Most faculty don’t encourage students to use personal experience because it is seen as too subjective and without much intellectual substance. Mott has students in her political theory course write three personal essays. Her motivation derives partly from the need to “displace the preponderance of passivity I find in their essays.” (p. 207) Not only does the academy object to the personal, but students themselves have been trained to stay out of their writing. “High school students know from experience that the more they talk about themselves, the more will be taken away.” (p. 207)

Mott’s carefully designed writing assignments creatively weave the first-person voice and personal experience into explorations of the political theorists being read in the course. Here’s her second five-page essay assignment:

“Begin by describing a situation in which you felt at odds with a professional (a doctor, a lawyer, a therapist, a teacher, a social worker). Show us (don’t tell us) how your experience of the event differed from that of the professional. Let the details of the story convey all the confusions of this experience. Stop and breathe. In the subsequent section, use one or two passages from Montaigne to analyze this experience, to unpack the confusion, and to lay out the terms of power. Finally, what did you learn about yourself as a result of this essay? (p. 209)

“The beauty of this method is that it allows a layering of experience, first descriptive, and then analytical, so that the writer becomes both participant and judge. First the writer explores the fullness of experience and then she reflects back on it using theory.” (p. 209) All three of Mott’s essay assignments are designed so that students cannot write about just their feelings or personal experiences. The personal writing becomes a vehicle for substantive discussion of course content. The article contains excerpts from student essays, and these show how effectively this approach enables students to confront personal experience with political theories that can explain more deeply or challenge what they may have come to believe about those experiences.

This article is not particularly easy reading, as Mott describes the writing assignments in terms of very specific discipline-based content. What the article does show clearly is how powerful carefully designed writing explorations like these can be. They allow students to take what they know and what they have experienced and hold that knowledge against a light that significantly illuminates their understanding.

Reference: Mott, M. (2008). Passing our lives through the fire of thought: The personal essay in the political theory classroom. PS, Political Science and Politics, 41 (1), 207-211.

Excerpted from Use Personal Essay Assignments to Encourage Substantive Discussion of Course Content, The Teaching Professor, vol. 23, no. 3.

How about whether projects are worth more points than exams, or vice versa?

Would you let your students decide some of the topics that will be covered in the course?

As learner-centered teaching continues to take hold, the balance of power in college classrooms is shifting from faculty to students. Not only do students have more power and choices, but they’ve become more responsible for their own learning.

If you’re used to teaching in the traditional, instructor-centered mode, sharing power with students can seem a little scary at first. And if you teach a large class of 80 or more students, the idea sounds like an invitation for chaos. Plus, let’s face it, it’s not unheard of for college students to try to “work the system” (no matter what that system is), and in some cases what they want out of your course, more than anything else, is an A (never mind if learning accompanies the grade).

And yet, learning-centered teaching can engage and motivate students in exciting ways not seen in most instructor-based classrooms, and even small, incremental changes can make a big difference in student learning, student attitudes, and class dynamics, says Carol Hurney, PhD, executive director of James Madison University’s Center for Faculty Innovation.

In the online seminar, Practicing Learner-Centered Teaching in Large Classes, Hurney presented three case studies from professors who felt something was lacking in their courses and made the conscious decision to add more learner-centered components. For example, a biology professor wanted his students to learn the basic course content on their own, so that class time could be used to tackle more complex topics.

The professor implemented a Readiness Assurance Process where each student takes a quiz on the assigned reading. The class then breaks into groups and takes the same quiz collaboratively using special IF-AT score sheets. The IF-AT sheets work a little like a scratch-off lottery ticket, and the students need to work on each question until the correct answer is revealed. The professor can then see if the group got the correct answer in one try, two tries, etc.

“I sat in and observed the students taking their group quizzes, and witnessed a lot of good discussion. At one point a student said that he thought the answer was ‘C’ because he remembered a chart from the reading that explained the process in question and I just thought ‘Wow, a student remembered a chart from the reading!’”

