THE
Volume 20, Number 4
PROFESSOR
April 2006
Use the Power of Groups to Help You Teach
By Robert Loser, Northern Virginia
Community College
rloser@nvcc.edu
eading a textbook and listening to a
lecture may be useful learning activities, but for most students, when used
alone, they are insufficient for long-term
retention and transfer of learning.
Activities like group work, discussion, and
other forms of collaboration have great
potential for helping students process new
information, ideas, and procedures so that
learning is expedited. Here are five
research-based reasons for using activities
that involve students in class.
R
individuals would on their own, and the
weaker students will learn better strategies from the stronger ones.
3. Knowledge is recalled best when it is
learned in the context in which it will
be used. Ask students to relate what
they are learning to their lives, their
work, their families, and society with
activities such as role-plays, case studies, and application papers. Once again,
groups are going to envision more relevant contexts than individuals are likely
to.
1. New knowledge must be anchored to
existing knowledge for long-term
retention; the more anchors, the better
the chances for recall. In a discussion,
ask students to compare and contrast
new information or ideas with what
they already know, or ask them to give
examples or analogies. Each elaboration
is a potential memory anchor for some
learners, and, together, the class will
generate many more elaborations than
could be thought of individually.
Chances are good that someone will
suggest a viable elaboration that never
crossed your mind.
4. Skills are learned by practice with guidance and immediate feedback. Since
you can’t provide immediate feedback
to everyone at the same time, enlist
your students to help each other in the
early learning stages when basic feedback is sufficient, but still vital. Offer
clear examples of excellent performance, and then provide students with
a rubric for critiquing each other’s
work. The greater the number of critiques, the greater the likelihood that
the average of the critiques will be reasonably accurate. Besides benefiting
from feedback, students are learning
something about providing it constructively.
2. Short-term memory can hold only
about seven pieces of information at a
time. New knowledge must be organized in chunks to fit through this bottleneck during learning and recall. Ask
students to organize new information,
summarize it, suggest mnemonics for it,
and then share their strategies with the
class. Again, the class is likely to generate more strategies collectively than
5. Problem-solving expertise requires relevant basic skills and conceptual knowledge, along with being able to decide
which basic skills and knowledge to
apply in any given situation. Assign
problems to heterogeneous groups of
five to seven students and facilitate collaboration to solve the problems.
Members of the group will have different knowledge and skills to contribute,
so the groups will tend to solve problems better than the individual members can on their own. In the process,
students will learn knowledge, skills,
and strategies from each other, especially if you have them discuss the processes they used.
Group strategies help you teach more
efficiently by harnessing the parallel processing power of all of the minds in your
classroom and open the possibility that
you just might learn something from your
students!
If you are interested in references that
explore the research that stands behind
these principles, let me recommend two
sources.
Clark, R., and Mayer, R. (2003). ELearning and the Science of Instruction:
Proven Guidelines for Consumers and
Designers of Multimedia Learning. San
Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.
Gagne, E., Yekovich, C., and Yekovich,
F. (1993). The Cognitive Psychology of
School Learning, Second Edition. New
York: HarperCollins.
In This Issue
Tell Students When They’re Wrong . . . . . .2
Feedback Forms for Peer Assessment
in Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Improve Thinking: Improve Learning . . . .3
Why Do You Teach? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Students and Optimistic Grade
Expectations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Revising the Freshman Research
Assignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Roll the Dice and Students Participate . . . .6
2
THE
Tell Students When They’re Wrong
PROFESSOR
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April 2006
nstructors need to be thoughtful and
reflective about those strategies they use
when they respond to students’ answers,
and this is especially true when the answer
given is wrong. Most of us understand that
the stakes are high in this case. Students
are easily intimidated. Even those not participating can be negatively affected by
how an instructor handles incorrect
answers. Some current philosophies of
education argue against telling students
that they are wrong. The thinking here is
that students need to figure out for themselves if their answers are right or wrong.
