Hello, and welcome to Teaching, a free weekly newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education. This week Beth tells you about a reader who says that, contrary to a recent newsletter, short workshops can be effective at changing teaching habits — and she offers a couple of tips. Dan shares some ideas that can help you kick off the semester, and a recent debate about how expertise can be a double-edged sword in teaching. And Beckie lets you know about some coming events to consider putting on your calendar. Let’s start.
Short but Effective
We like it when our readers argue with us. Really. It means that we’ve touched a nerve, or that you have a different perspective and want to share it. Case in point: This month I wrote about an eight-week, active-learning institute for faculty members at the University of California at Irvine.
Rebecca Brent, a seasoned teacher of active-learning strategies, primarily for STEM professors, wrote to tell me that she was “a little dismayed” that I seemed to dismiss the value of short workshops. “I completely agree that most faculty would need more than a single workshop to really learn all the ins and outs of, say, students working in teams,” she wrote. “But a well-designed workshop can go a long way toward persuading faculty to try nontraditional teaching approaches and helping them acquire the basic skills to get started.”
That got me curious: How can you run a short, effective workshop on something so complex? In one day can you really persuade professors to change their teaching? A former associate professor of education, Brent has run, by her estimate, more than 500 short workshops through her consulting firm, Education Designs. I figured she’d know, so I gave her a call. Here are some takeaways from our conversation:
Show AND tell. Don’t just talk about active learning. Do it. Brent and her partner, Richard M. Felder, a professor emeritus of chemistry at North Carolina State University, take participants through various active-learning exercise so they can feel what it’s like to learn through collaboration and open-ended problem solving. That, she says, starts turning on the lightbulbs.
Give concrete suggestions. Many workshops err on the side of theory, Brent says, and assume professors know how to apply it to their classroom. “It’s often not that easy,” she notes. Two favorite techniques she shares: At the end of every class, ask students to write down short answers to two questions: What was the main point of class today, and what was the muddiest point? Their responses can tell you what you need to work on. Another basic technique is to group students in twos or threes, and get them to do something together — explain a concept they just learned or describe how they’d get started on a problem. The act of talking, then reporting out, immediately livens up the class.
Get concerns on the table. Everyone believes that students hate active learning and that evaluations will suffer, right? And that you won’t be able to cover everything in your syllabus? So address those concerns. Brent calls it giving them a “huge dose of take-it-easy. Don’t try to transform everything you do overnight.”
Brent agrees that longer-term training and continuing support are needed for “massive change in achievement.” But the techniques learned in short workshops can lead, she says, to increased energy in class, more engagement, and more questions from students. “It’s a great way to start,” she says, “and then people need to find their own comfort zone.”
Ideas for the Start of the Semester
- To get your course off on the right foot, set clear routines and expectations, write Jennifer Garrett and Mary Clement in Faculty Focus. One way to do that is by using what they call a “Today We Will” list that lets students know what will be covered that day. The strategy is an example of clear and organized teaching, which is an approach that some education researchers see as a powerful force for learning.
- Want your students to get to know one another on the first day of class? Rather than having them simply introduce themselves, try these three icebreaker ideas, from That Wasn’t on the Syllabus.
- Syllabi and other administrative paperwork aren’t just things to get out of the way in the first few days of class. They can be opportunities to set the tone for a course and foster connections with students. A few past newsletters and articles share some ideas on how to go about it.
- In this much-retweeted tweet, Randy McCarthy, a research associate at the Northern Illinois University, shared a tip about how to tweak a common question at the beginning and end of each class. Instead of asking, “Do you have any questions?,” he suggests saying, “What questions do you have?” It’ll elicit “significantly more questions,” he writes. His tweet is followed by additional suggestions from other professors about how to make the question even better.
- Speaking of questions, James L. Lang writes in The Chronicle about a few that he uses to help his students make intellectual connections. Sometimes he ends class by asking students to write a paragraph that answers one of the following: “How does something we discussed today connect to something you learned in another course? Have you had any personal experiences that connect to today’s subject? Have you ever encountered any of today’s material in a book, film, or television show?”
Newsletter readers, how do you like to use the first few classes to set the tone for your courses? How is that approach working, and how do you know it? If you email me, at dan.berrett@chronicle.com, I might share your responses in a future newsletter.
‘The Curse of Knowledge’
Professors are experts in their disciplines, but that strength can actually be a liability in teaching, writes Adam Grant, a professor of management and of psychology at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. An expert is often so immersed in his or her subject that he or she can’t remember what it was like to be a neophyte, a phenomenon that Grant describes in The New York Times as an example of “the curse of knowledge.” Students, he suggests, should seek out courses with professors who have recently learned their subject, have had to struggle to do so, or who are best able to communicate why a particular subject is important.
But choosing a course according to those criteria is impractical to impossible, writes Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, on his blog. Citing research, Willingham also notes that “being a great (or indifferent) researcher predicts nothing about the quality of your teaching.” Besides, he writes, students take courses for all sorts of reasons. Some do to master content for their major, while others are looking to satisfy their curiosity.
Mark Your Calendar
- The National Society for Experiential Education holds its annual conference in Savannah, Ga., September 24-26. “This is the best place I've found to learn about the best practices in experiential education,” wrote the reader who suggested it. “If you’re looking to make your teaching lead to lasting, relevant learning, going experiential is the strategy I’d recommend!”
- The National Academic Advising Association holds its annual meeting, September 30-October 3, in Phoenix. “Academic advisers are engaged in teaching, too!,” wrote the reader who submitted it.
Source : www.chronicle.com
How to Get the Most Out of a Brief Teaching Workshop
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