Tag Archives: active learning

Quick Tips: Low to No Prep Classroom Activities

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Student engagement is a critical component of higher education and a frequent topic of interest among instructors.  Actively engaging students in the learning process helps increase motivation, supports collaboration, and deepens understanding of course material. Finding activities that instructors can implement quickly while also proving worthwhile to students can be a challenge. I recently attended a conference with a session titled, “Low to No Prep Classroom Activities.”  Jennifer Merrill, psychology professor from San Mateo County Community College, shared some simple classroom activities that require very little or no preparation ahead of time that I thought were worth sharing:

Music:
Playing music as students enter the classroom creates a shared experience which can encourage social interaction, inspire creative thinking, and lead to positive classroom dynamics. It can be used as an icebreaker, to set a particular mood, or specifically relate to the course in some way. Research shows that music stimulates activity in the brain that is tied to improved focus, attention, and memory.

  • Incorporate music as part of a regular classroom routine to indicate that it’s time to focus on the upcoming lesson.
  • Use it to introduce a new topic or review a current or past topic. Ask students to articulate how they think the music/artist/song relates to the course material and then share with the class.
  • Allow students to suggest/select what type of music they would like to hear.

Academic Speed Dating:
Like traditional speed dating, academic speed dating consists of short, timed conversations with a series of partners around a particular topic.Two lines of college students in a classroom, playing a round of academic speed dating. In this case, students are given a prompt from the instructor, briefly discuss their response with a partner, and then rotate to a new partner when the time is up. Partners face each other in two lines, with one line of students continuously shifting through the other line until they return to their original partner. This can also be done by having students form inner and outer circles, instead of lines. A few of the benefits of academic speed dating include:

  • Sharing and questioning students’ own knowledge while gaining different perspectives on a topic.
  • Enhancing communication skills as students learn to express their ideas quickly and efficiently.
  • Providing a safe space to share ideas as students interact with others, which can lead to a positive classroom climate.

Memory:
The classic “Memory Game” consists of a set of cards with matching pairs of text or images. Cards are shuffled and placed face down; players take turns turning over 2 cards at a time, trying to find matching pairs.  In this version, students take part in creating the cards themselves, using index cards, before playing the game. Memory can be used to reinforce learning and enhance the retention of course material.

Suggested steps for implementation:
1. On the board, the instructor lists 10 terms or concepts related to the course in some way.
2. Students are divided into groups of no more than 5 people. Each student in the group selects 2 terms/concepts from the list.
3. Using index cards, students write the name of the term/concept on one card, and an example of the term/concept on another card (e.g., “supply and demand” and “gasoline prices rising in the summer with more people driving”). Examples could also include images, instead of text.
4. When the groups are finished creating their sets of cards, they exchange their cards with another group and play the game, trying to match as many pairs as they can.

  • Use Memory College students playing a memory game with index cards.to review definitions, formulas, or other test material in a fun, collaborative environment.
  • Enhance cognitive skills, such as concentration, short-term memory, and pattern recognition.
  • Facilitate team building skills as students work in groups to create and play the game.

Pictionary:
In this version of classroom Pictionary, students are divided into groups that are each assigned a particular topic.  Each group is tasked with drawing an image representation of their topic, e.g., “Create images that represent the function of two glial cells assigned to your group.”  Ideally, it works best if drawings are large enough to be displayed College students in a classroom doing a gallery walk.around the classroom, such as on an easel, whiteboard, or large Post-it note paper. When each group is finished with their drawings, all students participate in a gallery walk, offering feedback to the other groups.  Facilitate a small or whole group discussion to reflect on the feedback each group received.

  • Enhance problem solving skills and creativity by asking students to think critically about how to represent information visually.
  • Use Pictionary to get students up and moving around the classroom, which will help keep them actively engaged with course content.
  • Help students develop constructive feedback skills as they participate in the gallery walk part of the activity.

Hawks and Eagles:
This activity is a version of “think-pair-share” that gets students up and moving around the classroom.

Suggested steps for implementation:
1. Students pair with someone nearby and decide who will be the Hawk and who will be the Eagle.
2. Give all students a prompt or topic to discuss and allow them time to think about their response (1-3 minutes).
3. Students share their responses with their paired partner (1-3 minutes).
4. Ask Hawks to raise their hands. Ask the Eagles to get up and go find a different Hawk.
5. Students share their responses with their new partner.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5, if desired, to allow students to pair with multiple partners.
7. Debrief topic with the whole class.

  • Use Hawks and Eagles as an icebreaker activity for students to introduce and get to know one another.
  • Use this activity as a formative assessment to gauge student comprehension of a particular topic.
  • Expose students to multiple perspectives or viewpoints on a particular topic by having them engage with multiple partners.

IQ Cards:
IQ cards (“Insight/Question Cards”) is an exit ticket activity that acts as a formative assessment strategy. At the end of a class or unit, ask students to write down on an index card any takeaways or new information they have learned. On the other side ofStack of index cards. the card, ask them to write down any remaining questions they have about the lesson or unit. Collect student responses and share their “insights” and “questions” with the class at the next meeting.

  • Gather instant feedback from students and quickly assess their grasp of the material, noting where any changes or adjustments might be needed.
  • Reinforce knowledge by asking students to recall key concepts of the lesson or unit.
  • Use IQ Cards as a self-assessment activity for students to reflect on their own learning.

Do you have any additional low or no prep activities you use in the classroom? Please feel free to share them in the comments. If you have any questions about any of the activities described above or other questions about student engagement, please contact the CTEI – we are here to help!

Amy Brusini, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation 

References:
Baker, M. (2007). Music moves brain to pay attention, Stanford study finds. Stanford Medicine: News Center. Retrieved August 26, 2024, from https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2007/07/music-moves-brain-to-pay-attention-stanford-study-finds.html

Image source: Jennifer Merrill, Pixabay

Lunch and Learn: Active Learning Techniques

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On Tuesday, March 12th, the Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation (CTEI) hosted a Lunch and Learn on Active Learning Techniques: Advice and Guidance from Experienced Faculty. Faculty panelists included Nate Brown, Senior Lecturer, University Writing Program (KSAS); Robert Leheny, Professor and Department Chair, Department of Physics and Astronomy (KSAS); and Michael Falk, Vice Dean of Undergraduate Education and Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering (WSE). Caroline Egan, Teaching Academy Program  Manager, moderated the discussion.

Caroline began the session by asking panelists how they got started with active learning and what they would recommend to those who were thinking about implementing it.

