Making Group Projects Work

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Macie Hall

Instructors often find that student engagement increases when active learning strategies are implemented in the classroom. One strategy is to assign problem-based collaborative learning projects. Well-conceived group projects help students develop critical thinking skills, learn how to work in teams, and apply theories learned in the course to real-life situations, producing an appreciation for how the knowledge gained will be useful once the class is over. The end result is a richer learning experience for the students.

Students are more likely to appreciate and retain information when they see a correlation between course work and what they expect to experience as working professionals. Problem-based group projects typically require an array of cognitive skills, induce collaborative learning, and allow students to take ownership of the process. Moreover, students who learn to work in teams are better prepared for their future work environments.

Developing effective problem-based group projects requires assignments that reflect your course learning goals and incorporate course information, permit management of the student groups, and facilitate assessment of student progress. Advance planning and thoughtful strategies will go a long way towards ensuring successful implementation.

I. Setting Student Expectations

Weight the project fairly. You want your students to take the project seriously but you don’t want to weight the project so heavily that experimentation or risk-taking is stifled. Consider dividing the project into parts and grading each separately, so the team understands which aspects of the project went well and what needs improvement.
Discuss student roles and what’s needed. Get the students thinking about what will be required of their team and how they can organize and manage the project. Emphasize the importance of a team schedule. Discuss the qualities of a good teammate so that students begin the project with mutual respect.
Start with small exercises as a warm up. Consider starting with a couple of smaller in-class team-based exercises so that students get used to working collaboratively

II. Group generation methods

Allowing self-selection of teams can create problems. Students like to choose friends as teammates. Personal issues then carry over into the project, friendships may suffer, or the members may take the project less seriously, resulting in poor group performance.
Random selection is a reasonable alternative to student choice. This method is the fastest way to generate groups and more reflective of the real world. While random selection is convenient, consider ensuring diversity in each group to the extent possible.
Skills based alignment is ideal for creating groups. Identifying students’ strengths and weaknesses through in-class exercises can help establish well-rounded teams. As a part of the preparation for the project, generate a list of the skills needed, have the students identify their strong and weak areas, then group the students accordingly.

III. Getting each student to contribute

Assign the students to roles. The difference between a dysfunctional group and a successful team lies in assigning roles. If students are assigned tasks with deadlines, they are more likely to take ownership and responsibility for completing their work as part of the team. Establishing roles can be a part of the group creation process. Avoid having students doing the same task for the entire length of the project. Instead, make the skill requirements for the team more conceptual. Use abstract concepts (Researcher or Synthesizer; Gatherer of Data or Analyzer of Data) so that broad expertise is required for each role.
Require that a different student present the team’s progress for each report. Make sure that each student has an opportunity to participate in an in-class presentation. Presenting their work is a skill that all students will use in the future. As it involves an understanding of all the parts of the project, these presentations by each team member also help to ensure successful group collaboration.

IV. Assessing the team/individual in and outside of class

Have the students do evaluations. This can be done both during and after the project. Evaluations serve as reflective exercises for the students, allowing them to comment on how the process could be improved. Evaluations are particularly useful for gauging the team and individuals’ contributions for grading. Questions that require students to evaluate their own performance, the performance of each team member, and the team as a whole can provide insight into how the team functioned.
Schedule time for team work in class. Scheduling group work outside of class is always a challenge for students. By allowing time during class for team work, you also will have an opportunity to monitor student progress. This is a great way to gauge whether the students are experiencing difficulties and provide an opportunity for questions, clarifications, or assistance with problems. Some of the best learning comes from spontaneous discussion in class, and peer-learning can be extremely effective when students are working together to solve problems.
Ask for regular status updates. Starting class with a brief progress report from each team will bring up questions and concerns that can be addressed at once, eliminating redundancy and saving time.

V. Build in time for reflection

Reflection is key to learning from failure as well as success. Make sure you build in time for students to reflect on their progress. The best time to get the students to reflect on their experience is after the project during a debriefing discussion. Questions such as “What went well or not so well?” and “What would you do differently?” will enhance the opportunity for learning from their failures as well as their successes.

