Here it is: my first guest post! Courtesy of my husband who is a college professor. He is working really hard this semester with almost 1000 students in the four classes he teaches. The pictures are courtesy of his colleague who is teaching the 2 Physical Science classes with him.
I want to be better. I just don’t want to pay for it. A few years ago a group of us at work started talking about how to be better than we are. It’s not exactly virgin territory, of course, but we are physics teachers in a department where the stereotypical sub-culture of “Bring in grant money and don’t stink in the classroom” is not good enough.
Our little group at work started reading books like “Make it stick: the science of successful learning,” by Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel, and “Building a better teacher: How teaching works” by Green. Now I’m locked in an experiment that is costing me a lot more time than I expected.
We thought maybe we’d try some of these ideas in the classroom. Our department is kind of in charge of a general education science class that a few thousand students take each year. It’s a large-lecture class, with 200+ students in each section. It’s a class that is easy for students to hate. It’s out of their major, it’s harder than a GE class should be (at least in the minds of some), and it’s stuff that they will never “use” again. It’s the perfect laboratory for education experiments.
Gus and I decided to co-teach two sections of this class, with the express goal of trying out effective learning strategies and evaluating one another on a daily basis. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday before class, we spend an hour in Gus’ office. We brainstorm and criticize. We push one another to go beyond platitudes and pat answers. We put time estimates on every slide and mercilessly cut out extraneous fluff. But we also help one another include thoughtful exercises in recall, elaboration, generation, and reflection. Even though we are both multi-year veterans of this course, every lecture feels totally new and that 9:00 o’clock lecture starts out teetering on the verge of collapse. We both attend both sections, spending the hour between classes fixing the sometimes not-so-narrowly-averted disasters, getting ready to try again at 11. One of us teaches both classes, alternating on different days.
Here are a few things we have learned along the way:
1. You teach better when you think someone cares. It’s intimidating to have an excellent teacher sitting in every lecture, talking to the students and taking notes, preparing to tell you where you went wrong. So I try harder to teach better. Not only that, I get jazzed to think that someone cares if I do a good job. I know the students are supposed to, but it’s not always clear that they do.
2. Don’t tap. Make it stick describes an experiment in which a group of kids has to tap the rhythm of a popular song. One person chooses a song from a known list and taps out the rhythm while another person guesses the song. The success rate is basically equal to random guessing. Something like this happens in our teaching, big time. The professor has an amazing and beautiful idea in his head and taps it out for the students. But the students, if they hear it at all, don’t hear the rhythm in quite the same way. So be explicit and leave out the guess work. Don’t assume the message is getting through. And don’t say it’s the students’ fault if they don’t understand.
3. Focus more. Typically a lecture has lots of background, justification, history, a few jokes, maybe a derivation or two, and a few demonstrations. The lecture’s punchline is always spectacular, of course, but because the run-up takes so much time, it is often rushed or left off altogether. So why not lead out with the main message and beat it to death?
4. Talk less. As amazing as our lectures are, students learn more effectively when they participate in the learning process. Experienced students do this naturally, both in class and on their own. But our audience is made mostly of beginners and they need some help learning how to learn. We don’t use a “flipped” classroom, but we are committed to using periods of active learning. We use iClicker questions, give short writing exercises, and assign students to talk with a neighbor in class. This means we cover less. But amazingly, because we focus more, we still cover the important concepts in the course.
5. Listen more. We ask “real” open-ended questions and wait for replies. We invite follow-up questions. We knew we needed help engaging students in productive discussions. So we pulled in a few TAs to roam the aisles with us during discussions. In the nicest possible way, we pull the kids away from the siren song of texting, facebook, email, and similar mind-numbing activities. This Q&A format doesn’t seem to work with one professor and 250 students.
6. Invest in students. As impossible as it sounds, we try to learn our students’ names. We call on them by name and ask them to share their thoughts briefly with the class. We see them on campus and say “hi” and use their names. They smile warmly and wave.
7. Revise and repeat. After our 9 o’clock class, we have an hour to rehash and correct errors and get ready for another try at 11. In the old days, when a lecture went badly, we just said, “Well, what do you expect for a Monday?” (or fill in whatever day it happens to be) and drowned our sorrows in research. But now we put real brain power on the defects and practice again.
And now for the big question. Is it worth it? I recently asked Gus to help me monetize this experience, to put put dollars on this experiment and see how the figures fall out in a cost/benefit analysis. Maybe that question is too hard. So let’s try an easier one. Will I do this again? I’m not opposed to it, per se, but I don’t think anyone will do this with me on any other class. It’s just too much time.
I sometimes wonder if being a good college teacher is like being an amazing chef in an elementary school cafeteria. No matter how fantastic your food is, the students will still put most of it in the trash. Maybe that’s too cynical. I still remember my favorite teachers from my own college days. They were very inspirational and helped shape my life’s perspectives and ambitions. I suppose I don’t have the tools for measuring the value of what I am doing this year. And given the reward structure of the college teaching job, I probably won’t take time to develop them. The
siren song of lab work, research grants, academic publications, and empire building is just too tempting.