Not only are the students more engaged during class, and taking responsibility for their reading assignments, but the professor reports that even though quizzes take up part of the class time, he’s actually able to cover more content than in the past because the students arrive with a good foundation of knowledge, Hurney says.

Assuming that your students will pick up a new technology on their own is a recipe for disaster. You must also be explicit about how you want them to use these systems to avoid them going off in the wrong direction.

Training your students in the use of technology need not be time consuming. The secret is to only do it once—it becomes time consuming when you need to repeat the training over and over.

You can take time in class to demonstrate how to use a system, but what about the students who miss class that day, or simply forget parts of the presentation? You can write out the steps for an online class, but seeing how something is done is far more effective in learning a process than reading about it.

Happily, it is very easy to make a screencast that walks people through the process and allows them to view it as often as they need. I’ve found that it takes far less time to make a screencast of a process than to write out the directions. I’ve also found that I get far fewer questions about a process with a screencast than written directions.

I make screencasts to explain nearly any task to students or colleagues. For instance, if I make a spreadsheet for my boss or others, I’ll accompany it by a two or three minute screencast pointing out which cells contain which information. This saves a lot of time explaining things later. I also make screencasts showing students how to post to the class blog and wiki, and allow them to view them on their own.

Screencasting only requires a microphone, which are built into some laptops, and if not can be purchased for around $30. The system will record your mouse movements and everything you do on the screen while you describe the process. There are numerous free and easy to use systems, and sites to post the results for your audience to watch or download at their leisure.

Once you start screencasting, you won’t want to stop. Have fun!

Feedback
As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of this blog.

Links to Free Screencasting Software for Teachers
Jing (http://www.jingproject.com): An excellent system from TechSmith which allows users to make five-minute screencaptures and either download the videos or post them to screencast.com.

ScreenJelly (http://www.screenjelly.com/): Allows for 3 minute videos that can be shared by email or Twitter.

ScreenR (http://screenr.com/): Make screencasts without downloading any software.

Screencast-O-Matic (http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/): Allows for up to 15 minute screencasts that are hosted on the site or uploaded to YouTube.

John Orlando, PhD, is the program director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University. John develops faculty training in online education and is available for consulting at jorlando@norwich.edu.

On the first day (I used this approach in all my courses), I spent the majority of the time teaching content that related to the overall ideas of the course. Thus, in freshman composition, a course that focuses on experiential learning, I had the students go outside and experience a brief period of blindness. They took turns taping cotton balls over their eyes and leading each other around. We then analyzed the experience and talked about how one might craft a thesis to describe what happened. In a Western literature class, I introduced the major ideas of the Enlightenment and talked about how the interplay of reason and emotion would reoccur throughout the course.

Only after this exposure to course content did I give students a copy of the syllabus. Rather than going through it in detail, I told students that they were perfectly capable of reading it. I think we should start assuming that students ranging from developmental courses to upper-division major classes can read and understand a syllabus. Rather than treating the syllabus as something special, I decided to handle it as another reading assignment.

To prepare students for this reading assignment, I did a brief presentation (I used PowerPoint this year, which I almost never use) on the most important aspects of the syllabus: why students are taking the course, how to get in touch with me, our university’s mission statement, academic support for those with disabilities, how to access the online readings, and the overall structure of the class. I limited the presentation to 10 minutes. I have even begun to wonder if I could skip handing out the syllabus altogether and simply have students print it off themselves and read it before coming to the first day of class.

On the second day, I had students pick up note cards as they arrived for class. I asked them to write on the card any questions they had about the syllabus. In one class of just over 30 students, I answered fewer than five questions, and it took less than five minutes. Even in my largest class, which had the most questions, I was still able to respond in less than 10 minutes. Thus, my presentation of the syllabus took 15 minutes, at best, as opposed to the 40 to 50 minutes it used to take.

I also used bonus questions taken from the syllabus on my reading quizzes. This makes it clear to students who have not read the syllabus that they are losing out on extra points. I have considered giving a quiz solely on the syllabus, as I have heard some professors do, but that seems a bit petty to me. I can see, though, how that approach reinforces the idea of treating the syllabus as class material, just like any other reading assignment.