This post was adapted from The Innovative Instructor article series: http://www.cer.jhu.edu/ii/InnovInstruct-BP_MakingGroupProjectsWork.pdf

Pam Sheff,
Senior Lecturer, Center for Leadership Education, Johns Hopkins University
Pam Sheff is an award-winning writer and marketing communications consultant, with experience developing marketing, public relations and communications strategies for clients ranging from start-ups to large corporate, institutional and government organizations. Now a full-time lecturer in CLE, Pam has taught classes on business communications and entrepreneurship.

Leslie Kendrick,
Senior Lecturer, Center for Leadership Education, Johns Hopkins University
Leslie Kendrick has taught in the CLE program since 2002 and developed the five core marketing courses. She has 12 years of experience as a marketing practitioner. She has worked for Harper & Row Publishers, Londontown Corporation, and Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins.

Image Source: © Reid Sczerba, 2012

Teaching with Images

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Macie Hall

Today’s students are surrounded by visual media in their everyday lives. With their heavy use of the Internet, they are accustomed to accessing information in both textual and visual forms. The use of images in the classroom is a pedagogical strategy aimed at engaging students who have grown up in a media-rich environment. Digital technology has made images more readily available and easier to incorporate into teaching and learning materials.

While teaching with images has been at the core of disciplines like art history for decades, all courses can benefit from the use of visual materials in class lectures, assignments, exercises, and resources. Images can be an effective way of presenting abstract concepts or groups of data. Instructors have reported that their use of images in the classroom has led to increased student interactivity and discussion. Teaching with images can also help develop students’ visual literacy skills, which contributes to their overall critical thinking skills and lifelong learning.

Finding images
While a Google Image Search, which draws from the many images available on the Web, can be useful for finding a specific or obscure image, there are problems associated with this method. Google retrieves images based on the text appearing nearby or on the image file names, often resulting in hundreds of unrelated results that have nothing to do with your subject. In addition, images posted to the Web may have incomplete or incorrect data attached and may have rights restrictions. Finally, the images found by Google are often of insufficient resolution for classroom projection or printing.

High quality images can be found through the Johns Hopkins Libraries, which provide access to a number of specialized image resources. These databases provide downloadable, high-resolution images, include reliable information about the images, and allow advanced search capabilities. The resources include:

ARTstor, a database of over one million images in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
Digital Image Database at JHU (DID@JHU) provides JHU faculty and students with access to thousands of images in a variety of subjects. You can also request to add images for specific courses to the database.
Accunet/AP Multimedia Archive, a database of images, audio files and texts from 160 years of news and world events.
There are thousands of free, public domain images available through the U.S. government, easily searchable at the USA.gov website.
The Image Research Guide contains search tips, information about copyright and publications, and subject-specific web recommendations.
The CER has a list of websites containing freely available images and multimedia for educational use

Copyright & Permissions
While technology has made it easier than ever to download, manipulate, and re-publish images, it has also made it easier to inadvertently violate the copyrights associated with them. The use of copyrighted images for educational purposes is allowed under the Fair Use exemptions to the US Copyright Act. As there are several factors to take into account when determining whether your use of an image may be considered a fair use, it is a good idea to familiarize yourself with these criteria. Many image databases and websites will stipulate the extent to which educational use of their materials is permitted.

There are resources available online to help guide you in determining whether your use qualifies under the Fair Use exemptions.

The University of Georgia’s Guide to Understanding Copyright & Educational Fair Use
Information about the different types of Creative Commons-licensed materials

In addition, there are some best practices to follow to facilitate the legal and ethical use of images. These include:

Restrict online access to images to class members only. Post images to a password-protected website or space, such as Blackboard, or in a shared folder in ARTstor or the Digital Image Database (DID@JHU). If you’re not sure how to do this, consult your Research Services Librarian or a CER staff member.
If you are posting or publishing images to a forum that is open to members of the public, use public domain or Creative Commons-licensed images.