Nate Brown described how he heavily relied on his lecture notes to deliver content to students when he first started teaching. As he’s gained more experience, he’s moved away from using lecture notes and actively involves students in their learning.  Brown structures his classes now in such a way that the students drive the conversation and solve problems collectively, leading to greater retention of information and increased engagement. He makes a point of having students think about “why they are doing what they are doing.”

Robert Leheny recalled how the Provost’s Gateway Sciences Initiative from several years ago provided funding to support the redesign of gateway science courses, such as the Introduction to Physics course, which he teaches. The goal of the Gateway Sciences Initiative was to evolve the pedagogy in large introductory science courses to produce better student outcomes.

The Intro to Physics redesign, which was modeled after similar large lecture style courses at NC State and MIT, moved away from a traditional lecture style to a much more interactive experience. Students are divided into groups and sit at round tables instead of in rows, and they solve problem sets together during class rather than at home. This in-class work is partly enabled by a flipped classroom approach which enables students to review the content before coming to class. Leheny said the department now offers two versions of Introduction to Physics that students can select from: an active learning style and a more traditional auditorium/lecture style.

Michael Falk first started implementing  active learning by using  clickers in a 200-student Introduction to Computer Programming course at the University of Michigan several years ago. Since he’s been at Hopkins, his classes have been smaller, allowing him to approach active learning in different ways. Falk gave an example of how he flipped an upper-level materials science course (which is now also part of the Gateway Computing program) so that students work in an online textbook outside of class and do more collaborative work during class. Another example is a First-Year Seminar class taught by Falk, Turing’s Shadow: Uncovering What’s Hidden in STEM. This discussion-based course covers a range of topics, some of which are sensitive, and students are often afraid to speak up. To address this, Falk created a series of discussion cards to help ease students’ discomfort. The cards provide discussion prompts for students, such as “Clarification: Ask for further explanation about something,” and they also inject some fun elements into the conversation by asking respondents to present their response “in the form of a song,” or “while walking around the room very quickly,” for example. It turns the exercise into a game and helps students to feel more comfortable participating in class.

Caroline continued by asking the panelists what their definition of active learning is and to provide a counter-example of it, which would bring its definition into better relief.

NB:   I think it involves giving students a stake in what we’re doing. For example, helping to define the parameters of a paper we’re going to write. I see the professorial role as one of support, like “air traffic control.” With active learning, students are involved in the creation of their own learning.

RL: The primary component of active learning in physics is peer instruction. Students need to be able to solve problems. We don’t use class time to introduce students to concepts, but instead give students an opportunity to practice solving problems where there are resources to help facilitate these skills. For example, students are divided into groups of three and explain to each other how they would go about solving a problem. The act of explaining the problem to someone else helps to solidify their own understanding. A counter example would be the old way of the instructor speaking from the blackboard, talking uninterrupted for most of the class period.

MF: Active learning is learning by doing. Students are engaging with content in a supportive environment. We are teaching a different group of students at Hopkins now – there are many more first- generation, limited-income, and/or underrepresented students with very different backgrounds. We need to think proactively about leveling the playing field for students. This is evident in the data around class outcomes: classes taught using active learning techniques have lower levels of students failing or dropping out. This is even more true for students in underrepresented groups.

RL: We also see this in Intro to Physics. We have the two versions of the course: one in the auditorium (which may have some active learning elements in it), and one designed specifically as an active learning course. The homework and exams are the same in both courses. The outcomes show that failing grades are much less likely to occur in the active learning course.

MF: I used to think my job as an instructor was to deliver content and material. Now, with active learning, I think my job is to deliver an experience.

Caroline continued by asking panelists for a simple active learning technique that instructors can implement right away.

NB: This may sound crazy – it comes from a writer colleague of mine. I was having students read out loud in class and noticed they were struggling: they didn’t feel comfortable, they were shy, or were experiencing language barriers, etc. I then asked them all to read in chorus (at the same time). No one understood what they were hearing, but it shocked them into it being ok to share. It really helped them get over their nerves.

RL: Think-Pair-Share. This technique works very well in a large lecture environment. We give students a multiple choice question and have everyone vote on the answer. Next, they have to find someone who voted differently and try to convince them to change their answer. We then ask students to vote again. The results are that there are usually more correct answers the second time. You do need good questions for this to be effective.

MF: An idea for STEM classes, figure out a way to shorten your lecture and hand out the problem set at the end of class. Allow students to work on them with each other. Ask students to write down the steps on how they would solve the problem, but not actually solve it. Allow time for a report out at the end. This gives them a chance to support each other while organizing information.

CE: A complimentary Humanities example: In my first-year writing class, I hand out labeled strips of paper to students with our class readings on them and ask them to organize the strips in a way that would help the students use the readings in their papers. Also, I give students writing prompts, break them into groups, and ask them to find out where they would find the answers to the prompts. This helps to get them in the right mindset of locating good sources.

Two other examples of active learning were mentioned by faculty guests. One instructor explained how she has students use Legos to construct the analysis of an argument. They connect more and more Legos to build supportive elements of their argument and take away those that they disagree with. Another instructor mentioned that she has students act out responses in class.

The session continued with questions from the audience for the panelists:

Q: In reference to Think-Pair-Share, have you observed any competitiveness among students or reluctance to participate in these activities?
MF: We tell students it has nothing to do with their grade.
RL: We do the same. We also tell them there is no curve and it is possible for everyone to get an A, which reduces overall competitiveness.
NB: One of the great things about this exercise, where students are engaging with each other, is that they get to hear from peers that are from all over the world. We turn it into a social space where they can feel comfortable sharing.

Q: (From a librarian) I recently had about 30 minutes to work with students in a research class. I received feedback from a student that I didn’t do enough active learning in the class, despite doing a brainstorming exercise with them. What do you do when you need more active learning in such a short amount of time?
RL: Explain to students why you structured the class like you did. It will help if you get their buy-in. Maybe the answer is to announce at the beginning that what you’re doing is in fact active leaning.
MF: Students like playing – it makes for a positive learning experience. Perhaps turn part of it into a game/play. And then explain what and why you’re doing it this way.

Q: Are there any active learning experiences to share when you’re guest lecturing? Do you use the same or different strategies?
MF: It needs to be a different strategy. As a guest, you don’t have the advantage of repetition or control of the environment. Explain to students what you’re doing and do the best you can with the constraints that you’re under.
CE: Be very intentional about your choices. At the end, ask them one thing they will remember from the class. This is a good recall exercise.
NB: As a guest speaker, you already are a bit novel since your presence is different than their regular day. Maybe use a novel activity that they will remember.