Feedback is Amazing, but Expensive
I want to be better. I just don’t want to pay for it. A few years ago a group of us at work started talking about how to be better than we are. It’s not exactly virgin territory, of course, but we are physics teachers in a department where the stereotypical sub-culture of “Bring in grant money and don’t stink in the classroom” is not good enough.
Our little group at work started reading books like “Make it stick: the science of successful learning,” by Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel, and “Building a better teacher: How teaching works” by Green. Now I’m locked in an experiment that is costing me a lot more time than I expected.
We thought maybe we’d try some of these ideas in the classroom. Our department is kind of in charge of a general education science class that a few thousand students take each year. It’s a large-lecture class, with 200+ students in each section. It’s a class that is easy for students to hate. It’s out of their major, it’s harder than a GE class should be (at least in the minds of some), and it’s stuff that they will never “use” again. It’s the perfect laboratory for education experiments.
Gus and I decided to co-teach two sections of this class, with the express goal of trying out effective learning strategies and evaluating one another on a daily basis. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday before class, we spend an hour in Gus’ office. We brainstorm and criticize. We push one another to go beyond platitudes and pat answers. We put time estimates on every slide and mercilessly cut out extraneous fluff. But we also help one another include thoughtful exercises in recall, elaboration, generation, and reflection. Even though we are both multi-year veterans of this course, every lecture feels totally new and that 9:00 o’clock lecture starts out teetering on the verge of collapse. We both attend both sections, spending the hour between classes fixing the sometimes not-so-narrowly-averted disasters, getting ready to try again at 11. One of us teaches both classes, alternating on different days.
Here are a few things we have learned along the way:
1. You teach better when you think someone cares. It’s intimidating to have an excellent teacher sitting in every lecture, talking to the students and taking notes, preparing to tell you where you went wrong. So I try harder to teach better. Not only that, I get jazzed to think that someone cares if I do a good job. I know the students are supposed to, but it’s not always clear that they do.
2. Don’t tap. Make it stick describes an experiment in which a group of kids has to tap the rhythm of a popular song. One person chooses a song from a known list and taps out the rhythm while another person guesses the song. The success rate is basically equal to random guessing. Something like this happens in our teaching, big time. The professor has an amazing and beautiful idea in his head and taps it out for the students. But the students, if they hear it at all, don’t hear the rhythm in quite the same way. So be explicit and leave out the guess work. Don’t assume the message is getting through. And don’t say it’s the students’ fault if they don’t understand.
3. Focus more. Typically a lecture has lots of background, justification, history, a few jokes, maybe a derivation or two, and a few demonstrations. The lecture’s punchline is always spectacular, of course, but because the run-up takes so much time, it is often rushed or left off altogether. So why not lead out with the main message and beat it to death?
4. Talk less. As amazing as our lectures are, students learn more effectively when they participate in the learning process. Experienced students do this naturally, both in class and on their own. But our audience is made mostly of beginners and they need some help learning how to learn. We don’t use a “flipped” classroom, but we are committed to using periods of active learning. We use iClicker questions, give short writing exercises, and assign students to talk with a neighbor in class. This means we cover less. But amazingly, because we focus more, we still cover the important concepts in the course.
5. Listen more. We ask “real” open-ended questions and wait for replies. We invite follow-up questions. We knew we needed help engaging students in productive discussions. So we pulled in a few TAs to roam the aisles with us during discussions. In the nicest possible way, we pull the kids away from the siren song of texting, facebook, email, and similar mind-numbing activities. This Q&A format doesn’t seem to work with one professor and 250 students.
6. Invest in students. As impossible as it sounds, we try to learn our students’ names. We call on them by name and ask them to share their thoughts briefly with the class. We see them on campus and say “hi” and use their names. They smile warmly and wave.
7. Revise and repeat. After our 9 o’clock class, we have an hour to rehash and correct errors and get ready for another try at 11. In the old days, when a lecture went badly, we just said, “Well, what do you expect for a Monday?” (or fill in whatever day it happens to be) and drowned our sorrows in research. But now we put real brain power on the defects and practice again.
And now for the big question. Is it worth it? I recently asked Gus to help me monetize this experience, to put put dollars on this experiment and see how the figures fall out in a cost/benefit analysis. Maybe that question is too hard. So let’s try an easier one. Will I do this again? I’m not opposed to it, per se, but I don’t think anyone will do this with me on any other class. It’s just too much time.
I sometimes wonder if being a good college teacher is like being an amazing chef in an elementary school cafeteria. No matter how fantastic your food is, the students will still put most of it in the trash. Maybe that’s too cynical. I still remember my favorite teachers from my own college days. They were very inspirational and helped shape my life’s perspectives and ambitions. I suppose I don’t have the tools for measuring the value of what I am doing this year. And given the reward structure of the college teaching job, I probably won’t take time to develop them. The
siren song of lab work, research grants, academic publications, and empire building is just too tempting.
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