The Learning Question – If you want students to be more focused on learning, then you need to start asking them questions about their learning: “What are you learning …?” It’s a question to ask as you chat with individual students before class or see them on campus. “What have you been learning in biology this week?” I jokingly interject that “nothing” is not an acceptable response. It’s a question to ask after every class activity. “What did you learn for the test that you’ll still remember when I see you next semester?” and “What did you learn about test preparation that you need to remember?”

The Exam Review Session – Teachers don’t need to review the material; students do! So, plan a review session in which students are doing the reviewing. Have them work individually or in groups to answer the ultimate review session question: “What’s going to be on the exam?” Assign students to prepare the study guides on the reading material or task them with generating possible test questions that are then completed by others in the class. In other words, students should be working way harder than the teacher during the review session.

Before and After Class Previews and Reviews – Same point as above: teachers already know how to preview and review. It’s the students who need to practice and develop the skill. Here are a few ideas for facilitating that kind of learning: 1) Ask students to review notes with another person at the beginning or end of class and identify three important points. 2) Assign three students to tweet a summary of the day’s lesson. 3) Give students bonus points, brownie points, or a high five from the class if they offer a minute review of essential content from a class session last week and suggest one connection between that content and what was presented today.

Assignment Options – Take an assignment and redesign it so that it includes several (not too many) options¬; perhaps different topic choices or different format possibilities. Let students choose how they will complete the assignment but not without justifying their choice in terms of how it relates to them as learners. Or, let students determine the relative weight of two assignments with specified ranges. Quizzes may count 10, 15, or 20 percent of the amount of the final grade determined by quiz and exam scores. Maybe you could have participation count for a variable amount. When students make these choices, they should confront and explain the reason why. Why would you want quizzes to count more or less?

Setting the Assessment Criteria – “What makes you want to read and participate in an online discussion?” Responses to a prompt like that can be transformed into criteria that can be used to assess an online exchange (the whole exchange not just individual contributions to it). It may be that the teacher will need to add some missing components, but even using some of the student criteria changes the dynamic. Practice generating assessment criteria (say for essay answers, presentations in class, or contributions to group work) develops a new level of awareness that helps student prepare and participate in those activities.

In the August 8, 2012 post I identified five features that I believe make teaching learner-centered: It is teaching that: 1) engages students in the hard, messy work of learning; 2) includes explicit skill instruction; 3) encourages students to reflect on what and how they are learning; 4) motivates students by giving them some control over learning processes; and 5) encourages students and teachers to learn from and with each other.

These activities are first steps that move teaching and learning in these directions and are part of a longer list that appears in the recently released second edition of my Learner-Centered Teaching book (pp. 234-235) available from Jossey-Bass.

Promote study groups – First, include a list of reasons why students should join study groups in the syllabus or on the course website. Maybe there’s a short podcast available in which you talk about the usefulness of study groups. Better yet, if you’ve got some students who studied together in a previous course, ask them to make some comments about their experiences. Second, talk regularly in class about study groups. You can repeat all the benefits, suggest activities that involve good group study strategies, or propose some things they could study together (like problems they could solve, questions they could discuss). You also can solicit feedback from study groups in class or mention content you discussed with a group during office hours.

Make study groups an option – Encourage students to organize their own groups, but offer to help with the process. Nudge them with reminders, such as “Send me an email if you’re interested in being part of a study group.” Have study groups “register” their members, and then report on meeting times and activities. Suggest study activities for the group (ideas like those offered in the next item). Invite the group to meet with you during office hours or to send questions electronically. Offer registered study groups that report regular meetings a bonus point incentive depending on the average of their individual test grades. Let all students know that joining a study group is an option throughout the course.

Demonstrate the value of a study group – Too often when students study together, it’s pretty much a waste of time. If they’re reviewing for a test, they talk about how it can’t possibly be that hard and thereby relieve themselves of the need to study. Or they “go over” their notes, reading what they’ve written but never with any discussion. Group studying is too often accompanied by eating, texting, and regular side conversations.

In order for students to get the most value from their study sessions, you’ll need to help them come up with a different set of strategies. You can do so by holding a review session and asking students to form potential study groups (it’s up to them if they want to meet as a group more often). Give the groups tasks like these: 1) For three minutes everybody reviews their notes and lists five things they think will be on the test and then for five minutes they share lists and create a group list of the items most often mentioned. During the exam debrief, students revisit their list of things they expected to see on the exam. Were those things on the exam? 2) Everybody takes three minutes and writes a question about some content they don’t understand or wish they understood better. The group devotes a specified amount of time to each question, looking for relevant content in their notes and the text. 3) The group has 20 minutes to make one crib sheet that everyone in that group can use during the exam.

Offer proof that study groups improve performance – Compare the scores, points, or grades of those working in study groups with those who aren’t. These are data which should be collected across several sections of the course.

Define study groups broadly – Students tend to think of study groups for exam preparation, but that isn’t the only kind of student collaboration that promotes learning. If there are regularly assigned readings for the course, students can get together to discuss the reading. Again you might let them do this first in class with a good set of prompts so they see how dialogue can enrich and deepen their understanding of the assigned material. Readings are easily discussed in virtual environments, which means the group doesn’t have to find a time when everybody can meet. If various writing assignments are required in the course, students can form peer editing groups. Rubrics, checklists, and prompts can help them get beyond superficial feedback (“you might need a comma here”) to the kind of helpful critique that improves the writing.

Readers, what strategies have you used to encourage effective study groups?

We know in our heart of hearts this assignment (it could also be a classroom activity, a collection of readings, or almost any aspect of instruction) doesn’t work. Maybe we’re telling ourselves it’s not our fault. Students can’t write. They didn’t learn how to write in their composition courses. Other teachers aren’t making them write enough. They don’t want to learn to write. They hate to write.

To be sure, students aren’t blameless. Often they don’t expend much effort on written assignments. But blaming students shouldn’t become the default mode that keeps directing us away from those aspects of instruction that aren’t working.

Often teachers avoid facing what doesn’t work with one of my least favorite sayings, “It is what it is.” In other words, nothing in the world can be done about the problem beyond passively accepting it. Given the kind of students we teach or given what we’ve come to believe about ourselves as teachers, we muddle along and hope for the best. We shouldn’t be asked to face what can’t be fixed — or so it seems some have convinced themselves.

But we can face what isn’t working and I’d like to suggest how. First, there’s got to be a willingness to find out why it isn’t working and that question needs to be approached with an open mind. This means not looking for the reason while already suspecting you know what it is. It also means being willing to pursue the answer wherever it leads, even if that ends up being your front porch. Finding out why some aspect of instruction isn’t working is easier when others are involved. You may want to solicit feedback from students. You may benefit from input provided by colleagues—those who can offer wise pedagogical counsel. Finally, this task must be approached with a firm belief that the vast majority of things that aren’t working in our courses can be fixed. The “vast majority” doesn’t mean all and “fixed” means made better (generally significantly better), but not perfect.