Q: Could you each share how you put groups together intentionally instead of having students self-form?
RL: Students are put into groups of three. Groups are engineered this way – we switch a few times during the semester. The students don’t know it, but we add them to groups according to their performance on the midterm. In each group, there is one person that scored at the top, one from the middle, and one from a low level. The top level person gets more practice articulating ideas. The lower level person gets the benefit of working with someone who has command of the material. We also group according to gender: we avoid placing two men and one woman in a group to avoid women being excluded. There is research that supports this.
NB: We also do a lot of group work. Halfway through the semester, I ask students to work with someone they haven’t worked with before. I also ask them to sit next to someone different. It results in a richer peer review experience.
MF: I have students do a self-assessment at the very beginning of the course and use the results of the assessment to group students.

For more information about the active learning topics discussed at the event, please see this  Active Learning For Distribution folder of materials developed by Caroline Egan.

Amy Brusini, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation 

Image source: Lunch and Learn logo, Unsplash, Pixabay

Quick Tips: Facilitating Group Work

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With good reason, one of the most common strategies that instructors turn to in the classroom is assigning students to work collaboratively in groups.  Group work, when thoughtfully designed and facilitated, can be a very effective way to engage students in their learning. Though not without challenges, group work offers numerous benefits: 

  • Increased engagement: Group work promotes active engagement and collaboration among students, which can help build a sense of community in the classroom. The learning process becomes more interactive which can deepen the level of understanding of course material and positively impact classroom dynamics.  
  • Diverse perspectives: Group work encourages the exchange of diverse ideas and perspectives. This can lead to a richer learning environment as students are exposed to different viewpoints and alternative solutions to problems.  
  • Skill development: Working in groups, students acquire a range of skills, including communication, problem-solving, and leadership skills. While certainly relevant in academia, these skills can also help students prepare for a professional work environment, where teamwork and collaboration are essential. 

Simply dividing your students into groups with little or no direction is unlikely to lead to the best outcome. Incorporating group work into courses requires careful planning and clear guidelines to ensure its effectiveness. The following is a list of strategies to consider when facilitating group work: 

Group formation:  

  • Consider aligning students with complementary or diverse skill sets. A broad range of skills often leads to creative ways of approaching and solving problems. Administering a survey to students before the project begins can help determine academic disciplines, backgrounds, and relevant skill levels.  
  • When possible, avoid isolating underrepresented minorities in groups. For example, place 0, 2, or 3 women in a team when forming groups of 3 (i.e., do not create a team of 1 woman and 2 men). This helps prevent the underrepresented from being over-ruled or ignored (Rosser, 1998).   
  • Explore technology options. If using a learning management system (LMS) such as Canvas, it will often include a tool to assist with creating and managing groups. Outside of the LMS, there is a free, open-source tool called gruepr that can assist instructors with group creation. CATME is another tool that assists with group creation and peer review. We reviewed CATME several years ago when it was free, but there is now a fee for use. 

Team Interaction: 

  • Establish ground rules for groups: insist on civil dialogue, respect others’ opinions, listen actively, etc. Involving students in creating the rules helps them hold each other accountable throughout the process. Carnegie Mellon has a resource with suggestions for setting ground rules that may be helpful for instructors. 
  • Assign each student a different role in the group and rotate the roles frequently. This helps to ensure that work is distributed equally throughout the project, avoiding situations where a few students are doing all the work while others are just along for the ride (Finelli et all., 2011). Examples of roles include recorder, spokesperson, summarizer, organizer, observer, timekeeper, or liaison to other groups.  Be sure each role has specific tasks that are clearly laid out for students.  
  • Include one or more short, introductory warm-up activities for group members to engage and get to know one another. This will help to build rapport and encourage participation within the group. 
  • Consider the physical space if allowing students to work in groups during class. Is the room conducive/comfortable for small groups to convene? Will students need accommodations? If teaching online, are groups meeting synchronously or asynchronously? Plan accordingly to anticipate space and technology needs.  

Assessment: 

  • Determine how you will assess the project. Depending on the goals, consider assessing both group and individual contributions. Develop and share rubrics with students so they know exactly what is expected. This sample group work rubric from Carnegie Mellon can be used as a guide. 
  • Meet regularly with each group to monitor progress. Set milestones to help students stay on track and meet their goals.
  • Include opportunities for self and peer assessment. Self-assessment encourages critical thinking and fosters greater self-awareness in student learning.  Peer assessment provides valuable insight for instructors about group dynamics and performance. It can also serve to motivate students to take responsibility for their individual tasks. Be sure to clarify for students if self and peer assessment will count towards their grade.  This assessment form from Carnegie Mellon is designed for students to assess themselves as well as group members.  
  • Allow time for reflection. Asking students to reflect on the process can help them extract meaningful lessons from the project’s successes and challenges.  It can also promote a deeper understanding of the project’s goals and the collaborative process as a whole. Examples of reflective exercises include written responses to specific prompts (i.e. what went well, what could be improved, etc.), small group or whole class discussions, and keeping a journal of the learning experience. More information about group reflection can be found in this resource from the University of New South Wales.   

With proper planning, group projects can be a positive and productive learning experience that will help prepare students for real-world challenges. Do you have additional tips to share about group facilitation? Please share them in the comments. 

Amy Brusini, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation

Image source: Pixabay

References:

Finelli, C., Bergom, I., & Mesa, V. (2011). Student teams in the engineering classroom and beyond: setting up students for success. Center for Research on Learning and Teaching: University of Michigan. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED573963.pdf  

Rosser, S. V. (1998). Group work in science, engineering, and mathematics: Consequences of ignoring gender and race. College Teaching, 46(3), 82-88. 

