Teaching Strategies – Page 19 – Centre for Teaching Excellence Blog

Musings on feedback — Gina Passante

As a Graduate Instructional Developer at the CTE I spend a lot of my time observing graduate students teaching and providing them with feedback. I have also recently set up a peer feedback system for research presentations at the Institute for Quantum Computing (where I do my graduate work). Needless to say, I’ve been giving other people feedback on their teaching quite a lot recently. But the other day I was the one receiving feedback on my research presentation. I was nervous, and quite surprised by it. I’m confident about my presentation abilities, and I know very well that feedback is constructive, and that everyone can improve, but none of this seemed to matter. It reminded me of how terrible I feel when I get bad student evaluations (even one bad comment out of 100 students is enough to temporarily crush my spirits).

Now, I can understand why student evaluations are often upsetting (many students don’t know how to give constructive feedback, they sometimes pick on aspects of your personality, …), but why was I so scared to receive constructive feedback from my peers? Indeed, this fear was completely unfounded as the feedback I received was not the least bit scary – but the fear reminded me of something very important: many people get very defensive when they receive constructive criticism. For example, my mom gets defensive when I suggest a different ingredient into a familiar recipe, as does my partner when I suggest he drive a little further from the car in front of us, and it happens every once and a while when I give feedback on teaching or a presentation or an assignment. I know that there are things I can do to help prevent this response from my end, and as luck would have it, a few days after these thoughts crossed my mind, a helpful post was written on the Faculty Focus blog on how to give students better feedback. Although the post written with grading assignments in mind, the advice can be applied in a much broader context. I suggest you take a look: http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/giving-students-more-effective-feedback/)

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The Centre for Teaching Excellence welcomes contributions to its blog. If you are a faculty member, staff member, or student at the University of Waterloo (or beyond!) and would like contribute a posting about some aspect of teaching or learning, please contact Mark Morton or Trevor Holmes.

Peter Jensen: Igniting the Third Factor — Shirley Hall

When I was asked yesterday to write something for today’s blog, thoughts rushed through my mind, the first being ” Oh my gosh, what will I write about? The second – it needs to be something, profound – worldly even. The third thought was – yikes! I can’t do it, and I have no time. Then, fear set in.All these thoughts raced by in a few seconds as I was checking my email between sessions of the OHD Staff Conference yesterday. It simultaneously occurred to me that I could simply write about my experience of attending the conference. Great! I was in a hurry to get back and hear the next speaker. But why? Why was I in such a hurry

Well, I wanted to hear the second speaker simply because the first speaker had been so inspiring. I love learning, love listening to people speak and share about their passions. For an hour I was able to be the student with Peter Jensen, my teacher. What inspired me about Peter Jensen’s talk? So much, and there is not enough space for many details here, so I encourage you to find out a bit more. Talk to someone who attended his talk. Or read his book, Igniting the Third Factor. (I won’t spoil it for those of you who did not have the chance to hear his lecture – I will let you find out for yourself what that “third factor” is). In brief, he described “Igniters” as those who take on the fulfilling mandate of making others better.

What I found memorable is the way in which Peter spoke, his approach. He spoke of people, events, life. I could relate to the stories he shared, how people felt, and therefore, I was engaged. He spoke of the importance of getting to know yourself, becoming self- aware, to take time to learn about your limiting beliefs, (our “blocks”) and to learn to exercise self-control. Then, take conscious action to manage yourself, understand your impact on others – (to borrow one of his many quotes “Manage yourself so others won’t have to. – John Wooden).

As he spoke, the distance between where I sat and where he stood on the stage began to shrink. His talk became comfortable. Like sharing stories over coffee. He spoke of himself, (we got to know him as a person, just recovering from cancer) of famous people, events and situations, in a profoundly moving and meaningful way. He shared the emotional journey of how to work through adversity, and embrace it. Make it your best teacher. He spoke about how people felt (himself included) when faced with challenges. I can identify with that. I do not know what it is like to be an Olympic athlete, preparing for the Olympic Games, but I do know what it FEELS like when I think I have failed in some way, (usually to meet my own expectations of myself). I could relate to and identify with the feelings of those athletes, and therein was the connection, once again. The one common denominator was the shared human experience.

