Maryellen Weimer's Blog, page 3

Solutions to Social Loafing

Social loafing (I do find this bit of jargon amusing), defined as "group members who shirk their obligations in the hopes of benefiting from the work of others. …" (p. 256, a definition cited from previous work). It is one of the aspects of group work that students and faculty find equally distressing. This study tested six hypotheses regarding social loafing. The hypotheses and findings are listed below.

 

Hypothesis 1: As the scope of the group project gets bigger, there will be a greater incidence of social loafing on group projects. Confirmed

 

Hypothesis 2: As the size of the group increases, there will be greater incidence of social loafing. Confirmed

 

Hypothesis 3: Compared to instructor-assigned groups, student groups formed through self-selection will experience lower incidence of social loafing. Not supported

 

Hypothesis 4: As the number of peer evaluations increases, there will be lower incidence of social loafing on group projects. Confirmed

 

Hypothesis 5: As the incidence of social loafing on group projects decreases, students are likely to be more satisfied with their group members' contributions to the project. Confirmed

 

Hypothesis 6: Satisfaction with group members' contributions is positively related to students' perceptions of grade fairness. Confirmed

 

I love this kind of pedagogical research. It is so applied—these are results that can be used. It is one study, but the empirical design is robust, which adds to the generalizability of the findings. Successful group learning experiences are very much a function of how the group work is designed and projects can be designed in ways that reduce potential problems. So, if members doing their fair share is a concern or has been an issue in group work projects, tackle that problem by limiting the size of the project (you can always add a second one), keeping the groups small (other research recommends 4-6), incorporating a peer assessment component, and taking that peer feedback seriously when assigning grades for group projects.

 

Reference: Aggarwal, P., and O'Brien, C. L. (2008). Social loafing in group projects: Structural antecedents and effect on student satisfaction. Journal of Marketing Education, 30 (3), 255-264.

 

 

                                       

Doing Learner-Centered Teaching or Being Learner-Centered

The rereading, sorting, and occasional tossing of articles on teaching and learning in my files continues. And I continue to be amazed at what I've missed and forgotten. Here's my latest find.

"In most of the writing on learner-centered education … the focus remains on the teacher—what he or she can or should do to achieve learner-centered instruction. Although a learner-centered model is based in a different set of assumption than a teacher-centered model, the starting point is still pedagogical techniques initiated by the teacher. …  In our view, such a focus objectifies students, distances teachers, and underemphasizes the most critical element in the classroom: learning." (p.335)

At least they didn't list my book on learner-centered teaching, but they certainly could have. In large measure it describes learner-centered techniques and strategies undertaken by teachers. After having thought about this, I have to admit I'm not sure I see another way to begin. Most students do not arrive in our classrooms having experienced approaches that make their learning a central part of the educational experience. If teachers don't use these techniques, how else do students discover that learners (and teachers) can fill different roles in the classroom?

The authors explain further. "As we began to think and talk about what truly learner-centered classrooms would be like, we found that teaching techniques and pedagogy became nearly irrelevant. We grew less concerned about what we did in our classrooms and more concerned with who we were in the class and why we chose to do what we did." (p. 335)

Their article is about what they call "being" in the classroom, and it emphasizes the need for teachers to move in their thinking from "doing" things in the classroom to "being" there as students do the learning. And I see that point—you can use learner-centered strategies in a teacher-centered way. You focus on the technique and its execution to the exclusion of students and the learning that is hopefully happening for them.

Moreover, the authors do recognize that teaching isn't always about "being"—sometimes teachers must do things to and with students. "What we advocate … is active and overt choice about where to operate on the doing-being continuum." (p. 354)

I'm keeping this article. It makes distinctions that are subtle and yet significant. Teaching can't be learner-centered if the learning is not more central than the teaching.

Reference: Ramsey, V. J. and Fitzgibbons, D. E. (2005). Being in the classroom. Journal of Management Education, 29 (2), 333-356.

Memorization: It Isn't All Bad

Larry Sanger makes an interesting point about memorization. Being something of a technology Luddite, I didn't recognize his name—he's one of the co-founders of Wikipedia and has a Ph.D. in philosophy.

 

"Whenever I encounter yet another instance of educationists' [I'm guessing that is not a term of endearment] arguments against 'memorizing,' the following rather abstract yet simple thought springs into my philosopher's mind: Surely the only way to know something is to have memorized it. How can I be said to know something that I do not remember? So being opposed to memorizing has always sounded to me like being opposed to knowledge. I realize this argument likely seems glib. The thing educationists object to, of course, is not the remembering or even the memorizing but rather the memorizing by rote—that is, by dull repetition and often without experience or understanding." (p. 16)

 

Admittedly, he's making a small distinction, but it gets at out how we often overreact. Our thinking crystallizes, holding one point to the exclusion of others. Some memorization is absolutely necessary. My mentally retarded brother, about whom I've written previously, needs to know his Pennsylvania phone number now that he lives here, and he is terrible at memorizing anything that matters. But is there any other way to learn your phone number? And, you need to know it. You can't ask the bank teller to wait while you use Google to find it, at least not without causing some wonderment.