Uses of Images
Images will be more effective in the classroom if they are meaningfully integrated into course curricula. Think of ways images can support the delivery of content, illustrate class themes, serve as primary research materials, or be built into assignments.

If you would like to learn more about integrating visual materials into your teaching, contact Macie Hall, Instructional Designer, CER: macie.hall@jhu.edu. The following are additional resources on how to use images in the curriculum:

Harris, Benjamin R. “Visual Information Literacy via Visual Means: Three Heuristics.” Reference Services Review 34.2 (2006): 213-221.
Click! Photography Changes Everything, a Smithsonian project with essays on the impact of photographic images on human behavior, belief, memory, and more. Great for ideas on how to use images in the classroom.

Some ways you can introduce images into your course materials:

Presentations in PowerPoint, Keynote, the ARTstor Offline Viewer, or the DID@JHU image viewer
Blackboard resources
Other learning tools, such as the CER’s Timeline Creator or Interactive Map Tool
Primary source materials: photographs as historic documents, maps to inform urban planning and site architecture, diagrams and technical drawings to show the evolution of bridge design, or medical images to practice diagnosis
Class assignments: images can be powerful as illustrations, didactic materials, or stimulating starting points for structured writing exercises

Adrienne Lai, Emerging Technologies Services Librarian, North Carolina State University Libraries

Ms. Lai was the 2008/9 Art Libraries Society of North America Intern and did her internship at Sheridan Libraries and Department of the History of Art, Johns Hopkins University. She wrote the original Innovative Instructor print series article, Teaching with Images, adapted for this blog post. She completed Master’s Degrees in Library Studies and Archival Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada and holds a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts from the University of California, Irvine. She came to the library profession from several years of teaching art, art history, and cultural and media studies at art colleges in Canada and the US, and is interested in the possibilities of collaborative instructional efforts between libraries, faculty, and technology.

Image Source: Images in the collage were obtained from USA.gov Photos and Images and include images from NASA, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, and National Agricultural Library, ARS, USDA.

Quick Tips: Managing Your Time Spent Online

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Macie Hall

We spend an increasing amount of time plugged in to our various e-devices, doing research, monitoring the “interwebs”, interacting with friends, colleagues, and acquaintances in social media settings, blogging and reading other’s writings, texting, and answering emails. For faculty the influx of email particularly during the semester is often overwhelming. Students seem to expect an immediate response and may become frustrated if they don’t receive a prompt reply. They may not understand that you teach several courses and have hundreds of students and don’t know from their email which course they are in. What to do?

A recent article (March 26, 2013) in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Managing Your Online Time by Paul Beaudoin, has some timely suggestions. While the article was written with faculty who are teaching fully online courses in mind, the suggestions offered will be equally useful to those instructors in more traditional, face to face environments. For example: it helps to start by managing student expectations on email responses at the outset, preferably in a well designed syllabus. You should let students know how quickly you will respond and during what hours. Frequent reminders that students should identify their class and section in all correspondence are helpful in gaining compliance. Look for tools in Blackboard (course management application) that will offer additional discussion outlets so that students can help others with the same questions. Create an FAQ, post it, and point to it when students ask the same questions repeatedly.

Check the article for more details and ideas.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: © Macie Hall, 2013

In Case You Missed It…

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Macie Hall

The Innovative Instructor has had several posts on flipping your classroom [2013 GSI Symposium Breakout Session 3: Flipping the Classroom and Flipping Your Class]. Two weeks ago the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) and the Office of Graduate Education held their annual Faculty Teaching Workshop. This year’s topic was: Engaging Students in Active Learning: The Flipped Classroom and Other Strategies.

So why are we telling you this now, after the fact? The good news is that recordings were made of the sessions in the half-day workshop and have been shared along with slides and other resources.

