Engaging modern learners

Back in May I attended a meeting at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, which is just down the road from UNCG. The get together was sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and its Project Kaleidoscope, which is a higher education reform center that is, according to its website, dedicated to "empowering STEM faculty, including those from underrepresented groups, to graduate more students in STEM fields who are competitively trained and liberally educated." The theme for this regional meeting was "Engaging Modern Learners through Innovative Teaching Pedagogies."

The keynote speaker was Dr. Christy Price, who is a psychologist in the Department of Health and Physical Education at Dalton State University. Her specialties include teaching techniques that influence student motivation and engage Millennial learners. The title of her presentation was "The New 'R's for Engaging Modern Learners" and began with a discussion of generational mindsets. While she discussed the characteristics of Boomers (born between ca. 1943 and 1960) and Gen X (born between ca. 1961 and 1981), I'll stick with Gen Y or Millennials, since the majority of the students I teach come from this generation. Definitions vary, but most folks consider Millennials as those born during or after the early 1980s. As a group, they tend to (1) focus on grades rather than learning; (2) be less formal in their relationships both with their peers and their instructors; (3) have short attention spans; (4) deflect the responsibility for their education onto others; (5) need instantaneous feedback; (6) have trouble with time management. Dr. Price acknowledged that these traits may not necessarily characterize every student from this generation, nor are they exclusive to Millennials, but they do (and I agree based on my own experiences) provide useful generalizations that can help us as instructors cater our teaching strategies to student needs.

Okay, here are her "R"s for engaging modern learners:

• Responsibility. As discussed above, Millennials feel that responsibility for their education lies exclusively with the instructor. The problem with this mindset is that it does not motivate students to learn. How do we motivate them? Dr. Price cited a study in which 98% of a sample of 201 students responded that the methods of instruction and the characteristics of the instructor influenced their motivation to learn. The lesson here is that (1) the structure of the course should be the instructor's responsibility; (2) a successful structure increases student motivation; and (3) motivated students are more likely to take responsibility for their own education and, thus, learn more.
• Research-based Pedagogies. Good instructors must acknowledge the pedagogical methods that have been shown to work. Some examples:
• The literature suggests that attention begins to drift off after about 20 minutes, so it is best to break up classes every so often with a question, discussion, or other activity to allow for processing time.
• It is also becoming increasingly clear that the brain is a novelty-seeker: the more novel the situation, the more the brain attends to it (this is also a point raised by Terry Doyle in his plenary presentation at the Lilly Conference last year). So, students need variety in topics and delivery.
• Problem-, team-, research-, and community engagement-based learning is particularly powerful.
• Some of her own research shows the top five factors that:
• motivate student attendance are linked to an instructor that (5) is enthusiastic, (4) explains concepts well, (3) makes class enjoyable and fun, (2) has an attendance policy that impacts the grade, and (1) involves students by asking questions and assigning discussions, group work, hands-on activities, and case studies.
• heighten student interest and attention are linked to an instructor that (5) embeds humor, (4) is not monotone, (3) explains concepts well, (2) utilizes multimedia, and (1) involves students by asking questions and assigning discussions, group work, hands-on activities, and case studies.
• motivate students to do work outside of class are (5) assignments that permits students to share their own point of view, (4) assignments that apply to students' lives, (3) an instructor that cares, encourages, or offers help, (2) extra credit or bonus points, and (1) assignments that are required and collected for a grade.
• Relaxed Learning Environment. Millennials appreciate a non-authoritarian learning environment with some built-in flexibility in course structure. One key aspect of this is an instructor that cares about their students. Another factor essentially mirrors the move in higher education away from the "sage on the stage" or "information delivery" model towards a facilitator model. This breaks down the traditional authority role of the instructor and makes students more comfortable speaking and learning from each other.  
• Rationale for Everything. While perhaps a bit annoying from the instructor's perspective, this R is really about relevance. Why, students ask themselves, am a I doing this assignment anyway? As instructors, it is important to provide an answer to this question, and it is more self-evident when the applications are either personal or authentic. Connecting content to student interests and their futures is also a good idea. 
• Rapport with Students. Teaching is persuasive. Before you freak out, its persuasiveness lies not in convincing students that course information is correct, but in advertising how cool the material is. This encourages students to want to reach the learning goals you, as the instructor, set out for them. Excitement of this kind helps build a close, supportive environment, which creates a positive emotional experience for students. 

Patricia Wright, girl power, and lemur conservation

Phi Beta Kappa is the oldest honor society for liberal arts and sciences in the U.S., and their Visiting Scholars Program helps fund visits by leading scholars to institutions across the country. Our department head, Bob Anemone, applied for one of these awards in order to bring Patricia Wright to UNCG. Dr. Wright is a world expert on lemurs and has dedicated her incredible career to conserving this unique group of primates.

