Teaching Strategies

Today was the final day of the teaching teaching spring class. We’ve been at it since January and have met 14 times. This means folks have devoted some serious time to coming together as a group to talk about their teaching and hopefully learn a few tricks. I started today talking about my design for the course, though of course, Roz designed too, and everyone who participated helped shape the course, either through conversations outside of the class or by their participation.

The design of this course was two fold:

1. To make the best use of the 14 hours we would have with everyone. (Aiming for active, meaningful classes.)
2. To not have any assignments or assessments. The goal here was to save time, since we were already taking so much, but also to help limit anxiety. Everyone starts things with the best of intentions, and several people mentioned that they wouldn’t mind assignments to help further their learning. However, knowing how semesters go, I didn’t want to put added pressure on anyone and I wanted to remove any barriers to attending class. This is because attendance was important for this particular course.
   1. This was because the design of the course required classroom participation. Everyone who teaches has something to say about teaching. I, as the one leading most of these sessions, was guiding the conversation through an instructional design lens. But everyone has something valuable to add and made the class richer. So, it was important to create an environment in which people would come, and limiting out-of-class work was a strategic decision to encourage attendance and participation.

The goals of the course were:

• To help create confidence
  • In the teaching we’re already doing.
  • For publishing in the SoTL; we’re doing really interesting and innovative work, and anyone teaching at ZSR has the ability to publish something in the SoTL. Hopefully this course helped give a framework and vocabulary for how to do so.
• To introduce some theory
  • Enough to be able to know why things the thing you’re already doing work (or don’t).
• To provide some tools
  • New strategies and ideas
  • Sharing information from different courses
• To let people know I’m here to help!
  • Really! If you want to chat about designing your course or class, or just adding in a few active learning exercises, I’d love to talk with you. If you have an idea for a professional development opportunity, I’d do that, too! And if you’ve heard enough from me, you know who is doing what from our course discussions, so you know who else on staff could help.

We also went through the list of topics covered in this course (which you can find in this blog) and discussed a few things people are interested in seeing in the future.

This “class” has been a fun one for me, and really rewarding. Thanks (again!) to everyone who participated and contributed to the program. I think we’ll see the benefits of our work over the next several semesters!

Today’s session was on the scholarship of teaching and learning. I really wanted to make sure to include it because this is something we’re all capable of doing right now and is nice to address after covering most of the content. I’m also saving the last class for wrap up and synthesis.

So, here are the slides:

If you have any questions, a lot of us have published and presented in this area. Feel free to ask for advice or collaboration!!

Announcements from the start of class:

• I’m planning to do a wrap up session for the swap and share. Don’t worry, you’ll still get to swap and share–I just want to make sure to have time to tie together all the threads we’ve started this semester. It’s gonna be a good class, please come if you can.
• Monday, May 11, at 10:00am we’ll have a session to share how we handle our lib100/20X classes. Each person will have time to talk about what they do, why they do it, and/or if it works. This will be a good chance to learn what others are doing, get ideas, and learn about how other people approach information literacy.
• Will have a workshop this summer on the practical application of what we’ve been discussing for course design. Watch for something from Giz or the PDC on this.
• Based on feedback, we’re looking at a model for next semester of a facilitated weekly discussion on the “nuts and bolts” of teaching. Of course, as with this semester, attendance isn’t required, but we want to make sure to provide this opportunity for the people who do want it. If this sounds good, we’ll start planning the logistics (schedule, how to get topics, how to get speakers, etc). At the end of the fall semester we can reevaluate and do whatever people would like (nothing, another teacher-led class, another facilitated discussion, etc).

Today’s powerpoint:

Notes from today:

• Formative assessment: clickers, end of class assignment, muddiest point, learning logs, weekly blog
• Summative assessment: EOG, big paper, annotated bibliography, final project, quizzes (depending on if graded and how used)
• Informal assessment measures performance, application, processes the students are going through
• Formal assessment measures performance against a benchmark, content mastery, ability to take a test, performance
• Objective assessment strengths include easy to grade, good for subjects with right answer (like math), good for skills-based work (like finding a book. Weaknesses include that it’s hard to create good questions, some things aren’t right or wrong.
• Subjective assessment strengths include the ability to see the big picture in the students’ work, easier to create assignments, open ended statements require students think of something to say. Weaknesses include grading time, consistency in grading, and can be hard for student to get started–it can be overwhelming. (Rubrics can help)

Questions? Leave them in the comments!!