In the past few weeks since the semester started, I have had more students reference policies from the syllabus than I usually have in an entire semester. Students know how many points I deduct for late papers, and two students in one class wanted to discuss our school’s mission statement. They asked if I believed we are actually trying to live it out (we are a religious institution), something that has never happened in my eight years of teaching here.

Rather than wasting that all-important first day going over material students can read on their own, I recommend we begin by introducing students to ideas from the course. Almost all of us complain about running out of time by the end of the semester, but a better beginning can help us reclaim at least one day of it, if we use it wisely.

Reprinted from The Teaching Professor, November 2009.

Large index cards. An essential way to create a sense of community in the classroom is to know and use students’ names. Note cards of the largest size (5 by 7 inches) can readily be folded horizontally to make name plates. Different colors of card sets can be used for individual course sections. For the first few weeks, I use these to get to know students’ names and as a way to check roll. I distribute them at the beginning of class and collect them at the end of each class period.

Stickers or colored dots. These can be placed on the index cards to form small groups (according to the dot color). For a senior level course, I try to find graduation themed stickers or happy faces of different colors. Groups can be quickly structured by asking all the orange (and blue and green) dots to get together. Early use of small groups within a classroom helps to create a greater sense of community among students.

Playing cards. This is another tool for assigning students to groups. For short, in-class activities, a standard set of playing cards can be used to set up random group assignments. In addition, children’s playing cards often have unusual faces on them such as animals, career roles, shapes, etc. When a class has an odd number of students, one unusual card (e.g., the Old Maid or Joker) can be included in the mix. The person who gets this card can then choose any group to join. Other groups would consist of those who have the same card.

Wooden craft sticks. It is common to fall into the habit of calling on the same students (e.g., those who raise their hands, those who sit near the front, or those whose names are easily remembered). Making a set of student name sticks for each class is a useful way to call on different students and to keep them engaged. With a permanent marker, print the name of each student on a wooden stick and place the sticks in a container such as a cup or basket. During class randomly draw sticks to call on students to participate.

Small foam ball or ball of yarn. Students can toss a form ball to another classmate to hear their perspective during a class discussion. To create a discussion maze, a ball of yarn can be used to create an interesting interaction pattern and to include more participants. A tool like this makes the class more energized.

Play money. Whenever students are asked as individuals or as groups to evaluate (i.e., select the best solution, decide on the best title, or generate the most interesting question), they can write their response on the back of a piece of play money. Using the money symbolically communicates a sense of value for what the student offers to share and enhances student engagement. I have found that groups of students seem to discuss more intensely as they decide what to write on the paper money, rather than just a piece of paper.

Now it’s time to go shopping. These tools are inexpensive, easy to find, and provide ways to make learning more engaging.

What’s on your shopping list for the fall semester? In the comment box below, please share some of the tools you use to keep your students engaged and organized.

Patty H. Phelps, Ed.D. is a professor in the department of Teaching & Learning at the University of Central Arkansas.

Stephen Brookfield writes about students who are beyond being passive about learning—they just plain resist it. He suggests that teachers can’t respond successfully unless they are knowledgeable about the sources of resistance to learning. Here’s a sample of possibilities that appear in his book The Skillful Teacher.

