How to Deepen Student Learning

Making adjustments to your courses can seem like an overwhelming task.  However, it may only take a few minor adjustments in order to promote a deeper level of learning within your own courses.  According to Tyler Griffin, PhD, associate professor at Brigham Young University, there are six “A” categories to consider in order to broaden student understanding a promote a healthier learning experience within your courses.

Adjustments

Most courses don’t need a complete overhaul, but instead need just a few minor adjustments for a smoother experience.  Consider the common complaints or top frustrations you hear from students year after year, then ask yourself if there are any small things that you could address that would make a big impact.  Where do students tend to struggle?  What can you do to support students through the most difficult sections?  In most cases, it’s not possible to remove every single obstacle to learning, but there are things you can do to better support student learning.

Audience

Begin getting to know your students by asking them to tell you a little bit about their backgrounds, struggles, and successes.  This could be done via a survey at the beginning of the semester or through one-on-one meetings scheduled with you before the semester gets in full swing.  Another important concept to consider is why the students enrolled in your class are taking it.  Is it to fulfill a graduation requirement?  Is it because they have a specific interest in the topic?  Have they heard good things about the course from other students, prompting them to try it out for themselves?

Learning more about your students provides a large ability to conduct your course in a way that is beneficial for the learning of all of your students.  Do they get sleepy if you dim the lights for too long?  Are they easily distracted by technology or other students?  Are there times when they zone out during class that you could choose to implement an active learning technique to keep them engaged?

Applicability

Be sure to consider how your course is going to help students not only succeed in your class, but in their life and careers.  Then, let them in on these things.  Students who are able to see relevance of a course and the content covered within it are more motivated to succeed.  Also do this for each assessment you assign, notifying your students the sort of things you hope this assessment to accomplish for them.

Adaptability

We’ve all heard the classic research that students tend to lose grasp on their concentration after seven to 15 minutes of lecture.  In fact, more recently, research has shown that the time frame for concentration may be even close to three to five minutes.  Delivering bite-sized chunks of information interspersed with appropriate active learning exercises and context builders is one way to keep students interested and engaged throughout the entirety of the class.  Griffin specifically states the importance of using the “three Ex’s” of instruction: explanations, examples (and non-examples), and experiences.

Accentuation

Providing students with the opportunity to process important information in multiple ways over a longer period of time promotes deeper learning and comprehension.  Therefore, since students are most apt to accept cramming as an inevitable way of studying, explain and demonstrate other more effective studying techniques like exposing crucial information in steps and revisiting it often to build upon their knowledge about it.  This can lead to deeper understanding and overall better comprehension of curriculum.  Griffin suggests making sure students are exposed to critical items more than once or twice in your classes for optimum retention.

Assessments

Students often see course content as a bunch of disjointed units rather than information that builds upon itself over time. Therefore, when designing your course and course assessments, consider the big picture that you’d like your students to leave the course with.  Create relevant, increasingly complex assessments in order to help them demonstrate the ways in which information continues to build upward and outward into a broader and deeper understanding of material.

Adapted From: Faculty Focus

Written By: Jessica Moser 

Advantages and Disadvantages of Different Types of Test Questions

There are several different ways to pose questions that tests students’ knowledge.  Creating a solid exam means being able to determine what a student knows and is able to do by the time testing takes place.  Therefore, it is good to regularly review the advantages and disadvantages of the most commonly used tests questions and the test banks that are frequently used.

The most common forms of tests questions include: multiple-choice, true-false, short-answer, essay, and questions provided by test banks.  If you’ve used any of these types of test questions in your courses, consider what the benefits and downfalls of including each type are.  For more information on the advantages and disadvantages of each type, read this article from an issue of Faculty Focus by none other than Maryellen Weimer.

Written By: Jessica Moser

Benefits of Using Rubrics

Though more commonly used in K-12 classes, rubrics can work as a fantastic form of communication between student and teacher.  When rubrics are utilized for a course, students need only to glance at their rubric for an assignment for expectations and specific components of focus for an assignment.

Why use rubrics?

Firstly, rubrics help instructors do a plethora of things within their courses including remaining consistent in their assessment of assignments between students, provide feedback that promotes student learning in a sustainable way, and clarifying expectations of an assignment for students.  Some instructors have even found that rubrics help save them time when grading large amounts of work, since the grading criteria remains the same throughout.  These instructors still spend time writing comments, but they are then also able to return to the scale their rubrics are set on in order to grade more efficiently.

Secondly, rubrics also help students.  Providing students with a copy of a rubric before they being completing an assignment will help them understand overall expectations for their work, and will make note of specific components that are listed on their rubrics.  Students are also more likely to become aware of their learning process and the progress that they make throughout the class by utilizing the feedback received on rubrics to improve in the future.

How can you develop a rubric?