Dr. Wright spent a couple days in Greensboro. On Monday, April 10th she had lunch with our anthropology undergraduates and, later that evening, gave a public lecture on her conservation work in Madagascar entitled "Back from the Brink of Extinction: Saving the Lemurs of Madagascar." I couldn't attend this presentation, but those who did said it was incredibly inspiring. The Greensboro Science Center then hosted a showing of her film Island of Lemurs: Madagascar on Tuesday evening. Unfortunately, I couldn't fit this in either, but sandwiched in between was a RISE sponsored lunch with Dr. Wright that I did attend. It was an intimate event in which she discussed her early years in primatology and her recent research with lemurs.

Her early years in primatology are documented in High Moon over the Amazon: My Quest to Understand the Monkeys of the Night, so I'll just touch on a couple of events. Her first encounter with a primate occurred in 1968 when she and her husband Jaime ran into a pet shop during a New York rainstorm. Within, they saw, and fell in love with, an owl monkey. They bought it for $40 and quickly learned that almost nothing was known about this species. (Dr. Wright was very aware of the irony of purchasing a primate as a pet given her later career choices). They learned, too, that monkeys do not make great pets and that perhaps their owl monkey needed a companion. So, they eventually traveled down to Colombia in 1971 to do just that.

Dr. Wright continued to study the owl monkey and discovered that males are heavily involved in infant care, a finding that was very different from what was known among other primates. This led her to wonder: how did parental care evolve? She was determined to study owl monkeys in the wild, and after a great deal of persistence and some encounters with several individuals both within and outside of academia (including one with Mrs. Nancy Mulligan, a wildlife enthusiast whose husband was an early investor in George Eastman's Kodak company--we all know how that turned out), she eventually received funding and an affiliation as an adjunct researcher at the New School for Social Research to work in Peru. The rest, as they say, is history: Dr. Wright completed ground-breaking work with owl monkeys and eventually began studying lemurs.

Among her most intriguing findings is that females rule the roost in lemur societies, and they enforce this dominance over males with violence. Dr. Wright related several rather humorous anecdotes of female lemurs walking up to males and literally beating them away from prime feeding locations. Given that females feed and carry the offspring, it makes sense that they would make every effort to secure priority when it comes to food. Why, then, Dr. Wright asked, keep the males around at all when females are not sexually receptive? After all, they don't help with infant care and compete with females for food. She doesn't know for sure, but one suggestion is that males provide a useful predator alarm and deterrence system. Another interesting issue is the ability of females to exert dominance over males in the absence of strong sexual dimorphism (females are no larger or stronger than males).

A couple of other observations that Dr. Wright and her colleagues have made over the years include "day cares" among black and white ruffed lemurs (females will leave their offspring in communal nests and go off, sometimes for hours at a time, to feed) and the formation of brain plaque among lemurs with heavily processed diets and a sedentary lifestyle (sound familiar?).

I did get a chance during her busy schedule to speak one-on-one with Dr. Wright. As the father of a four-year-old, I was particularly interested to hear that she had brought her then-young daughter into the field. I have begun to think seriously about bringing my son to Armenia or Tanzania in the next year or so, and Dr. Wright reported that the experience with her daughter in the field was wonderful.

Teaching students how to learn

On December 6, 2016, UNCG's University Teaching and Learning Commons (UTLC) sponsored a workshop entitled "Teaching Students How To Learn." The workshop's keynote speaker was Dr. Saundra McGuire, a Professor Emerita of Chemical Education at Louisiana State University. She has over 40 years of experience teaching chemistry, and has more recently become interested in student learning strategies. Dr. McGuire is a wonderful speaker, and I learned so much from this workshop, some of which I'll share below.

Her first presentation was entitled "Metacognition: The Key to Intentional Learning." Metacognition is, in short, thinking about thinking. It is, of course, more than that, and includes things like:

• Being consciously aware of yourself as a problem solver (this helps get students out of the "victim," and into a proactive, mentality). 
• The ability to monitor your mental processing (e.g., do I actually understand this, or am I just memorizing it?).
• Accurately judging your level of understanding. 
• Knowing what you know and what you don't know.

The problem, Dr. McGuire argued, is that these skills often are not required in high school, so incoming students simply do not have them. She showed some data from 2008, 2013, and 2014 showing how incoming freshman answered the following question: "At what level of Bloom's Taxonomy did you have to operate to make an A or B in high school?" There was some variation between years, but a majority (anywhere between 81% and 94%) never progressed beyond Level 3 (Application), and over 50% never progressed beyond Level 2 (Understanding). So, only a minority of students were required to analyze, evaluate, or create anything in order to receive an A or B in high school. What was interesting, though, is that when these students were asked at what level they would have to operate to make an A or B in college, well over half responded that they would need to at least be able to analyze (if not evaluate or create). They know, in other words, what they need to be able to do in college−they just can't do it!