Instead of telling them, instructors should
guide them to the right answers, possibly
through some sort of Socratic dialogue.
Robert Ehrlich and Stanley Zoltek
(reference below) are strongly in favor of
telling students when they are wrong.
Their context is science, but the points
they make apply to other kinds of knowledge as well. They think that instructors
ought to “destigmatize” wrong answers.
Mistakes are an inevitable part of learning.
They recommend encouraging students to
be less afraid of asking “stupid” questions,
quoting noted physician Alvan Feinstein,
“Ask stupid questions. If you don’t ask, you
remain stupid.”
They think that putting students under
some pressure, while it may undercut their
confidence at the moment, in the long run
benefits their learning and prepares them
for the future. In the world of work,
employers have to tell employees when
they are mistaken. College classrooms are
safer places where students can learn how
to handle negative feedback so that it
doesn’t traumatize or humiliate them.
Always praising answers puts instructors in the awkward position of having to
respond to wrong responses indirectly or
vaguely. This may result in “considerable
student confusion over where the truth
lies, or even the misguided belief that correct answers in science may be a matter of
opinion.” (p. 10)
Finally, they make the point that not
using corrective feedback in the classroom
I
is actually a condescending way to respond
to students. If a colleague makes a mistake
or says something foolish, he or she would
quickly be corrected by other colleagues.
It’s something expected among equals.
Erlich and Zoltek do understand that
how wrong answers are handled is crucial.
They make two points: “First, telling students they are wrong must be done in a
noninsulting and nonpersonal manner.”
(p. 8) It is the answer that is wrong, not the
student. “Second, it is not enough to tell
students that they are wrong; they must
also be told which aspects of their answers
are correct, and which aspects are incorrect.” (p. 8) They hold that corrective feedback is not the same as negative feedback.
The correction may include many additions, like “Jim, that answer is not correct,
but you’re on the right track.” “That
answer is close, but not quite right.”
“That’s a wrong answer, Susan, but you’ve
made a common mistake that all of us can
learn from.”
They summarize their case for calling
wrong answers wrong with this observation: “If you succeed in creating a class
environment in which everyone is treated
with mutual respect, and being wrong is
okay, you should find that students are less
fearful of being wrong, and more apt to
contribute to class discussion. In this case,
students will also be apt to analyze your
comments more carefully and may on
occasion have the pleasure of correcting
you the next time you are wrong!” (p. 10)
Reference: Ehrlich, R., and Zoltek, S.
(2006). It’s wrong not to tell students
when they’re wrong. Journal of College
Science Teaching, 35(4), 8–10.
The Teaching Professor
3
Feedback Forms for Peer Assessment in Groups
any faculty incorporate a peerassessment component in team projects. Because faculty aren’t present when
the groups interact and therefore don’t
know who’s doing what in the group, they
let students provide feedback on the contributions of their group-mates. In addition to giving the teacher accurate information on which to base individual grades,
the process gives students the opportunity
to learn the value of constructive peer
feedback. It’s a skill applicable in many
professional contexts.
Most faculty have discovered that the
quality of peer feedback improves if students use a form that articulates assessment criteria. Otherwise, given a form that
asks them to rate or describe the contributions of other members, students tend to
avoid giving negative feedback and to fall
back on the “everybody contributed equally” mantra.
A group of faculty (mostly in engineering) looked at the inter-rater reliability of
three short peer-evaluation forms. Interrater reliability is a statistical measure of
the extent of agreement among evaluators.
It’s an important feature of good assess-
M
ment instruments. One of the forms used
was a single-item instrument without any
behavioral anchors or specific assessment
criteria, similar to what’s described in the
previous paragraph. The second form used
a five-point rating scale and asked students
to assess team members across 10 categories that included various behaviors,
e.g., attended group meetings regularly,
contributed to discussions, listened effectively, performed significant tasks, and
completed tasks on time. The final form
included these kinds of behavioral anchors
in its instructions and elaborated descriptions of the rating words (excellent, for
example, was defined as “consistently went
above and beyond, tutored teammates,
carried more than his or her fair share of
the load”). However, on this form group
members gave peers a single rating assessment. Researchers found that both behaviorally anchored forms had about the same
high inter-rater reliability when they were
used by four raters in the same group.
