Small Teaching: Interleaving

by | May 5, 2022 | Blog, Classroom, Educational Development

3rd post of 9 in the Small Teaching Series

Small Teaching by J.M. Lang presents methods for making small changes in your teaching practices (hence the name) that can significantly improve your students’ learning. Each chapter provides the research-based evidence behind the practices Lang proposes so you can have confidence that Lang’s ideas work. The Coulter Faculty Commons will be boiling the Small Teaching chapters down into blog posts to provide instructors with concepts they can apply to a lesson, a class, or a course.

“A rose by any other name…” (from Romeo & Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2)



Interleaving

Lang had to call it something, so interleaving it is. I must admit that I was a bit disappointed that interleaving didn’t involve some sort of quantum-level warped space-time learning technique. The truth is a bit more mundane as Lang explained interleaving as, “… the practice of spending some time learning one thing and then pausing to concentrate on learning a second thing before having quite mastered that first thing, and then returning to the first thing, and then moving onto a third thing, and then returning to the second thing, and so forth. In short, it involves the process of both spacing and mixing learning activities— the spacing happening by virtue of the mixing” (Lang, 2016, p. 68). That’s not as cool as a tachyon generator powered by a bucket of dilithium, but infinitely more practical.

Lang noted the combination of interleaving and retrieval (covered in an earlier blog linked below) implies that all major exams should be cumulative (cue the student groans). This does not mean that the third major exam should be evenly divided between the material from the first two exams and the material from the third unit, but that each exam should harken back to what has previously been learned and assessed. The revisiting of material shouldn’t be limited to major exams either. Lang proposed three ways to work this concept into your classroom instruction:

  • Open each class session by posting a test question from a previous exam or a potential test question related to previous course content. Give students time to consider and discuss their answers.
  • Close class sessions by asking students to create a test question based on that day’s material and pose that question back to them in future class sessions.
  • Open or close class sessions by asking students to open their notebooks to a previous day’s class session and underline the three most important principles from that day; allow a few moments for a brief discussion of what they featured from their notes. (Lang, 2016, pp. 76–77)


In the section on Principles, Lang discusses last the value of explaining to your students the benefits of interleaving, how it is incorporated into the course assessments, and the nature of short- and long-term learning, but I think it is vital your students understand the reasoning behind your course design. If you don’t, interleaving may appear as a serious case of “this instructor doesn’t know what they are doing.”


To recap, here are the interleaving quick tips that Lang proposes:

  • Reserve a small part of your major exams (and even the minor ones, such as quizzes) for questions or problems that require students to draw on older course content.
  • Open or close each class session with small opportunities for students to retrieve older knowledge, to practice skills developed earlier in the course, or apply old knowledge or skills to new contexts
  • Create weekly mini-review session in which students spend the final 15 minutes of the last class session of the week applying that week’s content to some new question or problem.
  • Use quiz and exam questions that require students to connect new material to older material or to revise their understanding of previous content in light of newly learned material
  • In blended or online courses, stagger the deadlines and quiz dates to ensure that students benefit from the power of spaced learning.

    As always, if you’d like to discuss these or other ideas with the Coulter Faculty Commons you can schedule an appointment at https://affiliate.wcu.edu/cfc/consultations/
    Lang, J. M. (2016). Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/hunter-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4455000

Small Teaching Blog Series
1: Retrieving 2: Predicting

Small Teaching: Predicting

by | Apr 21, 2022 | Active Learning, Assessment, Blog, Collaborative Learning, Discussions, Faculty Development Workshop

2nd post of 9 in the Small Teaching Series

Small Teaching by J.M. Lang presents methods for making small changes in your teaching practices (hence the name) that can significantly improve your students’ learning.  Each chapter provides the research-based evidence behind the practices Lang proposes so you can have confidence that Lang’s ideas work.  The Coulter Faculty Commons will be boiling the Small Teaching chapters down into blog posts to provide instructors with concepts they can apply to a lesson, a class, or a course.