I will take the ideas that Peter spoke about and do my best to apply them to my life; in the classroom, with co-workers, family and friends. Peter‘s talk has inspired me to imagine more, play more, dream more. I am going to my best to “become an agent of conscious choice” around my own personal development. I hope in some small way I might inspire others to do the same.

As Peter showed us… in the end, all you have left is the person – Doug Leigh.

www.peterjensen.ca

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The Centre for Teaching Excellence welcomes contributions to its blog. If you are a faculty member, staff member, or student at the University of Waterloo (or beyond!) and would like contribute a posting about some aspect of teaching or learning, please contact Mark Morton or Trevor Holmes.

The Socratic Scientist – Marcel Pinheiro

Though the togas and sandals have largely been left in the past, Socrates’ method of education is one that would be revolutionary in the modern science class. The Socratic method is, at its simplest, questions and discussion. But, as described by award-winning Stanford Professor Rob Reich, it is “emphatically not teaching.” Rather than providing information, an instructor instead participates in a discussion with students about the material. To begin, an instructor’s carefully crafted, open-ended question is asked and the students provide their answers; sometimes, only best guesses. An example question in biology could be what is a gene? or how do we define a species? But any answer provided by the students merely starts the discussion. The role of the instructor is to tactfully ask probing questions of the students to frame and support their understanding of the topic.

In this way, it may be considered more akin to our own scientific method, where a series of questions and follow-up questions probe the student’s understanding of the topic as it flows from the group, and their peers try to defend their answers. By teasing out misunderstanding or misconceptions held by a group, they journey together through logic, the literature, and past scientific discoveries to unveil the answer to the problem at hand.

The result is less time spent in lecture covering material readily available to the student in their textbook, and more time dedicated to understanding concepts, and the underlying science to solve problems. Consequently, prior to participating in class discussion, students must have some familiarity with the material, even if it is rudimentary. With class time now dedicated to discussion, it is necessary to let go of the idea that material needs to be explicitly transmitted from textbook to student via the power point slide. Instead, assign readings or assignments – expecting them to actually be done! Ultimately, Socratic method provides students with a forum to develop and test critical thinking skills, and a paradigm-shifting opportunity, inspired by the original gadfly, to take responsibility for their own education.

Socratic method is commonplace in law and medical schools, yet is relegated to only holding untapped potential for the science classroom to demonstrate complexity. When asked specifically on application to science instruction Prof. Reich noted that Socratic method excels at uncovering “underlying structures or competing hypothesis about how to explain certain events.” But as a tool for an instructor, the entire process rests on creating an environment that encourages students to participate in discussion. In many cases these open-ended questions do not have absolute answers – like many research problems in general. Thus, students must be encouraged to take risks and provide responses to questions they may be unsure of, and even the “crazy idea” can take the discussion in thought-provoking ways, which tests the limit of their ignorance.

The thought of three hundred students all trying to provide their opinion or conversely (and more common-place in the average science class), staring at the well-meaning instructor in silence, may seem inevitable. The truth, however, is that Socratic method may be adapted to function in a large group with little effort. One of the simplest methods is the use of small (3-9 student) break-out groups. After asking a question and before opening the floor to the group at large, the instructor can ask students to discuss their thoughts with a small number of students surrounding them. This prevents timid students from having to stand out in the large group, while also building confidence. One pitfall is the freedom it gives students – an instructor must allow the discussion to explore tangents when addressing a question, but must recognize when to ease the discussion back on track.

Probing questions are the main tool in the instructor’s arsenal to move the discussion forward, and there are a number of types of probing questions. Generally, these probing questions target either the student’s definition of terms, assumptions underlying their answer, or extensions from their conclusions – with best results when taken to the extreme! Using elements of the Socratic method when teaching is a step away from the overuse of rote memorization, commonplace in large lecture classes, and has powerful advantages in developing critical thinking and confidence.

Avoiding the single-answer memory recall (or “jeopardy”) questions in favour of a more thought-provoking one, the instructor sends their students on a path towards becoming well informed citizens (if not scientists). The resulting students are primed to critically form opinions on anything from vaccinations to global warming. Not providing students a regular forum to question their understanding of the material begs the question, what are we teaching our science students to do?

Resources on Socratic teaching:

Rob Reich, “The Socr atic Method: What it is and how to use it in the classroom” May 2003.