The goals of the workshop were to:

Articulate the purpose and value of incorporating active learning and flipping a class/session
Evaluate the usefulness of flipping
Compare several methods for active learning techniques
Implement active learning and/or classroom flipping techniques in your class

The program included:

The Active Learning Landscape, Dr. Stephen Gange, Professor of Epidemiology
Make Learning Un-Google-able: 21st Century Pedagogies that Will Transform Education, Dr. Marcio Oliveira, Asst. Dean for Educational Innovation, UMD School of Public Health
Promoting Active Learning in a Large “Lecture” Class; Experience from a First Try, Dr. Scott Zeger, Vice Provost for Research, JHU
Faculty Panel: Active Learning and Flipped Classrooms at JHSPH
Panelists: Dr. Elizabeth Golub, Epidemiology; Dr. Keri Althoff, Epidemiology; Beth Resnick, Public Health Practice; Dr. Nan Astone, Population, Family, and Reproductive Health; Moderator: Clark Shah-Nelson, Senior Instructional Designer, CTL

So check out the workshop recordings. And while you are in the neighborhood, the JHSPH Center for Teaching and Learning has many other great resources for teaching on their website.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: ©Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, CTL Toolkit Logo

Create an Online Space for Students to Collaborate

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Macie Hall

Working in groups can be a very positive experience for students; it allows them to take ownership of their learning, and they become active rather than passive learners. In addition to gaining a deeper understanding of the subject at hand, the interaction that students have with their peers is equally valuable. Students have the potential to develop life-long learning skills including critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making abilities, as well as social skills such as effective communication, negotiation, and conflict resolution. Instructors may help ensure the success of group work by following some of these simple guidelines:

Establish clear expectations of participation by group members.
Specify the roles and responsibilities needed within each group and have students delegate them.
Have group members assess each other at various times throughout the project/activity.
Periodically check to monitor group progress.
Use rubrics to assess both group and individual contributions.

For more on student collaborative work, see Barbara Gross Davis, Tools for Teaching, Jossey-Bass, 2001.)

Instructors at JHU who have the option to use Blackboard (course management system), can create an online space for students to work collaboratively. The Groups Tool in Blackboard is a convenient way for instructors to create subsets of students for collaborative activity. Once created, group members have access to a number of communication and collaboration tools within Blackboard, as determined by the instructor. These tools include: a group discussion board, blog, wiki, journal, email tool, chat tool, a file exchange tool, and a task list. The instructor has access to all group tools at all times. This allows him/her to monitor each group’s activity as needed. The blog, wiki, and journal tools have the option of being graded; they are connected to the Blackboard grade center, so any grades entered are automatically transferred and recorded in the grade center. Within these tools there is the option to grade each member of the group individually or grade the group as a whole. Blackboard groups can be created one at a time, or as a set. Members of groups are selected manually, with the instructor choosing students from a pre-populated list, or by using the self-enroll option, where students use a sign-up sheet to enroll themselves into a group. There is also a ‘random enrollment’ feature (if creating a group set), where Blackboard will randomly assign students to groups. This feature is often helpful in large lecture courses.

For more detailed information about using the Blackboard Groups Tool, please see the Groups Tool tutorial.

Amy Brusini, Course Management Training Specialist Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Screen shot: Blackboard.

2013 GSI Symposium Breakout Session 5: Challenges and Rewards of Teaching in a MOOC

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Macie Hall

A Report from the Trenches

We’re continuing with our reports from the JHU Gateway Sciences Initiative (GSI) 2nd Annual Symposium on Excellence in Teaching and Learning in the Sciences. Our final report is on the session “Challenges and Rewards of Teaching in a MOOC” presented by Brian Caffo, PhD Associate Professor of Biostatistics, Bloomberg School of Public Health; Kevin Frick, PhD, Professor of Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health; and Ira Gooding, OpenCourseWare Coordinator, Bloomberg School of Public Health.

This breakout session followed Daphne Koller’s (PhD, Co-founder of Coursera and Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University) keynote address: The Online Revolution: Education for Everyone. [Click on the link to see a video-cast of her talk.]

Since JHU began working with Coursera in July 2012, The Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH) has developed and offered eight massive open online courses (MOOCs) on the Coursera platform. During this session, Ira Gooding, Educational Resource Coordinator in the JHSPH Center for Teaching and Learning, presented an overview of the School’s work so far, including enrollment information, completion rates, and practical insights about the development of MOOCs.