Here’s a great example illustrating how this can work and why it helps to involve others. In the paper referenced below, Paul Van Auken, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, starts out admitting to being disappointed with the quality of student work done in a semester long research project he assigned in an introductory sociology course. Students weren’t very engaged in the project and couldn’t seem to write a final paper that synthesized their learning in the course. He made one change that improved student engagement but not the quality of their papers. He decided to find out why—why weren’t students able to pull it all together in their final paper?

Several months after the course was over he asked a colleague to convene a focus group of students who received low C’s to low B’s in the course. His colleague facilitated and recorded a 90-minute discussion during which these students talked about their learning and experiences in the course. Much to Van Auken’s surprise, the recording revealed that students had way more understanding of the issues and concepts of the course than they conveyed in their papers and this was two months after the course had ended. A colleague wondered if maybe his assignment didn’t allow students to demonstrate their knowledge. Could he try giving students more options for sharing what they’d learned? He could and he did. Students still had to write a final paper but they also had to create a nonpaper artifact that demonstrated their learning. The results? A teacher satisfied and excited about student learning in the course.

What isn’t working must be faced and can be fixed!

Reference: Van Auken, P. (2013). Maybe it’s both of us: Engagement and learning. Teaching Sociology, 4 (2), 207-215. [There’s more about this excellent article in the May issue of the Teaching Professor newsletter.]

As I note in The Teaching Professor, this article is a great resource. It contains references to other studies documenting the use of texting and cell phones in college classes, and it features an excellent discussion of the physiological reasons why the human brain is not good at multitasking, despite the fact 47% of the students in this survey believe they can text and follow a lecture at the same time.

However, the real value of this research is that the findings and the authors raise tough questions about texting. Does it make sense to ban texting if students ignore the ban and teachers back away from enforcing it? Can a ban be enforced? How about in a large course, can it be enforced then? Should it be enforced? The researchers note that at one time most faculty objected when students brought food and drink into class and now that’s accepted in many classrooms. What are the costs of enforcing a “no texting” policy? Public altercations with students that erode the climate for learning in the classroom? But texting itself erodes the learning atmosphere of classroom, doesn’t it?

What about taking the “if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them” approach? The researchers cite a number of references in which faculty describe ways and means of using texting to enhance the learning experience. I worry that texting for legitimate reasons serves to validate its use for any reason.

Does texting show a lack of respect? Perhaps, but are students doing it because they want to disrespect the teacher? Or are they texting simply because they do it everywhere else and don’t see the classroom as being any different. I regularly see faculty texting during my workshops. Am I being disrespected?

Here’s a student comment (cited in the article) that raises the toughest question of all: “For me, I only text when I am bored, so if the teacher sees that maybe they can change their teaching style.” (p. 36) The researchers write, “Given the research on multitasking and brain function, the real question is not whether texting in class lowers academic performance, but why does a class not produce enough cognitive load that texting would disrupt it?” (p. 36) In other words, why isn’t the content in our courses interesting and challenging enough that students realize if they text, they will miss something important?

No, I’m not naïve—too old for that. I know that a divine visitation could be occurring in class and some students would still be texting. Moreover, not everything we teach, not even the stuff that that students really need to know, titillates with excitement. Sometimes we have to pay attention when it’s boring. And most of the time our attention cannot be divided for learning to occur. Somehow students must confront the fact that they can’t be texting, listening to the teacher, and taking good notes. They’re going to do one well and the others poorly, just like the rest of us when we try to multitask. Late last year I tried to listen to a webinar on Medicare while cleaning my desk and writing notes for a blog post. I later had to spend hours trying to rectify the mistakes I made when I signed up for Medicare.

The questions about texting are tough because they don’t have easy answers. I don’t think there’s one simple policy that solves the problem and constructively resolves the issues. But I don’t think that excuses us from confronting the questions.

Reference: Clayson, D. E. and Haley, D. A. (2013). An introduction to multitasking and texting: Prevalence and impact on grades and GPA in marketing. Journal of Marketing Education, 35 (1), 26-40.

I don’t know that I have ever seen or read anything that highlights differences when the discussion is of technical material. Please, point us to useful references if you know some. In the meantime, here’s a first pass at ways these discussions might be stimulated and focused.

Why and How Questions. If there’s a right answer or correct procedure, the “correctness” really isn’t up for discussion but “Why?” questions can lead the student to those deeper levels of understanding. “Why is that the right answer?” “Why does that process work and others do not?” When content has a right answer, students tend to memorize it and think they’ve got all they need to know. True understanding rests on not only knowing the answer but being able to explain why it’s correct.

The “How?” question provides teachers with valuable feedback. It can be used to uncover student thought processes. “Tell me how you got that answer?” “How did you go about solving the problem and why did you use that approach?” As the student recounts the steps taken, the point at which an error occurred is revealed as is the depth of understanding. This feedback helps the teacher respond to the student’s level of understanding.

But students should also be learning to ask themselves the “Why?” and “How?” questions. If the teacher always asks, students often won’t see the value of confronting themselves with the pathway they’ve taken to an answer. Teachers aren’t always going to be present when answers need to be corrected or defended.

Discussion of Errors. If there’s one (or several) “right” ways of doing something, there are plenty of “wrong” or less correct ways as well. The objective is to get students to talk about and learn from their mistakes, which isn’t all that easy. Students don’t want to make mistakes and they especially don’t want their mistakes to be discussed in public venues. Teachers may need to start the discussion with mistakes and errors made by anonymous students, or even mistakes they’ve made themselves. These discussions need to demonstrate that getting it wrong can result in learning—sometimes even more learning than when you get it right.

Discussion of Application. The discussion here is about what can be done with the solution, process, or procedure just learned. Does it apply to other problems? Can you use the procedure in other situations? Many students don’t regularly think about application. This is why they may know how to solve a problem, but when presented with a similar problem that looks a little different from the case covered in class or the homework problem, they don’t think they can figure out the answer.

Discussion of Connections. Much research establishes that learners connect new knowledge to what they already know. The point of discussing connections is to solidify them and help students appropriately integrate old and new knowledge. If that integration doesn’t occur, students can know certain facts but still hold misconceptions—as has been demonstrated by that infamous video of graduating seniors who’d taken all the appropriate courses but still incorrectly explained what causes the seasons.

But the discussion of connections needs to go in a different direction as well. Too often students take from courses a grab bag of facts, ideas, and information “covered” in the class. They still have no idea that all this information fits together nor can then put it together. Getting students to see that the coherence and beauty of that larger picture starts with discussions of how what they’ve just learned fits with the rest of what they’ve learned in this course and connects with content from other courses.

Readers, are there other approaches you take to the discussion of technical material? Please help all of us enlarge our understanding of content that might at first appear difficult to discuss.