“Once more unto the breach…” (from Henry V, spoken by King Henry)

Lang references “the connected nature of knowledge” (p. 48) to clarify how prediction aids learning.  The example he offers is that of a comparison between a history student and a history professor.  Given the date 1865, a history student would recall that it was the year that the American Civil War ended.  A professor of history would also recall the events leading up to the surrender of the Confederate Army at Appomattox, Chamberlain’s rendering honors to the defeated troops, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the ultimate failure of Reconstruction, and countless other bits of information that are connected to that date.  The fact that the Civil War ended in 1865 is relatively useless in itself, but knowledge is derived through the “web of connections” surrounding that date.   Lang posits (and the research supports this) that when confronted with the need to answer a question (predict a result) with insufficient information compels the brain to seek out any possible related information on the subject.  This process creates and reinforces the connections in the brain and begins building knowledge.

Lang suggests the following methods to give your students the opportunity to refine their powers of prediction:

  • At the beginning of the class, unit, or course, give students a brief pretest on the material. For example, give an opening-week pretest that is similar in format to the final exam.
  • Prior to first content exposure, ask students to write down what they already know about that subject matter or to speculate about what they will be learning.
  • When presenting cases, problems, examples, or histories, stop before the conclusion and ask students to predict the outcome.
  • When you are teaching a new cognitive skill (e.g., writing in a new genre), let students try their hand at it (and receive feedback) before they feel ready.
  • Close class by asking students to make predictions about material that will be covered in the next class session (p. 60)

Of course, predicting doesn’t always result in a correct answer.  Our theoretical history student might have thought that 1865 was the year the Civil War began.  Lang cautions that immediate feedback (or as immediate as practical) is important to keep inaccurate facts from getting entrenched.  It also has the benefit of helping students identify gaps in their knowledge or as Lang put it, vaccinate them against the illusion of fluency.  In the case of a pretest, it also lets your students know what kind of information they will be assessed on in the future, so they can adjust their study practices appropriately.

Small Teaching is available in the library as an ebook and is one of this summer’s Beach Reads! Email John Hawes (jhawes@wcu.edu)  if you are interested in joining a casual reading group this summer!Summer Beach Reads

As always, if you’d like to discuss these or other ideas with the Coulter Faculty Commons you can schedule an appointment at https://affiliate.wcu.edu/cfc/consultations/

Lang, J. M. (2016). Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/hunter-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4455000

Small Teaching: Retrieving

by | Mar 30, 2022 | Active Learning, Assessment, Blog, Classroom, Help Your Students, Student Performance, Teaching and Learning

Small Teaching by J.M. Lang presents methods for making small changes in your teaching practices (hence the name) that can significantly improve your students’ learning. Each chapter provides the research-based evidence behind the practices Lang proposes so you can have confidence that Lang’s ideas work. The Coulter Faculty Commons will be boiling the Small Teaching chapters down into blog posts to provide instructors with concepts they can apply to a lesson, a class, or a course.

Let’s get started.

Image of a brain

Chapter 1: Retrieving
Every subject requires students to know some foundational knowledge to successfully engage in higher levels of learning. For example, they need to know what a line is before they can understand more complex geometric shapes or the history of the earliest immigrants to the North American continent before they can discuss the nuances of current immigration policy. For your students to be successful, they need to be able to retrieve knowledge so that they can apply what they know.

Students need to retrieve knowledge from memory, but as Lang points out, “if you want to retrieve knowledge from your memory, you have to practice retrieving knowledge from your memory” (Lang, 2016, p. 20). How do you get students to practice retrieving knowledge? To illustrate a simple practice Lang cites studies where students were divided into three groups: one was given additional study time before a test, one given a practice quiz before the test, and one group where no intervention was taken. In one of the studies students that were quizzed prior to the test scored two letter grades higher than those that weren’t. Perhaps equally significant, students that were given additional study time scored no better than those that received no intervention. Re-reading did not improve knowledge retrieval.

