To help our students, we need to directly ask for academic risk-taking behavior (e.g. asking questions, dwelling in uncertainty, and advancing untried hypotheses) and identify it whenever we ask for it, so students know we perceive and value the challenges they face. Here are some strategies to try in class.

Model risk-taking moves: I sometimes ask my students to take a safe proposition (“College basketball harms some athletes”) and move it “out on a limb” in stages: What would be a riskier, less-believable statement? What would seem even loopier? What would be entirely out of bounds? Having stretched to the point of sheer mania (“College basketball is destroying American families”), students can step back a notch but still consider an interesting, difficult problem (“College basketball recruiters shouldn’t make high-pressure pitches”). Showing students examples of valuable risk-taking helps them move beyond a standardized-exam mind-set. Having students play with complex issues can help them develop risk-taking muscles.

Use peer-based learning: Students are more willing to reveal uncertainty and try out risky ideas with a few peers than in a full class. Faculty using Think-Pair-Share (T-P-S) exercises take advantage of this notion: they pose a question, allow a minute for individual quiet thought and a minute to discuss possible answers with a peer, and then ask for shared answers. Matching T-P-S or another peer-group exercise with a deliberately, overtly risky request—addressing a tricky problem-set, questioning a commonsense conclusion, suggesting alternate solutions—can increase both student interaction and risk-taking behavior.

Create low thresholds and allow soft openings: Not all students have the same level of risk tolerance. We can scaffold risk-taking behavior, beginning with risks most students can participate in (brainstorming questions) before we move to more complex tasks (proposing solutions). Students also need space in which to perform as risk takers. When some restaurants first open, they welcome a few guests but don’t advertise widely; staff can work out the kinks before scheduling the grand opening. Having students share working drafts, give mini-presentations of an in-progress project, or complete practice exams in groups presents an opportunity for risky performance. When we actively encourage, model, and support risk-taking actions at these stages, we help students take full advantage of the moment.

Reward academic risk-taking: If I engage students in T-P-S with a risky enterprise and then dismiss some of the shared answers as not worthy of discussion or I severely downgrade an essay draft because of grammatical or organizational errors, I send mixed messages: take risks, but don’t screw up. Many students will decide that it’s better to be safe and right than risky and wrong.

It’s true that on exams and major essays we cannot allow errors to earn full credit. However, we should remember that Olympic divers and skaters earn higher scores for imperfectly performed difficult moves than perfectly performed easy moves. I can create a line in my grading rubric, a section of an exam, a reflective assignment component, or a statement about partial credit that shows students how I will reward particular kinds of risk taking even if the final product is imperfect.

Risk taking and right-answer achieving can appear to be contradictory goals for students in our classrooms. When the correctness stakes are high and no other criteria are visible, everyone plays it safe. If we want our students to take risks, we need to create classrooms in which, at least in some designated zones, risk taking is more visible, accessible, and desirable than the alternatives.

Dr. E. Shelley Reid is an assistant professor and director of composition in the English department at George Mason University.

Excerpted from “Teaching Risk-Taking in College Classrooms.” The Teaching Professor, 23.8 (2009): 3.

We do that by putting certain educational goals above getting and keeping students involved. If I sense a lack of energy and involvement on the part of students, right then, I may need to adjust my teaching methods, even if that means sacrificing some other laudable goals. Here are some examples that illustrate what I mean.

Student engagement vs. correctness
True enough, students need to be able to produce correct answers. They should know Thomas Jefferson’s beliefs about representational government or how to set up a chemical equation. And asking questions is a great way to engage students, particularly the one who’s answering the question. But some students may be too shy, unprepared, or indifferent to engage with a fact-based question. Plus, once it’s answered, no more students need to engage.

We can, however, consciously craft engagement-focused questions rather than knowledge questions. These are true questions to which we don’t know the answer, they have multiple “right” answers, and they relate to students’ experiences. They may also reveal comprehension or invite critical thinking: What do you think is important for a democracy to survive? Which variable did you consider first in setting up this equation? If necessary, I can give students 30 seconds to jot down an answer or share with a peer before I solicit responses.