Consider what needs to be decided after each student comment:

• Is the point being made clear and coherent? If not, what follow-up question needs to be asked?
• Is the answer or comment relevant? Does it answer the question? Is it on the topic currently under discussion? What needs to be done, if it’s not?
• Should you respond? Invite someone else to respond? Not respond and solicit more comments? If you respond, what and how much should you say?
• Can the student’s comment be linked to what another student said, to something you’ve said, to something in the text? Who should make that link?
• Would a follow-up question deepen the answer, sharpen its focus, encourage others to comment? If so, what is that question?

As the discussion unfolds, here’s some of what needs to be monitored and kept in mind:

• Who’s speaking and how often?
• Who gets called on when there are a lot of volunteers? What about when there aren’t any volunteers?
• What’s the level of attentiveness within the class collectively and individually? Who’s clearly not paying attention? What are they doing and does that need to be addressed?
• Is the discussion losing steam? If so, how might it be re-energized?
• Is the exchange becoming heated? Are emotions running too high? Does the atmosphere feel tense and threatening? If so, what should be done about it?
• Is it time for a summary? Do the main points need to be sorted out of the morass?
• Where did the discussion start, where is it now and where does it still need to go?
• Has there been enough discussion of this particular point or on this topic in general?

That’s a lot to keep track of at the same time you’re processing content. You might need to summon information to answer a question, come up with an example, or point out other relevant material. When we facilitate discussion, most of the focus is on the content. All of these discussion details are at the periphery of our awareness.

How then do we develop our discussion leadership skills? Let me suggest three ways, each involving one thing: awareness. First, we need to be aware of what discussion involves. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I ever made a list like the one above —and that’s just a portion of what facilitators must consider to keep the discussion flowing. Next, we need to observe how we facilitate a discussion (or several of them). The idea is to stand alongside and observe, to pay attention to things like the details listed above. Yes, the content still needs our attention, but at the same time we need to become aware of how we “do” discussion. Finally, we need to reflect on discussion after the fact. We need to recall the details and use them to develop an accurate account of what happened during a particular discussion that then becomes part of our larger understanding of how we lead and guide discussion.

Building discussion skills begins with awareness—awareness of what’s involved, awareness of our skills, and awareness of what actually happens during discussion. The individual strategies used in discussion aren’t all that difficult. There are lots of things you can do when a student makes a point that isn’t relevant. There are many ways to respond when a comment isn’t very good. If you consider the options, become aware of how you usually respond, then you can try something different the next time. What’s complicated as the dickens is how many individual responses are needed to ensure a productive discussion and how all of those things must be selected and delivered without the benefit of time to carefully think about any of them.

Yes, students can learn from activities that involve them in providing instructional feedback, especially if it’s focused on their learning experiences in class. Most students have little insight into themselves as learners. So, if the assessment activity gets them thinking about how they learn and what teaching policies, practices, and behavior expedite their efforts to learn, it can be a beneficial activity for them as well as for the teacher.

The trick is coming up with feedback activities that garner these benefits and I just found a great example. Professor La Lopa, who teaches hospitality and tourism management at Purdue University, has students in his 200-level Human Resource Management course write a reflective paper on quality teaching and its assessment. (I can hear some of you wondering about the appropriateness of the assignment. His article, referenced below, explains the context which more than justified it for me.) What’s most creative about the assignment are some of the prompts students respond to in the paper. Here’s a condensed and slightly edited version of some of them.

• How would you describe your ideal professor? Include a description of the classroom setting (number of students, physical space, etc). Paint as clear a picture for me as possible so I can envision your ideal college professor and class.
• Now describe the typical teacher you have actually experienced in your courses here. What is the typical classroom setting like?
• If you could put one question on a course evaluation what would it be and why would you ask it?
• If you were the president of your college or university, what method would you use to evaluate the [teaching] performance of college professors?

The article is worth reading for the quotes excerpted from the student papers alone. Their observations demonstrate just how well an assignment like this gets students thinking about good teaching, its assessment, and its relationship to learning.

There are lots of potential spin-offs from an activity framed around these questions. The most frequently mentioned characteristics of the “ideal” professor could be shared and discussed. Why these characteristics? Are these characteristics that support efforts to learn? How? Why? How about the teacher writing a short description of the “ideal” student followed by another short description of the “typical” student? I wonder if the one question teachers would add to the course evaluation would be anything like the question students would add. Maybe the best way to evaluate professors is by how well their students learn. Is that a good idea? Why? Why not?

There’s lots of research documenting that students don’t believe that their feedback is taken seriously by institutions or instructors, which in part explains the poor quality of the feedback they provide. And there’s lots of research documenting that if faculty talk with students about assessment feedback it improves end-of-course ratings. It’s a visible sign that teachers care and are willing to work with students, even if we don’t make all the changes they propose. Good feedback activities like the one described here have one final benefit: they can be learning experiences for students.

Please share the ways you collect, respond to, and use feedback from students. We’re especially interested in those ways that also encourage students to encounter themselves as learners.

Reference: La Lopa, J. (2011). Student reflection on quality teaching and how to assess it in higher education. Journal of Culinary Science & Technology, 9 (4), 282-292.

Most of these questions are being answered in stages by research inquiries that address smaller issues related to these larger questions. For example, Carolyn Hart has completed an integrative review of the research literature in the hopes of identifying those factors that positively affect a student’s persistence in an online course. Do we know what differentiates students who complete online courses from those who drop out?

Her review is based on 20 studies published since 1999. She found that researchers used a wide range of definitions for persistence. She opted for this straightforward description: persistence is “the ability to complete an online course despite obstacles or adverse circumstances.” (p. 30) The opposite of persistence is attrition, which she defined as “withdrawal from an online course.” (p. 30) Based on her review, she identified the following factors as being related to student persistence in online courses.

Satisfaction with online learning – Not surprising, students who are satisfied with online courses and programs persist. In one study, students who had graduated from an online program reported satisfaction levels above 90%, those enrolled in a program reported 70% satisfaction levels, and those just beginning indicated a 58% satisfaction level. Those percentages compared with 20% satisfaction levels reported by those who withdrew from courses. (p. 34)

A sense of belonging to a learning community – Students who are comfortable establishing relationships in an online environment tend to persist at higher rates. These are students who can successfully participate in online discussions and work with others they do not know or have not met. The feeling of “camaraderie” among students within the class contributes to persistence.
Motivation – Highly motivated students complete online courses. “Personal resolve and determination to succeed strongly contributes to persistence.” (p. 34)

Peer and family support – Those learning in online environments more often successfully complete courses if they have peer and family support. The emotional support provided by peers, family, and sometimes even faculty, is especially important when students are trying to complete online courses at the same time they are coping with hardships or juggling competing demands.

