Teaching Large Classes: Getting Students to Utilize Feedback

Grading and providing feedback is one of the most time consuming things that instructors must do.  Rubrics, written comments, point systems, whatever your grading method may be, it’s no question that you devote a large amount of time using it to provide constructive feedback to your students.  But what happens when those comments, suggestions, and point values are never read?  When students simply skip over your handwritten responses to glance at the letter grade and stuff the assignment away?  How do we get students to not just read the feedback that is provided to them, but to also take it constructively to use on future work?
 

Surprisingly, the first step to curing this problem is reconsidering the ways in which you provide the feedback itself.  According to Maryellen Weimer in her article “Getting Students to Act on our Feedback,” the feedback we so often provide to students tends to be more about justifying the grade we’ve awarded rather than highlighting what a student needs to do to improve.  Instead, include “three or four specific suggestions that target what the student should work on to improve the next assignment.”

I know what you’re saying, “But that still won’t help if the students aren’t actually reading the feedback anyway!”  Weimer provides a solution to that as well.  She suggests providing students with a few minutes in class to look over and read through their feedback, and then asking them to write an action plan on how they will use that feedback to improve their work in the future.  This action plan doesn’t have to be long, just a few statements will do.  You could even have students start with the same opening line, “Based on the teacher’s feedback and my own assessment of this work, here are the three things I plan to improve in the next assignment.” 

If you don’t particularly like the paragraph response as an option, try one of these instead:

• Write in revisions – this is a particularly helpful method with papers and written work.  Have students turn in their work a second time, but making note of the revisions they made according to the comments and suggestions that you had provided on their first-round paper.

• Collaborative revisions – have students bring in their work to review with someone near them.  Students should focus on the feedback you provided and then decide on ways that each of them could utilize that feedback to revise their work.

These assignments encourage students to take the constructive criticism you’ve provided and use it to become better writers, thinkers, and studiers in the future.

Tip Provided By: Jessica Moser

Teaching Large Classes: Pre-Class Assignments

Time flies when you’re having fun.  Maybe this phrase is to blame when you realize week after week that your classes have flown by, and you didn’t have nearly as much time as you thought you would.  And if that weren’t troublesome enough, this challenge only increases with the number of students per class, forcing professors and students alike to feel rushed through material.

Professors at Vanderbilt university propose a way to alleviate these time constraint stresses by getting students engaged in class material outside of scheduled class hours, and then using in-class hours for discussion, collaboration, and debates.  Here's how they do it.

Students are assigned a pre-class bit of homework (much like the already are in most classes).  These homework assignments are more about involving students in contemplating the content rather than formulating structured responses, so the style of responses may vary throughout the semester.  Some examples of this pre-class homework are:

• Watching a video

• Responding to a news article

• Developing an argument based on a reading

• Choosing a quote from a reading that stood out to them

• Reading a case study

• Listening to a podcast

Even though the design of this pre-class work can look different each time, the goal is always to get students to begin thinking critically about the content on an individual level before arriving for class. 

Once class time does roll around, your students will have prepared an understanding of the content you will be covering.  It is suggested that you take some time to explain to students that being prepared for class includes: being able to make claims about the reading and use examples to back up those claims, make connections between the things they've read about and their own experiences, and be able to work with the text in a knowledgeable and insightful way.  (Asking them to create lists, annotate their texts, or write a summary of their arguments are all useful ways for them to prepare.)

Vanderbilt professors then utilize these developed ideas by arranging students into groups of no more than six students.  Ask your groups of students to discuss the responses that they came up with on an individual basis about the homework, and consider how their individual responses compare to one another.  You might even choose to assign another shorter reading for them to delve into as a group in order to stir up some new ideas.

Later, choose groups to share what they discussed concerning the main elements of class that day.  This may spike mutual agreement over a text, but it could also transform into a debate of ideas between class members, forcing them to decide on ways to structure their argument based on facts and ideas they have constructed themselves from the course material.

