Teaching Tips

Tips for engaged discussions all semester.

November 2024

Accelerate Learning with Peer Instruction

In John Hattie's analysis of over 1,000 meta-analysis studies (Visible learning—Hattie's research; Visible learning), several forms of peer instruction significantly improve student learning. Here are three examples of peer instruction:

1. Explaining Answers:
   1. After explicitly teaching some content that you know tends to be difficult for students to fully grasp, stop and give students a well-designed one-question multiple choice quiz. If you have a larger class, have students use Google forms for polling or the old-fashioned hand method:
      1. Students write on an index card their answer and turn their card face down.
      2. Everyone puts their head down or shuts their eyes and you ask students to raise their hand with the number they put on their card. You count how many answered each option.
   2. Students then get into groups of four and share their answers, one at a time. After sharing their answer, each student must explain why they chose that answer and not the others. Every student must provide their own explanation in their own words:
      1. What prior content knowledge supports their answer?
      2. What prior personal experience or connection or understanding supports their answer?
      3. What prior content makes each of the other answers incorrect or less correct?
   3. After 5-10 minutes of this discussion, students re-take the one-question quiz. You repeat the process of showing you which answer they gave this time. Usually, the majority of students now have the right answer.
   4. You tell the students the right answer and ask 2-3 students to tell the class the best explanation from their group of why that is the right answer.
   5. You then extend the explanation, including why the others are not correct.
2. Jigsaw Method:
   1. Tell the students that at the end of the clas period, you will give a quiz on the concepts they will teach each other during this class period.
   2. Put students into groups of four if you have four concepts, or groups of three if you have three concepts. Each group develops a "teaching" on one recent concept in your class.
   3. In the groups, students must do the following:
      1. Write a 1-2 sentence explanation of the concept using correct terminology.
      2. Give an example of the concept within the discipline.
      3. Write a simile of the concept from everyday life.
      4. Write a five-sentence explanation of this concept to a 5th grader.
   4. Each group member needs to record all four of these on their own paper.
   5. Change groups so that every group has one person from a different initial group. In this new diverse group, each group member teaches the other group members the concept their initial group discussed. All group members take notes as the speaker explains, asking questions for clarification.f.    You then give a quiz on the concepts. This works best if the quiz is short answer so students can put the concepts into their own words as they just learned them.
3. Structured Peer Learning:
   1. Preparation:
      1. Create a case study on a recent topic: suggestion: Use Gemini to help you craft a good case study on your topic.
      2. After the case study, write a one-question survey that has one "best" answer, two wrong but plausible answers, and one good-but-not-best answer.
   2. In class–put students into groups of three-five (depending on the size of your class)
   3. Tell the students they will be solving a case study in groups.
   4. Pass out the case study and read through it together, asking if anyone has questions.
   5. Give your students 10-20 minutes (depending on the depth of the case study) to choose their group answer. They must come to a consensus on their answer.
   6. Record all answers from the groups. Have each group explain why they chose that answer.
   7. Review all the answers and provide additional teaching on why the correct answer is the best and why the others are not correct, reminding students of some of the content you covered or they read that would help them choose correctly next time.

September 2024

Metacognitive Reflections: Improving Students' Learning

Metacognition definition: "Broadly construed, it is any cognitive process or structure about another cognitive process or structure (e.g., data about memory held in memory)" (Kralik et. al, 2018, p. 731). Metacognitive reflections can significantly improve:

• What students retain from your class period
• How effectively students control their learning process in your class
• How much students engage during class

I have taught at-risk student writers for 23 years, and few of these students have much awareness of how they learn, which, I have found, significantly impacts their learning in my class (especially in the last 5 years). So several years ago, I began incorporating metacognitive reflection into my pedagogy almost every day. I end my teaching about 5-8 minutes before the end of class and give my students this prompt, which they write in the LMS (at OWU, Blackboard):

• (simple rating) Rate your level of learning engagement today from 1-10 (1 being low, 10 being high)
• (bullet list) What are the top 3 things you learned in today's class?
• (50 word response) How did you learn these things? Why were you engaged in your learning at these moments?
• (bullet list) What will you do in the next class period to improve your level of learning (if low) or maintain your level of learning (if high)?

Since the points for this activity are complete/incomplete, I have found that after the first week of doing these, students are more engaged in class because they know they will have to rate themselves and explain what led to their learning. They also do a great job reflecting on how to improve, including telling themselves to get to bed earlier (I always teach at 8:00 am). And most of my students did, in fact, do a better job of getting to bed earlier.

Just a Few Articles on Metacognition

• Beach, P. T., Anderson, R. C., Jacovidis, J. N., & Chadwick, K. L. (2020). Making the abstract explicit: the role of metacognition in teaching and learning. Inflexion, Policity Paper: Metacognition in Education, 8-27.
• Kralik, J. D., Lee, J. H., Rosenbloom, P. S., Jackson Jr, P. C., Epstein, S. L., Romero, O. J., ... & McGreggor, K. (2018). Metacognition for a common model of cognition. Procedia computer science, 145, 730-739.
• Rivas, S. F., Saiz, C., & Ossa, C. (2022). Metacognitive strategies and development of critical thinking in higher education. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 913219.

August 2024

Do You Want to Improve Your Students' Engagement in Class Discussions? Talk about talking.

At the Constructive Dialogue Institute Aug. 14 training, we learned some tools for preparing students for discussing difficult topics, and these same tools prepare students for any discussion. Here are two of the tools we learned:

1. Prior to the first discussion day, set ground rules (or "norms") for how students should engage in discussion. It works best if you draft a set of rules and ask students for input: what is missing? What could be improved or clarified? This conversation engages students in talking about how they will talk in class.
2. When discussion breaks down, acknowledge the breakdown immediately. Signs you can look for:
   1. Notice if one or more students are prioritizing winning over dialogue
   2. Recognize when a few students talk too much or are too silent
   3. Recognize when a comment moves past the "sharing my perspective" into the "this is the correct position."
3. As soon as you recognize that discussion is breaking down, pause the class and talk about talking. Return to the guidelines and have the class process (first individually and then in groups) what exactly happened and what rule was broken.