University of New South Wales. (n.d.) Supporting students to reflect on their group work. https://www.teaching.unsw.edu.au/helping-students-reflect-group-work

Washington University of St. Louis, Center for Teaching and Learning. (n.d.) Facilitating in-class group work. https://ctl.wustl.edu/resources/facilitating-in-class-group-work/ 

Teaching Cinema with Omeka

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Since the death of the DVD player, several challenges have emerged for media-based courses: How can we give students access to a wide range of audiovisual, image, and text sources located on multiple different online platforms? What is the most efficient way for the instructor to access these materials in class spontaneously, and for students to be able to work with the materials on their own? Can we do this in a way that allows for critical engagement and sparks new associations? Can we make that engagement interactive? To address these challenges, graduate fellow Hale Sirin and I discovered Omeka, an open-source exhibition software tool developed at George Mason University. We found the Omeka platform optimal for creating media-rich digital collections and exhibitions.Omeka website Home page for Comparative Cinema

In Fall 2019, funded by a Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation (CTEI) Technology Fellowship Grant, we created and customized an instance of Omeka with the specific goal of designing a web-based environment to teach comparative cinema courses. We implemented the Omeka site in Spring 2020 for the course “Cinema of the 1930s: Communist and Capitalist Fantasies,” further supported by a CTEI Teaching Innovation Grant. This course compares films of the era in a variety of genres (musical, epic, Western, drama) from different countries, examining the intersections between politics and aesthetics as well as the lasting implications of the films themselves in light of theoretical works on film as a medium, ethics and gender. We adapted the online publishing software package into an interactive media platform on which the students could watch the assigned films, post comments with timestamps, and help expand the platform by sharing their own video essays. We built this platform with sustainability in mind, choosing open-source software with no recurring costs so that it could be used over the years and serve as a model for future interdisciplinary and comparative film and media courses.

When building this website, our first task was to organize the digital archive of film clips and film stills for the course. These materials were then uploaded to Panopto, the online streaming service used by JHU, and embedded in the Omeka site.screenshot of embedded film hosted in Kanopy We also embedded the films that were publicly available on YouTube, Kanopy, and other archives, such as the online film archive of the production studio Mosfil’m, designing the Omeka site to serve as a single platform to stream this content. Each film, clip, text, or image was tagged with multiple identifiers to allow students to navigate the many resources for the course via search and sort functions, tags and hyperlinks, creating an interactive and rich learning environment. We added further functionality to the website by customizing interactive plugins, such as the “Comments” function, which allowed us to create a thread for each film in which students could respond to the specific prompts for the week and to timestamp the specific parts of the film to which their comments referred.

In order to abide by copyright laws, only films in the public domain were streamed in their entirety. For other films, we provided selected short clips on Omeka, which we were able to easily access during class. Students were able to access the films available on Kanopy through our website by entering their JHU credentials.

Teaching comparative cinema with the interactive website powered by Omeka provided the students with a novel way of accessing comparative research in film studies. The website served as a single platform, interconnecting the digital material (video, image and text) and creating an interactive and rich learning environment to enhance student learning both in and outside of class time. Rather than the materials being fixed to the syllabus week to week, students could search film clips by director, year, country, or theme. Students were thus able to compare and contrast many images and films from across cultural divides on a unified online platform.

Students were not only able to access the course materials on the Omeka site, but also to expand and re-structure the content. screenshot of Scarlett Empress film clip in Omeka site Over the course of the semester, students contributed to the annotation of film clips by uploading their comments to the films and timestamping important sequences. Since they were also required to draw their presentations from material in the exhibition, their engagement on the site was quantifiable on an on-going basis. As their final projects, they had the option of creating a video essay, which involved editing together clips from the films, and recording an interpretive essay over them, like a commentary track. Their video essays were shared with their peers on the Omeka site.

After switching to online learning in Spring 2020 due to Covid19, the Omeka site not only performed its original task, but was flexible enough to give us the opportunity to build an asynchronous, alternative educational environment, now not only hosting the course materials and discussion forums, but also the weekly recorded lectures, recordings of our Zoom discussion sessions, and students’ final video essays.

We thank the Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation (previously known as the Center for Educational Resources) and the Sheridan Libraries for their support and continual guidance during this project.

Additional Resources:

https://omeka.org/

https://blogs.library.jhu.edu/2016/08/omeka-for-instruction/

Authors’ Backgrounds:

Anne Eakin Moss was an Assistant Professor in JHU’s Department of Comparative Thought and Literature, a board member of the program in Women, Gender, and Sexuality and of the Center for Advanced Media Studies. She was the 2017 recipient of the KSAS Excellence in Graduate Teaching/Mentorship Award and a Mellon Arts Innovation Grant, and a 2019 KSAS Discovery Award winner. Since the fall of 2021, she has been at the University of Chicago where she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures.

Hale Sirin is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature. A recipient of the Dean’s Teaching Fellowship and the Women, Gender, and Sexuality teaching fellowship, she has taught courses in comparative literature, philosophy, and intellectual history. Her research interests include early 20th-century philosophy and literature, theories of representation and media in modernity, and digital humanities.

Image source: Hale Sirin

Exhibiting the Avant Garde: Rare Primary Sources as Pedagogy

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[Guest post by Molly Warnock, Assistant Professor, History of Art, Johns Hopkins University]

The library is often called the lab of the humanities. In my experience, the Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries embraces this role. I collaborate regularly with the Libraries’ staff to encourage students not only to use library resources to conduct their research but also to use the physical space to present their findings. In several of my undergraduate art history courses, students curate an exhibition as one of their major assignments. This article provides an overview of my collaboration with the Sheridan Libraries and describes a model that my colleagues are considering adopting for their own course projects.

The collaboration began when I discovered the extensive modern and avant-garde collections owned by the Libraries, which boast vast reserves of journals, rare exhibition catalogues, and artists’ books, as well as posters, pamphlets, and other ephemera. I Students viewing library exhibitwanted to integrate these materials into my courses, and started by setting aside a day or two every semester to visit Special Collections. Now virtually all of my courses at all levels include multiple sessions of this sort. For example, my introductory survey “Modern Art, 1880-1950,” includes thematic visits devoted to such topics as Futurist typography, the role of journals and little magazines in the spread of experimental practices, and utopian urbanism. These visits allow students to see and in many cases handle rare primary materials, adding substantively to our discussions in the classroom. They are almost always surprised to discover the extent of our collections.

The curatorial seminars that I have developed over the past six years are specifically aimed at increasing student engagement with these important library holdings. Each course is in certain respects a traditional seminar, focused on some area of twentieth-century practice. We have weekly readings, look at digital slideshows, and discuss various case studies. At the same time, however, students immerse themselves in a semester-long, hands-on curatorial project centered on one particular aspect of our subject matter. The first such course, “Surrealism,” produced a survey of Surrealist journals (“Surrealism at Mid-Century”), while the second, “The ‘Long Sixties’ in Europe,” turned the spotlight on the library’s wealth of Lettrist books, journals, posters, photographs, and film scripts, among other items (“Presenting: Lettrism”). Additional iterations of “The ‘Long Sixties’” have focused on the library’s recently expanded trove of materials relating to the avant-garde group Cobra (“Asger Jorn and Cobra”) and on the Paris-based journal Robho (“Robho in Context”). Student contributions drive all stages of the project, including: researching and studying the available holdings; crafting a final object list; writing exhibition labels for the selected works; and designing the exhibition layout. At the exhibition opening, the students serve as docents, guiding interested members of the Hopkins community through the show.