MacKnight, C.B. (2000). Teaching Critical Thinking through Online Discussions. Educause Quarterly 4:38-41.

Marcel Pinheiro is a PhD candidate in the Department of Biology and participant in the Certificate in University Teaching (CUT) Program.

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Teaching and Learning Inventories – Svitlana Taraban-Gordon

This week the issue of teaching and learning inventories came up on two different occasions. Although the contexts of the conversations were different, the topic triggered my interest in the types and usage of inventories in university teaching.

What are the teaching and learning inventories? Inventories are basically self-scoring instruments that focus on some aspect of teaching or learning behaviour, approach, preference, attitudes, etc. A sound inventory is conceptually grounded in relevant teaching/learning theory and supported by extensive empirical studies. Inventories include a scoring sheet and descriptive categories that classify individuals into X number of distinctive types/profiles based on their scores. Some of you might have come across similar tools used in other contexts, for example the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI), a well-known personality inventory.

My quick search of educational literature and higher education websites revealed plenty of teaching and learning inventories (and critiques thereof). I worked with a couple of them in our teaching workshops. For example, Pratt’s Teaching Perspectives Inventory is the tool that we often use to help instructors articulate their teaching philosophy and examine their personal beliefs and values as educators. This inventory is available online and used by many educators across Canada. Other similar self-reported inventories for university instructors include the Teaching Goals Inventory by Angelo and Cross (1993), the Approaches to Teaching Inventory by Trigwell and Prosser (1999) and the Philosophic Inventory by Leahy (1995).

In addition to teaching inventories, there is a wide range of learning inventories that instructors can use with students to help them identify their learning strengths and preferences and become more effective learners. Some of the most popular ones are the VARK Questionnaire and the Soloman-Felder Index of Learning Styles, which was co-developed by Richard Felder, a chemical engineering professor in the US. Other popular instruments include the Kolb Learning Styles Inventory (1999) and the Approaches to Study Inventory by Entwistle and Ramsden (1983). Finally, instructors working with first-year students might find the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) useful for helping students to identify their learning strengths and weaknesses and to develop more effective study strategies.

Clearly, there is no shortage of various self-assessment and self-awareness tools in higher education. Some of them (e.g., learning style inventories) were challenged by educators on conceptual and methodological grounds. That being said, I can see why some instructors, TAs and students might find them appealing. For one, inventories could help novice learners or beginning teachers to become more self-aware. Also, inventories are powerful tools for conveying the message about individual differences and diversities that permeate all aspects of teaching and learning. I think that if we are to view inventories with a skeptical eye and use them as a way of stimulating a discussion rather than finding definite answers, then they could be helpful tools for teachers and students. When considering various inventories, we should keep in mind that they are designed to identify preferences rather inborn characteristics and are meant to be descriptive not explanatory.

Are you using any teaching or learning inventories in your courses?

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The Centre for Teaching Excellence welcomes contributions to its blog. If you are a faculty member, staff member, or student at the University of Waterloo (or beyond!) and would like contribute a posting about some aspect of teaching or learning, please contact Mark Morton or Trevor Holmes.

Pecha Kucha – PowerPoint with Rules!

By Katherine Lithgow

It’s been compared to a poetry slam. It has taken place in bars, nightclubs, universities, churches, private homes and studios. It began in Tokyo and has spread world-wide. What is it? Well, it’s a power point presentation. More specifically, it is a power point presentation with rules. Pecha Kucha, (pronounced peh-chahk’-cha), Japanese for chatter, is a short powerpoint presentation with a time and slide limit- 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide, for a total presentation time of 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

The “rules” were created by a two Tokyo-based architects in 2003 to provide a format where designers could take turns presenting their work to each other without having one person monopolize the time leaving little to no time for others to present their work.

What interests me about this presentation format is the way that it can be used in the classroom. The structure is great for introducing material, providing a broad context or summary (see Linda Carson’s art history lesson ‘From Rembrandt to Lady Gaga in 5 minutes’) or telling a story to present information. It works especially well with material that is highly visual.

A lot of what I learned about pecha kucha came from a discussion on the POD* listserv. Hope Greenburg (POD listserv post 2/3/2011 ) shared the following suggestions for using pecha kucha in the classroom-

Do an overview highlighting major points that will be addressed later in the class
Provide the “big picture” of why this topic is important for this class or for the field, how it relates to what has gone before, etc.
Set the scene for introducing a point that may be important but not easy to get at another way,
Build a complex chart or graph to illustrate the process as well as the final result.