Time management skills – “Students with good study habits, [who have] the ability to stay on task with assignments and readings, and [who] are able to successfully manage time are more apt to persist when compared to non-persisters.” (p. 31)

Increased communication with the instructor – “Qualitative findings indicate that in addition to promptness, the quality of feedback, and the willingness of faculty to meet student needs are viewed as important to student persistence.” (p. 33-4)

Some of these factors for success in the online classroom are not unexpected. It makes sense that students are more likely to complete a course when they are happy with how the course is going and self-motivated enough to see it through. Others factors implicate how online courses should be taught and to some degree who should teach them. Online courses need to be designed so that students have opportunities to connect and work with each other. They should be taught by teachers who understand the importance of communication with students and who willingly interact with them throughout the course.

The research findings also give an indication of who should be taking online courses. If the student is one of those not particularly well prepared for college-level work and not an especially motivated beginning student, online courses early in the college experience may not be advised.

Online courses can be designed so that they work well for many students and with most content. And most teachers can learn how to teach online. But those courses, like any kind of instruction, don’t work well automatically, which means the questions of who takes, who teaches, and what content is most appropriate should influence our decision-making.

Reference: Hart, C. (2012). Factors associated with student persistence in an online program of study: A review of the literature. Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 11 (1), 19-42.

Standing opposite the experience of faculty members like this one is an accumulation of research that strongly supports students learning from and with each other in groups. There’s research and analyses of group learning now reported in virtually every discipline. Here are five things students can learn in groups, all well-established by a wide range of empirical analyses.

1. They can learn content, as in master the material. Whether they are working on problems, answering questions about the reading, or discussing case studies, when students work together on content, they can master the basics. The reason they learn is pretty straightforward, when students work with content in a group they are figuring things out for themselves rather than having the teacher tell them what they need to know.
2. They can learn content at those deeper levels we equate with understanding. I just highlighted an article for the April issue of The Teaching Professor newsletter which reported that the explanations students wrote to justify a chosen answer were stronger after just seven minutes of discussion with two or three students. When students are trying to explain things to each other, to argue for an answer, or to justify a conclusion, that interaction clarifies their own thinking and often it clarifies the thinking of other students.
3. They can learn how groups function productively. In order for groups to function productively, students must fulfill individual responsibilities. Productive group members come prepared, they contribute to the group interaction, they support each other, and they deliver good work on time. In order for individuals to function productively in groups, they have the right to expect the group to value their individual contributions, to address behaviors that compromise group productivity, and to divide the work equitably among members.
4. They can learn why groups make better decisions than individuals. Students can see how different perspectives, constructive deliberation, questioning, and critical analysis can result in better solutions and performance. If students take an exam individually and then do the same exam as a group, the group exam score is almost always higher because students share what they know, debate the answers, and through that process can often find their way to the right answer.
5. They can learn how to work with others. Group work helps students learn how to work with people outside their circle of friends, including those who have different backgrounds and experiences. They can even learn how to work with those who disagree with them, and others they might not “like” or want as friends.

Now, it is absolutely true that students don’t learn any of these things just by being put together in groups. Student attitudes about group work are often negative and that’s because they’ve been in lots of groups where they didn’t learn anything other than the fact they don’t like working in groups. Much of the group work used in college classrooms is not well designed or well managed. But when group work is carefully constructed and when teachers help students deal with those group dynamic issues that compromise group effectiveness, students can learn the content and the skills listed above.

It would also be nice to be able to end this post with a reference of a comprehensive review of research on group work. I don’t think that piece exists. Research that documents that students can learn these five things is so scattered across the disciplinary landscape that finding it all and then devising some way to quantitatively compare the results is all but impossible. But just because the findings aren’t organized or integrated does not diminish what has been documented time and again in study after study. Students can learn from and with each other in groups.

Those of us who’ve taught for a while probably have had more than one of these experiences. “Do you make these exam questions tricky on purpose?” a student once asked me in class. “Making us work in groups when we don’t want to is bad teaching,” a student recently told a colleague. And then there was the student who observed that the textbook was really bad and wondered aloud whether the professor was requiring it because he got a cut of its sales.

Comments like these are tough because, in addition to being personal, they often come at us when we don’t expect them. The student will pop off with the comment and then it just sort of lingers in the air. You can feel the action in the classroom grinding to a halt as everyone redirects their attention to you to see just how you’re going to respond.

As professionals, we recognize that sometimes students aren’t particularly articulate. Their words have sharper edges than often intended. Other times, when they’re having a bad day, students, like other people we know, may take out their anger, frustration, worry, and general malaise on those who happen to be nearby. And sometimes a student makes an intentionally mean-spirited comment because they think the teacher deserves it.

Koenig suggests three ways of responding to these comments. First, she recommends redirecting the comment to the class. “What do the rest of you think about that?” “Does anyone disagree?” “Would anyone state the objection a bit differently?” Soliciting commentary from other students gives the student who made the comment feedback and it gives the teacher an opportunity to gauge the level of discontent. Of course, the risk is that heads all around the room will nod in agreement, which can make the teacher’s position feel all the more precarious.

I think Koenig’s second suggestion is the best. She writes the student’s comment on the board before responding. As she writes, she may ask a question about the words the student used. This often causes the student to clarify what he or she said and perhaps change it. Koenig says that writing down the comment “depersonalizes” it so that she can respond to the comment rather than the individual.

She also suggests responding by asking, “What do we need to know to answer that question or comment?” Asking this question helps the teacher and the student get at the main concern that motivated the comment. In other words, sometimes the student’s comment is the smoke that causes us to cough, choke, and run away. We need to look for the fire, because if we can put that out, there won’t be any more smoke.

I totally endorse the idea of developing a few response strategies beforehand. That short time between when the student makes the comment and the teacher must respond isn’t the best time to come up with clever, creative alternatives. What’s most important is that we don’t let our emotions take over and come back with a defensive retort that only escalates the exchange. After all, we are the professionals in the room and we should work to respond in ways that are professionally appropriate. On the other hand, if the comment is truly mean-spirited, we might also have a professional responsibility to chat privately with the student about the principles of constructive feedback.

Finally, as part of being prepared for those days when a student makes an unwelcome or hurtful comment, it’s a good idea to have tucked away in the corner of your desk one or two of those really wonderful things students have said about your efforts to help them learn.

Reference: Koenig, S. M. (2013). Beyond fight or flight: Responding to stressful student comments in class. Teaching Theology and Religion, 16 (1), 51.

If that’s what you’re doing, it’s consistent with the actions of faculty teaching undergraduate sociology courses; as documented by an analysis of 405 different syllabi. Almost 95% of those syllabi described some type of writing assignment and most of them required more than one.

Researchers found that faculty employed a variety of writing assignments in their courses; 49% included essay exam writing (including take-home tests), 48% required short reflection papers such as book reports, group project reports or essays, 23% assigned 6-10 page papers, 14% traditional library-research papers, 12% used some sort of journal assignments, 11% assigned longer 11-15 page papers, and 2% used creative writing assignments. Another 17.5% used assignments that belonged in an “other” category, which included things like written homework, outlines, writing for the web, case studies, memos, and study guide questions.

