Notes on Teaching and Learning

The article “How People Learn” from The Week explores Carl Wieman’s ideas about how to improve learning. Wieman, a Nobel laureate in Physics and advocate for research based teaching practice, makes the case for a number of changes to enhance learning.

Reducing cognitive load.

Some ways to do so are obvious, such as slowing down. Others include having a clear, logical, explicit organization to the class (including making connections between different ideas presented and connections to things the students already know), using figures where appropriate rather than relying only on verbal descriptions and minimizing the use of technical jargon.

Addressing beliefs

The particular intervention we have tried addresses student beliefs by explicitly discussing, for each topic covered, why this topic is worth learning, how it operates in the real world, why it makes sense, and how it connects to things the student already knows.

Stimulating and guiding thinking

To do this effectively, teachers must first know where the students are starting from in their thinking, so they can build on that foundation. Then they must find activities that ensure that the students actively think about and process the important ideas of the discipline.

On Tuesday, April 16, the Kaneb Center and the Graduate School held their annual awards dinner to honor the 2013 Outstanding Graduate Student
Teaching Award winners.  This award honors graduate student instructors and TAs whose teaching demonstrates excellence in the classroom or laboratory.  Chris Maziar, acting dean of the Graduate School, and Kevin Barry, director of the Kaneb Center, presented recipients with their awards following a keynote speech from Daniel Myers, vice president and associate provost for faculty affairs.

Visit the press release for more information and the list of recipients: http://graduateschool.nd.edu/news/39415-47-graduate-instructors-receive-2013-outstanding-graduate-student-teaching-awards/

The ability of a student to become a self-directed learner relies on the development of their metacognitive skills, or the ability to reflect and assess their own learning and thinking.   Ambrose et al. 2010 states “to become self-directed learners, students must learn to assess the demands of the task, evaluate their own knowledge and skills, plan their approach, monitor their progress, and adjust their strategies as needed” and that this process is cyclical and dependent on the student’s beliefs about intelligence and learning.  Some students may develop these skills on their own but many will benefit from guided (but not forced) instruction geared towards developing these metacognitive skills.  Specifically, Ambrose et al. suggests a number of techniques in the classroom for developing each of the steps within the cyclical metacognitive process:

Assessing the Task at Hand

• Be More Explicit Than You May Think Necessary
• Tell Students What you Do Not Want
• Check Students’ Understanding of the Task
• Provide Performance Criteria with the Assignment

Evaluating One’s Own Strengths and Weaknesses

• Give Early, Performance-Based Assessment
• Provide Opportunities for Self-Assessment

Planning an Appropriate Approach

• Have Students Implement a Plan That You Provide
• Have Students Create Their Own Plan
• Make Planning the Central Goal of the Assignment

Applying Strategies and Monitoring Performance

• Provide Simple Heuristics for Self-Correction
• Have Students Do Guided Self-Assessments
• Require Students to Reflect on and Annotate Their Own Work
• Use Peer Review/Reader Response

Reflecting on and Adjusting One’s Approach

• Provide Activities That Require Students to Reflect on Their Performances
• Prompt Students to Analyze the Effectiveness of Their Study Skills
• Present Multiple Strategies
• Create Assignments That Focus on Strategizing Rather Than Implementation

Beliefs About Intelligence and Learning

• Address Students’ Beliefs About Learning Directly
• Broaden Students’ Understanding of Learning
• Help Students Set Realistic Expectations

Interested in learning more about promoting self-directed learning in your classroom?  Consider reading “How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching” by Susan A. Ambrose, Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietro, Marsha C. Lovett, and Marie K. Norman available from the Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning Library

*Ambrose, S., Bridges, M.W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M.C., and M.K. Norman, (2010). How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. John Wiley and Sons, San Francisco CA. *

The Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning seeks graduate students with Notre Dame teaching experience to serve as Kaneb Center Graduate Associates for the 2013-2014 academic year.  Kaneb graduate associates facilitate workshops on effective teaching, develop teaching resources, and contribute to other activities to help graduate students develop as teachers.

Graduate associates will receive training (required) to prepare them to serve as workshop leaders and mentors.  In addition, they attend weekly meetings with Dr. Amanda McKendree, assistant director of the Kaneb Center, during which they contribute content and ideas for Kaneb Center program planning.  Throughout the semester, Kaneb graduate associates contribute 6-10 hours per week, depending upon availability, and receive a stipend commensurate with hours worked ($3600-$6000 per academic year).

Applicants should be at least in their 4th year of graduate study while holding this position.

To apply, please submit the information below to kaneb@nd.edu by March 22, 2013.

•  Name
• Address
• Phone
• Email
• Department
• Current year in Graduate School
• Teaching statement describing your teaching experiences, including your teaching philosophy, teaching style, teaching strengths, and a summary of your teaching evaluations.
• Description of professional development activities (teaching workshops, panel discussions, reading groups, etc…).
• Description of workshops or seminars you would like to implement.  These may be current programs that you will revise or programs that are brand new to the Kaneb Center.

Are you interested in learning more about discipline-specific teaching and learning in the university setting? The university offers short credit-bearing summer graduate courses on university teaching and learning in various fields!  Consider taking one of this year’s courses:

GRED 60612: Effective and Exciting Teaching in Social Sciences and Humanities

GRED 60640: Designing and Teaching Your First Biology or Chemistry Course

GRED 60501: Teaching Engineering Tutorials and Laboratories

GRED 60601: Preparing for an Academic Career in Physics, Math, and Engineering

GRED 60301: Multi-modal Communications: Sharing Your Research with Multiple Audiences

GRED 60642: Active Teaching and Learning

GRED 60610: How to Teach Effectively and Prepare for an Academic Career in the Humanities and Social Sciences

For more information visit : http://kaneb.nd.edu/programs/graduate-courses-in-university-teaching-and-learning-gred/ and see the 2013 brochure at http://kaneb.nd.edu/assets/94114/2013brochure.pdf

The following entry from the 2012-2013 Teaching Issues Writing Consortium: Teaching Tips was contributed by Michaella Hammond, Assistant Director for Instructional Design, Saint Louis University.