The strict adherence to time makes it useful as a way to provide a larger number of students the opportunity for oral presentation in the classroom and it is good practice at getting to the point of a presentation. Linda Carson (BKI), for example, had each of her students create a pecha kucha to share their reflections on what they had learned during their museum trip to Amsterdam. The presentations were collected into one large power point and automatically advanced. Students literally lined up around the room and came forward as the slide to their section came up.

There are challenges associated with the format. A lot of preparation goes into creating a pecha kucha and a lot of rehearsing is required to coordinate the timing of the slides with the narrative. The structure doesn’t allow for interaction with the audience during the presentation, and it isn’t a good method to use to go into a concept in depth.

But it is a good way to learn a little bit about something in a short amount of time. And it can be entertaining to watch and participate in. I’d be interested in knowing if anyone decides to incorporate it into their classroom and what you thought of the experience.

Resources and sources:

http://www.pecha-kucha.org/

Hope Greenburg – Avoiding “Powerpoint to Death” http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/courses/jtb/jtb-powerpoint.pdf

Daniel Pink- http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-09/st_pechakucha

Posts on POD listserv February 2011- search Pecha kucha

http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2007/09/pecha-kucha-and.html___________________________________

“Active Learning is good as long as it does not take additional time”!!! – Prashant Mutyala

This is one of the things I learned from the conversations I had with the students in the past two years of teaching at UW. Earlier while planning learning activities, I never thought of this aspect so much but now it has become one of the major factors.

I usually supervise day long labs for final year Undergrad students. They are committed to stay from morning 10.30 AM to evening 6 PM on those days. Earlier the practical sessions were preceded with a quiz session which I found was not very productive in upgrading the knowledge of the students. Therefore I designed some activities to make the learning more fun and productive too. Ofcourse, that took more time than the usual straight lectures. The students who were really interested to learn liked the new method but the neutral students were not that much happy. The formative feedback showed some 60% students supporting the new pattern and many of them pointed out that ‘Active Learning is good as long as it does not take additional time’.

Soon I came up with a new pattern. The activities were distributed in such a way that the students now used to spend time in them after starting their experiments, typically when waiting for the equipment to reach some steady state or when the equipment is collecting results. In other words the activities now were ‘not taking additional time’. As a result the end-feedback showed 90% of class support to the new pattern.

It seems that the new generation students (who grew up alongside netbooks, iphone and tablet pcs) prefer everything (including learning) to be not only productive but also fast. I wish enhancing the learning process was as simple as installing an additional RAM in a computer. Students now are not looking just for active learning methods but they are looking for time-efficient active learning methods and that adds a challenge for the teachers while planning learning activities.

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Unwitting Learning — Mark Morton

On Taxi, a TV sitcom from the 1980s, there’s an episode in which Jim Ignatowski, whose memory has been permanently addled by chronic drug use, sits down at a piano and is startled when his hands begin to move over the keys and a beautiful sonata flows forth. “I must have had lessons,” he mutters, with surprise. I felt a bit like that last week when I turned on the car radio, which my kids had inadvertently tuned to Radio Canada. As I listened to the French-language newscast, I was amazed that I could understand it. Two years ago I could read French, but I had almost no aural comprehension of it — I simply had a terrible ear. Moreover, over the course of the last two years, I hadn’t studied or tried to improve my comprehension of spoken French one bit. So what happened?

Well, what happened was that two years ago I began studying Arabic at Renison University College. I suspect that as I worked hard to understand Arabic words, phrases, and eventually sentences, I developed auditory processing skills that I previously didn’t have. True, those skills emerged because I was studying Arabic — but they transferred over, without any conscious effort on my part, to French as well. It’s a bit like developing motor skills by playing tennis, and then discovering that you’ve also, unwittingly, become a better dancer.

Of course there must be limits to this sort of “skills transfer.” Mastering chess might make me a better bridge player, and it might even make me better able to spot logical fallacies in my kids’ arguments about why they should be allowed to stay up late, but it won’t make me a better driver on the 401. Or might it? Is it possible that everything we learn enhances everything else that we’ve previously learned? !آمل ذلك

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