It's recommended to alternate using pre-class homework strategies like this one and regular lecture class days on a weekly basis so that students are able to interact directly with the material they are learning, and still gain insight through direct instruction.  Or, a daily combination of pre-class work alongside interactive lecture would work just as well.

Tip Provided By: Jessica Moser

Teaching Large Classes: Using the Exit Ticket Strategy

Due to the vast amount of students in large class settings, many professors face the same challenge of how to gauge what your students have taken away from a particular session.  Did they truly understand the main ideas of the lecture?  Did they have any questions that weren't answered?  These issues can be eased through the use of exit ticket strategies

An exit ticket is something each student hands in before leaving at the end of class.  On it, students might answer a question, state the main point of the lecture, or ask a question that they have about the content that had been covered.  The ticket can be a note card, a scrap of notebook paper, or a sticky note.  The only real requirement of the ticket itself is that it must be able to serve as a way for students to convey a message to the professor.

Here are some ways to utilize an exit ticket within your class:

1. Ask students to take the last few minutes of class to write about what they believed was the most important point in class that day.

2. Have students write a question they still have regarding the material.

3. Ask students to answer a specific question that you come up with regarding the material that was covered in class that day.

After this has been completed, simply provide a space for students to hand in or drop off their exit tickets before they leave, and viola!  You have instant feedback on your most recent lecture.

This strategy enables you to reinforce concepts that were confusing to students, and to see what main concepts students left class knowing.

Other ways to include the exit ticket strategy include:

• Requiring post-class discussion posts on D2L to see if students have questions about the content covered in class each day.
• Instead of handing in their tickets, students could use the last few minutes of class to discuss the things they wrote about on their cards with their peers around them.  Often, this leads to clarification through discussion with each other.
• Exit tickets don't necessarily need to used at the end of class.  If you'd like to implement them at the beginning or middle to evoke discussion or problem-solving, go for it!

 Tip Provided By: Jessica Moser

Contract Learning: Pros and Cons

"Allowing students to decide which grade they wish to strive for, which activities they will engage in, and how they will demonstrate that they have satisfactorily completed their studies permits a teacher to seize upon powerful motivating forces within individual students ... This notion shifts responsibility for learning from the teacher to the student, but at the same time offers an incentive by insuring success under known conditions. Students are challenged without being threatened." (Frymier, 1965)

Research and implementation of learning contracts within the classroom has been taking place for more than fifty years.  However, for those of us who have not interacted first hand with a learning contract, it may seem like a foreign world.  Here are some things to keep in mind about learning contracts in order to be more informed about whether they are the right fit for you in your own classroom.

What is a learning contract?

A learning contract is a written agreement between you and your students on an individual level that identifies the content that each student will be learning, specifies the methods and strategies that will be used to learn the content, and specific resources that will be used in order to learn the content.  From there, the student compiles specific types of evidence they will be using to demonstrate learning and how the evidence will be validated.

How do students know what to include on learning contracts?

Teachers may choose to allow students to creatively come up with their own ways to demonstrate learning, or more frequently, teachers provide a list of pre-approved options for students to choose from.

What are the benefits of learning contracts?

Students are required to become more self-directing and more responsible for their own learning.

Choice is a powerful thing.  Studies have shown that students learn material more deeply and permanently if they learn through projects of their own choice instead of direct lecturing or teaching.

Using learning contracts directly creates individualized instruction between teacher and student.  Since both you, and your students will be creating a contract together, you continue to stay engaged in the learning process together.

What are the negatives of learning contracts?

Research proves that required learning contracts are not nearly as beneficial as those that are willingly agreed upon.  Therefore, it is suggested that you offer the choice to enter into a learning contract, and allow students to choose between that or a required project that doesn’t allow the same amount of choice.

Students may break the contract.  Before determining that learning contracts are something that you want to utilize as a teaching tool, you should first consider what consequences you are willing to enforce should a student break their learning contract.

Interested in creating a learning contract, but not sure where to begin?

Click here for instructions on how to design your own. 