Students showing exhibit to library patronsCollectively curating an exhibition in one semester means negotiating difficult time constraints. I start my course planning by identifying a long list of objects relevant to my course. Throughout this period, I consult extensively with Don Juedes, the dedicated librarian for History of Art. We then meet with Mark Pollei and Alessandro Scola of the Conservation and Preservation team to ensure that the pre-selected objects are stable enough to be handled repeatedly and determine vulnerabilities that would have to be taken into consideration for exhibition—whether, for instance, a particular book or journal is especially light sensitive, or can only be opened halfway. Once the semester is underway, students begin working on the exhibition immediately. Within the first week, we’re in Special Collections, where students get their first peek of the objects cleared for exhibition; each selects a few to research individually. I provide some initial context, but encourage them to choose based on their broader interests or curiosity about specific items.

One of the course goals is to teach students how to interpret primary materials using different research strategies. Their first assignment is to outline a research plan for each of their chosen objects. Don introduces the students to library resources and teaches them the skills needed to conduct their research: for example, how to meaningfully generate and delimit searches in our online catalogue and how to navigate various databases and bibliographies. They have to locate relevant materials using the strategies Don has shared with them, and indicate how they plan to build an argument from these sources. This can be quite challenging in the case of objects that have not been studied extensively by scholars to date. I provide feedback and encourage them to think broadly about different angles of attack, from the more obvious (researching the artist or author) to the less immediately apparent (researching a gallery’s broader exhibition agenda).

By mid-semester, we are all back in Special Collections, where the students present their objects and recommend specific display options, based on their research findings and the various larger stories we might wish to tell. We then move into the most exciting—and difficult—phase: experimenting with different installation plans and whittling down our final object selection. We mark off spaces equivalent to the various display cases and physically move things around until we feel we’ve arrived at a coherent, visually compelling narrative.Students making adjustments to exhibit objects The Conservation and Preservation team stop by again to consult with us about our display concept, and then spend roughly a month and a half preparing the featured materials, building customized cradles, and installing the objects. The students use that same period to produce and collectively edit the banner text and individual object labels. The official opening usually takes place in the penultimate week of the semester and serves as a celebratory capstone for the course as a whole.

As an instructor, it is deeply satisfying to see how seriously the students take one another’s research, and how effectively a collaborative project of this sort can help to build community. I find myself continually refining my pedagogical approach to facilitate this. One crucial step was simply to limit the class size to a maximum of ten students. I’ve also explored the potential of new technological platforms to facilitate more lateral processes of peer-to-peer discussion and group editing. For example, having students generate and refine all exhibition-related texts in Google Docs allows me to afford class participants greater responsibility for the finished products, while still tracking individual contributions. This can be awkward at first, as students may not have prior experience giving one another constructive criticism. But they quickly learn that robust peer critique results in a better overall outcome: an exhibition that represents all of their contributions.

In their course evaluations, students rate this experience highly positively. One described “the opportunity to curate an exhibition and work with objects from the library’s collections” as “truly special,” while another called it “unlike anything I had done for a course at Hopkins before,” adding: “Interacting with one another so regularly to work on the exhibition also built a great sense of community among the students.” A third noted: “I really enjoyed getting to spend so much time physically with all these artifacts, and doing research on objects JHU owned.”

This project has also deepened my working relationship with Don Juedes. Don’s assistance has been instrumental at every stage. Early on, he helped me to put together an exhibition proposal and worked with the exhibition committee to significantly expedite the review process, which had previously taken several months. (Based on the success of previous course- related curatorial project, the Libraries now dedicate a regular slot in the calendar to our exhibitions.) He has also worked closely with library staff from multiple departments to streamline workflows and pin down a project timeline.

At the same time, Don and I consult regularly about the collections and often tailor new acquisitions in my research area to the courses I plan to teach and the kind of student-curated exhibitions that might accompany them.Students working to prepare exhibit For the students, there is an added benefit: working closely with Don teaches them the multi-faceted role that libraries play in supporting the scholarly community. They see that libraries are not just passive repositories but have a highly active custodial and, indeed, curatorial role, assembling and caring for the materials that enable forward-looking research and teaching. They learn the importance of developing relationships with library staff that can provide complementary expertise and assist in the discovery process. The students in these curatorial seminars often become avid library patrons, returning to use primary sources for other courses and independent research projects.

My partnership with the library has changed how I teach and opened up new learning experiences for students. I feel incredibly fortunate that the Libraries’ leadership and outstanding staff at all levels fully grasp the importance of teaching with objects and so generously support pedagogical innovation and collaboration in this area.

Molly Warnock, Assistant Professor
History of Art, Johns Hopkins University

In addition to critical surveys of modern and contemporary art, Molly Warnock’s recent and forthcoming undergraduate courses include several seminars with curatorial components, each focused on particular aspects of twentieth-century practice and culminating in an exhibition of journals and other ephemera from the Special Collections of the Sheridan Libraries. Recent graduate courses have explored the philosophical underpinnings of art history as a modern discipline; problems in abstraction; theories of painting and subjectivity; and the concept of an aesthetic medium, among other topics.

Image Source: Don Juedes

PhysPort: Not Just for Physics Instructors

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Screenshot of PhysPort home page.While tracking down some resources for active learning this past week, I stumbled on PhysPort, and wished I’d know about this site much sooner. PhysPort, formerly the Physics Education Research (PER) User’s Guide, supports “…physics faculty in implementing research-based teaching practices in their classrooms, by providing expert recommendations about teaching methods, assessment, and results from physics education research (PER). Work in PER has made enormous advances in developing a variety of tools that dramatically improve student learning of physics. Our goal is to synthesize and translate the results of this research so you can use it in your classroom today.” The thing is, many of the resources here will be valuable to faculty in any discipline and will help improve student learning in any course.

Certainly, some of the materials and examples are physics-specific; others may be more useful for STEM faculty generally. Yet, there is plenty here that will be appreciated by anyone looking for pedagogical resources, even Humanities faculty. The best thing is the emphasis on research-based strategies.

I liked the clean, clear structure of the site. There are five tabs at the top each page for easy navigation to the Home page, Expert Recommendations, Teaching Methods, Assessments, and Workshops.