Dr. McGuire then outlined a number of learning strategies and how we, as teachers, can help inculcate them.

• First, students need to understand the difference between studying and learning. There was some variation among faculty in how this distinction is made. Everyone agreed, though, that they are fundamentally different and that the ability to apply knowledge outside of the strict context in which it was presented is key. 
• For which task, Dr. McGuire then asked us, would a student work harder: to make an A on an exam or to teach the material to the class? Everyone agreed that students will typically work harder for the latter scenario. Therefore, assignments or activities that require students (individually or in groups) to review and present material to the class is often a very successful learning strategy (consider the skills from the above metacognition list that such an exercise requires). 
• For those students that have trouble with reading comprehension and retention, Dr. McGuire suggested a strategy called "Active Reading." Here are the basics:

1. Preview. Scan the text for section headings, boldface print, italicized words, and any charts or graphs. Why? This gives the brain a preview of what's about to be read and provides important context for what is to be learned.
2. Questions. Come up with questions that the reading should address. Why? This provides motivation, or a reason, to do the reading that taps into a student's (hopefully) inherent curiosity. 
3. Paraphrase. Now that that the brain knows what to expect and is sufficiently curious, begin reading. Read the first paragraph, then stop. Now, paraphrase that single paragraph in your own words. Move on to the second and do the same thing, except this time, when you paraphrase, add in the information from the first paragraph. Continue this process for each paragraph. Why? This breaks the information down into manageable chunks. This sounds like a lot of work, and it is. However, this strategy takes less time than the alternative, which typically involves the reading of entire chapters only to realize that nothing was retained and thus must be read again (and again...). 

• Dr. McGuire presented some pretty impressive data showing test scores before and after these strategies were taught (either to individuals or to entire classes). The timing of this workshop turned out to be quite good: I just completed a short (5 1/2 week) online Winter Session course here at UNCG, and I almost immediately had the opportunity to implement some of these strategies. After the first exam, I received e-mails from several students who were concerned with their grades and wanted some advice on how to better retain information. Well, well, I said, I just so happen to have learned about a strategy called "Active Reading." While I can't be sure that each student followed the strategy entirely, the before and after intervention scores are pretty interesting:

Student	Exam 1 (before)	Exam 2 (after)
1	43%	69%
2	75%	80%
3	61%	88%
4	67%	66%



• It is important to provide these interventions after a comprehensive assignment or exam, since students will not listen until they've received grades well below their expectations!
• Strategies for studying, doing practice problems, and group work were also summarized, although I have not yet implemented them.
• Dr. McGuire concluded this session by asking who is primarily responsible for student learning: the student, the instructor, or the institution? While there was quite a bit of discussion of this among the faculty, she argued that "when all three of these entities take full responsibility for student learning" significant increases in learning and graduation will result. What does that mean? Well, students should learn within an environment that (1) teaches them how to learn; (2) makes learning visible; (3) does not judge potential based on initial performance; (4) encourages persistence in the face of initial failure; and (5) encourages the use of metacognitive tools.

Her second presentation was entitled "Increasing Student Motivation: Strategies that Work." In the context of education, "motivating" means stimulating interest in a subject to produce a desire to learn it.

One of the biggest roadblocks to student motivation is "Learned Helplessness," which is the feeling that, based on prior experience of failure, no amount of effort will bring success. The figure below, which Dr. McGuire also used, nicely illustrates the problem:

From Psychlopedia.wikispaces.com

It is therefore important to recognize that perception of ability has the most influence on the amount of effort a student will expend on a task (this meshes nicely with the "Growth Mindset" made so popular by Carol Dweck and others). Dr. McGuire then outlined three "levers" that influence motivation:

• Value. The importance of the goal.
• Supportive environment. The instructor is approachable and support is available from peers and others.
• Efficacy expectancies. Students believe that they are capable of identifying and executing a course of action that will produce a desired outcome. 

As Dr. McGuire conceded to the audience (composed mostly of faculty), most or all of this information is well known to student outreach centers on university campuses, including the Student Success Center at UNCG. Great workshop. Here are some useful online resources:

Center for Academic Success at Louisiana State University
HowToStudy (this one even has some anthropology specific resources)
Var-Learn (a self-quiz on learning styles)

Check out, too, Dr. McGuire's recent book on the subject (I won the raffle for a free copy!):

McGuire, S.Y. (2015). Teaching Students How To Learn. Stylus Publishing: Sterling, VA.