Tip Provided By:  Jessica Moser

Teaching Tip: "Today We Will"

Disengagement and lack of accountability are just a few issues that are commonly seen in college students.  With ever-growing classroom sizes, how do we continue to keep students engaged and accountable for what they’re learning?  Two words: learning objectives.  As seen in successful primary and secondary classrooms across the globe, students tend to work best when they understand what their learning objectives are for each class period.  Thus embarks “Today We Will” learning.  

A concept taken from listing learning objectives, “Today We Will” requires only 2 things. 

1. Teachers write “Today We Will” and then a list of the main things they hope their students to learn or take away from their class that day.  

2. Teachers keep that list up for students to see for the entirety of the class period.  

Simply listing the objectives for class that day provides students with a road map of what they can expect and listen for throughout class.  This keeps students engaged in a checklist of sorts, allowing them to keep track of each of the main points your lesson focuses on, and what they should make note of as important for future classes, assignments, projects, or exams.  

A “Today We Will” list also prompts student questions if they become lost or confused on a particular topic.  Writing out your objectives makes students more accountable for making sure they fully understand each concept before the class is over.

Keep in mind that your "Today We Will" list doesn't have to be absolutely specific.  You might choose to include a statement like, "Today we will go over three big questions that are on the midterm." Not only does this make students more attentive, it also encourages them to attend class, arrive on time, and compensate for any portion that they may have missed.

Tip Provided By:  Jessica Moser

Active Learning Activities - Debbie Ernie, English

While this seems like a prime moment for me to engage in the whimsical rhetoric my writing typically includes, I will spare you from some bizarre analogy or tangential introduction and instead let you immediately get to a better piece of rhetoric: Professor Debbie Ernie’s active learning activity focused on (you guessed it) rhetoric.

Setting: Activity implemented in multiple sections of same 100-level course; activity takes about 20 minutes in active learning classroom (5 pods with 4 students per pod) but time varies in traditional classrooms due to prep and transition time for class sharing (see extended discussion below)

Purpose of the activity: For the Blugold Seminar in Critical Reading and Writing, we place a large emphasis on rhetoric as a way for students to transfer knowledge learned in the seminar to other classes or writing they will do on their chosen career paths. A good entry point for many students is through advertisements and social media, examples of rhetoric they come into contact with regularly, examples that might have more obvious elements of rhetoric. For this activity, done both in an active learning and traditional classroom, my students were identifying rhetorical choices made in advertisements. The goal here was to review concepts we had been discussing in their own words and through their own analyses of use of the term.

Setup for the activity + how the activity unfolded in the classroom: This activity would come toward the beginning of a discussion of the elements of rhetoric, but after having done some work/reading as an entire class on these elements. This activity is thus a bit of review/testing student knowledge, as well as a chance for students to begin to play with these devices themselves. This activity took place in both an active learning room and traditional classrooms. I will discuss the procedure for the active learning version. Then, I will discuss the differences when placed in a traditional space.

Active Learning Procedure: Before the students arrived, I wrote one element of rhetoric we had been discussing on each whiteboard (near each pod). We had one extra whiteboard. On that board, I listed some options –print advertisement, YouTube video, meme, etc. Once students had taken their respective seats, I discussed the activity:

1. As a group, find or create a strong example of use of your board's element.
2. This example can take any of the forms listed on the extra board.
3. Be prepared to share with the class. You will need to define your element in your own words (review) and explain your example's use of said element. Why is this a strong example? How is your concept at work here.

Students took time searching and/or creating as a pod-group using the computers at each pod. I walked around to answer questions and comment on their finds. All groups sought out several examples and then voted on the best use of their given element, which I was pleased to see! This is why I allowed for some wiggle room as far as time. Once each group had made their final choice (two created something, three found something), we shared. I displayed images from each pod to all of the other pods and projector screens as groups discussed.