Even when I accept all initial answers unreservedly—if I have designed the question well, the answers are all “right” for the students who gave them—I need not abandon correctness. I can then move us into critiquing the field, winnowing toward a “better” answer or a more “academic” response. This process is exactly what I am trying to teach students to do: not to take my word for it but to draw from their own experiences and reason toward a best answer.

Student engagement vs. coverage
The need for coverage presents another challenge: we have one class period to cover the Korean War or advanced research strategies, and we don’t want to spend the whole period lecturing. Instead, I sometimes find myself pelting wary students with “Socratic” questions. In these situations, it may be both faster and more effective to do a shorter, noninteractive lecture and set aside five minutes for a related activity.

And when I engage students before I present information, I don’t lose much speed. I start by asking student groups to pool what they already know about a problem: List three tips for locating scholarly sources. Waiting for students to generate material takes time; I also worry about “the blind leading the blind.” Yet students’ collective knowledge can be surprisingly extensive. After hearing from students, I know better what I don’t need to “cover” and can focus more efficiently on their questions or confusions.

Student engagement vs. control
Making engagement the top priority means ceding some control over students’ learning. Despite our ample qualifications to direct the learning endeavor, we also know that during the moments when we are most engaged in learning, we are often least engaged with our formal teachers or with anyone else’s plans.

True free writes (“write about anything”), group work with loose guidelines (“talk about what surprised you in last night’s reading”), and somewhat random engagement questions (“if you were going to paint a portrait, who would you paint?”) may not push students to use concrete language, wrestle with critical concepts, or understand 18th-century European artwork. That makes this the hardest trade for me to make. I need to remind myself that undirected engagement can be highly productive for learners. If I want my students to surprise me and to enjoy making unexpected discoveries—the hallmarks of engaged, lifelong learning—I need to take these chances and trust that the payoffs will be worth the risks.

Getting engaged
When the blahs strike, I try to look for a way to completely—albeit temporarily—abandon correctness, coverage, or control in favor of getting students engaged. Besides all the good learning that results, I feel a pedagogical rush when my students turn on their brains and produce new knowledge. We all get engaged, and we all move a bit closer to learning “happily ever after.”

Dr. E. Shelley Reid, is an assistant professor and director of composition in the English department at George Mason University.

Excerpted from The Teaching Professor, February 2008.

I’m sharing this list in the hopes that it will help you help students transfer good writing skills from English composition to your class. By answering these questions about your own writing assignments, you may cue students to write better by building on some learning principles common to first-year composition classes.

Questions students could ask a professor about getting started with a writing assignment:

1. If I have my own idea for a topic or angle that’s interesting to me, can I use it, or do I need to complete the assignment exactly the way it is described?
2. Is there an assignment model, a sample essay, or a kind of published writing that I could look at to help me better see how to do this assignment?
3. If I write an essay draft early, can I come see you to talk about it or email you to ask a few questions?

Questions about the assignment’s main purpose:

1. Why do people in this field write or read a text like this? What’s the main goal for this kind of writing?
2. Should I mostly review the similarities, differences, events, theories, or key features? Or should I make arguments, draw conclusions, or give my interpretations about these ideas? Do I need to answer the question “So what?”
3. Should I broadly survey the field or issue, or should I narrow my focus and “go deep” with my analysis?

One final, crucial thing you can do that will help students draw on what they’ve learned in classes like mine is to get them working on the assignment before it’s due. Require them to write something—a proposal, a thesis statement, an introductory paragraph, a rant, an outline, a bibliography—at least a week or two before the due date. Even if you provide no in-depth feedback at that point, you’ve indicated that you know the fundamental principle of good writing in English courses and beyond: it requires good revising, and thus takes more time and attention than we initially think.

Dr. E. Shelley Reid, is an assistant professor and director of composition in the English department at George Mason University.

Excerpted from 20 Questions about Writing Assignments, The Teaching Professor, August -September, 2008. To see the complete article, download a copy of our free report Keys to Designing Effective Writing and Research Assignments.