Course syllabi that listed critical thinking as a course goal were significantly more likely to include writing assignments that the researchers labeled “transactional” — in that they informed, instructed, or persuaded readers. An author referenced in the article suggests that writing assignments that develop critical thinking skills should contain these components: “They must ask questions, define problems clearly, examine evidence, analyze assumptions and biases, avoid emotional reasoning, avoid oversimplification, consider alternative interpretations, and tolerate uncertainty.” (p. 48)

Even though students taking these courses wrote more and completed more kinds of writing assignments than their peers in other courses, they were assigned traditional term papers infrequently. Most of the courses were not introductory-level courses, but courses taken by majors. Why have teachers abandoned the venerable term-paper assignment? Are students so unable to write coherent, well-developed research analyses that teachers have given up on the assignment? What skills do term-paper assignments develop? Are those skills necessary for the writing tasks most professionals face?

In this sample, almost 81% of the writing assignments were transactional. A bit more than 63% were expressive assignments — identified as reflective writing in which students typically explore feelings and individual reactions. Expressive writing is often less formal, may be done during class, and is graded less on grammatical and syntactical correctness. Less than 1% of the writing assignments described on these syllabi involved what the researchers call “poetic” or creative writing.

Are students in sociology being asked to write enough and to do the kind of writing that develops the skills sociology graduates need? Those are questions only those in sociology can answer, but they are questions that should be asked of the collection of writing experiences in every major.

I know I written this before, but we so regularly do not think about collections of learning experiences (like writing assignments) that occur across a set of courses or in degree program. If those teaching in a program shared their syllabi, this kind of analysis could easily be replicated and the results would raise questions we ought to be discussing. Questions like:

• How much writing is enough, given the skills student don’t have and need to acquire?
• Are some writing assignments better suited for some courses?
• What writing assignments are best suited for introductory courses, major courses, and capstone experiences?
• Besides developing writing skills, are these assignments contributing to the development of other course and program goals?
• Do our writing assignments prepare students for the kinds of writing they will be doing professionally?

Writing does serve different purposes in different fields, so what’s being done in sociology isn’t a benchmark for all fields. But it should motivate us to consider our writing assignments. Are the writing experiences offered to students accomplishing the goals that have been set for those assignments? It’s a question to ask about writing assignments in individual courses as well as across the entire degree program.

Reference: Grauerholz, L., Eisele, J., and Stark, N. (2012). Writing in the sociology curriculum: What types and how much writing do we assign? Teaching Sociology, 41 (1), 46-59.

Just recently it came to me that preparing one of these crib sheets might be an excellent activity for an in-class review session. If students attend the review session, they get to work with other students and prepare a crib sheet which they submit at the end of the session and will be returned attached to their exam. I think this would get most students attending the session and actually doing some substantive reviewing during it. If the activity started with a time of discussion (probably in a small groups) over what to put on the card, then the session could end with the blank cards being passed out and students having 15 minutes to make their individual cards.

I’ve talked with some faculty who call these cards “cheat sheets” and won’t let students use them under any circumstances. One told me, “Anything that’s on that sheet is something the student doesn’t have to learn.” I suppose it depends on the course and kind of exam, but in general, exam situations are pretty artificial. How often in your professional life do you have a limited time window and no access to resources or expertise? There are occasions, I know, but they aren’t all that frequent. And it seems to me that in this age of technology, we need to be purposefully teaching students how to access, organize, and apply information.

What students learn when creating their crib sheets
Students respond positively to the crib sheet strategy. They don’t talk about how preparing the sheet helps them prioritize and organize content. They see the cards as stress relievers. I remember one telling me, “I go into the exam with my card and I have at least three or four important things that I know I’m not going to forget.”

Another faculty member told me that he has students attach their crib sheets to the exam when they turn it in. He frequently finds on the cards information students needed to answer a question but they didn’t or couldn’t apply it to a particular problem. This situation makes a great discussion topic for the exam debrief session. After showing some examples, it’s pretty easy to make the point that a student can memorize material, or in this case have it right there, but if he doesn’t know how to use it, the information is pretty much worthless.

I’ve also heard of faculty grading the crib sheets, although I’ve never seen examples of the criteria used to assess them. I think it might be more beneficial to have students assessing the value and usefulness of the information they decided to put on their crib sheet. They could discuss or write responses to prompts like these:

• How many questions on the exam did your crib sheet help you answer?
• Did you have information on the crib sheet that you didn’t use at all?
• How did you decide what to put on your crib sheet?
• If you had the opportunity to revise your crib sheet, what changes would you make?
• What have you learned from preparing this crib sheet that you want to remember when you make the next one?

If you have experience using this strategy or opinions about the use of cribs sheets in general, please share in the comment section below.

That’s not a big surprise. It confirms findings consistently reported. The surprise in the survey was that respondents also were asked to rate the effectiveness of each of these 18 instructional methods in terms of how they helped students acquire information, develop a skill, or apply knowledge. The faculty consistently rated hands-on activities and practical exercises as the two most effective strategies in accomplishing these objectives. Interesting.

Readers of this blog likely use a full range of teaching strategies and activities to engage students. I’m guessing most of us are instructional innovators. It’s faculty like us who are reforming teaching and learning and we’re doing it one class at a time. A large international study of reform in engineering education concluded, “The dominant approach [to curricular change] places the onus for change on individual faculty champions—to date, it has been these innovators who have driven educational reform.” (p. 596)

How closely does this conclusion describe your situation? “Innovations are typically developed within single, isolated courses. Often informed by evidence that alternative pedagogies can improve student learning, such reforms typically have little or no support from their institution. Most funding and support mechanisms in engineering education are built on the assumption that harnessing these local examples of innovation and best practice holds the key to fundamental, long-term change across the discipline.” (p. 596)

Should it be the responsibility of instructional innovators to advance the improvement agenda? Most of us don’t operate from a position of power and our sphere of influence is rather small. We can recommend changes to other teachers, but not much beyond that. Sometimes advocacy for different ways of teaching puts us at risk—if we’re in a department where everyone pretty much teaches the same way, if we’re up for tenure and making waves doesn’t count positively, or if we don’t have a continuing contract.

It doesn’t seem that instructional innovators should be expected to carry the weight of efforts to improve teaching and learning, but does that absolve us of any responsibility for the quality of teaching and learning on our campuses? Although we don’t operate from positions of power, we do have some influence when we advocate for instructional change as research consistently documents that the primary source of new instructional ideas are colleagues.

