Changing the brain through instruction

I attended my second Transforming Online Pedagogy and Practices Symposium (TOPPS) this past May. The event is sponsored and hosted by UNCG's University Teaching and Learning Commons (UTLC). Like the 2018 symposium, this event was well worth it.

This year's theme was "Science and the Art of Changing the Brain through Instruction and Instructional Design," and the UTLC brought in Dr. Kristen Betts as the event's keynote speaker. Dr. Betts is a Clinical Professor in the School of Education at Drexel University and specializes, among other things, in how we can harness brain science to improve teaching. Her presentations, which revolved around the theme "Leveraging Psychology to Create Compelling Learning Experiences," was spread across two morning sessions on May 13th and 14th.

The first session was entitled "Neuropedagogy: Changing the Brain through Instruction and Instructional Design." Dr. Betts first asked us to go through a list of statements about learning and the brain and mark whether we thought the statement was correct or incorrect. Here they are:

1. Listening to classical music increases reasoning ability. 
2. Individuals learn better when they receive information in their preferred learning styles (e.g., auditory, visual, kinesthetic) 
3. Some of us are "left-brained" and some are "right-brained" due to hemispheric dominance and this helps explains differences in how we learn 
4. We only use 10% of our brain 
5. Normal development of the human brain involves the birth and death of brain cells 
6. Learning is due to the addition of new cells to the brain 
7. There are critical periods in human development after which certain skills can no longer be learned 
8. Learning occurs through changes to the connections between brain cells
9. The left and right hemispheres of the brain work together
10. Production of new connections in the brain can continue into old age

Now, this screamed "top 10 myths about the brain and learning," so my guard was up immediately. Nevertheless, I was sure that 1-4 were incorrect since I had discovered previously that these, including approaches based on "learning styles" and "left hemisphere/right hemisphere," are among the most commonly debunked myths, and the 10% fallacy is also well-known. What is interesting, though, is that when an instructor invokes a "learning style" approach and, in doing so, validates a student's preconceived notions about their own learning style, they create a fixed mindset in the learner--"well, I'm a visual learner, so that's the only way I can learn." The other list she had us look at included statements that highlighted how emotions can affect cognitive processes and the fact that human memory does not operate like a recording device.

With learning myths suitably punctured and learning truths duly identified, Dr. Betts then moved on to a discussion of feedback. I think we all know how important meaningful feedback is--the peer-review process in academia is an excellent example--but I never really thought deeply about why it is so important. It turns out that feedback, when it is done right, helps us to identify and reduce the gap between our current performance and some desired goal, be it an A on a research paper or a scientifically legitimate research study. Dr. Betts asked the audience to define feedback and its relationship to assessment. Our group described feedback as a response that allow students to see the difference between what they do and what they are trying to do (or, at least, what we as instructors are trying to get them to do). We also argued that feedback helps students identify biases, incorrect statements, and their overall strengths and weaknesses. It also quickly became clear that, for us, feedback and assessment are very distinct processes. While for former tracks the development of a skill, the latter evaluates whether a skill has been attained or not. We wrapped up the discussion by identifying the challenges of giving feedback. The most commonly cited one is time: do we have enough of it to provide substantive feedback? Others included the question of whether or not learners take the feedback into account (if not, why waste the time giving it?) and whether or not instructors are able to craft an assignment that can produce meaningful feedback in the first place. (One suggestion to ensure that students heed instructor feedback is to require it as part of an assignment's rubric.) Dr. Betts then outlined best practices for instructor feedback, which should be:

• Understandable. Use language that the student can understand.
• Selective. Choose two or three issues that the student can do something about without feeling overwhelmed.
• Specific. Point out the areas in the student's work to which the feedback applies.
• Timely. It should be provided so that the student has enough time to improve for the next assignment. Students need time to reflect, address misunderstandings, and seek support from the instructor and/or academic services. A lack of feedback, or even delayed feedback, often leads to (di)stress, which in turn creates anxiety and poorer performance. 
• Contextualized. Comments should be framed in reference to the assignment's learning outcomes and/or rubric. 
• Non-judgmental. The focus should be on learning goals rather than just performance and comments should be descriptive rather than evaluative. Even the terms we use can impact the way that students perceive, and thus react, to our feedback: give "feedback" rather than "criticism"; provide "constructive" rather than "critical" feedback; areas of "weakness" can become areas "to develop"; and "rewrites" turn into "revisions." 
• Balanced. Point out both the strengths and weaknesses.
• Forward-looking. Provide suggestions for how future work can be improved.
• Transferable. The focus should be on the process and skills, not just the knowledge content.
• Personal. Refer to what is already known about the student based on previous assignments.