 

All memorization is not bad. It can be a tool that leads to understanding. It opens the door to knowledge. Sometimes even rote memorization is a necessary first step. If you've got it in your mind, even though you may not understand it fully or at all, its relevance, connection, and value is there to be discovered, provided it moves from short-term memory (where most things memorized by rote are stored) to long-term memory.

 

We should be opposed to rote memorization when it's the study strategy students rely on most. We also need to be sure that we aren't giving exams that measure memorization abilities better than they measure learning. But our thinking about memorization needs to be tempered with a clearer understanding of when it does and does not promote learning.

 

Reference: Sanger, L. (2010). Individual knowledge in the internet. Educause Review, (March/April), 14-24.

Writing Promotes Learning

Once again I'm trying to clean out my collection of articles on teaching and learning. I've been collecting for years and have hundreds … yes, hundreds. Now that everything is available online there is no reason to keep the many stacks and boxes that have filled my office to overflowing. The problem, of course, is that I run into all these wonderful articles that I have forgotten about. If I toss them, will I ever encounter them again? So much good material is so rarely referenced.

 

Here's the essence of one I found yesterday. Would you believe that even very short, ungraded free writing assignments promote learning course material? And by short, I do mean very short—five minutes on a topic per week, that's 45 minutes a semester. That much writing improved performance on factual and conceptual multiple-choice items.

 

Improved compared to what? The study explored two different treatments experienced by 978 undergraduates in 32 sections of an introductory psychology course. In both treatments students either thought or wrote about topics that "centered on expressing opinions about current controversies in the field, applying course content to everyday experiences and choosing and supporting a position after presentation of competing viewpoints." (p. 173) In one treatment, students were instructed to think about the topic for five minutes, and in the second they were asked to write about it for five minutes. A 10-minute discussion of the topic followed both treatments. Students took multiple-choice exams after each of the three main content sections, and those exams contained some questions (factual and conceptual) about the thinking/writing topics.

 

"Just five minutes of writing on a topic per week … produced significantly higher scores on test items than did the same amount of time spent thinking." (p. 174)

 

How did they get students to write for five minutes? They offered one point per free write. And students who attended the recitation on the days they were asked to think about the topic got one point for being there.

 

"This research demonstrates that a technique within reach of most course instructors can produce significant improvement in students' performance." (p. 175) These are results worth remembering.

 

Reference: Drabick. D. A., Weisberg, R., Paul, L., and Bubier, J. (2007). Keeping it short and sweet: Brief, ungraded writing assignments facilitate learning. Teaching of Psychology, 34 (3), 172-176.

That Content We Love

 

I had occasion this week to reread one of my favorite articles. In this piece Marshall Gregory explores teaching 18th Century British poetry, content he loves but that his students don't find particularly compelling. The example he uses throughout the article is Thomas Gray's poem, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," and it's one of Gregory's favorite poems. Despite this very specific example, the article is really about teaching any well-loved, but seemingly esoteric content.

 

Gregory's honesty is at times brutal—the article is such a great example of how critical reflection can lead a teacher to new insights and deeper understandings. After concluding that there is no value in teaching this poem per se, he writes, "One clear implication of my claim that there is no intrinsic educational virtue in knowing Gray's 'Elegy'… is that there is also no intrinsic educational virtue in much of the other content we teach in colleges and universities. There is much educational virtue in studying this content, but we who love this content often imply to our students that the content matters for its own sake in a way it seldom, in fact, does matter." He goes on to point out that once outside the classroom students will not likely be asked whether they have read Gray's "Elegy" just as they aren't going to be asked if they know Boyle's law, Toynbee's theory of history, or Cicero's treatise on friendship.

 

"Mostly students do not get educated because they study our beloved content. They get educated because they learn how to study our beloved content, and they carry the how of that learning with them in the world as cognitive and intellectual skills that stick long after the content is forgotten." (p. 97)

 

This perspective on the role of content in learning leads him to this conclusion about covering content. "If maximum coverage is the end of education, then there are no educated persons, because even the most deeply educated among us merely scratch at the surface of all there is to know." (p. 96)

 

I don't know how many times I've read this article, but during every revisit I am once again awed by the erudite way he crafts his argument, but even more impressive is the compelling sensibility of his points.