Plants in space

The RISE Network at UNCG periodically hosts STEM-based presentations, and I was able to attend one recently (9.27.16) on "Space...the final frontier...for plants" by the new Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, John Kiss. Kiss spoke about his work with NASA on plant biology. The highlights:

• He started off by describing the importance of space as a laboratory for plant biology. Long distance (and long-term) space travel will likely require some sort of bioregenerative ecosystem, so it is critical to understand how plants grow in space. What's also interesting is that plants, by providing a tangible connection to Earth, appear to have a positive psychological effect on humans in isolated contexts (like space). 
• While the space travel angle is all well and good, Kiss's academic interests lie in the effect of zero- and micro-gravity on plant physiology. More specifically, he and his colleagues are looking at a phenomenon called "red light induced phototropism." Phototropism is simply growth in response to light; we see this all the time when plants grow "towards" a source of light. As I understand it, most modern plants, especially flowering and seeding plants, are sensitive to the type of light that they respond to (light in the blue area of the spectrum seems to be preferred). Ancient lineages, on the other hand, appear not to care much about the wavelength. The effect may be very slight, however, and can be confounded by gravity. Kiss and his colleagues are using Arabidopsis in a zero gravity environment to determine if red light induced phototropism is present (it appears as if it is).

Fun stuff...

UPDATE (6.1.17): I just heard that Dean Kiss's experimental samples will be launched into space today. The project, dubbed Seedling Growth-3, aims to understand how plant growth is affected by gravity. The launch will be streamed live here.

Lilly Teaching Conference

I recently received an Online Learning Course (Re)Design grant from UNCG's University Teaching and Learning Commons (UTLC) to upgrade our department's Statistics for Anthropology course for online delivery in the Summer of 2017 (UPDATE 5.10.18. I finally got it online in the Spring of 2018). To help me with this transition, I attended on Online Learning Incubator workshop at UNCG this past June. Expertly facilitated by Brian Udermann, who is Director of Online Learning at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse, I learned a ton about how to put together, deliver, and assess an online course.

UTLC's Coordinator of the Learning Innovations Office, Laura Pipe, then contacted me about joining a group of UNCG faculty that were attending the Lilly Conference on Designing Effective Teaching, held on August 1-3 in Asheville, North Carolina. Boy, am I glad that I accepted the invitation−there were some fantastic presentations, everyone was extremely pleasant, and the meals were outstanding. One of my main goals was to continue learning about online course delivery, but I also took part in a variety of other workshops. As usual, the highlights from my notes:

• The first session that I attended was Taking the Flip: Plans, Tools, and Assessment Strategies for Creating a Flipped Classroom, by Jayme Swanke of Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. I had heard of a flipped classroom before, but I really didn't know much about it. As Swanke explained it, the "Flipped Triad" consists of: (1) content delivery (readings, online lectures, etc.) outside of class; (2) assessments such as quizzes, either outside or at the beginning of class, to ensure student readiness and/or identify deficiencies in student understanding; (3) creative activities in the classroom that apply the course content. Here is a figure from her presentation:

The Flipped Classroom model. From newlandstandl.files.wordpress.  

This model, because most of the "homework" is conducted in the classroom with the instructor, is supposed to encourage peer-to-peer collaboration, independent learning, individualized attention, and overall engagement. Swanke talked about her experience using this model in her social work courses and found that it works best when organized around themes or units rather than individual topics. She also stressed the importance of clearly defining the objectives for the units and for each class session. Her recommendations for presenting content online were: GoAnimate (for creating animations; not free), CamStudio (for recording lectures; free), and Windows MovieMaker. To ensure and/or assess student readiness, she suggests Socrative for in-class quizzes, Canvas quizzes of the online lectures, and discussion board posts. Finally, for in-class activities Swanke uses discussions, problem-based learning, collaborative learning (VoiceThread, for example, allows students to post audio files to facilitate collaboration), and case studies.

• Sally Blomstrom (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University) and her colleagues summarized a project whereby student digital literacy is developed and assessed in a communications course through "audio tours." In this case, students choose a fish from a museum collection and record themselves discussing the species's movement from a biomechanical perspective (this is an engineering school, after all). One of the goals is to teach students how to engage an audience with vocal variety and enthusiasm. Blomstrom utilizes Sing&See, which is software designed to analyze singing voices, to actually visualize students' voices. I've had trouble tracking this skill objectively in my own speaking courses, so I was excited to learn about this new tool. Blomstrom had the students take before and after self assessments of their digital skill set and found that many students did notice a significant increase over the course of the project. The most important aspect of assessing this project is, as the presentation's title Using Structured Reflection to Improve Digital Literacy suggests, the formal reflection that students write at the end. This exercise forces students to identify what worked, what didn't, and what they truly learned from the experience. One interesting finding: many students not only became better users of digital tools but recognized the relevance of digital literacy.  