1. Poor self-image as learners—If students don’t think they can learn, they often resist efforts that seek to make them learn. These are students who, at the first hint of trouble, abandon even fledgling efforts. Any negative feedback just confirms what they already believe: they aren’t smart enough; they will never be able to figure it out. “Developing a strong self-image as a learner—regarding oneself as someone able to acquire new skills, knowledge, behaviors, and insights—is a crucial psychological underpinning to learning.” (p. 217)
2. Fear of the unknown—Some students resist learning because they are afraid. Students like doing what they already know. They hold on to beliefs that have served them well, especially those passed on from parents. “People committed to eternal verities can withstand years of dissonant experiences and mountains of contradictory evidence that call these [beliefs] into question.” (p. 218) For many students, the comfort and security of where they are causes them to resist going to new places, especially places where beliefs might be held more tentatively.
3. Disjunction between learning and teaching styles—Most teachers have experienced this: bright, capable students who resist what’s happening in class. Once a student in my class said, with some passion, “I hate discussion!” “Why?” “I can’t figure out how to take notes off a discussion. What are you supposed to write down?” He was an engineering major and talked often about how clear and organized the content was in his engineering courses. Content is configured differently across disciplines. Sometimes students resist when their preferred approach to learning is at odds with how the information is organized or is being presented.
4. Apparent irrelevance of the learning activity—Students resist learning when they don’t see how or what an activity contributes to their efforts to learn. If it looks like busywork or a waste of time, students resist. Brookfield points out that this is particularly true when learners are paying for their education themselves.
5. Inappropriate level of required learning—Students get frustrated and angry when they can’t understand the content. They object to unfamiliar language and the fast-paced delivery of complicated material. The frustration quickly becomes resistance. Brookfield also uses the example of teachers who transfer too much of the responsibility for learning to students too quickly. Students resist. The teacher is asking them to do what he or she is being paid to do.
6. Students’ dislike of teachers—It’s not a particularly pleasant thought, but sometimes students resist because they just plain don’t like the teacher. Maybe objections to the teacher are justified or maybe they aren’t, but sometimes teachers themselves cause resistance.

Brookfield’s list is actually quite a bit longer, but these examples illustrate a variety of sources of resistance to learning. He points out that teachers should not expect to be able to “overcome,” or completely dissipate, resistance. They should work to contain or mitigate its effects.

To do this, he recommends that teachers start by trying to sort out the causes of resistance and decide if the resistance is justified. If the instruction is being aimed at a level way above the level of most students in the class, the resistance is justified and the teacher can do something about fixing the problem.

He offers a number of other useful suggestions. For example, teachers need to build a case for learning. They should explain clearly and often why something is important, why it’s relevant, and why it’s something students need to know. For learners without confidence who are afraid of new knowledge, it helps to create learning situations in which they can taste some success early on.

Finally, teachers will deal more constructively with resistance to learning once they come to accept that it is normal and that students, in fact, have the right to resist. Students cannot be forced to learn anything. All teachers can do is to make the case for learning and work to create conditions that are conducive to it.

Reference:
Brookfield, S. D. The Skillful Teacher: On Technique, Trust, and Responsiveness in the Classroom, Second Edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006. Brookfield’s discussion of resistance to learning appears in Chapter 12.

Reprinted from Six Causes of Resistance to Learning, The Teaching Professor, March 2009.

While the student is a customer, the customer is not “always” right. Instructors have a very difficult job and must always try to strive to be fair and use discretion; however, we must adhere to policies and regulations. Unfortunately, some students will not be able to maintain their “4.0” average or a graduate student may earn a “C”, or a “D”, or even an “F.” Sometimes, they have legitimate reasons and they have provided valid and validated excuses. Sometimes, they are simply not satisfied with their grade and will do anything to earn the grade they wanted or “perceive” they earned. They may make accusations; they may bypass the instructor in their complaints and, in some cases, may make the call or send the e-mail directly to the top decision-maker on campus. You will then be asked to “defend” yourself.

My advice is simple: At the beginning of the term, set aside a separate thumb drive for e-mails for a specific course, or create a separate subdirectory on your hard-drive for that course. When you receive e-mails, save them by last name and number (Smith – 1; Smith – 2, etc.) When you send e-mails, save them in the same manner. When you send e-mails to the class, save them by class number, for example CJ400-1, CJ400-2. When necessary, in responding to students, inform them that you are cc:ing your supervisor (and do so).