Gooding was joined by two MOOC instructors: Kevin Frick, Professor of Health Policy and Management, and Brian Caffo, Professor of Biostatistics. Drs. Frick and Caffo both shared details of their experiences teaching thousands of students via the MOOC model. During the question and answer portion, the panel was joined by two other MOOC instructors: Karen Charron of the Department of International Health and Roger Peng of the Department of Biostatistics. All agreed that MOOCs are a powerful tool for broadening access to high-quality educational experiences that can serve as a supplement or a gateway to more formal and traditional academic pursuits.

Many thanks to Ira Gooding for providing The Innovative Instructor with the notes from this session.

For more information on massive open online courses, see The Innovative Instructor post from January 8, 2013: The ABCs of MOOCS.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Ira Gooding

2013 GSI Symposium Breakout Session 4: Student Engagement in Curriculum Development

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Macie Hall

A Report from the Trenches

We’re continuing with our reports from the JHU Gateway Sciences Initiative (GSI) 2nd Annual Symposium on Excellence in Teaching and Learning in the Sciences. Next up is “Student Engagement in Curriculum Development: School of Medicine Medical Education Concentration” presented by Sarah Clever, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and her students Mark Fisher JHSoM ’14, Sara Fuhrhop, JHSoM ’14, Nikhil Jiwrajka, JHSoM ’15, and Eric Sankey, JHSoM ’15.

Please note that links to examples and explanations in the text below were added by CER staff and were not included in the breakout session presentation.

Dr. Clever identified physicians as having distinct roles as teachers as they interact with their peers, trainees, and patients. As well, graduates from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (JHSoM) often pursue careers in academic medicine. Specific training in medical education significantly enhances physicians’ skills as educators.

Based on an online needs assessment survey she conducted of 306 JHSoM students in June 2011 (86 responded), Dr. Clever felt that there was substantial student interest in the implementation of a medical education track including didactic teaching in medical education, hands-on curriculum design with a faculty mentor and evaluation of that curriculum, as well as presentation at a national meeting and or scholarly publication.

Nationally, clinician-educator tracks for residents and faculty are growing in popularity, but Student-as-Teacher programs for medical students are less common. The schools that have such programs include the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (Distinction in Medical Education), University of Rochester (Medical Education Pathway), University of Chicago (Medical Education Track), University of Texas at San Antonio (MD with Distinction in Medical Education Program), and Stanford (Foundation in Medical Education). These institutions provided inspiration in developing the JHSoM program, and the discussions with medical students from these institutions about the strengths and weaknesses of their programs were particularly helpful.

The JHSoM Medical Education Concentration (MEC) started with a pilot in the fall of 2011 (for JHSoM Class of 2014 students) and opened formally for application to JHSoM class of 2015 students in May (at JHU, student self- select into this option). There are 20 participants in the first year. The Medical Education Concentration students apply in the 2^nd half of the first year. The second year is spent in a fall seminar series and on developing a curriculum module. This is done individually in conjunction with a faculty member. Year three, they implement and obtain feedback. In year four the module is implemented a second time. By the end of the program, students will create an original teaching module in the clinical or preclinical curriculum; collaborate with a faculty mentor using evidence-supported curriculum development methods; and implement and evaluate their module and teaching performance. The overarching goal of the JHSoM program is to teach students critical curriculum design and teaching skills.

The fall seminar series is taught by JHU faculty and includes topics such as: adult learning theory, conducting a needs assessment, writing quality goals and objectives, choosing educational methods, technology in education, constructing an effective PowerPoint presentation, small group facilitation, eliciting, giving, and receiving feedback, and learner and curriculum evaluation methods.

Some of the pilot cohort teaching modules were:

Conducting a follow up visit with chronic disease patients in the Longitudinal Clerkship
Conducting a well-child visit with pediatric patients in the Longitudinal Clerkship
Developing oral presentation skills in the Longitudinal Clerkship
Incorporating inter-professional education modules into the Pediatrics Clerkship
Surgical skills education for first year medical students.