The value, of course, is the economy of
the shorter form. It considerably expedites
the grading process, which benefits
instructors who may have large classes and
homework and other assignments to
grade. Researchers also hypothesize that
students will complete shorter forms more
conscientiously. However, they do recommend using the longer form to accomplish
formative goals. They have their students
complete it at the end of a first project so
that group members can use the feedback
to identify areas for improvement. If the
feedback indicates that a group has some
members who are “hitchhiking” (as in getting a free ride from the group) or “overachieving” (as in dominating and overdirecting the group effort), the instructor
meets with those groups to explore better
ways to distribute the workload and leadership within the group.
All three of the forms tested in this
analysis are included in this article.
Reference: Ohland, M. W., Layton, R.
A., Loughry, M. L., and Yuhasz, A. G.
(2005). Effects of behavioral anchors on
peer evaluation reliability. Journal of
Engineering Education, 94(3), July,
319–325
Improve Thinking: Improve Learning
ere’s a list of some practical suggestions taken from a neat, “miniature
guide for those who teach on how to
improve student learning.” (reference
below) The guide was prepared by Richard
Paul and Linda Elder, both well-known
experts on critical thinking.
H
• “Focus on fundamental and powerful
concepts with high generalizability.
Don’t cover more than 50 basic concepts in any one course.” Instead of presenting more new material, spend the
time thoroughly analyzing these fundamental concepts.
• Keep these basic concepts in the “foreground.” When a new concept is pre-
The Teaching Professor
sented, weave it into those that students
already understand. Show how the
whole relates to this new part and how
the part relates to the whole.
• “Speak less so that they [students] think
more.”
• “Don’t be a mother robin—chewing up
the text for the students and putting it
into their beaks through lecture.” The
goal instead is to teach students how to
read the text for themselves.
• Model good critical thinking for students. Think out loud for students; puzzle your way through problems. “Try to
think aloud at the level of a good student, not as a speedy professional.”
Students will not think they can emu-
late the thought process if the problems
are too advanced and you work through
them too quickly.
This miniature guide is part of a
“Thinker’s Guide” series that covers 12
topics, including active and cooperative
learning, ethical reasoning, how to study
and learn, and critical thinking. Some of
these guides are written for students as
well as faculty. They are reasonably priced,
especially for bulk orders. For information
about this guide series as well as other
resources on critical thinking, visit this
website: www.criticalthinking.org.
April 2006
4
Why Do You Teach?
et’s imagine a “required” professional
development activity for faculty: after
20 years of teaching, all college instructors
must prepare (we’ll skip the and-submitfor-credit part) an essay that explores the
reasons why they teach. The idea for this
assignment derives from an essay by Laura
B. Soldner (reference below) who found
herself restive during a sabbatical year. She
couldn’t seem to focus on the textbook she
was supposed to be writing but kept revisiting the reasons she chose to teach and
exploring how those reasons related to her
current professional life. The four reasons
Soldner chose to teach and that she discovered continued to motivate her to
remain in the profession may not be reasons you’d list, but they illustrate the
importance of this kind of introspection,
and they might springboard your own
reflection.
L
Sense of discovery—“I am continually
struck by the simultaneous nature of
teaching and learning. In one instant, I
may be the teacher or facilitator of a lesson, discussion, or activity, but I am, at the
same moment, a learner who is reconsidering previous knowledge, seeking out new
information, or making connections
between the two.” (p. 73) Teaching is a
profession for those who love to learn.