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Teaching writing online may seem intuitive for many faculty given all of the writing that actually happens in online courses – discussion boards, peer-review projects, research papers, and more. However, using the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing report (http://wpacouncil.org/framework/) as an intellectual and pedagogical springboard for invigorating and improving online writing instruction can be especially helpful for instructors who teach content areas that promote inquiry through writing, online or otherwise.

The Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, and the National Writing Project worked together to research the report’s eight “habits of the mind” for student writers. The eight habits are values most, if not all, educators embrace and strive to nurture in students and writers:

• Curiosity
• Openness
• Engagement
• Creativity
• Persistence
• Responsibility
• Flexibility
• Metacognition

So, how might one go about encouraging these values online, especially for writing communities who work exclusively or partially online? Here are a few suggested resources that embrace the multifaceted nature of writing beyond the discussion board:

Curiosity – WebQuests – learner-created or faculty-crafted – embrace inquiry-centered, collaborative lessons for team learning in addition to visual resources such as the cloud-based graphic organizer creation site, bubbl.us. Sites like Quadrivial Quandary also prompt students to revel in (and practice) word play, pure and simple.

Openness – Building community and praxis through low-stakes, weekly writing opportunities such as Twitter (mini-writing labs that focus on thesis statements or ways to curate timely research) and blogs such as Blogger or WordPress help students write for authentic audiences (in addition to receiving and responding to peer review comments along the way).

Engagement – Online writing conferences between student and professor and/or peer groups can be incredibly instructive. Decide first if the conferences you hold will be asynchronous, for instance, back-and-forth email or a self-paced Google Document, or synchronous, real-time web conferences via programs like Adobe Connect, Google chat, Skype, and others. Beth Hewett’s terrific book, The Online Writing Conference: A Guide for Teachers and Tutors (2010), highlights how inviting students to set agendas for writing conferences invests students in the learning process.

Creativity – Finding one’s voice, especially in writing, can sometimes be difficult. Depending on the conventions and styles you want students to write in, consider inspiring them with some of these clever finds:

• Finding Your Voice by Leo Babauta, Zen Habits blog
• I Write Like (find out which famous writer you sound the most like)
• 750 Words a Day: A great writing tool for students who benefit from daily practice

Persistence – The online environment is, in many respects, ideal for the ever-evolving writing lab and student! Help students take stock of where they’re at in the writing process by providing personalized feedback through screencasting programs such as Jing and Screenr or embedded audio comments in Microsoft Word. To learn more, I highly recommend reading a recent Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy article, “Talking with Students through Screencasting: Experimentations with Video Feedback to Improve Student Learning” (Thompson & Lee, 2012).

Responsibility – To foster student ownership in the writing process, online writing projects should include:

• A clearly written assignment sheet
• A timeline that incorporates the writing process and describes how students will receive feedback from peers and the instructor, when applicable
• A rubric that establishes how the final essay or project will be graded
• A reminder that students should speak up if something is confusing or vexing and not to wait until the last minute to post writing online (Murphy’s law is real)

Flexibility –

• Whenever possible, give students options and choices within writing tasks.
• Understand that students are learning new technologies too; they may need a boost and/or explicit instruction in learning how to use the Learning Management System, web conferencing tool, etc.

Metacognition –

• Self-evaluation is essential to building reflective students. VoiceThread works well for this purpose. Furthermore, a sample student self-evaluation may include questions like these (Cully, 2002).
• Consider having students create online revision portfolios, where earlier work is improved and a reflective letter or analysis explains how and why these revisions were made towards the end of the semester.

For more information about online writing instruction, consider the following useful and timely texts:

• Scott Warnock’s Teaching Writing Online: How & Why (2009)
• Beth L. Hewett’s The Online Writing Conference: A Guide for Teachers and Tutors (2010)
• CCCC Committee on Best Practices in Online Writing Instruction (2013)

What is debate?

Debate is defined as  “a formal discussion where two opposing sides follow a set of pre-agreed rules to engage in an oral exchange of different points of view on an issue” (Akerman and Neale 2011).  Incorporation of debate into the classroom has been shown to (1) improve academic attainment, (2) develop critical thinking, (3) better communication and argumentation skills, and (4) boost aspirations, confidence and cultural awareness (Akerman and Neale 2011).

How do I get started?

The International Debate Education Association (IDEA) is one of several groups promoting the use of debate in the classroom.  IDEA hosts a website full of resources for those who wish to use debate as a tool in their classroom (http://idebate.org/).  For example, the IDEA website includes a database of possible debate topics and lists the top 100 Debates from their website (ranked by total views) (http://idebate.org/view/top_100_debates). Each topic includes a prompt describing the topic, a list of points for and against, and a bibliography of resources (For example see “This house would ban animal testing”).

Are you interested in learning more about the role of debate in the classroom?  Consider attending the Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning workshop “Debating in the Classroom” on Thursday, February 7, 2013.  Visit our website for more information and registration.

Akerman, R. and I. Neale (2011). Debating the evidence: an international review of current situation and perceptions. Research report, CfBT Education Trust. ISBN 978-1-907496-55-4