Rather than just think of quizzes as assessment activities, consider them a means for your students to practice knowledge retrieval. But quizzing can take many forms. Here are the Quick Tips Lang suggests in Chapter 1:

 

  • Give frequent, low-stakes quizzes (at least weekly) to help your students seal up foundational course content; favor short answers or problem-solving whenever possible so that students must process or use what they are retrieving.
  • Open class periods or online sessions by asking students to remind you of content covered in previous class sessions; allow students time to reflect for a few moments if you do so orally.
  • Close class by asking students to write down the most important concept from that day and one question or confusion that still remains in their minds (i.e., the minute paper).
  • Close class by having students take a short quiz or answer written questions about the day’s material or solve a problem connected to the day’s material.
  • Use your syllabus to redirect students to previous course content through quizzes or oral questions and discussion (Lang, 2016, p. 39).

Summer Beach Read

Small Teaching is one of SITL’s Beach Reads. Are you registered yet?

Summer Institute for Teaching and Learning Post Card

As always, if you’d like to discuss these or other ideas with the Coulter Faculty Commons you can schedule an appointment at https://affiliate.wcu.edu/cfc/consultations/

 

Source
Lang, J. M. (2016). Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/hunter-ebooks/detail.action?docID=445500

Staying in Touch with Your Students – Communicating Through the Gradebook

by | Jan 11, 2022 | Blog

By John Hawes, Educational Developer and Jonathan Wade, Senior Educational Technologist

There are nearly countless ways to stay in touch with your students. Zoom, emails, text messages, announcements, digital syllabi, and dynamic course schedules make it possible for instructors to reach out to students with a few strokes of the keyboard or taps on the screen. An often overlooked means to communicate with students is the Canvas Gradebook. Student surveys have shown that students seek feedback through the grading mechanism of the LMS. Pushing information to students through email or announcements from you is a wonderful way to communicate with them but using the grading function of the LMS can allow you to connect with them at a moment when they are seeking to connect with you. Consider that grading need not always be a permanent summative judgment but can also be an opportunity to help the student understand how to better understand the material. Dr. John Orlando writing for Faculty Focus observed that giving students an opportunity to revise and resubmit their work helps with student motivation because “… students who know that they have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and fix their problems will not be demotivated by their failures.” Resubmitting their works allows students a chance to better demonstrate their mastery to obtain a better final grade.


SpeedGrader is the portal that gives you access to the communication functions in the Gradebook like rubrics, comments, and the document viewer.


Rubrics in Canvas serve two basic communication functions. First, rubrics let the students know what the criteria are that will be used to evaluate their submission. Second, rubrics provide a means for instructors to let students know why they received the score they did. There’s a lot to consider when creating a good rubric. When designing a rubric, instructors should keep in mind what the learning outcomes are for the assessment. If it is to demonstrate understanding of a topic, use Demonstrated Understanding as the criterion rather than page or word count. When creating the text for each rating level use language that clearly differentiates how a submission met or failed to meet a standard. Check out the link below for more information. And of course, rubrics also make it easier to grade many submissions while still providing feedback students can use to improve future work.

Assignment Comments 

No matter how well you’ve designed your rubric, you may want to add some specific comments for a student. In SpeedGrader the Assignment Comment text box gives you the option of adding additional comments in multiple ways. You can type in your comments, attach a document, record audio or video comments or use voice recognition to add text comments. See the SpeedGrader link below for specific guidance.

DocViewer 

Depending on the type of submission, you can also add comments directly to the document in the preview window. See the DocViewer link below for specific guidance.

Messages from the Gradebook

You can send messages to students using filters based on specific assignment categories:

  • Haven’t submitted yet – students who haven’t submitted the assignment, even if they have been manually awarded a grade.
  • Haven’t been graded – students whose assignments have not yet been graded (submitted or unsubmitted).
  • Scored less than [point value] – students who earned a grade on their assignment less than X number of points.
  • Scored more than [point value] -students who earned a grade on their assignment more than X number of points.

More than one student may receive the Gradebook Message, but each student will receive an individual (not group) message.

To chat with a member of the faculty partner team about communicating through the Gradebook click on this link to schedule a consultation https://affiliate.wcu.edu/cfc/consultations/.