 

Reference: Gregory, M. (2005). Turning water into wine: Giving remote texts full flavor for the audience of friends. College Teaching, 53 (3), 95-98. 

Are We Answering Too Many Questions?

"For the most part, college students enrolled in beginning chemistry courses do not, during laboratory-based experiences, learn to follow directions. Instead they learn to depend excessively upon oral directions presented by the instructor in response to their queries." (p. 103) When I happened on this quote (referenced in another article) it reminded me of my chemistry lab experience—I took a chemistry course with 20 beginning students as part of a first-year seminar program. The teacher, also our lab instructor, refused to answer questions in lab, and we hated him for it. Ask him a question and rather than answer he'd ask you a question back. It was infuriating—you had to figure everything out for yourself or with your lab partners.

 

He should have explained what he was doing and why—it would have helped with the frustration. I figured out after the fact that it was actually a great technique. If you could get past the frustration of not having your question answered and attended to the question he had asked in response, answering his question almost always led to the answer needed to your question. And this exchange provided you with the opportunity to figure it out for yourself. I should have seen the value of the approach as I experienced it.

 

Do we help student learn when we answer all their questions? What about those we've already answered in class or that are answered in the text or that you'd know if you'd done the homework? What about those procedural questions—like how many pages, do you want margins, does spelling count, do we have class the day before Thanksgiving—carefully and completely answered in the syllabus? If you answer questions like these, is there any reason why students should read the syllabus?

 

Why do students ask these kinds of questions? Partly, I think, because they lack confidence in their ability to make decisions. If you get an answer you know what you need to do next—somebody who knows the right answer has told you what to do. But does that grow your confidence and make you able to make decision on your own? I don't see how. Rather, it makes your learning more dependent on having someone around to answer your questions.

 

I do remember what happened in chemistry. We basically stopped asking the teacher questions. We asked each other. Sometimes we even asked each other follow-up questions. And, for the most part we figured things out for ourselves. The only rub in this story is that we (yes, that includes me) thought the instructor was really unhelpful. We didn't leave class giving him credit for having devised a strategy that actually promoted more learning and developed confidence.

 

Reference: Hilosky, A., Sutman, F., and Schmuckler, J. (1998). Is laboratory-based instruction in beginning college-level chemistry worth the effort and expense? Journal of Chemical Education, 75 (1), 100-104.    

 

A Great Book on Grading

I've just finished reading the second edition of Barbara Walvoord and Virginia Anderson's book on grading (Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment in College). The book was first published in 1998, and since then it has established itself as the go-to book on grading. I see it referenced more often than any other source on this important topic.

This fine reputation is well deserved, in my opinion. If you don't have a book on grading and need a well-organized, thorough treatise on all issues related to evaluating students, this is the book I'd recommend. It tells you what you need to know and should consider doing in a straightforward, no-nonsense way. As my previous blog entry and an article I'm working on for the newsletter illustrate, it is full of good ideas. Unlike all too many how-to books, this one doesn't just offer sensible advice, it backs up what it recommends with research references. It also includes references to lots of other good resources on grading and its associated topics.

This is a book you should have in your teaching library, and I do believe all teachers should have a collection of resources on teaching and learning. It's part of valuing our profession—recognizing that there are good sources that have collected and integrated important information about aspects of teaching—in this case, grading. So, if you haven't yet started your library or it's been a while since you've added a book, here's one to consider. It's so well organized you can pick it and read what's of interest or find what you might need to know.

This quote aptly describes all that this book covers. "By 'grading' we mean not only bestowing an 'A' or a 'C' on a piece of student work. We also mean the process by which a teacher assesses student learning through classroom tests and assignments, the context in which good teachers establish that process and the dialogue that surrounds grades and defines their meaning to various audiences. Grading encompasses tailoring the test or assignment to the learning goals of the course, establishing criteria and standards, helping students acquire the skills and knowledge they need, assessing student learning over time, shaping student motivation, planning course content and teaching methods, using in-class and out-of-class time, offering feedback so students can develop as thinkers and writers, communicating about students' learning to appropriate audiences, and using results to plan improvements in the classroom, department, and institution. When we talk about grading, we have student learning most in mind." (p. 1)

Reference: Walvoord, B. E. and Anderson, V. J. (2010). Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment. 2nd ed. Jossey-Bass, 2010. (available online from: www.josseybass.com )

Learning Goals for Students

As Barbara Walvoord and Virginia Anderson point out in their venerable book on grading (now available in a revised 2nd edition) goals can motivate students. Unfortunately, too often they are motivated only by the goal of getting grades and getting courses out of the way. Walvoord and Anderson suggest you tell student you know they have these goals but that you are (and they should) also be interested in what they want to learn in the course. Here are some of Walvoord's and Anderson's good ideas for making learning goals a part of the learning experience in a course. 