Refinements to the Medical Education Concentration in the second year have included some changes to the seminar series, integration with other SoM education initiatives, and improving MEC infrastructure (i.e., Blackboard components used for the MEC).

In the future, Dr. Clever hopes to develop a system to track students’ project progress, create a handbook for MEC leadership, work on pre-assessment for prospective participants, and to collaborate with similar programs at other institutions.

Dr. Clever’s presentation ended with these questions for discussion among the breakout session participants:

How can student involvement in curriculum development benefit the Gateway Sciences?
What are the implications of undergraduate student involvement in teaching and/or curriculum development for courses that are already well established?
How can we better involve students in the learning process?

The discussion centered on transferring this experience to the Gateway Sciences Initiative. Although participants did not feel that freshman and sophomore students would be able to effectively have a role in curriculum design, peer-teaching or developing focused instructional modules could help an upperclassman to gain a greater understanding of a concept or to understand its application to higher level courses.

The consensus was that these SoM medical education concentration students could be role models for pre-med students. They also could provide insight to faculty teaching undergraduates about the skills needed in medical school (at least the JHU model). Everyone agreed this was a session that showed how cross- University collaboration could benefit all involved.

For more on the development and implementation of the MEC program see Dr. Sarah Clever’s presentation for the Johns Hopkins Medicine Institute for Excellence in Education Grand Rounds, March 14, 2012: Learners to Educators: Development and Implementation of a Medical Education Curriculum [JHED ID required].

Many thanks to Melissa West for providing The Innovative Instructor with the notes she took during this session.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Dr. Sarah Clever

2013 GSI Symposium Breakout Session 3: Flipping the Classroom

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Macie Hall

A Report from the Trenches

We’re continuing with our reports from the JHU Gateway Sciences Initiative (GSI) 2nd Annual Symposium on Excellence in Teaching and Learning in the Sciences. Next up is “Flipping the Classroom: How to Do It Conceptually and Technologically” presented by Michael Falk, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Material Sciences and Engineering and Brian Cole, Senior Information Technology Specialist, Center for Educational Resources.

Please note that links to examples and explanations in the text below were added by CER staff and were not included in the breakout session presentation.

For the past several years Professor Michael Falk has “flipped” his course EN.510.202 –Computation and Programming for Materials Scientists and Engineers. [See the recent Innovative Instructor post on Flipping Your Class.] The purpose of Falk’s class is to teach algorithm development and programming in the context of materials science and engineering. The class size ranges between 20 and 30 students, and Professor Falk has one Teaching Assistant for the class.

Professor Falk outlined the logistics for the students taking the course. They are required to watch a video of a lecture-style presentation he has posted on his Blackboard course site, and then take a quiz on the content presented in the podcast, before coming to class. The quizzes ensure that the students will watch the lecture and are held accountable for the information presented. Once in class, Falk has the students engage in an interactive experience, such as writing a mini-program, based on the material from the presentation. He noted that he has not found making the podcasts difficult, but creating in-class active learning experiences for his students has been more challenging. He spends a great deal of time developing in-class exercises that will build cumulatively. He also wants students to be able to get enough from the classroom activity to continue work on their own.

For assessment purposes he has students take a survey at the beginning of the semester and at the end of the semester to determine learning gains. Preliminary data indicate that the class increases the ability of students to program, that students showed increased perception in their abilities, as well as an increased intention to use programming in the future.

Brian Cole discussed and demonstrated the technology behind the flipped classroom. Falk uses the software application ClassSpot, which allows students to share their work on the classroom’s main projection screen, to edit common code during class. Cole described using Audacity, Adobe Connect, Adobe Presenter, and QuickTime on Macs to create the video recordings. He mentioned that a faculty member could also use an appropriate pre-recorded lecture from a trusted source. Falk uses ScreenFlow to make his presentations; however, Johns Hopkins does not have a license for this software. Adobe Captivate is another possibility. It is very powerful but has a steeper learning curve.

The follow questions were raised and answered during the session:

Q – Could this method be used to flip a few modules as opposed to the entire course?
A – Undergrads don’t like change, so it would probably be better to do the whole course.