Quest for self-improvement—
Soldner writes about the many changes
teachers regularly face: favorite texts that
go out of print, the increased presence of
technology in the lives of students (and
their teachers), the declining levels of preparedness of college students, and others.
Teachers can bemoan these changes and
respond to them with much complaining,
or see them as opportunities for growth.
Soldner says that her commitment to
teaching remains because it provides her
with so many opportunities to grow and
change.
Ability to scaffold development—
Soldner is a developmental educator. She
works with students on basic reading and
writing skills. She explains that the “ability to scaffold development, to provide students with the initial assistance they need
and to withdraw that help gradually as
they are able to use the skills and strategies
independently, is another reason I find
teaching so satisfying.” (p. 75) The success
of one’s students can bring teachers much
satisfaction.
Sense of “mattering”—“Developmental
literacy educators are often the front line of
defense in stemming student attrition. They
may be the only ones to have daily instructional and personal interactions with their
students.” (p. 77) That makes their work
important—to their students, to their institutions, even to our society—and this sense
of doing work that makes a difference can
be a powerful motivator for all kinds of educators.
Perhaps in preparing an essay on “why I
teach,” some educators may find that what
brought them to education in the beginning
no longer sustains them. Those teachers
should make a change. For the rest of us, this
exercise can be a confirming and motivating
experience. It’s easy to forget the reasons or
to take them for granted. Preparing an essay
like this and then reading it at least once a
year would be a beneficial endeavor for most
faculty.
Reference: Soldner, L. B. (2002–2003).
Why I continue to teach: Reflection of a
mid-career developmental literacy educator.
Journal of College Literacy and Learning, 31,
71–78.
Students and Optimistic Grade Expectations
sk students what grade they think
they’re going to get in a course before
the course starts and they’ll tell you that
they’re going to do extremely well. Let the
course begin, distribute the syllabus, go
over course requirements, give students the
opportunity to attend several class sessions, and then ask them to predict their
grades. Guess what? They are just as optimistic. At least that’s what one group of
researchers (reference below) found when
they asked 258 undergraduates, most of
whom had already completed one year of
college.
All but two students in this cohort
A
April 2006
reported that they had read and understood the course syllabus and all but three
had been to at least two class meetings.
Even so, better than 95 percent of them
anticipated a B or better—this despite the
fact these students had been told in the
course introduction that typically only 50
percent of students in the course earned
A’s or B’s. These students’ grade predictions averaged to a 3.6 course GPA when
in fact the GPA for the course turned out
to be 2.4. A full 70 percent of these students overestimated their final grades, 24
percent accurately predicted them, and a
mere 6 percent underestimated them.
The researchers analyzed these overestimations in a variety of interesting ways.
Most notably but probably not unexpectedly, they found that students who came to
the course with lower cumulative GPAs
most seriously overestimated their grades
for the course.
In their discussion of results, the
researchers divided this student population
into two groups: the informed optimists
“who tempered the anticipation of the success they desired with reality” (meaning
they expended appropriate effort to
PAGE 6 ☛
The Teaching Professor
5
Revising the Freshman Research Assignment
By Cara Snyder, Dallas Christian College,
TX - csnyder@dallas.edu
wo years ago, I said goodbye to the
traditional 10-page research paper in
my freshman composition classes. My students knew too well that Googling along
with cut and paste could produce 10 pages
of fluff in no time, with a bibliography of
15 sources. (Who cares how reliable?) It
was time for a change.
The new assignment consists of five
short (about four-page) papers. The student sticks with the same topic through all
five papers. Typically, each student has a
different topic. The topics are very narrow
and reflect the mission of my college, for
example, why was stoning the biblical
method of execution, or how is “yeast”
used in Scripture? I provide a list of suggestions, but students can come up their
own topics. One of these papers is due
every two weeks (but we’re flexible), and
much of our class time is spent in the
library, with me finding out about new
sources right along with the class as I
attempt to answer their questions. As can
be seen in the following brief description
of the papers, despite the specificity of
these topics, the way I’ve reformulated the
traditional research paper is applicable to
many other topics and content areas.