Traditional Classroom Comparison: This was a fairly simple but effective use of our technology. Just how effective this was came into play when attempting similar activities in my more traditional classrooms. Because of a lack of pods, a more traditional classroom has certain limitations that lead to needed prep work by the instructor or students. Some options: I bring magazines into the classroom, this of course limits options for discovery; students are asked to bring in advertisements, this is an issue for coordinating group work on this small of an activity, as well as the issue that many students print in black and white, which plays into rhetorical concerns; students bring in laptops; or I instruct students the day-of to make up their own advertisement or meme (could do so with scratch paper or laptops). Even in making these decisions, the small activity becomes more complicated. Because I teach several sections, I tried a few variations. I brought in magazines, a wide variety, but felt students spent less time analyzing multiple options, and rather just picked one at almost-random (NOT a goal of this activity). I also asked students to choose their own advertisements before class, as well as bringing in laptops. With the choosing of individual ads, students were given assigned elements ahead of time.

The group work once in the classroom felt limited with the group search aspect removed. I certainly could not assess their searching and critical thinking involved in person. We also had to waste some time moving into groups, no matter the prep chosen, especially in a classroom filled with rows of desks. While the project got them reviewing rhetoric, and while I would not necessarily cut it from future classes in more traditional rooms, these versions certainly presented more challenges. Lastly, sharing could be done one of two ways –groups coming up to the front to display their ad/meme, or small groups sharing with another nearby group. Again, a little more finagling required and time-wasted.

After the activity: The assessment was tied into the sharing portion of the activity, both the review and analysis of the use of the concept for each group. Assessing their work and knowledge was certainly more easily observable in situations where they were searching while in the room.

Additional comments from the instructor: On a scale of 1 to 5 (with 5 = high success), I would rate this activity as a 3-4 for a traditional classroom. It requires more prep from the teacher and/or students and makes the group aspect and sharing of the activity less accessible. If I were to rate this in an active learning setting, however, I would give it a 4-5. This activity runs smoothly in these classrooms, and is an easy and fun way to utilize our technology.

Tip provided by: Debbie Ernie
Write up by: Jon Pumper

Active Learning Activities - Abra Brisbin, Math

Tragically, many students come to college with very little modeling experience. Not modeling in the sense of fashionably wearing retail clothing or modeling in the sense of painstakingly gluing tiny pieces together in order to make ostentatious little cars, but modeling in the sense of deriving mathematical equations to represent real-world phenomenon. Dr. Abra Brisbin, Department of Mathematics, utilizes an active learning teaching technique called “information search” to get her students to interact with models in a meaningful way.

Setting: Activity utilizing pod groups (5 pods with 3 students per pod), groups reporting out, and a discussion involving the whole class

Setup for the activity: Students were assigned to read two papers ("Just modeling through: A rough guide to modeling" by Michael Pidd and "It's the findings, stupid, not the assumptions" by Stephen Shugan) and write answers to three questions about the papers before class.

How the activity unfolded in the classroom: I assigned each group one of the first 5 principles of modeling discussed in Pidd's paper. They discussed their assigned principle within their pod, and used the whiteboards to write answers to the following questions: What does this principle mean? Why is it important? Give an example of applying the principle. While discussing within their pods, several groups used the computers at each table to bring up a copy of the paper to refer to.

After about 15 minutes, I asked a member of each group to explain their answers to the rest of the class. I solicited discussion on connections between the principles and students' prior knowledge by asking, "Did any of the principles surprise you?" and "How could this principle apply to the model of the wolf population we worked on last week?"

After the activity: The presentation by students and discussion were part of the activity. On a subsequent homework problem, students were asked to build a model of the number of restaurants in the United States, and write a paragraph describing how their model-building process illustrated a principle of modeling.

Additional comments from the instructor: "I was pleased that this activity got students to think about the broader context of modeling, in contrast to the specific mathematical tools for modeling that are the focus of most of the course. In the future, I would like to spend more time discussing the Shugan paper (most of the time was spent discussing the Pidd paper), and integrate additional questions throughout the term to call students' attention back to this activity."

Tip provided by Abra Brisbin

Write-up by Jon Pumper