This may seem like extra work and, for some, much ado about nothing. However, if you are not able to provide documentation of your correspondence to students, it is difficult to defend what you have said. You also may find that the same student often complains in more than one class or seems to have “excuses” for not completing assignments in more than one class (your program coordinator or chair might validate this). I once had a student whose mother died three weeks before the final in two separate terms with two separate instructors. When we keep and share this information it will begin to prevent much of the problem in the future and provide you with very valuable documentation. It also will prevent unnecessary correspondence with your program coordinator, department chair, dean, and president.

Michael T. Eskey, PhD is an associate professor of criminal justice at Park University.

Familiarizing students with basic terms such as “fixed” and “variable costs,” or “product” and “period costs,” can be challenging. The textbook my institution uses is well organized. It starts with the basics and eventually progresses to the complex process of making business decisions. However, my students work on learning the material chapter by chapter. When they must analyze in-depth questions, they have difficulty knowing which tools to use and why, even though these tools have already been covered in the text. To help with this problem, this year I recommended that students prepare a reference sheet containing the concepts, how to use them, and what information they revealed. Not a single student took my advice.

I needed a way to help students take the concepts out of the chapters so that they could be applied to subsequent material so I adapted an approach I learned at a leadership conference. Here’s how it works:

With each concept introduced, the students get an index card. I write the basic concept on the board and how it behaves or what it is, and then I provide an example. For instance, for break-even analysis, the students write down the formulas, how to calculate the individual components of the formula, how to achieve the sales dollars given the units and vice versa, and what “break even” means. Students keep these cards; they may refer to them when I offer illustrations from the chapter and use them for study outside of class.

Students end up with eight to 10 cards by the end of the course. The cards divorce the ideas from the individual chapters and thereby enable students to apply the concepts to more complex business decisions. For example, when deciding if the company should discontinue a seemingly unprofitable segment, students can look at the cards from the early chapters in which basic concepts like fixed costs are defined and explained, and use this knowledge to decide which costs should be considered in making this particular decision.

Moving beyond ‘chapter learning’
I’m enjoying teaching the course more because during the later half of the course, the students’ knowledge is much stronger. They analyze the choices involved in a particular business decision faster and they start to ask questions about issues beyond the basic course content. This tells me they comprehend the decision and are beginning to see it in a larger context.

Are my students’ grades higher? Do I have fewer students failing the course? The first time I tried the approach, grades in the course pretty much stayed the same. However, fewer students failed the course. Normally that percentage ran between 10 and 12. When I used the index cards, only two of the 55 students enrolled in the course failed. The second time, my class average grade rose to an incredible 82 percent and no one failed the course.

Am I doing too much to help them learn? Was the last class just more intelligent than previous ones? I’ll have to do further research to answer that question definitively, but for the time being I’m going to carry on. Any technique that helps students apply concepts beyond the chapter in which they’re presented seems like an approach worth continuing.

Karen Lightstone, PhD is an assistant professor at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Excerpted from Student Success Is in the Cards … Or Is It?, August -September, 2008, The Teaching Professor.

I instead encourage faculty to start by adding a blog to their class. A blog can be set up in minutes and is easy to learn and maintain. Plus, there are a variety of studies proving that blogging can improve educational outcomes. For instance:

• Faculty at the University of Maryland Baltimore County found that when they switched chemistry labs from individual students doing experiments and submitting their results, to groups of students posting their findings to a blog and receiving feedback from other students, the average passing rate in class went from 71.2 percent to 85.6 percent, even as the minimum score needed to pass went up. Read more about the UMBC experience here ».
• David Wiley at Brigham Young University had his students post their written work to a blog before handing it in. The students received comments from other students and even faculty at other institutions, which improved their work greatly. Wiley found that dozens of other people were effectively doing his job for him by providing students with commentary to improve their work. It multiplied student outcomes without extra effort on his part. Read more about the experience here » .

One of the benefits of blogging is that it is public, and we are more attentive to the quality of our work when it is public than if it is just viewed by one other person. Plus, blogging creates a person-centered discussion, as opposed to the topic-centered discussion of the LMS. Students are less invested in LMS discussions and often lend the minimum commentary necessary fulfill the requirement. But students become much more invested in their work when blogging, and thus are more engaged with the material.