• The first plenary presentation was given by Terry Doyle (Emeritus at Ferris State University) on Understanding How Students Learn: The First Step to Improving College Teaching Practices. Doyle is an advocate of Learner Centered Teaching, and his website is a fantastic (though overwhelming) resource for this approach. He began by asking us, as teachers, to ask ourselves the following three questions about our classes: (1) What do we want students to retain and apply from our classes A YEAR AFTERWARDS? The answer, he says, should guide decisions about content delivery: if you don't expect students to retain and apply a fact or concept for the long term, then it's probably best to spend more time on other things; (2) What can students do on their own, and what can they not do on their own? Information is EVERYWHERE nowadays, and teachers, as experts in their fields, need to concentrate on things that students need our help to learn rather than on things that they can look up and learn themselves; (3) What teaching actions optimize students' opportunities to learn and master course content? There is only so much time, and we want to ensure that this limited resource is being used well. We as teachers are obligated, he contends, to pay attention to and follow where the research on learning takes us, even if it makes us uncomfortable. Ultimately, we can't make informed decisions without knowing how people learn, which is what the bulk of his presentation was about. One thing that resonated with me is that teachers cannot control a whole slew of variables that impact a student's readiness to learn: genes, family life, sleep, stress levels, diet, hydration, and so on. What we can control is our own readiness to teach, the quality of our learning activities, the quality and timeliness of feedback, and accessibility to students. So, what does the research tell us about learning? Well, first of all, it is clear that, to quote Doyle, "It is the one who does the work who does the learning." No work, no learning. It is also becoming increasingly evident that movement (walking, running, or other forms of exercise) encourages thinking and learning. Can't solve a problem? Get up and go for a walk. Attention is also key. When you attend to a task, it physically alters the brain and prepares it to learn. This is why active engagement is so important−it helps maintain attention. Attention is also affected by the type of task (new and unfamiliar vs. old and automatic) and, perhaps most importantly, the relevance or meaningfulness of the task. A learner, in other words, needs a clear rationale for learning something. I think we all know this, and in our classes we try to tell students why its important to learn what we're teaching them. Doyle provides some excellent rationales that apply to any course in any discipline. First, learning how to learn is critical; the rapidity of technological advances and ever-changing requirements in expertise, even within industries, will require people to literally remake themselves, perhaps several times, throughout their working lives. So, students must become life-long learners. Second, most classes teach writing, reading, problem-solving, collaboration, and the like, all of which are foundational skills that help students gain and keep employment. Finally, learned skills help meet survival needs (paying rent, buying food, etc.). There was a lot to digest from the presentation, but it really forced me to think about my teaching actions.

• Steven Benko and Julie Schrock (Meredith College) facilitated a session entitled Redefining Participation: How Well Did You Do? How Much Did I Help? This workshop forced teachers to ask a very important, but often poorly defined, question: What is "good" participation? Like most teachers, I have an amorphous and, usually, presumed idea of what I consider to be good participation. While I consider participation to be important in my courses, to be honest I've never really sat down and thought deeply about the actual "deliverables" of participation, which is a prerequisite to any reasonable rubric for evaluating it. It is not unusual for instructors to informally gauge participation and use that impression to determine if students on the edge are bumped up or down on the grade scale. Most people in the session agreed that participation includes attendance, class preparation (by doing readings or exercises before class), and contributions to in-class discussions, and a balance should be struck between quantity, dependability, and quality. Benko and Schrock designed very detailed rubrics to measure these items. Contribution, for instance, was graded as Novice (did not raise questions about he readings, did not state a position during class discussion), Developing (rarely, i.e., no more than once, contributed), Proficient (occasionally, i.e., at least twice, contributed), Accomplished (regularly contributed), or Mastery (answered multiple follow-up questions, explained a position and provided reasoned justifications). This rubric was implemented through self-assessments. I admit I was a bit skeptical when I first heard this−allowing students to assess themselves? They found, however, that students were surprisingly honest about their participation, or lack thereof, and that the rubric, which was made available to the students, influenced how they prepared for and participated in classes. Importantly, the rubric included and valued behaviors beyond just oral participation, which allowed students who, for whatever reason, are reticent to speak up, to be rewarded for participation. Now, their class sizes at Meredith are no more than about 30 students, which makes it easier for teachers to track participation and thus call students out if needed, so this strategy may not be very successful in larger class settings. They have also used a token system whereby students are given a token each time they participate, with different colors representing different levels of contribution (comment, question, well-developed idea, etc.). Again, probably best for smaller classes. Nonetheless, this highlights the importance of setting clear expectations for participation.

• While online courses permit a good deal of flexibility for learners, there are also a wide range of misconceptions among students about the format: they are easier, they take less time, etc. Saginaw Valley State is now implementing a "Digital Badge" system to encourage students to take an online tutorial to prepare them for the online learning environment. Students that successfully complete the tutorial receive a badge that appears on their Learning Management System profile so that instructors know that they have some background. UNCG has an optional set of modules called Ready to Learn that serves our community in this capacity. (I should point out, too, that online instructors−myself included−assume a level of technological savvy among millennials and post-millennials that often doesn't exist.)