Q – Can students watch the podcasts over and over?
A – Yes.

Q – Where is the textbook in all of this? Could you replace your podcasts with readings from a textbook?
A – There are reading assignments in addition to the videos. In my experience, students prefer a human face, a talking head, over reading a textbook.

Q – How do students reach you if class time is dedicated to working on problems?
A – I encourage students to use the class Blackboard discussion board. [Note: The flipped class structure doesn’t prevent students from talking to the faculty member, and Falk also has office hours.]

Q – Did you scale back student work [outside of class] since more time spent watching podcasts?
A – Yes – most of the traditional homework is done in class.

Q – Are there tests?
A – Yes.

Q- How important are quizzes to making the flipped course work?
A – Very important. Students are very grade oriented so having quizzes, tests, and exams matters. Quizzes are great motivators for getting students to watch the videos.

Amy Brusini, Course Management Training Specialist
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Microsoft Clip Art

2013 GSI Symposium Breakout Session 2: Formative Assessment

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Macie Hall

A Report from the Trenches

We’re continuing with our reports from the JHU Gateway Sciences Initiative (GSI) 2nd Annual Symposium on Excellence in Teaching and Learning in the Sciences. Next up is “Assessing Student Learning during a Course: Tools and Strategies for Formative Assessment” presented by Toni Ungaretti, Ph.D., School of Education and Mike Reese, M.Ed., Center for Educational Resources.

Please note that links to examples and explanations in the text below were added by CER staff and were not included in the breakout session presentation.

The objectives for this breakout session were to differentiate summative and formative assessment, review and demonstrate approaches to formative assessment, and describe how faculty use assessment techniques to engage in scholarly teaching.

Summarizing Dr. Ungaretti’s key points:

Assessment is a culture of continuous improvement that parallels the University’s focus on scholarship and research. It ensures learners’ performance, program effectiveness, and unit efficiency. It is an essential feature in the teaching and learning process. Learners place high value on marks or grades: “Assessment defines what [learners] regard as important.” [Brown, G., Bull, J., & Pendlebury, M. 1997. Assessing Student Learning in Higher Education. Routledge.] Assessment ensures that what is important is learned.

Summative Assessment is often referred to as assessment of learning. This is regarded as high stakes assessment – typically a test, exam, presentation, or paper at the midterm and end of a course.

Formative Assessment focuses on learning instead of assigning grades. “Creating a climate that maximizes student accomplishment in any discipline focuses on student learning instead of assigning grades. This requires students to be involved as partners in the assessment of learning and to use assessment results to change their own learning tactics.” [Fluckiger, J., Tixier y Virgil, Y., Pasco, R., and Danielson, K. (2010). Formative Feedback: Involving Students as Partners in Assessment to Enhance Learning. College Teaching, 58, 136-140.]

Effective formative assessment involves feedback. That feedback has the greatest benefit when it addresses multiple aspects of learning. It includes feedback on the product (the completed task), feedback on progress (the extent to which the learner is improving over time), and feedback on the process (If the learner is involved, feedback can be given more frequently.)

From this point on in the session, the participants engaged in active learning exercises that demonstrated various examples of formative assessment including utilizing graphic organizers (Venn Diagrams, Mind Maps, KWL Charts, and Kaizen/T-Charts – practices that focus upon continuous improvement), classroom discussion with higher order questioning (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy), minute papers, and admit/exit slips.

Classroom discussions can tell the instructor much about student mastery of basic concepts. The teacher can initiate the discussion by presenting students with an open-ended question.

A minute paper is a quick in-class writing exercise where students answer a question focused on material recently presented, such as: What was the most important thing that you learned? What important question remains? This allows the instructor to gauge the understanding of concepts just taught.

Admit/exit slips are collected at the beginning or end of a class. Students provide short answers to questions such as: What questions do I have? What did I learn today? What did I find interesting?

There are many ways in which faculty can determine learner mastery. These may include the use of journaling or learning/response logs to gauge growth over time, constructive quizzes, using modifications of games such as Jeopardy, or structures such as a guided action or Jigsaw. There are also ways to quickly check student understanding such as using thumbs-up–thumbs-down, or i>Clickers.