The problem for many students is that they have not received thoughtful feedback in an educational context. As instructors, we'd of course love to provide this for everyone, and we should strive to do so within the constraints set by our class sizes and learning objectives. This workshop was designed specifically for online instruction, and one practice that Dr. Betts engages in, and one that I never thought about, was recording her feedback and sending the video to students. It turns out that this can be accomplished in two to three minutes and might take less time than red-marking a paper.

Dr. Betts went on to share some basic principles of learning science during the second day:

• Human brains are as unique as human faces.
• Everyone's brain is also uniquely prepared, based on their personal experiences, to learn different tasks. This is significantly influenced by one's developmental environment. It has been shown, for instance, that chronic toxic stress can affect the ability of the prefrontal cortex to process information. Of particular importance to us as instructors is students' prior educational experience: while some students have had extensive feedback and have been held accountable, others have had little or no feedback and have not been held accountable; while some students have been held to high standards, others have not been held to high standards. This sets an individual's "default mode network," which projects that experience into the future (e.g., "I've never been held to high standards, so I won't ever be held to high standards.")
• The brain changes in light of new experience, so neuroplasticity occurs throughout one's lifetime. Every time a new fact or skill is learned, the brain creates new neural pathways and, possibly, about 700 new neurons a day. Practice actually thickens the myelin sheaths surrounding the brain's axons, which in turn permits more efficient signal (that is, information) transfer. 
• Learning cannot occur without some form of attention and memory.
• The brain seeks novelty and patterns.
• Repeated practice and rehearsal of learned material across multiple modalities helps to consolidate information in long-term memory.

The overall take-home message is that because the brain physically changes every time learning happens, we, as instructors, are quite literally brain changers. A powerful thought indeed.

Transforming online pedagogy

I am, as usual, behind on my posts, so here is one from an event I attended way back in May...

UNCG's University Teaching and Learning Commons sponsored and hosted the Transforming Online Pedagogy and Practices Symposium, or TOPPS, this past May 7th through 11th. This wonderful event ran the entire week, although I was only able to attend Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm very happy I did so, too, because UTLC brought in Dr. Michelle Miller, a cognitive psychologist who specializes in memory and attention, as the keynote speaker. Her presentation, which revolved around the theme "Leveraging Psychology to Create Compelling Learning Experiences," was spread across two morning sessions.

The first session focused on memory and attention. Dr. Miller began by asking us to recall movie lines. It turns out that people are surprisingly good at recalling, verbatim, extended pieces of dialog from our favorite movies. Wouldn't it be nice if students could retain information like this in our classes? What is it about movie lines that encourages long-term retention? As we went around the room, folks identified several factors that explains this, including the fact that the lines appear as part of a dramatic scene in which we were (at the time of viewing) deeply engaged. In other words, we were fully attentive, and attention, as Dr. Miller pointed out, drives memory. The problem, though, is that many things can interrupt the link between attention and memory: excessive cognitive load (there is simply too much strain being put on attention), poor mastery of low-level processes (they have not yet been automatized and, thus, take up some attention), and "dysfunctional multi-tasking" (the myth that attention can be effectively split among several tasks).

So, how do we capture students' attention in order to exploit the link between attention and memory? Dr. Miller had several suggestions:

• Ask for responses, and do it often. Asking someone to retrieve information immediately focuses their attention on the task at hand. Student Response Systems in face-to-face courses and interweaving questions into online text can keep students involved and attentive.
• Work to automate lower-level tasks so that they require less attention. Assignments that require and reward repeated practice and even speed help students achieve mastery of tasks that teachers, as experts, take for granted. We thus need to ask ourselves: what skills can we reasonably automate in our courses? 
• Address attention myths. Most students (and most people, for that matter), for example, are under the impression that they can multi-task without negatively affecting their attention on any one task (reading and watching YouTube, anyone??). Another common misconception is that certain people are exempt from the attentional limitations of the human mind (well, most people can't multi-task, but I can...). Dr. Miller developed an online module called Attention Matters! that demonstrates to users how limited attention really is. She and her colleagues have shown that the module does help students realize how difficult it is to learn something without fully attending to it. Memory is, after all, not a fixed thing. It is constantly constructed and reconstructed.   

Ultimately, it is important to realize that memory is an adaptation; we are, in fact, evolved to remember things! However, our brains must use relevancy to decide how to parse out the limited amount of attention it has at its disposal. Items are also more likely to be recalled when learned within a context that creates cues.

Dr. Miller also stressed the visual nature of most learning--while people may prefer particular modes of content delivery (audio, verbal, etc.), the idea of "learning styles," as I found out, has been largely debunked. Okay, so what does the field of applied memory tell us? In other words, how do we make our material memorable? Well...