On the Home page there are three areas for general help—Teaching (I want to…), Assessment (I want to…), and Troubleshooting (I need help with…). Clicking on a topic of interest will take you to a page with relevant materials and resources. Expert Recommendations are essentially articles/blog posts written by PhysPort staff and guest authors to help instructors. I’ve listed some articles of general interest further down.

Teaching Methods will take you to a form where you can enter information more specific to your course. You can enter subject from a drop down list (including “any subject” to keep results more generic), level, setting, student skills you’d like to develop, the amount of instructor effort required. You can choose the level of research validation, and exclude resources, such as computers for students or tables for group work, that may not be available to you. Below the form is the list of 57 Research-Based Methods that you can browse through if the form doesn’t provide you with relevant choices. Again, some of these are physics-specific, but others, like Just-in-Time-Teaching are broadly applicable. Each of the methods has tabs for Overview, Resources, Teaching Materials, and Research.

The Assessments tab allows you to explore “…where you can get instant analysis of your students’ scores on research-based assessment instruments, comparisons to national averages and students like yours, recommendations for improving your teaching, and reports for tenure and promotion files, teaching portfolios, and departmental accreditation.” It is also set up with a form at the top. You can scroll down to see a list of 92 Research-Based Assessments. Most of these are physics-based. But scroll to the bottom of the page for a few interactive teaching protocols that may be more generally appropriate.

The Workshops tab features video tutorials. Again, there is a mix of physics-specific and non-specific materials.

Back to my original quest for resources on active learning. Under Expert Recommendations tab of particular interest are a series of posts by Stephanie Chasteen, University of Colorado Boulder (June 20, 2017) on implementing active learning strategies in your classroom. These are applicable to any subject matter, not just physics or even STEM courses. Each topic covered has a section on further reading with a list of references, a general reading list, and suggested keywords for searching in the literature.

PhysPort is a rich resource for all faculty. Spend a little time digging around. You should come up with some great material.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Screenshot of PhysPort home page: https://www.physport.or

 

Does Active Learning Disadvantage the Learning Disabled?

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Black and white line drawing of the upper torso of a young male in a thinking pose. Two question marks are on either side of his head.Active Learning is a good thing, right? As an instructional designer, I’ve read a great deal of research compiling evidence for teaching practices that promote active learning as a way to engage students and secure better learning outcomes. In my role consulting with faculty on curriculum design, I often suggest ways to increase student participation in their learning that match the learning goals and objectives articulated by the instructor. So it was a surprise to read a dissenting view in a Tomorrow’s Professor post by Fernando Gonzalez, an assistant professor of software engineering at Florida Gulf Coast University, titled For Some, Active Learning Can Be a Nightmare. [Full citation for original publication: Gonzalez, Fernando. “For Some, Active Learning Can Be a Nightmare.” ASEE Prism 26, no. 4 (December 2016): 52.]

To be clear at the outset, this is an opinion piece, based on anecdotal evidence and personal experience. There is no research backing Gonzalez’s claims, at least not yet. The article is short, and I encourage you to read it for yourself. In summary, Gonzalez provides a short overview of active learning, then states that “…[active learning] can be a nightmare for students with learning disabilities (LD). While learning disabled students – including those with dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, visual and auditory processing deficits, ADHD, nonverbal learning disabilities, and many others – vary in how they learn and on the type of accommodation they require, a common characteristic found in most LD students is needing more time to assimilate information from a lecture.” This he contends, makes it difficult for the learning disabled student “…who may not be able to learn the material in time to participate in the active learning activity immediately following the lecture or may have problems with the activity itself.” He notes that he has severe dyslexia and states he would not have “survived” an undergraduate education heavily based on active learning, and certainly would not have then been able to go on to get a PhD.

There are weaknesses in Gonzalez’s argument, starting with his construct of active learning as mostly being “…strategies [that] consist of a lecture where the student listens passively, followed by an activity that serves to clarify and reinforce what the student has learned.” There are many active learning strategies, and it is misleading to characterize them in total as being difficult for those with learning disabilities, which also are many and varied.

He cites only one concrete example of a strategy, the minute paper, which, although it can be considered an example of active learning, is typically used to obtain formative assessment from students. These exercises are not typically graded and therefore pose little pressure for students.

That said, I do not want to dismiss Gonzalez’s concerns. I was unable to find any published research on the benefits or disadvantages of active learning strategies for learning disabled students. Indeed, it would be valuable for these students and their instructors to have evidence of teaching and learning strategies that are inclusive. If you are aware of research in this area, please share the information in the comments.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Pixabay.com

Lunch and Learn: Flipped courses: What is the purpose? What are the strategies?

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Logo for Lunch and Learn program showing the words Lunch and Learn in orange with a fork above and a pen below the lettering. Faculty Conversations on Teaching at the bottom.On Thursday, October 20, the Center for Educational Resources (CER) hosted the first Lunch and Learn—Faculty Conversations on Teaching for the 2016-1017 academic year. A panel of faculty including Avanti Athreya, Assistant Research Professor Applied Mathematics & Statistics; Michael Falk, Professor Materials Science & Engineering; Bob Leheny, Professor Physics & Astronomy; and Soojin Park, Assistant Professor Cognitive Science; spoke briefly on their experiences and engaged in a lively discussion with attendees on Flipped courses: What is the purpose?  What are the strategies?

Avanti Athreya described flipping a large lecture course in Fall 2015 with her colleague, Dan Naiman, Professor, Applied Math & Statistics. The 4 credit course, Statistical Analysis I had previously met four times a week for 50 minutes – three lectures by faculty and one small-group meeting led by a TA.  Starting in Fall 2015, students watched several short videos (5-15 minutes each) before the week started.  The videos were created by Athreya and Naiman using Camtasia. Students then met once for a 75-minute lecture with the instructor and twice in small-groups with a TA.  During these sessions students, working in teams of three, solved problems with a TA available for help as needed.  Clicker quizzes were given at the beginning of each lecture to motivate students to watch the videos. Athreya noted that clear learning objectives were listed at the beginning of each video. Challenges included initial resistance from the students (she stated that there had been less of that this semester, the second iteration of the flipped course), and that students often need alternative explanation for concepts. Typically, the videos cover an idea in one way. In a lecture, the instructor noting confusion may offer another explanation for clarification.

