Achieving true engagement in your lecture hall - Heltasa Clickers Presentation Part 2

Editor's Notes

• #11: Due to the interactive nature of using clickers and active involvement in the lesson
• #19: Quality of learning: Qualitative difference when learning with ARS (e.g., better explanations, thinking about important concepts, resolving misconceptions)
• #25: SHOULD describe how a student should be different at the end of a courseReflect the key abilities, attitudes, and items of mastery that a student should (strive to) attainShould be measurable ( not vague, watch terminology)Help students “know what they need to know” in a course.THEY SHOULD*nourishment of intellectual curiosity, * encouragement of independent learners,*development of people able to engage in the more complex thinking processes* knowledge of content* NB Instructor behaviour is aligned with this in the teaching techniques
• #26: THEY SHOULD*nourishment of intellectual curiosity, * encouragement of independent learners,*development of people able to engage in the more complex thinking processes* knowledge of content* NB Instructor behaviour is aligned with this in the teaching techniques
• #28: Motivation depends on students’ background, and can be changed.How to motivate?
• #29: Students need to actively construct an understanding.Construction requires feedback. How to promote active learning?How to provide feedback?
• #30: How to find out and connect to what they already know?
• #38: Think pair share!
• #41: Many instructors see value in structuring a class session into a sequence of activities as a way to help students maintain their attention helps students pay attentionhelp focus their attention in productive ways on particular tasks. gather information from students in order to determine the direction of a class sessiongiving all students a voice in determining that direction.
• #42: fun help students maintain attention and engagement with course activities. Fun helps instructors establish a useful rapport with their students. Some students find competition motivating.
• #43: Anonymity uncovers student perspectives that might not be clear through other meansStudents are able to determine what they understand, what they do not understand, and how they are learning.Instructors learn a lot about what their students understand more frequently through clicker questions that can be acted on before major assessments are assigned. collect information from all students in a classroom quickly, easily, and simultaneously.
• #44: conduct background knowledge probes at the beginning of class sessions Points grades for attendance
• #47: These levels expect deeper conceptual understandingQuestion creation exceriseUse the Bloom’s Taxonomy worksheet to rate the Bloom’s level of your questionSwap your question with a neighbor. Do you agree on the Bloom’s level of your question?Can you think of a way to “Bloomify up” the level of your question?
• #48: Type “ConcepTests” into google This brings up listings of question collections in numerous fields.
• #49: What student learning goals do I have for the question? Consider…1. Mechanics (is it well written? Clear?)2. Depth (Is it trivial, or deep? What level ofBloom’s Taxonomy?)3. Goals (What is this question trying toaccomplish,pedagogically)
• #50: Content Goal: Does the question test an essential aspect of the material? Is it aligned with your learning goal?Cognitive Goal: How do students use the content to arrive at the answer? What does it mean to learn or “do” this subject?What are the cognitive processes involved? Are they comparing and contrasting phenomena, ranking, classifying, or performing a mathematical manipulation?Metacognitive Goal: Are students examining their own thinking?
• #51: What do I want my students to learn by asking this question?
• #52: How might this question be used to engage students with course content in small-group or classwide discussions or by creating a time for telling? Use questions that will prompt discussion.
• #53: What distribution of response do I expect to see from my students?What might I do if the actual distribution turns out very differently?
• #54: Look for answer choices for potential clicker questions in student responses to open-ended questions, ones asked on assignments in previous courses, on homework questions, or during class. This can lead to answer choices that better match common student misconceptions and perspectives.Don’t make them too easy.
• #55: Use a variety of types of clicker questions. experimenting with different kinds of questions can help instructors use clickers in ways that engage students and meet course learning goals Experiment with asking on-the-fly clicker questions Often a classwide discussion leads to spontaneous clicker questions; other times rhetorical questions can be turned into productive clicker questions.
• #56: spend a least some time on each of the answer choices – right and wrong ones. Students often appreciate hearing their instructor’s perspective on the answer choices they selected
• #57: Find other instructors who teach with classroom response systems and share experiences.
• #61: Provides feedback to teacher about student knowledge status
• #62: About new ideas, concepts and knowledge
• #63: Prepare for new knowledge and understanding
• #64: Give students a voice (i.e., survey on their opinions/preferences)
• #78: • Are often focused on conceptual understanding• Deal with important ideas in class• Have common student mistakes (consider answers from past exams orquizzes) as the wrong answers.• Result in a lot of discussion and debate among the students.• Require analysis and reasoning (not simple memorization).
• #79: • Are often focused on conceptual understanding• Deal with important ideas in class• Have common student mistakes (consider answers from past exams orquizzes) as the wrong answers.• Result in a lot of discussion and debate among the students.• Require analysis and reasoning (not simple memorization).
• #81: Given that having students respond to and discuss clicker questions takes class time, do instructors using clickers find it difficult to include as much content in their courses as they would without clickers? o Some instructors find it difficult to include as much content in their courses when they begin using clickers but are satisfied with the trade-off. They believe that if students’ misconceptions are not addressed, subsequent course material will not make sense to students, so class time spent resolving those misconceptions through clicker questions is well spent. Other instructors are satisfied with covering less material because they believe that teaching methods that actively engage students with course material are more effective in the long term than less engaging methods that allow for more time-efficient coverage of content.
• #82: Grading clicker questions on accuracy can give students who correctly answer critical thinking questions the false sense that they have mastered those questions, when in fact it is often quite possible to answer such questions correctly without fully understanding all the reasons for and against the answer choices. Grading clicker questions on accuracy increases the pressure students feel to master course material. Some instructors want their students to feel this pressure, since it can motivate them to seriously engage with course material as it is being presented during class. Other dislike creating high-pressure classroom environments and prefer to grade clicker questions on effort, not accuracy.
• #85: How long should students be given to submit their answers to a clicker question? When should an instructor call time and end voting?
• #86: immediately after gives the students rapid feedback on their learning and can add a bit of dramatic flair Askstudents to write down reasons that the answers they did not choose are incorrectsome students disengage when they learn the correct answer sometimes without fully understandingDelay showing to generate small-group or classwide discussion
• #87: First timers should test the system as thoroughly Limit use to start withHave a backup plan in mindmalfunctioning clickers – have sparesConsider on-the-fly questions
• #88: First timers should test the system as thoroughly Limit use to start withHave a backup plan in mindmalfunctioning clickers – have sparesConsider on-the-fly questions
• #89: Question Idea – confusion meter?I’m bored – speed upI’m with youSlow down a littleI’m totally lostQuestion Idea – Are you done?Click in with your progressStill workingAlmost doneFinished
• #91: "Wait-time" is the amount of time after an initial question has been posed before the teacher answers it him or herself; repeats, rephrases, or adds further information to the question; or accepts an answer from a student. More than just a few seconds are a necessary prerequisite for mental information-processing (Rowe, 1974).
• #92: By far the most common failing is to make questions that are too easy. In this situation, students often see the questions as simply a quiz to keep them awake, and they are annoyed that they had to spend money on clickers only for this purpose. easy questions may mislead students as to the difficulty of the questions they would expect to see on the exam
• #93: You should discuss how clickers will improve your communication with them, the well-established value to learning when students actively engaged in thinking about the subject and figuring out answers to questions, and how clickers make this much easier to achieve in a lecture setting.start with a “Why do you think we use clickers” clicker question in class, as shown below. Possible answers are all components of “active learning” and hopefully you will see a spread of answers.