Today’s class focused on the practical, down and dirty, aspects of classroom management. Since I knew this was a topic of interest for several people, and that we had already covered IGI and Conversation Theory a bit in another session, I decided to focus our attention on the classroom aspects of teaching. If anyone’s particularly interested in that, though, I’m happy to chat.

A reminder: Roz and I are meeting next week to discuss this project and next steps. If anyone has feedback, questions, ideas for future teaching initiatives, please let one of us know!!

I also mentioned Central Michigan’s FaCIT Take 5 For Teaching website. It’s a great resource for practical tips if you have a spare five minutes and an area you’re interested in learning more about.

Okay! The things we discussed:

First Day

• Student Tours
• Discussion of how students currently use the library (perhaps followed with student led tour)
• Students fill out card about what they want to get from the class (to be used in refining the syllabus)
• Showing the library website and how to do useful things (place a hold, reserve a study room, etc)
• Clickers to get demographic information and introduce the tool
• Learning style inventory

Getting Students To Talk

• Room and layout makes a difference. Giz volunteered to help rearrange for a few hours this summer to see if there are any good solutions. I’m in. Anyone else?
• Worksheets and in class assignments in lieu of discussion
• Pair work

Group Word

• No one currently lets students choose if they want to work alone or in a group
• Students might resist group work, but it’s good for them (they’ll have to do it for the rest of their life)
• Service learning as a way to do group work with one large class group

Getting Comfortable with Speaking

• Practice with an audience
• The shift between the reference librarian’s role as a helper/expert to a teacher’s role as the one in charge is a hard one
• Praise in public, chastise in private
• Set ground rules

Multitasking Students

• Ignore it
• Ask how what they’re doing is applicable (if blatant)
• Teach from in front of the multitasking student, wherever they’re sitting

Attendance and Tardiness

• Quiz grades: that they count towards attendance, that they start when the class starts so their grades reflect tardiness
• Tick off each comment as class participation
• In class graded exercises
• Shut door when class starts
• Stop and comment when people come in late

Learning Names

• Name table tent by each student
• Assigned seats

Establishing Class Rules

• As a class
• List that is modified each semester based on previous experiences

So, those are the comments I managed to record during our discussion. If I missed something or you think of something else, please add it! If you have any other Q&A, please leave them here!!

This is just a space in case you have questions or comments on active learning! Do you do anything interesting with your classes that you would like to share? (We’d like to hear it!)

So I didn’t do too much in class on Friday. This was because I felt that if we were taking a day to do active learning, it should be as active as possible, with as little from me as possible. I tried to slip entirely into a facilitator role.

Some noted that physical things are easy to make active, because people can do them. That’s true. But you can take different approaches to how to make them active, and you can still get ideas from how people teach things that are physical. For example, the knit-and-pass exercise could work just as well for translating in a group, teaching synonyms for search, or any brainstorming activity. The yoga-poses teaching demonstrated how to teach something kinesthetically that could have been taught with flashcards. You could have people pose as a painting is drawn, or act out scenes of literature to learn them.

My plan, for this class, was also to show how once you’re thinking from an active learning perspective you incorporate several types of techniques easily, iwthout necessarily thinking “theory X would recommend teaching method Y.”

Our tenth day focused on active learning, something several people had requested to know more about. Active learning is an umbrella term that includes many different schools of thought within education, and I’ve tried to incorporate some level of it into each class we’ve had.

Since you’ve been in a class that’s been lead by Roz and me, you’ve learned our active learning styles. My goal for this class session was to see other approaches. To do this, I turned it around for different groups to come up with active learning exercises and to do them for the class. This was so that you could see how quickly you can come up with an exercise, and that you oculd see different interpretations of incorporating active learning into the classroom.

Four groups came up with something to teach, and an active way to teach it. We had:

1. Knitting: demoed knitting with video, and in person; taught one person who then had to knit a stitch on their own; that person passed it to the next and taught the next person; continued down the chain. This was an excellent example of how to incorporate motivation (you know it’s coming to you at some point) and the student-as-teacher model.
2. Yoga: group demonstrated three poses and named them; had the class do the three poses as named them; group did poses and asked class to recall the name. This exercise was a great way to engage kinesthetic learners. Though you might agree easily that doing yoga poses is an obvious way to teach yoga, the same concept could be applied to any case where a student has to memorize a form/image and a name.
3. Cooking Salmon: pairs had to find a salmon recipe, then come up with reasons their recipe was best; each group made their case; the class voted on their favorite. This exercise helped participants learn various ways of cooking salmon and weigh the relevant benefits and drawbacks of each. In this case, the teacher didn’t have to teach anything, but facilitate the class discussion to guide them to relevant points.
4. Differences in classical composers: this group divided the class into three groups and assigned areas to listen for: melody, harmony, and rhythm; we then listened to two clips of music; then filled out a chart as a group of the characteristics of both composers. This was an excellent way of getting students to realize the answers on their own and document the answers you want to make sure they remember. It also brought up several other areas of discussion, where people were really interested in the answers, rather than just listening to a lecture.

