT, during football season, well, that seemed unrealistic (though I do take attendance and attendance is 10% of their final grade).
Harmonizing: When I wasn't filming lectures this past summer, I was working on redesigning the in class part of the class. I had decided early on in the process that I would be doing case studies, but I struggled a lot with exactly how to do that, and how to create a clear connection between the Roman history component and the ethics component. I knew that a key to the flipped class's success was creating a clear relationship between the out of class and in class parts of the course. Still, it was difficult to see exactly how this might work. As the class has gotten underway, I've made a point of regularly and deliberately reinforcing that connection, whether by asking i>clicker questions about material from the lectures/textbook or by posing questions for discussion that require them to put together the specifics of the case study with the larger historical picture (e.g. Livy says the Tarquins were bad and yet we know that, under their rule, Rome became the most powerful city in Latium). I also made the decision to have the review session be held during regularly scheduled class time. I don't require attendance, but about 75-80% are attending. Thus far, I've been extremely pleased with how seamlessly these out of class and in class activities are coming together, reinforcing one another, and leading to much deeper learning and more sophisticated student insights.
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