Nonetheless as the opening survey results so clearly show: getting faculty to make changes, even changes that they know help students learn more effectively, isn’t easy. The engineering study contains even more disturbing results. It looked at examples of successful changes and found that most often they are driven by a threat—possible termination of a degree program or accreditation issues. In other words, it took a risk of losing one’s job to get the most change-averse faculty to finally try a new approach.

No one is saying that lectures should to be abolished. They just shouldn’t be the default instructional strategy. Many of us have changed what happens in our classroom but many more still need to change. Unfortunately, if the motivation to change only comes from a colleague or an external threat, then teaching and learning will continue to improve at a very slow pace — and at the expense of more effective learning experiences for many students. It seems to me there has to be a better way.

References: Smith, D. J. and Valentine, T. (2012). The use and perceived effectiveness of instructional practices in two-year technical colleges. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 23 (1), 133-161.

Graham, R. (2012). The one less traveled by: The road to lasting systemic change in engineering education. Journal of Engineering Education, 101 (4), 596-600.

“The notion of participation is so well entrenched in the collective mind of the teaching profession that I wonder if we have not consciously stopped considering what we are after when we work with a class.” (p. 15) Dennis Gioia thinks that most of us are after lots of different students answering and asking questions. “It really feels good to see a substantial portion of the class joining in. Indeed, success at achieving class participation is a seductive sort of accomplishment—so seductive that it often leads to a de facto presumption that the class is successful simply because so many people are more actively involved in it.” (p. 15) He’s got a point. Sometimes it’s so difficult to get anyone to participate, that on those days when there’s a good amount of discussion, we can’t help but feel the class is going well. But if our concern stops with the number of students who speak, we may be valuing quantity over quality.

Gioia makes an interesting distinction between participation and contribution. “Participation connotes involvement, sharing and simply taking part. . .” Contribution, on the other hand, implies much more, including “. . .intellectual involvement and sharing of knowledge and knowledge construction.” (p. 16) “Concentrating on contribution causes people to think about what they are going to say, instead of simply blurting out ill-considered opinions, superficial observation, and irrelevant personal examples.” (p. 16) And haven’t we all heard some of those types of comments in our classes?

So how do we encourage students to go beyond participation and make contributions to class discussions? Gioia starts us off with a list that describes what students do when they make a contribution:

1. provide recapitulations and summaries;
2. make observations that integrate concepts and discussions;
3. cite relevant personal examples;
4. ask key questions that lead to revealing discussions;
5. engage in devil’s advocacy; and
6. disagree with the instructor in ways that promote further exploration of the issue. (p. 17)

His best suggestion is a bit more challenging to implement. He recommends that the instructor’s “agenda” for the day shouldn’t take up more than 50 percent of the period. Students are responsible for generating and sustaining the rest of the class discussion and no, they don’t get out early if they fail to do so.

Gioia encourages contributions with “think breaks.” These are short periods of silence during which students “think through a comment just made to see if it makes sense or constitutes a worthwhile observation.” (p. 18) He also hands out awards: the Reader’s Digest Award when a contribution ably sums up or succinctly positions a point, and the Monopoly Award if an answer is rambling, disjointed and difficult to follow. He doesn’t hand out the latter often. It functions more as an incentive to encourage thinking before speaking. I wonder if it might also discourage over participation. Maybe it’s something that could be “awarded” privately.

Encouraging contributions is harder than getting students to talk. It requires that teachers move among a constellation of roles: facilitator, coach, cheerleader, iconoclast, questioner, integrator, supporter, referee, Socratic muser, occasional anarchist, and feigned dunce, according to Gioia (p. 19) That’s quite a list, but then good discussion requires sophisticated leadership.

I do think that many of us (especially readers of a blog like this) have a good repertoire of strategies that encourage participation: persistent patience, wait time, the three-hand rule (don’t call on anyone until there are at least three hands up), think-pair-share before participating, and giving time to jot notes on a possible answer, for example. If we are getting good participation, it’s time to start working on raising the caliber of what students say, so that in addition to participation we are hearing contributions that promote understanding, develop knowledge, and result in discussions where student voices dominate.

Reference: Gioia, D. A. (1987). Contribution! Not participation in the OB classroom. Journal of Management Education, 11, 15-19.

Definitions for teaching effectiveness abound, which makes it difficult to identify any one as definitive. We’ve defined it by asking those concerned (teachers, students, and administrators) what the term means to them. Here are some examples of how we’ve asked and what’s been answered. When asked to list in order of importance the three most important abilities, students, teachers, and administrators agreed on the same three — cultivate thinking skills, stimulate interest in the subject, and motivate students to learn — but not in the same order.

In another study, researchers compared the words and phrases students used to describe effective and ineffective teachers. The top three words used to characterize teachers with the highest ratings were: interesting, approachable, and clarity. The definition extracted from descriptions of teachers nominated for teaching awards used these words: approachable, presents material well, makes subject interesting, helpful, and knowledgeable. In 1988, Kenneth Feldman did a meta-analysis of 31 studies in which teachers and students identified characteristics they associated with good teaching and effective instruction. He found that students emphasized the importance of teachers being interesting, having good elocutionary skills, being available, and helpful. Faculty placed more importance on being intellectually challenging, motivating students, setting high standards, and encouraging self-initiated learning.

To examine this further, let’s start with two basic questions. (1) What do these various aspects and characteristics of teaching effectiveness have to do with learning? (2) Why don’t we just define effective teaching as teaching that results in learning? Too many intervening variables, the researchers tell us. Say you teach a course students do not want to take (developmental reading or remedial math might be examples), and you do all these things associated with effective teaching, your students still may not learn. They may not have the prerequisite background knowledge, they think they cannot learn the content, or it just may not be the time of their lives to be learning what you’re teaching. On the other hand, you may be an ineffective teacher but if your students are motivated to learn the content, they will do so in spite of you. Students are the ultimate “deciders” when it comes to whether or not they learn.

But do these teacher attributes and activities make it more likely that students will learn? Research (albeit most of it correlational) says that they do and if it’s fairer to evaluate teachers on their teaching than on their students’ learning, then these aspects of effective teaching merit our consideration. But here’s where the research lets us down. The quest for descriptors continues, even though we have already identified many different traits and characteristics.

I wish we knew which of these descriptors are the most important. How many do you have to display before students consider you effective? If you’re deficient in one area, can you compensate by excelling in another area? Does it matter that students and teachers define “teaching effectiveness” differently? How does one craft an improvement agenda when so many of the characteristics seem like personal attributes?

Finally, there are some who critique an emphasis on teaching effectiveness by saying that it takes the focus away from learning and students. Are they mutually exclusive? Can we only focus on one and not both? I would grant you that for a long time the focus was too much on teaching and not enough on learning, but we have redressed that imbalance. It seems to me that focusing on both cements the link between teaching and learning. We want to be teaching in such a way that learning results and if these aspects of teaching promote learning, then we should be working on the skills necessary to develop them.

References:
Layne, L. (2012). Defining effective teaching. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching. 23 (1), 43-68.