• Nearly everyone acknowledges the importance of team-based learning (i.e., group work), largely because it models the setting in which students will find themselves in the workforce. Students typically dislike these types of assignments, however, largely because they lose some control over their performance and, thus, their grade. The fear, of course, is to be placed in a group with a slacker (or, to use the apparently technical term, "social loafer"). Completely understandable. A round table discussion I attended on Tuesday morning attempted to address this issue through the use of task management applications that track the contribution and workflow of group members. Here is a list of the discussed applications, some of which are free: Asana, Droptask, Trello, Teamweek, KanbanFlow, Meistertask, Freedcamp, Wrike, Teamwork, allthings, Zoho, Realtimeboard,and Stormboard. Several people mentioned that students are uncomfortable outing each other as social loafers, and when they do it is usually when the assignment is ready to be turned in. This puts the instructor in a difficult position when trying to modify grades and assess contribution. Because contributions can be tracked with these applications, it makes it easier for the instructor to identify social loafers early on. Michael Howell from Appalachian State University, who facilitated the roundtable, suggested that instructors take a class session (or shoot a video) to familiarize students with the use of the applications.

• In How to Facilitate Engaging Discussions Using Research-Based Techniques, Kevin Kelly from the Association of College and University Educators provided a number of useful tips for discussions. He first stressed that discussions, just like any other assignment, should have specific objectives, what he called a "mission statement." We should also try to allow students to write down (individually or in groups) their response to a prompt before answering orally, which lets them stew and thus increases the chances of a meaningful response. He also suggested the "Hatful of Quotes" technique. I had never heard of it, but it goes like this: before class, select five or six passages from the text or an article and transfer them to small slips of paper, ensuring that each quote appears at least twice. Once you get to class, have individuals or groups draw a quote and give them several minutes to consider their response. Then, have them share with the class. I might try this one. Ever heard of a "Google Jockey"? Me neither. An example from Marsha Ratzel and Shelley Wright's post on the Voices from the Learning Revolution blog:

I facilitate the discussion by asking questions, while my students Google, looking for the information we need. As they come across links and videos that explain what we're learning about, my students send me links that I add to our Wiki. This process allows us to talk about the information, including how to research and find reputable information.

This example actually made me think of Terry Doyle's point about what students can and can't do on their own. Often times, looking up information is not something they need our help with−it's determining what is reliable (and why) that they need help with.

• The coolest session I attended was run by Michael Meyer, who directs the Center for Teaching and Learning at Michigan Technological University. Meyer, who also teaches physics at MTU, covered Seven Strategies for Seven Principles, the "seven principles" referring to the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. While we actually covered more than seven strategies, they were all very interesting. There is a movement among educators towards the integration of technology in the classroom. This is all well and good (I am one of them), but Meyer's first strategy was the use of good 'ole fashioned white boards. In his physics courses, he divides the students (typically 70-80 of them) into groups of three and asks questions that can be answered collaboratively and displayed to the rest of the class. This method works great for graphs, diagrams, and mental maps in addition to traditional true/false, short answer, and multiple choice questions. Nearpod is a cool application that allows you to pose a variety of questions, including "draw-it" questions using a digital whiteboard, to students on mobile devices. If you want to pay a bit, the upgrade also allows the instructor to add "virtual field trips" and to control the screen of other digital devices so that, for example, everyone can be on the same webpage (and not on Facebook). Piazza is a nice (and free) online Q & A platform that allows, among other things, instructor endorsed answers, customizable polls, and full integration with an LMS like Canvas. PhET has hundreds of interactive simulations for STEM concepts, and TagCrowd creates word clouds. A word cloud, I learned, is the number of times a word appears in a section of text and a list with the font size of the word representing its frequency occurrence. This is especially useful when you want to track student responses to a question: put all the responses into a single text, paste it into TagCrowd, and look for patterns in their answers. This can help you identify whether folks are on the right track.

• Lisa Martino, also of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, spoke about online course culture. While the number of online learners is growing extremely rapidly, students continue to struggle with social isolation, coursework confusion, and the lack of teacher presence. Martino highlighted some ways in which teachers can create a culture within their online courses that can help alleviate these challenges, including introduction videos from the instructor, ice breakers for the students, regular office hours (yes, even online), and weekly video announcements. 