There are several different types of rubrics that you can choose to employ within your classroom depending on which one works best for the work you’re assigning.  If you’re new to rubrics, start small by creating one rubric for one assignment in a semester.  This will allow you to test the waters and see if rubrics work well for you within your own courses.  It may also be beneficial to ask colleagues if they have developed rubrics for similar assignments, just to get an idea of what sort of rubrics might be the most helpful. 

When creating a rubric, consider how you would outline the elements or critical attributes that will be evaluated for the assignment.  Then work on creating an evaluative range for performance quality underneath each element.  Leave comment boxes next to each section of the rubric for optional comments on specific components or to reference students back to a particular section of their work.  From there, all that’s left is to assign a numerical scale to each level.  Be sure to provide students with a copy during class and walk through the components together, asking for questions along the way.

For those of you who would rather type your comments, consider making your rubric into a fill-able PDF that can easily be sent out to students.

Adapted from: Cornell University CTE

Written by: Jessica Moser 

A Note-Taking Refresher

Thinking back, I can’t even begin to count how many times I was reminded as a student that taking good notes involved thought.  I remember teachers putting up PowerPoint presentations and warning us that if we simply record what is written on each slide word-for-word we would never truly understand the content.  Despite this, we were rarely told why or shown ways to improve note-taking as an approach to learning.

What students often don’t realize is that taking notes requires strategy, organization, and personal connections.  Taking notes is a way for students to actively listen and engage with the material that is being presented.  This is especially true if students attempt to put what the instructor says into their own words.  Among the piles of research on note-taking, essentially the same message can be found: students need to be working with, writing down, or keying in this information for themselves in order to gain the deepest form of understanding.

Therefore, rather than providing all information needed on slides for students, consider including skeletal concepts for them to build off of themselves.  List some key words (especially those that are difficult to spell), charts, tables, graphs, diagrams, and links to other references or websites.  That way, when posting these presentations online after class, students can still review these basic notes without fully relying on them as a singular source of information.

There is a chance that students will struggle with these notes, claiming that they are too vague or don’t contain enough information for them to remember anything.  If this happens, encourage them to develop note-taking skills and motivate them to take notes by showing them the value of a good set of notes.

Need some help on where to start?  Here are some short activities that you can use with your students:

• When you say something important, provide students with a slightly elongated time to write it down (word for word if they like).  Then ask them to take a moment or two and look at what they’ve written and write it again in their own words.  Studies show taking time to write things in your own word strengthens understanding and overall retention of information.

• Usually, students are focused on listening for main points and jotting down as little as possible to stay on track with the tempo of the lecture.  After a larger chunk of information, provide students with a few moments, encouraging them to look back on what they’ve written and add more if their understanding of the concept has increased.  Ask probing questions like, “Where do you need more information?” or “What’s the most important thing you’ve got in your notes on this topic?”

• Start off your class by asking a question students should be able to answer using their notes from the previous class.  What do they have written that relates to that question?  Ask them to talk to the person sitting next to them about what they have in their notes on the topic.  Then provide them with the opportunity to revise or add to their notes if needed.

• A similar activity can be done when you are debriefing an exam.  Ask students to spend some time looking through their notes concerning a question that a lot of students missed on the exam.  If they have a hard time locating the information, slowly begin giving them hints like what date the content was covered.  Do they have the content they needed in that area?  What should they have written down?

• Don’t spend too much time telling students how to use their notes.  Remember that each student learns differently and while one technique may work really well for some students, it could cause great frustration for others.  Instead, consider asking questions on how students utilize their notes before taking an exam.  Ask questions like: “What’s gained by rewriting your notes?” “Is it valuable to highlight, underline, or otherwise mark key ideas in your notes?” “Should you compare notes with somebody else in the course?” “Do you use your class notes when you’re reading the text?  Should you?” “How often should you be looking at your notes?”

• Consider the idea of letting students use their notes during a quiz.  It doesn’t have to be all or nothing—you might only let them use them for one quiz, or for only a few minutes on each quiz.  Providing students with the possibility of using notes will likely motivate more note-taking, which in turn, means more listening and engaging with the material.  It also provides students with a realistic approach to learning as in most careers, professionals do have access to information when they are preparing answers.

Adapted from: Magna Publications

Written By: Jessica Moser

Using Learning Logs in the College Classroom

It’s no question that reflection is an important element in the learning process.  In order to move forward utilizing newly-learned information, knowledge has to be moved from working to long-term memory.  Reflection is a great tool to use in order to make this transfer take place.

Thus, learning logs.  Kadriye O. Lewis, a professor of pediatrics at the UKMC School of Medicine uses learning logs in order to promote student reflection in her online courses.  Essentially, a learning log is a journal-entry based learning tool that students are asked to fill out after each section of a course.  In these logs, students write about things like:

• What they learned

• What they studied

• What struggles they faced

• What they would like to know more about

• What they would like help with

• What their plans are for future work in the course

• What experiences they have had that relate directly to the discussion topic

Naturally, these are only a few suggestions and learning logs can be utilized in a variety of different ways.  Regardless of what prompt students are asked to consider, the purpose of the log is to strengthen student comprehension and retention of information through reflection on their learning experiences.  These kinds of reflections have been shown to improve students’ metacognitive ability to self-monitor their own learning, and thus, improve learning itself through this process.  Students are involved in a more active way of learning and are asked to think about the content in a deeper and practical way.