Feldman, K. A. (1988). Effective college teaching from the students’ and faculty’s view: Matched or mismatched priorities? Research in Higher Education, 28 (4), 291-344.

Personalizing notes – Students need to make whatever notes they take meaningful to them. If they need the comfort of having in their notes exactly what the teacher said fine, but then they need to translate, paraphrase, or otherwise put into their own words what they think the teacher’s words mean. The act of rewriting aids knowledge acquisition in two ways. First, it’s a test for understanding. If you can’t put what the teacher says in your own words, using different words that capture what the teacher means, then you probably don’t have a good grasp of the idea. Second, rewriting aids understanding when the student uses the rewrite to connect new knowledge to something already known. Students do the best rewrites when they are focused on the task exclusively, not while they are trying to listen as the teacher continues talking.

Try this as an end-of-class activity: Have students rewrite their notes, or part of their notes, and then ask for volunteers to read them out loud to the rest of the class. This will give you a sense of the level of comprehension and provide you with the opportunity to clarify what isn’t understood and deepen what is. Plus, hearing their peers explain a concept in their own words can often help other students to better understand the day’s lesson.

Reviewing and elaborating notes – Research has shown that this is most beneficial right after the notes have been taken (not two weeks later). Students can be given two or three minutes to review and enhance their notes at the end of class, during class (when a content chunk has been presented or a discussion has ended), or at the beginning of the next class. This review time does more for learning and retention if students add to their notes; write more about a topic, clarify something they’ve written that they now understand more completely, or insert questions and comments in their notes.

Organizing notes –This can be as simple as annotating a set of notes by underlining key ideas, using those glow-in-the-dark highlighters, adding stars, drawing arrows, even taking a day’s worth of notes and transforming them into a concept map. Again maybe this can be a useful way to end the class session.

Using notes – The value of a set of notes is clearer when teachers encourage students to use them — say to answer a question on material presented previously. “Look in your notes from the 24th. You should have the answer there.” On test review day, sample questions can be used to send students hunting for answers in their notes. To encourage students to do the reading, consider letting them use during the quiz whatever notes they took on the reading. Or maybe students get to consult their notes for five minutes during an exam. The value of notes can also be highlighted during the exam debrief. “Did you miss question 14? We talked about that on the 15th. Check your notes. Do you have what you need there to answer the question?” “Somebody who got the question right, read what you have in your notes and tell us how that helped you answer the question correctly.”

Studying notes – When you ask students how they’re going to prepare for an exam, many of them will tell you, “I’m going to go over my notes.” Hearing that, I used to recoil in exaggerated horror. “Going over them, no, no, you must ‘get into’ your notes.” Students should also be encouraged to use their notes when they are studying together. They should talk about what they have in their notes and explain things to each other using their notes. Maybe the value of doing so can be demonstrated during the exam review session.

It’s not the first article I’ve read of late on the various barriers that stand in the way of change in higher education. The literature is not encouraging, but I think there are some fairly straightforward principles that give any new teaching strategy, technique or approach a much greater chance of success. Out of that success will grow the courage and motivation to implement even more instructional changes.

1. Think about what needs to change before deciding on a change – I regularly lead workshops on campuses across the country and often worry that there are carts being placed before unseen horses. When I’m asked to present, I’m usually counseled that faculty attending will want techniques, new ideas, strategies that work, and pragmatic things they can do in the classroom. But that’s not where the change process should begin. It should start with a question, ‘What am I doing that isn’t promoting learning or very much learning?’ Or, ‘What am I doing that I’ve probably done the same way for too long?’ Once you see the horse, you can better pick out a cart to put behind it.

2. Lay the groundwork for the change – I regularly object to the “just do it” approach to instructional change, as if we all work in a Nike commercial. The motivation is admirable but every instructional situation is unique. Teachers are different, students are different and we don’t all teach the same content in the same kind of courses. Whatever a teacher does must be adapted so that it fits the peculiarities of the given instructional situation. Don’t just do it before having given careful thought to how the change will work with your content, your students, and when you use it.

3. Incorporate change systematically – Beyond adapting the change, teachers need to prepare for its implementation. This means considering when (or if) it fits with the content, what skills it requires and whether students have those skills. If they don’t, how could those skills be developed? It also means valuing the change process by giving it your full and focused attention so as to ensure the new approach has the best possible chance of succeeding.

4. Change a little before changing a lot – Too often faculty have “conversion experiences” about themselves as teachers. They go to a conference or read a book, get convinced that they could be doing so much better and decide to change all sorts of things at once. They envision a whole new course taught by an entirely different teacher. Unfortunately, that much change is often hard on students and equally difficult for teachers to sustain.

5. Determine in advance how you will know whether the change is a success – It’s too bad that assessment has come to carry so much negative baggage, because when it’s about a teacher trying something new and wanting to know if it works, assessment provides much needed of objectivity. If you determine beforehand what success is going to look like, then you are much less likely to be blinded by how much everybody liked it. In this giant review of the change literature I mentioned earlier, only 21% of the articles contained “strong evidence to support claims of success or failure.”

6. Have realistic expectations for success – No matter how innovative, creative and wonderful the new idea may be, it isn’t going to be perfect and it isn’t going to be the best learning experience possible for every student or the pinnacle of your teaching career. Everything we do in class has mixed results; any new approach will work really well for some students, in some classes, on some days. Know that going in, remind yourself regularly, and don’t let it discourage you from continuing to make positive changes.

Reference: Henderson, C., Beach, A., and Finkelstein, N. (2011). Facilitating change in undergraduate STEM instructional practices: An analytic review of the literature. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 48 (8), 984-952.

Parker writes that academics have a tendency to “think the world apart.” “We look at the world through analytical lenses. We see everything as this or that, plus or minus, on or off, black or white; and we fragment reality into an endless series of either-ors.” (p. 64) I see us doing this as teachers and I can’t think of a better example than how being teacher-centered is juxtaposed with being learner-centered. You are either a teacher who lectures (now considered bad) or you are a teacher who involves and engages students (now considered good). In short, this orientation pits teaching against learning.

It is true that for many years the pedagogical focus was on teaching. We assumed (and not without justification) that if teaching improved, so would learning. When teachers demonstrate characteristics like organization, enthusiasm, clarity and fairness, research has shown that students learn more (as measured by higher grades). But the reality of so many students coming to college minus important learning skills stimulated an interest in learning and, along with it, the realization that perhaps we had emphasized teaching too much. Our preference for and focus on learning has now tipped the scale in the other direction.

The thinking that teaching is either teacher-centered or learner-centered breaks an inseparable bond and does so to the detriment of our students and ourselves. Learner-centered teachers still need to lecture, as in tell students things. After all, faculty are the definitive content experts in the classroom and our knowledge and experiences can be immensely helpful to students as they work to master course material and eventually find their way to careers and lives that matter. Meanwhile, those who are teacher-centered should work to engage and involve students. They must recognize that students can learn from each other and that the deepest learning happens when students have the opportunity to practice and obtain feedback.