Assessment may also be achieved by using “learner-involved” formative assessment. Some ways to achieve this are through the use of three-color group quizzes, mid-term student conferencing, assignment blogs, think-pair-share, and practice presentations.

When incorporated into classroom practice, the formative assessment process provides information needed to adjust teaching and learning while they are still happening. Finally, faculty should look on formative assessment as an opportunity. No matter which methods are used it is important that they allow students to be creative, have fun, learn, and make a difference.

Faculty may also use assessment methods as research. This allows them the opportunity to advance hypotheses-based teaching, gather data on instructional changes and student outcomes, and to prepare scholarly submissions to advance the knowledge on teaching in their discipline. Teaching as research is the deliberate, systematic, and reflective use of research methods to develop and implement teaching practices that advance the learning experiences and outcomes of students and teachers.

Cheryl Wagner, Program/Administrative Manager
Center for Educational Resources

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Macie Hall

2013 GSI Symposium Breakout Session 1: Practical Tips for Active Learning

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Macie Hall

A Report from the Trenches

The next several posts will be in the form of reports from the JHU Gateway Sciences Initiative (GSI) 2nd Annual Symposium on Excellence in Teaching and Learning in the Sciences. The symposium featured five breakout sessions and many of us attending wished we could clone ourselves and attend more than one, as the topics were so interesting. So to those who couldn’t bilocate, and to those who couldn’t attend the symposium, these posts are for you.

First up is “Moving from Lecture-based Teaching to Active Learning Instructional Approaches: Some Practical Tips” facilitated by Robin Wright, PhD, Associate Dean and Professor of Biology, University of Minnesota.

Robin Wright practiced what she preaches in this breakout session, quickly moving the participants into an active learning activity.

To begin she told faculty to “…start where you are, you don’t need to start over. Start with your current lecture notes and identify the key learning outcomes. What can you do instead of telling your students?” (Remember that the one who does the work does the learning. When you tell your students, you are doing the work.)

She asked participants to think about their favorite lecture, or their worst one. She then discussed the principle of backward design – an instructor looks at what s/he wants students to know and/or be able to do at the end of the course. Dr. Wright noted that the advantage of backward design is by starting with defining the desired end result, instructors can create appropriate assessments and activities. As well, students can be told what they can expect to learn. Setting clear expectations helps students achieve the goals set for them.

She then asked everyone to define a learning outcome and design an assessment to determine how well students reached the outcome, directing three questions to the participants:

What do you want students to know or be able to do [think in terms of the lecture you’ve selected – what do you want the students to learn from that lecture]?
How will you assess their learning?
What activities will you plan to help them reach your specific goals?

Dr. Wright walked the participants through an example from her own class, defined the outcome, described activities that moved students from a lower level to a higher level (Bloom’s Taxonomy) with activities, and described how assessed.

Then the participants were set to work on writing one higher level learning outcome and an appropriate assessment and discussing these with the people sitting near them. Everyone appeared to be very enthusiastic about this exercise. In sharing after the small group exchanges we heard the following comments:

It was difficult for many to get started.
It was a powerful tool for determining what the class should focus on.
Participants refined their learning outcomes and assessments in discussion with others.

Dr. Wright then talked about the “tools in her toolkit” that she uses as activities and gave examples of some of these:

Figures from the textbook projected and used as a basis for questions for small group discussion.
Trick questions (questions which may seem to have an obvious answer, but the “obvious answer” is not the correct one).
Videos used to challenge thinking and promote discussion, often used as a way to introduce broad subjects (e.g., evolution) to her classes.
Case studies used to get students to think critically and to begin to learn on their own, outside of the classroom.

She introduced each “tool” with a specific example, and had participants briefly discuss possible answers to questions she would ask her students. Again, the participants gained an understanding of how to incorporate active learning into the classroom through an active learning process.

View the video of Robin Wright’s 2013 GSI Symposium keynote address “Teach What Really Matters; Use What Really Works.”

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Microsoft clip art