Also, Kris Kelly notes that blogging encourages higher levels of reasoning because the “focus is not necessarily on the content of the blog, but more on the process of constructing and evaluating knowledge helping us reach the sometimes elusive upper levels – analyzing, evaluating, and creating – of Bloom’s Taxonomy” (http://tinyurl.com/mtj6kf).

One simple way to incorporate blogging into nearly any course is to create a single class blog and post case studies, news items, or topics for commentary. Another option is to assign students to post notes on each class along with their thoughts on the material, and assign other students to comment on the postings.

Add blogging to your classes with any of the free platforms below:

Blogger - Google’s publishing tool: http://www.blogger.com

Tumblr - A feature rich system: http://www.tumblr.com

Posterious - Super simple, and with lots of functionality: http://posterous.com

Soup.io - Another powerful product from the “io” people: http://www.soup.io

Edmodo - Good for making password protected groups of blogs: http://www.edmodo.com

Share your ideas: I would love to hear ideas for using blogs in the classroom. Please share your experiences or ideas by posting a comment to this article in the space below.

John Orlando, PhD, is the Program Director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University. John develops faculty training in online education and is available for consulting at jorlando@norwich.edu.

There’s a reason that the Wikipedia entry normally comes in at the top of a Google search. Google relies heavily on inbound links to rank a site, and Wikipedia is one of the most commonly linked sites on the Internet. Here’s another secret—Wikipedia is vetted by volunteer academics. Wikipedia’s motto is “no original thought,” meaning that everything must be cited, and uncited material is quickly removed. In fact, studies have shown the Wikipedia is about as accurate as Britannica.

Here are two ways to use Wikipedia to improve learning outcomes in your classes:

Have Students Build Articles
In the Spring of 2008, Professor Jon Beasley-Murray at University of British Columbia had the students in his class “Murder, Madness, and Mayhem: Latin American Literature in Translation” create articles for Wikipedia on the books that they read. He transformed his students from learners to teachers, which improves outcomes. Plus, creating public work improves motivation as well as performance.

Importantly, the students were instructed to make contact with the Wikipedia editors—called the “FA Team”—to receive feedback on their work for revisions. The instructor had effectively enlisted outside academics as reviewers for his class. Wikipedia also has a quality ranking system that assigns “Good Article” or “Featured Article” status to exceptionally good works. About 1 in 800 articles reach Good Article status, while 1 in 1,200 reach Featured Article status. The instructor guaranteed his students an “A” for Good Articles, and an A+ for Featured Articles.

The results? The students, who worked in groups of two or three, produced three Featured Articles and eight Good Articles, an exceptional result given how few articles achieve these levels. These articles receive thousands of hits per month, demonstrating to students the value of their work. Now more than 20 universities have projects in Wikipedia.

Host a Course on Wikiversity
Wikimedia–the non-profit foundation that created Wikipedia–also hosts nine other wiki projects, including: Wikibook (free textbooks), Wikispecies (dictionary of species), and Wikiquote (compilation of quotes). One interesting site is Wikiversity, which provides a space for hosting courses or other content. An instructor can build a course page with syllabi, lesson plans, and other material for the students to access whenever they need it. That page can also be linked to other educational material such as videos.

Best yet, students can be given editing access to the page to add their own material. Groups can be assigned to add material to the course, such as resources for further exploration of the topics. Another option is to have the students build self-tests on the material using free web-based quiz functions for future students. This will enlist the students in an ongoing project of developing knowledge that outlives their particular class and is passed on to future generations of students.

Resources
The Latin American Literature Project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jbmurray/Madness
Guide for university projects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects/Piotrus_educational_boilerplate
Listing of university projects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SUP
Guide for peer review of articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PR
Wikiversity: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page

John Orlando, PhD, is the Program Director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University. John develops faculty training in online education and is available for consulting at jorlando@norwich.edu.