The best teaching is not one or the other, but a combination of both. As my colleagues Ricky Cox and Dave Yearwood write in the January issue of The Teaching Professor, “It is time to re-assert the role of teacher as a multifaceted individual who contributes to learning inside and outside the classroom. Teachers positively impact students on many levels, including curriculum design, intellectual challenge, personal growth, career guidance and other less tangible ways. Our students not only know us as teachers who design their course, they also know us as people who listen to their aspirations and struggles. Indeed, students’ memories and experiences with teachers are often just as important to their success as the skills they develop and knowledge they acquire.”

Parker Palmer explains why seemingly paradoxical things should be joined. “The poles of a paradox are like the poles of a battery; hold them together and they generate the energy of life; pull them apart, and the current stops flowing. When we separate any of the profound paired truths of our lives, both poles become lifeless specters of themselves…” (p. 67)

It is time for us to start addressing the more complex and interesting task of joining together teacher-centered and learner-centered instruction. The question for those who aspire to be learner-centered is not how to abandon lectures, but to understand when “teaching by telling” effectively advances the learning agenda. Learner-centered teachers should not leave students to muddle through on their own, but must know when to intervene and what kind of interventions enable students to discover their own way to understanding. Teacher-centered instruction does not get bogged down in a morass of policies and prohibitions that establish the teacher’s authority, but explores how to set boundaries within which students can make choices and move toward autonomy in learning.

Reference: Palmer, P. The Courage to Teach. 10th Anniversary Edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007.

Best and Worst Classes – I love this quick and easy activity. On one section of the blackboard I write: “The best class I’ve ever had” and underneath it “What the teacher did” and below that “What the students did.” On another section I write “The worst class I’ve ever had” (well, actually I write, “The class from hell”) and then the same two items beneath. I ask students to share their experiences, without naming the course, department or teacher, and I begin filling in the grid based on what they call out. If there’s a lull or not many comments about what the students did in these classes, I add some descriptors based on my experience with some of my best and worst classes. In 10 minutes or less, two very different class portraits emerge. I move to the best class section of the board and tell students that this is the class I want to teach, but I can’t do it alone. Together we have the power to make this one of those “best class” experiences.

First Day Graffiti – This is an adaptation of an activity proposed by Barbara Goza in the Journal of Management Education in 1993. Flip charts with markers beneath are placed around the classroom. Each chart has a different sentence stem. Here are a few examples:

“I learn best in classes where the teacher ___”
“Students in courses help me learn when they ___”
“I am most likely to participate in classes when ___”
“Here’s something that makes it hard to learn in a course: ___”
“Here’s something that makes it easy to learn in a course: ___”

Students are invited to walk around the room and write responses, chatting with each other and the teacher as they do. After there are comments on every flip chart, the teacher walks to each one and talks a bit about one or two of the responses. If you run out of time, you can conduct the debriefing during the next session.

Syllabus Speed Dating – Karen Eifler, an education professor at the University of Portland, designed this activity. Two rows of chairs face each other (multiple rows of two can be used in larger classes). Students sit across from each other, each with a copy of the syllabus that they’ve briefly reviewed. Eifler asks two questions: one about something in the syllabus and one of a more personal nature. The pair has a short period of time to answer both questions. Eifler checks to make sure the syllabus question has been answered correctly. Then students in one of the rows move down one seat and Eifler asks the new pair two different questions. Not only does this activity get students acquainted with each other, it’s a great way to get them reading the syllabus and finding out for themselves what they need to know about the course.

Irritating Behaviors: Theirs and Ours – This activity grows out of research done by D. Appleton in 1990 (The Journal of Staff, Program and Organizational Development). His findings are a bit dated now, but the idea is not. Appleton asked students to list faculty behaviors that most irritate them. He had faculty do the same for student behaviors. I’d put students in groups and have them respond to a slightly different question: “What are the five things faculty do that make learning hard?” Or, asked positively, “What are the five things faculty do that make it easy to learn?” Collect the lists and make a master list to share in class or online. Below the five things faculty do, you can also list the five things students do that make it hard or easy to teach. The follow-up conversation is about how the teacher and students can each commit to not doing what appears on their respective “hard” list and have a better class experience as a result.

Do you have a favorite activity that you like to use on the first day of class? Please share in the comment box.

With courses ending so definitively, it’s easy to think that whatever impact you or the course might have on students is over. But learning doesn’t always end when the course does. Some insights and understandings are iterative and cumulative. Students arrive at them after repeated exposure, as the evidence mounts and their skills and experiences deepen. Other intellectual development happens when students are finally ready to learn. Most of us can recall one of those serendipitous student encounters in the mall. “Dr. Weimer, Dr. Weimer, do you remember me?” Sometimes I want to say, “How could I forget? You have a prominent place on my failures list.” Occasionally, one of those students hands me a gift. “I didn’t learn much in your course, but I didn’t sell the book back and just recently I read it. And as I was reading it, I remembered all sorts of things you said in class.” Perhaps I can cross that student off my failures list.

Some students can be very hard to read. It isn’t always easy to determine what effect the course is having, or will have. Recently, while out shopping, I ran into a former student whom I didn’t recognize at all. “You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked. I looked more closely. “No, I don’t.” “I was in your speech class at Berks,” she explained. “Oh, that could be,” I said. “What’s your name?” She told me and that didn’t trigger any recollection. Then she said, “I learned three things in your course that I use pretty much every day.” She listed them off and I started smiling. She had a solid grasp of what I hoped every student would take from the course. When I got home and looked in my grade book, I discovered that what she’d learned was worth far more than the grade she’d earned in the class.

Because course endings give us a false sense of closure, we can end up feeling more discouraged about our teaching than we should. There really is no way to know how our content, our teaching and or the experiences in our classes have affected students or may affect them in the future. Students can be profoundly changed by a course and the teacher may never find out. I have a colleague who loves classical music. It’s not his academic area, but his knowledge is expansive. I once asked how he got interested in music. “Oh, I had a music teacher—that’s how it started. You know, I’d always intended to thank him, to tell him how his introduction to music has resulted in a lifetime of pleasure. But I got there too late. I had to say my thanks at his grave.”

Teaching is an act of faith, not something we always readily acknowledge. I like the Biblical definition: “faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not yet seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) Sometimes we do see the evidence; students excel and we share their success. But many times there is no evidence. A student passes through the course without appearing to have been touched. But faith is a substance, it’s something tangible to hold onto in the absence of evidence. As the current courses end and the year concludes, the influence of both continues. In this season of peace, hope, joy and love, may your faith be renewed and strengthened. What you do for and with students does matter. It makes a difference and that makes it so worth doing.