At the beginning of the course have students write down their learning goals. If you need to, make it an assignment and offer a few points for doing so.
Discuss their goals in class. Students can share them in small groups or with the whole class. In class have students pass their goals to someone else and keep passing the goals until no knows whose goal they have. Then ask some students to read that goal. If you're up for a bit of fun and modest mayhem, have students ball up the paper with their goal and toss it to someone else. Encourage students to toss these papers around the room for a bit. Then they can uncrumple the paper and read the goal out loud. The idea is to give students a sense of each other's goals.
After hearing the students' goals, collect them, prepare a summary, and discuss how their goals will or will not be addressed in the course. If you haven't already, this can be a very effective time to distribute and discuss the syllabus.
Then you might want to have students revise their goals, preserving them in a prominent place in their course notebooks. Some faculty (with small classes) use discussion of these individual goals as the basis of a short getting-to-know-you conversation with students. This option is viable only if class sizes are small, although maybe individual goals could be commented on in an email.
If the goals are preserved in students' notebooks, they can be revisited during the course. Have any of the goals been achieved? Are we making progress with others? Or, when presenting content you might mention its relevance to certain goals.
A review of these goals makes a great end-of-course activity. Were the goals achieved? How? Were the goals important? Do they make it more likely that content will be remembered? Is having a learning goal a good idea? Why? What did the teacher and fellow classmates contribute to the accomplishment of the learning goals?

Reference: Walvoord, B. E. and Anderson, V. J. (2010). Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment. 2nd ed. Jossey-Bass, 2010.

Valuing our Community College Colleagues

In a 2009 editorial, John Moore lists some impressive figures about community colleges. There are almost 1,200 of them in the U.S., and they enroll 11.5 million students a year. About 60 percent of those students are attending college part time. Their average age is 29. Especially impressive is the fact that about 40 percent of them are first-generation college students. Moore who edits the Journal of Chemical Education notes that 44 percent of the recent graduates in science and engineering have taken at least one course at a two-year college. He also points out that enrollment in two-year colleges significantly increases the racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in science and engineer. I suspect that's true for other disciplines as well.

There is a pecking order among higher education institutions, even though, given our missions and what we believe about the role of education in a democracy, there shouldn't be. Unfortunately, community colleges (I'm really glad we've moved away from calling them junior colleges) are often at the bottom of that order. In my own experience working with faculty at a wide range of different institutions, I would have to say that community college faculty are often the most sophisticated pedagogues I encounter. They face many challenges in the classroom and have responded with a plethora of innovative and exemplary instructional strategies. I have learned much from them.

Moore writes this about community college faculty. "We should point out that two-year colleges encourage students who might otherwise not consider science [or many other fields, I would add], but who might become super scientists of tomorrow. We should celebrate our colleagues who teach by choice in two-year colleges because they have the desire and passion to make a real difference and because they believe that every student is important. We should not expect students, even graduate students, to become carbon copies of ourselves but rather should encourage them to find out where their talents can best be used and then dedicate themselves to use those talents to improve our society." (p. 779)

Reference: Moore, J. W. (2009). Two-year colleges: Guidelines and exemplary teaching. Journal of Chemical Education, 86 (7), 779.

What Lectures Can Accomplish

"I have never believed that there was intrinsic damage being done to students in what has been called the 'sage on the stage' model of teaching. I don't think it's always bad to listen to an expert talk about what she knows best, and I don't think that the discussion format is inherently better than the lecture format merely because the latter allows the students to express their opinions. On the contrary, I think that a truly great lecturer has the capacity to change a student's life, and I think that there is something valuable in students listening to a person who has an effortless command of a subject, in seeing the kind of dedication and erudition a fine lecturer embodies." (p.460)

This quote appears in an essay by an English professor who is describing the experience of teaching Introduction to Fiction in a large class format. It's an insightful essay. I've excerpted the quote because it so clearly captures what makes lectures an effective pedagogical strategy. I do believe most faculty rely on the method too much, the vast majority of lectures are not great and most do not change students' lives, but there is no arguing their potential for greatness and transformation.

I'm sharing the quote to remind us that no pedagogical method is inherently good or bad—no pedagogical method is always better than another. Much of what we read and hear now is anti-lecture. Given what we know about how people learn and the attention spans of today's college students, most of us should probably lecture less. But that doesn't mean we should completely stop lecturing or feel guilty whenever we do.

Lectures belong in an instructor's repertoire of instructional approaches. Part of what makes them successful is a clear understanding of what learning outcomes they are best suited to accomplish and purposeful decision-making about when to use them.

Reference: Foote, S. (2010). Amateur hour beginning in the lecture hall. Pedagogy, 10 (3), 457-470.