I Was Inspired by a Teaching Workshop, But Now What Do I Do?
Synopsis:
Dr. Mary Haines, after attending an interactive teaching workshop, was inspired to change how she taught her control systems course, a tough course for students that yielded low exam scores. When preparing for the course, however, she had difficulty figuring out exactly how to modify her teaching. She gained some helpful suggestions from a departmental colleague.
Dr. Mary Haines, after attending an interactive teaching workshop, was inspired to change how she taught her control systems course, a tough course for students that yielded low exam scores. When preparing for the course, however, she had difficulty figuring out exactly how to modify her teaching. She gained some helpful suggestions from a departmental colleague.
Full Story:
In a faculty meeting, Dr. Mary Haines, an associate professor in Electrical Engineering at a private university, heard her respected colleague, James, recommend a workshop for engineering faculty called "Why should I change the way I teach?"
In a faculty meeting, Dr. Mary Haines, an associate professor in Electrical Engineering at a private university, heard her respected colleague, James, recommend a workshop for engineering faculty called "Why should I change the way I teach?"
Strategies Menu
Mary thought of her control systems design course. This is a tough class for her students, with students last year averaging 72% on exams. She first assumed the low exam scores were due to students’ poor preparation or low motivation, but after talking to her students she realized they put in good effort but just weren’t learning the concepts. She teaches this course every year and the class is in lecture format with weekly homework, a midterm, and a final. Mary thought that perhaps this workshop could help her modify her teaching enough to improve the student’s performance.
She attended the workshop, glad to see other engineering colleagues of various experience levels attending it. The workshop explained how research shows that classes that incorporate more active learning techniques have higher student learning and student satisfaction than the traditional lecture format. In the workshop they also learned about varied learning styles and saw examples of new interactive teaching methods.
Mary was undoubtedly inspired by the workshop, but when it was time to prepare the next control systems class, she reviewed the syllabus and was a little perplexed exactly how to incorporate active learning techniques into her lectures. Feeling momentarily discouraged and daunted, Mary mentioned this roadblock to her colleague James and they talked about his suggestions:
- Realize that even active learning techniques that help students think critically about new material and spark greater inquiry into concepts can be simple. For example, the quick and easy Think-Pair-Share technique prompts students to use information they just heard about in a lecture.
- Be prepared to explain your new techniques to the students. Active learning can often fail in the set-up and the wrap-up. If you don’t give students a reason for doing the activity, they will consider it busywork or too different from what they are used to, which is lectures and note taking. If you don’t do a wrap-up, you risk that the students will not see they learned anything and will consider the activity busywork.
- Incorporate classroom assessment techniques so that you know when your changes are successful. For example, the Minute Paper quickly gauges students understanding of materials recently covered.
- Start small. Make sound incremental changes rather than making sweeping changes that take a great deal of time and effort. Remember that updating one's teaching skills is a gradual process.
When the semester started, Mary tried incorporating 5-minute discussion groups to break up the lecture and used Minute Papers at the end of lectures to identify the muddy concepts. She remained patient with her students and herself during this time of change and was rewarded for her efforts by significantly higher student scores. because her students’ average scores increased significantly.