• The second plenary presentation was by Claire Major (University of Alabama), who has written extensively on research-based assessments of various teaching strategies. She summarized results from the most recent meta-analyses and found that: (1) Students actually like lectures, as long as they are done well; (2) Knowledge retention in lectures is increased with guided note-taking, frequent in-class quizzing, active learning break-outs, and instructor sign posts (e.g., "I need 500% of your attention, because this concept is important); (3) In terms of information transfer, lecture-only classes are no better than other class models for short-term retention, but fall behind in skill development (critical thinking, for example) and long-term retention; (4) Courses that combine lecture with active learning activities result in higher exam scores that courses using a lecture-only format; (5) Failure rates are higher in courses using a lecture-only format than they are in courses that combine lecture with active learning activities; (6) Students in courses that use discussion outperform the critical thinking (synthesis and evaluation of information) of students in courses that are solely based on lecture; (7) Students who participate in courses with collaborative learning have greater gains in team skills, self confidence, and higher order skills like problem solving than students in lecture-only courses; (8) There is no difference in exam performance between students who participate in games than students in lecture-only courses. She also argued that collaborative learning can be improved by ensuring that the activities have structure, mechanisms for individual and group accountability, and appropriately sized groups (five seems to be the magic number). There is no doubt that games are good motivators for students, but they can also be improved by making them collaborative and including instructor feedback.

• Hands-down the most thought-provoking session was Fostering a Decolonized Education in an Inclusive Liberal Arts Education, hosted by Tiece Ruffin, Agya Boakye-Boaten, Trey Adcock, and Jeramias Zunguze, all of the University of North Carolina at Asheville. It was pointed out that much of the university (and especially K-12) curriculum in the U.S. is biased towards the Western (and, thus, White) tradition of knowledge and knowledge production. They also argued that it is time to "decolonize" education by considering alternative perspectives not only as "window dressing" for universities purporting to be inclusive, but as truly immersive experiences that force educators to step outside their cultural comfort zone. Tiece Ruffin related a story from one of her teacher education courses in which a student attended the Asheville Goombay Festival, which celebrates the African diaspora and Asheville's African American Community. When asked to reflect upon her experience, the student, who was white and raised in rural North Carolina, wrote that she felt extremely uncomfortable and even expressed fear that she would be shot. This highlights the need among teachers for more exposure to diverse cultures (take an anthropology course!!). I would recommend the following articles, both of which speak to this issue in the context of white teachers and black students: What I Learned Teaching Black Students, and White Teachers I Wish I Never Had.             

        

Teaching human evolution to the public

I convinced my friend and colleague Briana Pobiner to come down to Greensboro from Washington, D.C. to present on her education and outreach work with the Smithsonian. Briana's major research interests focus on the evolution of the human diet, but recently she's become deeply involved in public outreach and the teaching of evolution, particularly human evolution. Her presentation "Communicating Human Evolution" drew a good crowd (including a couple of university donors) and outlined the efforts of the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian to explain human evolution to the public. A couple of salient points/observations:

• Briana presented a bunch of data on public attitudes to science, scientists, evolution, and human evolution. Perhaps the most surprising number was 42. This is the percentage of Americans that do not accept organic evolution as an explanation for biological diversity. Even more troubling is the fact that this number has not really changed much since 1982! A sobering realization given how much time, effort, and money has been devoted to improving science education in the U.S. 
• One of the most important points that Briana made was that convincing people of the fact of evolution requires open dialogue−brow beating simply causes people to dig in their heels. One of the things that the Smithsonian is doing is to make their scientists available to the public. 
• The last thing that I found to be interesting was the reason why so many folks view science, and human evolution in particular, with such circumspection: when you see headlines announcing the latest find, it often reads something like "new fossil find overturns all previous models of human evolution." This sort of stuff garners readership, no doubt, but is also inaccurate. (If we're constantly overturning everything we know, it's no surprise that the public views the science behind it with some suspicion!) The fact is, even the most incredible find simply fills in the gaps of a well-established body of knowledge.

If you have not seen the National Museum of Natural History's human evolution exhibit (it opened in 2010), go visit! It is top-notch.

Congress and NSF face off

The chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Republican Lamar Smith of Texas, has recently prepared a bill entitled "The High-Quality Research Act" that aims to revise the criteria by which the National Science Foundation would award grants. According to ScienceInsider, the new bill would:

require the NSF director to post on NSF's website, prior to any award, a declaration that certifies the research is (1)...in the interests of the United States to advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare, and to secure national defense by promoting the progress of science; (2)...the finest quality, is groundbreaking, and answer questions or solves problems that are of utmost importance to society at large; (3)...not duplicative of other research projects being funded by the Foundation or other Federal agencies.

The bill is being proposed in response to several social science grants that were identified as a waste of tax-payer money. I am in agreement with arstechnica's John Timmer who, in response to points (2) and (3) of the bill's criteria, argues:

The other two requirements, however, completely misunderstand both basic research and the role of the National Science Foundation. Basic research is largely about exploring the unknown; by definition, it's almost impossible to tell which areas of research will end up being groundbreaking of have commercial applications. And the NSF is specially tasked with funding basic research and science education.