Soojin Park co-teaches Cognitive Neuroscience: Exploring the Living Brain with Brenda Rapp, Professor, Cognitive Science. This 3 credit course has an enrollment on average of 250 students. Park and Rapp flipped their course in Spring 2016, with a goal of putting more emphasis on student exploration. They videotaped scripted lectures (these videos were shorter and more focused than the lectures in the traditional course) and posted them on Blackboard. Students took quizzes on the video content. Students met twice a week in sections of about 25. One section was structured as a review section, the other as an active learning section. The challenge was to create the active learning activities. They decided to emphasize practical skills, such as exercises to learn spatial areas of the brain using 3-D software. These activities were all group based. There were worksheets for each session. For the final project, students developed a mock NIH proposal. Park and Rapp found a 5% learning improvement on the final exam (the questions were reused from the previous year to allow comparison) as well as higher course evaluations.

Bob Leheny reported that he is in the fourth year of teaching an active-learning version of Introduction to Physical Sciences, which incorporates a flipped classroom model. The course serves 700 students each semester. Before class, students watch videos that were developed at the University of Illinois. Leheny noted that there is a great deal of video content already developed for teaching introductory physics, so the faculty developing the course here were spared having to create their own. Faculty are able to track how much time students spend watching the videos. The course was developed with funding from a JHU Gateway Sciences Initiative grant, which included the design and implementation of an active learning classroom that seats 80 students. In the classroom, students review the video content, then work collaboratively in groups of three on exercises and experiments that explore the topic for the day. The course is supported by three graduate student TAs and four undergraduate TAs. Leheny said that one of the challenges was time management in the active learning setting. He compared the instructor and TAs to “waiters working the tables” where students were doing the activities and exercises. There is a constant monitoring of where students are and what they need.

Michael Falk was an early adopter of flipping the course. He now flips two courses: his undergraduate Computation and Programming for Materials Scientists and Engineers, with an enrollment of 35, and a graduate course, Thermodynamics of Materials. For the undergraduate class he created his own videos using Screen Flow. Students take quizzes on the video content before class. In class students work through exercises collaboratively. Falk uses Class Spot to facilitate this work. Class Spot allows screen sharing; students can see how their classmates worked out solutions to problems. For his graduate course in thermodynamics, Falk made short, Khan Academy-style videos using Quick Time. The students watch the videos before class and use class time for problem solving. He also made use of an application called Perusall for annotation exercises. His found in general that his students like it better if there is a short recap of the video material at the beginning of class. Falk feels that the biggest challenge with flipping is finding meaningful activities for class time.

Some key points covered during discussion included:

  1. Making sure that students aren’t assigned too much to do outside of class–videos should replace some of the reading or other homework assignments.
  2. It may be necessary to incentivize students to watch the videos. This can be in the form of quizzes.
  3. If group or collaborative work is done in class, follow best practices for creating groups. Groups of three are ideal. It is best not to have two males and one female in a group as has been shown in research on gender construction of teams. Group work presents valuable experiences for students. For those going into STEM fields, collaboration will be the norm, thus is a good skill to acquire. Group work can help minimize the negative aspects of competition in a classroom.
  4. Base in-class activities on the student learning goals for the course.
  5. Keep videos short, even, or especially when using a lecture-style delivery of the content. Scripting of lecture delivery was advised, as well as adopting a modular concept. Each lecture video should focus on one idea.
  6. Faculty who had flipped their courses noted that preparation for the initial offering of the course took a tremendous investment of time, but that the results had been worth the effort involved.
  7. Several faculty from the humanities discussed whether a flipped model could be used in their class situations, and specifically whether video delivery offered any advantage over reading a text. Certainly offering a variety of learning modalities can be valuable for students coming to a course with different backgrounds and understanding. A humanities course might not benefit from being flipped in total, but having students work together in class to develop specific skills, such as close reading, could prove valuable.

In all, the session was interesting and informative. If you are an instructor on the Homewood campus, staff in the Center for Educational Resources will be happy to talk with you about flipping a course.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image source: Lunch and Learn logo by Reid Sczerba, Center for Educational Resources.

Where goes the Lecture?

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Black and white image of universal sign figure at podium with a point, overlaid with red prohibited sign -- a circle with a slash through it.At Johns Hopkins there have recently been discussions among faculty and high-level administrators around the concept of “blowing up” the lecture. Nationally, we hear and read that the lecture is ripe to be “disrupted” and replaced by online, hybrid, or flipped course experiences. This is a debate that arouses strong feelings for and against the age-old pedagogical method. But what if you aren’t in a position to re-invent your lecture-based course? The three articles reviewed in today’s post offer some insights into best practices for working within the lecture format.

In How to Teach in an Age of Distraction [The Chronicle of Higher Education October 2, 2015], Sherry Turkle, Professor, Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, looks at the broader issue of reaching students immersed in their electronic devices. As almost all instructors today face this challenge, the article is well worth a read, whether or not lecturing is your mode of content delivery.

Turkle defends, with caveats, the lecture, citing anecdotal evidence from colleagues that with MOOCs and flipped classes, students often miss interacting face-to-face with an esteemed faculty member. “A student in an MIT class acknowledges that she gets to listen to the professor speak in an online video, but she wishes she could hear him lecture in person. He is an international figure and has a reputation for being charismatic. She feels she is missing out.” Turkel argues that watching course content videos alone in their dorm rooms isolates students and increases their connecting learning with using electronic devices. Further, she says,

But for all its flaws, the lecture has a lot going for it. It is a place where students come together, on good days and bad, and form a small community. As in any live performance, anything can happen. An audience is present; the room is engaged. What makes the greatest impression in a college education is learning how to think like someone else, appreciating an intellectual personality, and thinking about what it might mean to have one of your own. Students watch a professor thinking on her feet, and in the best cases can say: “Someday I could do that.” What the young man meant by showing up to “something alive” was really showing up to someone alive — a teacher, present and thinking in front of him.

As stated above, Turkel’s essay focuses primarily on the value of face-to-face conversation and collaboration, arguably not the primary components of most lecture-based courses. A well-designed flipped class would be more likely to foster these pedagogies. But, in Turkel’s defense, the flipped-class trend has not guaranteed that all flipped classes are better learning experiences for students than lectures.

In Turkel’s own classes, which are small seminars, students agreed to put away their devices and focus on the discussion at hand. It is not out of the question to ask that your students do the same in a lecture class. Helping students understand what they will gain by doing so may go a long way towards getting buy in. Turkel’s essay will help you make those points.

There are other reasons to eschew the old-fashioned sage-on-the-stage approach in favor of more interactive teaching practices. Annie Murphy Paul in Are College Lectures Unfair?, an opinion piece in The New York Times [September 12, 2015] asks if college lectures discriminate. Specifically, are lectures “… biased against undergraduates who are not white, male and affluent?”