Resources

SpeedGrader
https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-use-SpeedGrader/ta-p/757

Rubrics
https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Basics-Guide/What-are-Rubrics/ta-p/35

Designing Grading Rubrics
https://www.brown.edu/sheridan/teaching-learning-resources/teaching-resources/course-design/classroom-assessment/grading-criteria/designing-rubrics

Using DocViewer in SpeedGrader
https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-add-annotated-comments-in-student-submissions-using/ta-p/694

Sending messages to students from the Gradebook
https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-send-a-message-to-students-from-the-Gradebook/ta-p/741

Orlando, J. (2021, July 28). Use Revise and Resubmit Instead of Extra Credit [Higher Education]. Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/educational-assessment/use-revise-and-resubmit-instead-of-extra-credit/

To Flip or Not to Flip? That is the Question.

by | Nov 16, 2021 | Active Learning, Be Present-Mindful, Blog, Classroom, Collaborative Learning, Cooperative Learning, Educational Development, Flipping the Classroom, Pedagogy, Problem Based Learning, Student Engagement, Student Performance, Teaching and Learning

Whether you call it inverted instruction, classroom flipping, or some other term, the concept behind this kind of instruction is basic. Students get the foundational knowledge they need outside the classroom and class time is spent on higher-level learning. Properly executed, this instructional methodology changes the instructor’s role from one of a “sage on the stage” to a “guide on the side.” (Bergmann & Sams, 2007)

How do the students get that foundational knowledge?

  • Video
    • If you record your own videos:
      • Keep them short (7 minutes max)
      • Topic focused
      • Provide captions and transcript
    • If you don’t want to make your own, there are plenty of sources:
      • Khan Academy, YouTube, Ted Talks
    • Assign specific time ranges as appropriate
  • Texts
    • A history, account, narrative, or case study
    • From the course texts, assign specific pages if the students don’t need the whole chapter – they are more likely to do the reading
    • Consider developing a reading guide to target their attention on particular concepts or ideas 
  • Websites
    • Again, assign specific pages or parts of the website as appropriate
  • Research
    • Give your students a list of questions and let them find answers

How can I know they have attained the foundational knowledge?

Barkley and Major, in their text Learning Assessment Techniques, offer concrete ways to assess students’ foundational knowledge, and they fit the “blending” teaching paradigm:

  • If asking them to recognize – consider an online quiz that focuses on verification, matching, or forced choice, to be taken prior to coming to class.
  • If asking them to recall – consider online quiz questions that focus on low cues or high cues.
  • If asking them to interpret or exemplify – consider an online quiz that focuses on constructed responses or selected responses.
  • If asking them to infer – consider questions that focus on verification, matching, or forced choice.
  • If asking them to explain – consider questions where students must reason, troubleshoot, redesign, or predict.

What are some effective classroom strategies to engage students in higher-level learning?

  • Muddiest point
    • Have your students bring a list of points they’d like to have clarified to class
      • Alternatively, have them post them to a discussion board
    • Address these points first before moving on to other learning activity
  • Group discussions
    • Students discuss/clarify muddiest points in groups
  • Group presentations
    • Have students teach what they learned
  • Knowledge Demonstration
    • Let the students demonstrate what they have learned

Is flipping right for me?
The real question is whether or not flipping is right for your students. One of the big advantages of flipping is that it gives students more control over their learning as they guide the classroom activity with their questions. Another is the opportunity it provides instructors to review their teaching methods. After considering your options, you may decide that flipped instruction does not provide any advantages. However, keep in mind that this is not an all-or-nothing proposition. You may determine that some material in your course is suitable for flipping, while some still require more of a hands-on approach. In either case, you’ll have reflected on how you are teaching and that is always a good thing. (Trach, 2020)

If you’d like to talk about group work with a member of the Coulter Faculty Common, click here to schedule a consultation.

Sources

Barkley, Elizabeth F., and Claire H. Major. Learning Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/hunter-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4205832.

Bergmann, J., & Sams, A. (2007). Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. International Society for Tech in Ed. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/hunter-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3317690

Hertz, M. B. (2012, July 10). The Flipped Classroom: Pro and Con. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/flipped-classroom-pro-and-con-mary-beth-hertz

Trach, E. (2020, January 1). A Beginner’s Guide to Flipped Classroom. https://www.schoology.com/blog/flipped-classroom