Not to mention, learning logs provide a great way for teachers to get to know their students.  Since students are writing about their learning processes through a specific section of the course, instructors are able to use this information in order to understand each student’s comprehension of the material and offer clarification where needed.  This is especially helpful in online communities where student/teacher interaction tends to be considerably lower than face-to-face courses.

Adapted from: Magna Publications

Written By: Jessica Moser 

Why Frequent Exams are Better

Implementing exams throughout courses is a necessary evil, and it has been widely accepted by students and instructors alike that the times of midterms and finals are times of panic and disarray.  However, this anxiety might be less about the fact that students are required to take a test and more about the lack of test-taking they’ve experienced previously in the class.

In 2007, a study was completed in which a control group was set to have students only complete two midterm exams and a cumulative final throughout the semester.  This was in turn compared to an experimental group that required the completion of biweekly exams (six in total) as well as the same cumulative final as the control group.  The findings from this study proved very interesting indeed.

Students a part of the experimental group with biweekly exams scored, on average, about 10 percentage points (or one letter grade) higher on exams throughout the semester.  Plus, they scored about 15 percentage points higher on the final than students in the control group.

This wasn’t the only thing that had shown to be different between these two groups.  The control group experienced a decline in student enrollment when more than 11 percent of the students withdrew from the course.  Not a single student withdrew from the experimental section.  The improvement frequent exams made on the course was also seen in course ratings, as students who were a part of the experimental group rated the course and instructor higher overall in each.  In fact, 71 percent of students in the control group rated their instructor as “one of the best” they’ve had, vs. just a 36% rating from the control group.  (Note that both of these courses were taught by the same professor.)

So why was so much improvement seen between these two groups?  What is it about frequent exams that make the class more valuable to students?

Students are consistently exposed to information.  This paired with less material to learn at a time for the biweekly exams helped contribute to overall retention and understanding of course material.  This also amounted to receiving feedback more frequently and earlier on in the semester, allowing students to gauge what they should change about their learning habits in order to improve their scores.

Tip Provided By: Jessica Moser

Myers, C.B., and Myers, S.M. (2007). Assessing assessments: The effects of two exam formats on course achievement and evaluation. Innovative Higher Education, 31, 227–236.

Student Comments and End-of-Course Evals: The Battle

Now that courses are finished for the semester, it’s time to attempt to decipher the meaning behind the vague student comments that are left for you on their end-of-course evaluations.  This is by no means a simple task, as sometimes these comments can leave you left wondering, “Just what in the world are they trying to say?  Why don’t they write more specific things?”

The way I see it, you receive such vague comments for two big reasons.  1) Students are in the middle of wrapping up their semester, something that usually means late hours, more papers, tests, and projects to prepare for, and a constant busy mind.  This can distract them from writing things that are truly meaningful since they are often less concerned with the state of their evaluation than they are with their own ever-growing to-do list inside of their heads.  2) Students often don’t believe that evaluations are taken all that seriously among professors.  Not only is this because they asked to complete them for every class they are enrolled in, but also because they won’t be witnessing any changes or differences their evaluations make, as most students won’t be in your class again after the semester is over.

Several common things that students tend to comment on in their vague, clipped way are: organization, fairness, and what was most difficult about the course.  These seem pretty straightforward as far as answers go, but what is a professor to do with a comment like “disorganized” when they can’t think of a single time they demonstrated disorganization?

As it turns out according to a study performed by Carol Lauer, student and instructor definitions of these terms are actually different.  For example, nearly one third of the faculty surveyed by Lauer stated that they believed “disorganized” to reference a teacher who changes or doesn’t follow their syllabus.  When surveying a group of students on the same term, only 11% of them said they agreed that’s what the term meant to them.  Instead, students stated the term “disorganized” could mean a variety of things including lack of preparedness by the instructor, lack of lesson plan, and not returning work in a reasonable amount of time.

The same disparity can be seen for the phrase “not fair.”  To instructors, this term means an issue in grading, but to students, it means a teacher who doesn’t treat all students equally.

With all of this said, there are three things to consider.

1. How you communicate the impact of teaching policies and practices on efforts to learn with your students.  Keeping this conversation an ongoing effort in your course will essentially allow students to see a willingness on your end to make their learning experience the best possible.
2. The use of mid-term evaluations (facilitated by your friendly CETL team) for your classes in the future.  Implementing mid-term evals is a good way to show students the efforts you are making to improve your course in the most efficient ways possible.
3. Asking your students to be as specific as possible before they write their end-of-course evaluations.  Hearing this request in person rather than reading it on the form can help students to give more attention to what they are writing and how they are writing it. 

Tip Provided By: Jessica Moser

Adapted from Magna Publications