Dr. Leah Olson-McBride on Role-Playing

Role-playing exercises offer a unique way of learning material: they require a high amount of imagination and communicating skills that are useful in any discipline. Dr. Leah Olson-McBride, Department of Social Work, shares how she uses Role-Playing exercises in her class:

One thing I’ve started doing in my Groups and Families class—a class where we teach the students how to be social workers with groups and family units—is a fishbowl activity, where students will actually role-play and act out a scenario. In the middle of the class, after teaching specific techniques regarding the upcoming scenario, I put up a case study on the screen and pull some students from the class to live out the situation. One person will play the social worker, other students will be the family, etc. After the performance, the class will give feedback on what the social worker did well, and what they could improve upon. Students seem to be really anxious about participating, but always give good feedback on it. A common response I’ll get is: “I was really nervous being chosen, but I’m really glad I got to do it.” If it’s really hard content, sometimes I’ll have them show me the worst way to do it first: it takes the pressure off performing perfectly, and, of course, the students think it’s really funny.

Role-playing can actually be applied to nearly every discipline: view creative examples and types of role-playing exercises at Carleton’s teaching website here. 

Interview by: Jon Pumper

Dr. Lisa Quinn-Lee on Online Videos

Besides all conveniently starting with a “c,” cars, corn, and classes have something else in common: they are steadily becoming more and more hybrid (except maybe for corn, which has been a hybrid product for quite some time*).  A hybrid course can open up a lot of new teaching and learning opportunities that were not originally present in traditional face-to-face meetings. Dr. Lisa Quinn-Lee, Department of Social Work, shares her experience with hybrid courses and online videos:

I’m a big proponent of hybrid classes. I periodically switch a regular meeting day to online when I want to utilize a video that is difficult to grapple with or contains high-emotional content. As a professor of social work, this happens quite frequently. I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from my students regarding this: students say that they are happy they were able to deal with the emotional content privately, stopping and starting the video on their own terms when it gets too difficult to watch. As an additional bonus for me, I don’t have to watch the video a million times! I have the students respond to the video on a D2L discussion board, which I think is extremely useful: students who aren’t as comfortable talking in class—either in general or with these more difficult subjects—are much more comfortable discussing in an online format, which generates a lot of rich, meaningful discussion.

To view some quick tips on setting up a blended/hybrid course, view University of Milwaukee’s resource page here.

*For more information on hybrid corn, view History of the US Industry Hybrid Corn here.

                                                

Interviewed by: Jon Pumper

Dr. Lisa Quinn-Lee on Guided-Reading Assignments

Large reading assignments are like large T-bone steaks: on any given day, they run the risk of not completely getting done (I personally like my steak medium-rare, so that’s not an issue for me). And much like underprepared steak, underprepared students are increasingly more likely to invoke stomach trauma for everyone in the classroom. Dr. Lisa Quinn-Lee, Department of Social Work, describes how she utilizes guided-reading questions to help her students get through tough reading assignments and be better prepared for in-class discussion:

One thing I do when I give my students reading assignments—especially if the reading is dense or difficult—is create complementary guided-reading questions. It’s a trick I actually learned from CETL during one of the many workshops I’ve attended over the years. It usually ends up being 10 questions a chapter that focuses students’ attention on the important segments of the reading. I randomly check throughout the semester to see if they have them done (so if there are 15 reading assignments, I might check 5 of them over the period of the course). This ensures that students will come to class prepared and ready to discuss those 10 questions, which leads to very active class periods. It additionally helps me write the exams (I base them off of the reading questions) and helps the students study for the exams: their work serves as a personalized study guide.

Interviewed by: Jon Pumper

Teaching Tip: Dr. Leah Olson-McBride on Minute Writes

Minute Writes are the quickest, easiest, and most immediate way to get feedback from students. Dr. Leah Olson-McBride, Department of Social Work, describes how she implements them in her class:

I use the Minute Writes in content heavy classes, like my Research Methods course. Students write on scrap paper and anonymously put down what they get, and what they don’t get regarding that day’s material. I also added a restaurant-comment prompt they can address: what can I do to improve your experience in this class? The students will fill these out occasionally, mostly when I get a read that a lot of people are not getting it. I’ll read them after class, and if I see any big themes about things they aren’t understanding, I reteach that material at the beginning of the next class in a different way. Having the additional source of feedback on how the overall course is going is really helpful too: it’s as useful to hear that everything is going all right as it is to hear that you need to change something.

Interviewed by: Jon Pumper

For more information and variations on the Minute Write, view Carleton College’s compilation here.