T
Paper One—Students begin with a
reader-response essay researched using
only a primary source. The goal is for the
student to find out what this source seems
to be saying and showing about the topic.
In my case, the primary source is the Bible.
Students are limited to versions of the
Bible and to complete concordances, and
they are expected to study as many passages as possible that pertain to their topics. Similar assignments in other fields
could involve whatever the primary literature is, whether creative writing, historical
documents, or scientific papers.
Paper Two—The second paper
requires that students use only sources
The Teaching Professor
written before 1799. Whether they find
these sources online or in hard copy doesn’t matter—the sources just have to be old.
In our case, the online library
www.ccel.org (Christian Classics Ethereal
Library, Calvin College) has made this
research easily accessible. I make this the
second assignment because this material is
the hardest for students to understand, and
I find facing the harder challenge early
makes the rest of the papers seem easier.
My students are usually quite surprised to
find that the old guys already have said so
much about their topics. Given the difficulty of the material, I grade them on how
much they managed to find and how well
they organized and presented it rather
than how much they may have understood
it. I’m hoping for approximately six
sources in the works cited.
time range, like 1800 to 1980. For this one,
I’m hoping for 12 to 15 sources cited but I
am happy if I get eight or 10 good ones.
Paper Three—Now students are limited to dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, or other reference works. I do allow
Wikipedia on this one, but with the stipulation that anything they find in it must be
checked against their other sources and
that inaccuracies then be submitted to
Wikipedia. The goals of this paper are (1)
to see how many sources they can find that
say the same thing; (2) to find the earliest
source saying it; and (3) to check for any
differences or added details that have
accrued over the years. In this one, they are
encouraged to come up with as many citations as possible (I’m hoping for between
six and 12).
This collection of papers precludes having students integrate all their research
into one long paper. I simply do not have
the time at that point in the semester to
read 20-page papers because I’ve already
graded a lot of papers. I do find, though,
that I get through the four-page papers
much more efficiently and enthusiastically
than I do 10-page papers where I’m
repeatedly marking the same mistakes.
Using this approach gives students more
feedback more quickly, and that improves
subsequent papers.
The greatest advantages I’m finding are
that the students really do seem to begin to
understand the research process, their topics, and specific kinds of bibliography
forms. There is much less mindless
Googling and much less plagiarism. So far
I’m finding my new system preferable to
the traditional approach.
Paper Four—In the fourth paper, students turn to the most established works
in our field, which are commentaries and
books on Scripture since 1800. Again, students may use either print copies or online
versions—preferably both—but the bulk
of this research should be from print
copies on the shelves at the library. My
students are generally surprised at this
point to discover how much excellent
material can be found in books, of all
things. I’ve found it useful to designate a
Paper Five—Finally, students look at
journal articles and Internet sources. Use
of relevant electronic indexes for the field
(ATLA in our case) is required, but so is as
much Googling as they want to do. By this
point, the students have become pretty
good authorities on their own topics and
are better able to judge Internet materials.
They do two bibliographies for this paper,
one being the works cited, and the other a
complete list of all the Internet sources
and scholarly articles that might relate,
even if they don’t get used. This longer
bibliography identifies any unreliable or
misleading Internet sources, as well as the
best ones.
April 2006
6
Roll the Dice and Students Participate
By Kurtis J. Swope, U.S. Naval Academy,
Annapolis, MD
swope@usna.edu
recently ran into a former student at a
local restaurant. We talked for a few
minutes about how his classes were going
this semester and what his plans were following graduation. After we talked, it
occurred to me that I had heard him speak
more during this short conversation than
he had during the entire semester he took
my course. I was somewhat appalled, being
that I’m an instructor who prides himself
on engaging (or at least attempting to
engage) students in active classroom participation. Here was a student who had
done well overall in the course but who
had evidently made it through my class
with only a modicum of vocal participation.