I, personally, had a great time seeing what people chose to teach and how they taught it! Thanks for sharing!

day 6 was a discussion of Teaching Perspectives that came out of my ACRL Intentional Teacher Immersion program from San Diego last summer. I began by discussing the two books on teaching that we had used in that program: Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher by Stephen Brookfield and The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer. I briefly reviewed the main points of these two books. Palmer’s book focuses on the connection we make with our students rather than good teaching ‘technique.’ Brookfield’s book looks at teaching through four lenses: our autobiographies, our students eye’s, our colleagues’ experiences and theorhetical literature. I have both of these in my office if anyone is looking to read them.

Next the class looked at the Teaching Perspectives Inventory (http://teachingperspectives.com/ ) As we had all taken the inventory - we posted our placement on the continuum on the board. The five measures of the TPI are

• Transmission: Effective teaching requires a substatial commitment to the content or subject matter
• Apprenticeship: Effective teaching is a process of socializing students into new behavioral normas and ways of working. (Kolb)
• Developmental: Effective teaching must be planned and conducted ‘from the learners point of view’ (Vygotsky)
• Nurturing: Effective teaching assumes that long-term, hard, persistent effort to achieve comes from the heart not the head (Albert Bandura is a researcher here)
• Social Reform: Effective teaching seeks to change society in substantive ways.

Once again we fell all along the continuums of these five factors but an interesting discussion ensued on ways our perspectives inform our teaching and our students learning.

Last week Lauren did a brief discussion of the various learning styles. We brainstormed on ones we had heard of and came up with visual, auditory, kinesthetic, verbal, etc. We had all done the Index of Learning Styles questionnaire from NCSU available at http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html

I drew up the continuums on the board and had everyone come up and mark where they fell on them. The ranges were:

• Active — Reflective;
• Sensing — Intuitive;
• Visual — Verbal;
• Sequential — Global;

Here’s how we came out on these:

I think it’s interesting to see how we cluster in some areas and spread out more in others. I think our best discussion came out of how our own learning styles can impact how we teach our material.

Today we talked about several types of learning theories, really quickly. We’ll go into several of them in greater depth in the next few classes.

Because I used a very “meta” approach, I’m rolling the two posts into one here.

We started with a Q&A exercise that Kevin, Craig, and I have used in Lib100. Everyone (who wanted to) wrote questions they have in the course, and after it was over everyone (who wanted to) added tick marks to the ones they also shared. This will help Roz and me make sure to cover what you want by the end of the course.

We started with Active Learning, and used a case study as an example. The case study could be approached with an active learning strategy, but that wasn’t necessary. The point of the exercise was to experience an active learning activity.

Next up we addressed Problem Based Learning. In this case each pair had a problem they chose (how to teach a specific skill) and had a minute to find a way to solve the problem. The pairs shared out with the larger group, reflected and discussed some more, and had the opportunity to share their solutions again.

The third method we explored was Inquiry Based Learning which is perhaps the most student-driven solution. Pairs (again!) explored some aspect of IGI (how it’s related to the other subjects we’ve covered, if it is effective, how to incorporate it into instruction, etc) and shared out to the class.

Service Learning was our fourth topic, were everyone reflected individually on a project that they were very involved in. After reflecting we shared with the group.

The final category was conversation theory, in which the group would make connections as a whole. However, I had a meeting scheduled right up to that moment in class, so I had to leave at this point. If someone wants so share how that went… feel free to comment!

So, the big meta of the day:

• It was fast! It was designed to be fast to get through a lot of content for those who wanted a taste of a bunch of things. The speed also allowed us to demonstrate that there will be a lot of content about the specific topics we’ve singled out for future classes so that participants would know it’s more than just what is covered on the surface at conferences, in mainstream education literature, etc. Finally, if someone’s really busy and having a hard time making it to the classes, there was enough content to know if it’s something you want to know more about in the future. Of course, we hope you’ll come, though!
• I tried to fit in pair work leading to discussion, pair work that informs discussion that informs pair work, and personal reflection. Each of these approaches has strengths and weaknesses and a combined approach allows you to give more people a chance to do something that resonates with their own learning style.

If you have questions, please leave them here!