Paul cites studies conducted by scholars at the University of Washington and the University of Texas at Austin that suggest that the lecture format puts women, minorities, low-income, and first-generation college students at a disadvantage. The studies showed that use of active learning strategies in the classroom reversed the effect. “Research comparing the two methods [lecture vs active learning] has consistently found that students over all perform better in active-learning courses than in traditional lecture courses. However, women, minorities, and low-income and first-generation students benefit more, on average, than white males from more affluent, educated families.”

Although Paul looks to flipped-format courses as the answer, there are many examples of ways in which to incorporate active learning into a lecture by using classroom polling systems (clickers), think-pair-share exercises (see more on this below), and other strategies. See Twenty Ways to Make Lectures More Participatory from Harvard’s Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning for more ideas.

Regardless of the content-delivery format, instructors should understand the value of creating an inclusive classroom climate and the importance of teaching to students with diverse backgrounds. The JHU TILE project (Toolkit for Inclusive Learning Environments) is a good place to go for resources. I highly recommend watching the video The Affective Domain: Classroom Climate.

The third article, What If You Have to Lecture?  by David Gooblar, Lecturer, Department of Rhetoric, University of Iowa [The Chronicle of Higher Education Vitae: Pedagogy Unbound, February 18, 2015] addresses the conundrum directly.  Gooblar offers three ideas to keep students engaged for those who “…simply don’t have the option of abandoning a lecture-dominated course.”

Gooblar’s first suggestion is to use regular quizzing. He cites an earlier article he wrote on the benefits of frequent low-stakes testing for student retention of information. He offers the suggestion of handing out a short multiple-choice quiz at the beginning of the class that students will answer as the lecture progresses. All of the questions will be covered in your lecture. The quizzes are collected and graded at the end of every class with each quiz counting as a small percentage of the final grade. An even better pedagogical approach, Gooblar proposes, would be to have students answer the questions at the beginning of the class before the lecture, then correcting their own answers during the lecture. This approach allows students to see what they don’t understand and helps them focus on learning those points.

Gooblar second idea is to incorporate group work, a common active-learning strategy, into your lectures by putting students in pairs. Pairs work best in large lecture settings as it is easy for students to turn to the person next to them, and every student is accountable. He describes the classic think-pair-share activity, but also suggests, “Pair students up and, at various points throughout the lecture, pause and ask the pairs to share and compare notes for the previous section of the lecture. This is a good way for students to discover if they’ve missed anything important, and for misconceptions to reveal themselves quickly.”

Thirdly, he recommends that you “cultivate confusion” by asking students either in the middle of the lecture or at the end to write down their “muddiest point.” If you do this in the middle of class you should then call on students and have them read their responses so that you can address concepts that are not clear.  If students are asked at the end of class, collecting the responses, reviewing them and then responding at the beginning of the next lecture to clarify misunderstandings will help keep them on track. Gooblar maintains that this “…is a great way to break students out of the role of passive listeners….” This kind of formative assessment is a good practice for an instructor as well.

Even if you must lecture, you can ask students to be present and reinforce that by keeping them actively engaged. They can’t be on their cell phones if they are being called upon to answer questions, take graded quizzes, and pair up to discuss concepts with classmates. Be aware of the inequities that lecturing may bring and address issues of classroom climate at the beginning of your course. Use formative assessment to benefit you and your students. As you can see, a lecture doesn’t have to be a passive experience.

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Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Image remixed from Pixabay.com images

Back to School

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It’s freshman move-in day on our campus, signaling the end of summer and the start of classes. Today’s post offers some resources for instructors as the semester begins.

Empty lecture hall, tiered with wooden seats.The Chronicle of Higher Education’s ProfHacker Blog post from August 13, 2015 by Natalie Houston (associate professor of English, University of Houston), From the Archives: Getting Ready for the New Semester, offers tips on getting ready to teach. Whether you are new to the profession or a practiced professor, there are links to articles with suggestions on learning student names, being prepared for medical emergencies in class, and routines to help you get organized.

In the The First Day of Class: A Once-a-Semester Opportunity (Teaching Professor Blog August 19, 2015), Maryellen Weimer, (professor emerita, Penn State Berks) writes, “There’s only one first day of class. Here are some ideas for taking advantage of opportunities that are not available in the same way on any other day of the course.” She suggests using the opportunity to tell students why the course is important, why you are committed to teaching it, why they should be committed to learning the material. Take the time to learn about your students and begin building relationships with them. “[G]et students connected with each other and the course content.”

Students often complain of poor presentation methods in lectures where instructors use PowerPoint (or other presentation software applications). A common mistake is to attempt to make your slides serve two purposes by being both lecture notes and lecture slides. This leads to too much text on the slides and reading from the slide. Both practices lead to student inattention. Bryan Alexander, in Giving a great presentation: notes on using PowerPoint, (July 27, 2015) tell us, “Your argument…is the essential thing.  The slides enhance your essential argument.  They amplify it and render it easier to understand. Make and use slides accordingly.” While the focus of the article is on presentations in general, there are some good things to consider for your use of presentation software in teaching!

Thinking about flipping your course? Check out Robert Talbert’s post Four things I wish I’d known about the flipped classroom (June 5, 2014), from his blog Casting Out Nines.

Or, perhaps you are considering implementing active learning strategies in your classroom. A recent article in Nature, Why we are teaching science wrong, and how to make it right (July 15, 2015) by M. Mitchell Waldrop, examines the problem of persistence in undergraduate STEM education. “Active problem-solving confers a deeper understanding of science than does a standard lecture. But some university lecturers are reluctant to change tack.” Waldrop stresses the importance of active learning, while analyzing the factors and challenges that contribute to slow adoption. For specific active learning strategies, see Cornell’s Center for Teaching Excellence website page on Active Learning. If you are going to be using an active learning classroom, the University of Minnesota’s Center for Education Innovation offers advice.

New to teaching or looking to brush up on your pedagogical skills? The Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) is re-offering the 8 week-long MOOC: An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching, starting September 28 and running until November 19, 2015. Having taken the course last year, I highly recommend signing up. Here’s the description from Coursera:

“This course will provide graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) who are planning college and university faculty careers with an introduction to evidence-based teaching practices. Participants will learn about effective teaching strategies and the research that supports them, and they will apply what they learn to the design of lessons and assignments they can use in future teaching opportunities. Those who complete the course will be more informed and confident teachers, equipped for greater success in the undergraduate classroom.”

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Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Pixabay.com