I wonder if your experience is like
mine. I find that some students eagerly
volunteer answers and often dominate discussions, while others listen, observe, or
daydream while their classmates hold
forth. I have always been somewhat hesitant to call on inattentive students for fear
of embarrassing them or creating an awkward or uncomfortable classroom atmosphere. However, I have also found that
those reluctant to volunteer often have
quite worthwhile and interesting things to
say when called upon.
I regularly teach a course in statistics,
and a few semesters ago I began using
index cards with students’ names to ran-
I
EXPECTATIONS
FROM PAGE 4
achieve the grades they predicted) and
uninformed optimists who not only were
unable to accurately predict their grades
but also seemed to lack “important learning skills and an appreciation of the factors
that influence and culminate in course success.” (p. 17)
The most interesting part of the discus-
April 2006
domly select them for various tasks, such
as working homework problems on the
board. I used this approach to reinforce the
concepts of probability and sample selection, but I found that when I shuffled the
cards prior to randomly drawing names, a
wave of interest and excitement rippled
through the class. Based on this favorable
response, I started using the cards during
classroom discussions and in other courses
as well. Previously some students were justifiably confident that I would not call on
them if they did not volunteer, but the
cards suddenly made everyone “fair game”
every time.
It was my wife who suggested that I use
dice rolls to simplify and expedite the
selection process. She actually found some
many-sided dice at a local game store that
are perfect for the smaller-sized classes at
my institution. However, dice rolls can also
be easily adapted to larger class sizes by
breaking the section list into several smaller subsections (for example, groups of 10
to 20) and then using two dice rolls—one
to pick the subsection and one to pick the
student.
I found that using the dice rolls frequently to elicit student responses in various contexts has several important advantages: (1) it provides a convenient avenue
for looking past the overeager student who
participates too frequently; (2) it removes
the awkwardness associated with intentionally calling on inattentive students; (3)
it generates a sense of anticipation and
attention because any student can be called
upon at any time; (4) it provides a convenient method of calling on somebody
when nobody seems willing to volunteer
an answer; and (5) it generates greater
variety in student responses.
While I do not have any rigorous
empirical analysis to prove that frequent
use of random selection improves overall
learning outcomes, my personal experience
has been overwhelmingly positive.
Students seem very receptive and goodhumored toward random selection. I am
certain that it improves student attention,
which is often the greatest challenge.
Moreover, most students seem to welcome
the dice roll as an alternative to discussions
dominated by a few classmates. On the
other hand, responses are more frequently
wrong or at least not well formulated. But
these types of responses actually stimulate
greater and deeper discussion because we,
as a class, can stop and analyze the
responses.
I still use “open” discussion quite often,
but the dice rolls are very effective at initiating or changing the pace of a discussion.
I roll the dice whenever I need to select or
assign students to a task. In fact, I now use
the dice rolls so often in class that a student this semester asked, “Sir, do you
always carry that thing around in your
pocket?” I don’t—but maybe I should. I
have a feeling it could come in handy
unexpectedly, like when I can’t decide
which spaghetti sauce to buy.
sion of results explores what to do with the
uninformed optimists. Should a teacher
try to correct their expectations? What
happens to students’ motivation when the
teacher directly and forcefully tells them
that the grades they think they will achieve
are highly unlikely? These researchers recognize that having high expectations
motivates students. They believe that
“uninformed optimists may not benefit
from more realistic appraisals as much as
they would from skills development.”
Instead of trying to discourage grade optimism, teachers ought to make clear what
skills are needed to succeed in the course
(and the rest of their college courses) and
then include opportunities for their development.
Reference: Svanum, S., and Bigatti, S.
(2006). Grade expectations: Informed or
uninformed optimism, or both? Teaching of
Psychology, 33(1), 14–18.
The Teaching Professor