Should NSF and other government funding agencies be required to justify their decisions? Absolutely. But who is best qualified to judge the merit of these projects? I'd say the hard-working, anonymous reviewers who have expertise in each particular field. I'll be keeping an eye on this...

Problem-based learning and STEM education

I am part of a network at UNCG called RISE (Research and Instruction in STEM Education), which is a collection of faculty and staff interested in promoting science education. From the network's website:

The goal of the RISE Network is to enhance and expand the already strong partnership between researchers, educators, and science, mathematics, and technology educators in the community and at UNCG. This will be accomplished by developing a network of interested partners to better coordinate STEM education and research across campus. This network will enhance UNCG's ability to broaden access to STEM fields by:

Creating a more coordinated web of opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to engage in inquiry-based STEM experiences

Supporting curriculum development through revising STEM courses in order to offer an inquiry-based collaborative method of instruction designed to foster skills in critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, and communication, with the goal of promoting the STEM literacy of our graduates

Enhancing the extent to which UNCG supports high-quality STEM education in pre-K–12 classrooms by designing research-based projects that generate and disseminate knowledge about STEM content and pedagogy and are responsive to student, teacher, and district needs

Facilitating collaboration between local community and business leaders and UNCG concerning scientific literacy skills, skills needed for the next generation of the (local) workforce, and instructional policies and programs to meet these needs 

Providing support for faculty and staff who seek external funding to support the above efforts

I attended the latest event this past Monday, which was a workshop entitled, "Is it Really Teaching if Learning Doesn't Happen?" The network brought in Dr. Ann Lambros, who is Assistant Dean of Medical Education and Assistant Professor of Social Sciences and Health Policy at the Wake Forest School of Medicine, to talk about problem-based learning strategies. "Problem-based learning," along with other buzzwords (or buzz phrases, perhaps?) like "high-impact learning," has garnered quite a bit of recent attention from education policy makers. Although I had heard the term before, I have to admit that I really didn't have a concrete sense of what problem-based learning (or PBL) was.

Essentially, PBL begins with a problem, and learning is achieved as students gather information and test hypotheses to solve the problem. We were provided with a really nice review article on the approach by John R. Savery (2006: 12-15), who, after mining the literature, identified several key components of PBL:

• Students must have the responsibility for their own learning
• The problem simulations used in problem-based learning must be ill-structured and allow for free inquiry
• Learning should be integrated from a wide range of disciplines or subjects
• Collaboration is essential
• What students learn during their self-directed learning must be applied back to the problem with reanalysis and resolution
• A closing analysis of what has been learned from working with the problem and a discussion of what concepts and principles have been learned are essential
• Self and peer assessment should be carried out at the completion of each problem and at the end of every curricular unit
• The activities carried out in problem-based learning must be those valued in the real world
• Student examinations must measure student progress towards the goals of problem-based learning

In her introduction, Dr. Lambros related why Wake Med made the switch to PBL. Studies had shown that med students were struggling to (1) solve problems, (2) stay engaged, and (3) make connections between various concepts. So, they were looking for a new way of doings things; after all, Dr. Lambros said, and I liked the analogy that was made, memorizing a maze was easy enough to do, but the learning becomes useless if the exit is moved.

The attendees went through a PBL exercise, and it works more-or-less like this: First, a real-world problem is presented that requires both some prior knowledge and the acquisition of new knowledge. The group must lay out the facts that are known, decide what sorts of assumptions can or cannot be made, and relate the problem to existing knowledge. Second, students need to identify what additional information is required and, through self-directed learning and open inquiry, will procure this information and formulate hypotheses. Finally, students are asked to present and defend their hypotheses...and the process starts again with the newly gained knowledge serving as the existing knowledge for the next round.

PBL learning model. From the University of Queensland.

I think any teacher will tell you that one of the biggest obstacles to learning is motivation. While grades are meant to fill this role, students become invested in the grade rather than learning. One of the things I like about the PBL approach is that in the process of exploring a problem and eventually being forced to defend hypotheses based on information they themselves gathered, students are invested in the accuracy of their findings and, in the end, feel a sense of ownership. The other major roadblock to learning is relevance: Students must see that what they are learning is going to be relevant in some concrete way. PBL also addresses this by focusing on real-world problems.

There is, however, one glaring issue here: research has failed to show that PBL actually results in systematically better performance relative to more traditional approaches. The major advantage, it seems, is that students report a preference for PBL. The other problem is that PBL only seems to work well when it is implemented at all levels of a curriculum, and this of course requires that faculty and staff buy in to the approach (something that is MUCH easier said than done). The debate will no doubt go on, but I can see myself designing and implementing PBL lessons to see how it works.

References:

Savery, JR (2006). Overview of problem-based learning: definitions and distinctions. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning 1, 9-20.