• Harness the "testing effect." Reading quizzes, repeatable quizzing, self-quizzing: forcing one to recall information helps build memory.
• Space it out. Break information into smaller temporal chunks and include exercises that involve information retrieval between chunks of information. When material involves categorization or problem types, interleaving can be particularly effective.
• Push powerful processing. Ask students to synthesize information and relate material to themselves. Visual diagrams, especially those that have audio and an interactive interface, can be especially powerful.

Dr. Miller demonstrated these principles with a simple request: draw a penny. Try it yourself. Suffice it to say, I was not able to recreate a U.S. penny on my pad of paper (I was able to produce a circle with a face and some of the correct words, though). Why? Do I need to know what a penny looks like? Nope. This knowledge is not relevant, so I've no reason to continuously look at a penny and remember what it looks like. So, I have never quizzed myself about it. There is also no context here--why does a penny look the way that it does? I've never been forced to synthesize the information about a penny. All that historical and political information would provide critical context.

An infographic entitled "How to remember (almost) anything" very nicely summarized the morning's session (see more details here):

• Quiz, don't reread. Actively recall information rather than passively rereading it.
• Visualize it. Associating information with sensations is memorable, and vision is a strong sensory cue for most people.
• Structure it. Break information into parts and put related pieces into meaningful order or structure.
• Give it meaning. Brains remember things that mean something to their owners. Before trying to remember something, make sure you understand it.
• Relate it to yourself. Personal relevance makes things stick and allows you to draw on what is already known.
• Create a cue. Find parts that are difficult to recall and link that piece of information to something that's more vivid.    

The second session revolved around thinking, motivation, and self-regulated learning. Having students "think" is, of course, what we as instructors want, but it is a skill that needs to be cultivated. What is more, we have to define what we mean by "thinking." This can be difficult, since it can manifest in a wide variety of ways, from problem solving and formal reasoning to critical thinking and analogical reasoning. Thinking can be difficult to develop, too, because it is often crowded out by content. The question, as Dr. Miller presented it, is: how do we balance thinking skills and content knowledge so that the complement each other?

This is what the literature tells us about thinking skills:

• Thinking skills are context specific, so they do not transfer as well as we think they do. Better transfer of skills can be attained through repeated practice across--and this is key--varying examples. This taps into the deeper structure of a problem, which is something that novices have real difficulty with because, for them, everything matters. In other words, students are unable to distinguish between the unimportant details and the more meaningful framework of a problem. (Raise your hand if you've ever said "Don't worry about the details here. Pay more attention to the general principles." Well, there you go.)
• Critical thinking is difficult to define and, thus, particularly tough to address. The barriers are myriad, and include a resistance to independent thinking and the fact that just because you can thinking critically doesn't mean that you will. Why? Well, it's hard! You have to be motivated to do hard things, so the problem requiring critical thinking must matter (back to relevance).     

Dr. Miller offered the following suggestions for producing thinkers:

• When designing a specific activity or an entire course, think first about the specific skills you, as the instructor, want to cultivate. Align the course and its activities to those skills, which counters the tendency to focus exclusively on content.
• Ensure that activities encourage transferability by creating lots of examples with different surface details.
• Use scenarios like case studies, problem-based learning, role-playing, and faux "clients" to work with.

We were then asked to consider our own educational experience in college. What classes were we both interested in and motivated for? What about not interested but still highly motivated? Or perhaps interested but not motivated? There are typically four types of students:

The interest/motivation dynamic requires different approaches for different learners, and there are several approaches to the problem of motivation.

• Classic incentive approaches. These incentives can come from the learner (intrinsic) or from the instructor/course/environment (extrinsic)
• Self-determination theory. This approach revolves around the ideas of competence ("I'm good at this, so I can do it," or "I'm no good at this, so I just can't succeed"), relatedness (we're all in this together), and agency (there is some choice on the part of the learner).
• Academic self-efficacy. This is the "You think you can do it, so you do it" approach. Imagine you offer someone $50,000 to prepare a presentation, in a single evening, on a topic that is completely alien to them. Most of us would say that this is quite simply not possible. No incentive, not even $50,000, can change one's motivation if they don't think the goal is possible.
• Mindset. This is based on the now well-known work of Carol Dweck, who distinguishes between a "growth" mindset (intelligence is mutable, so one can become smarter through hard work) and a "fixed" mindset (intelligence is fixed and unchanging, so no amount of work will make one successful).

One interesting suggestion that Dr. Miller made was to borrow from game design. There is, in fact, an entire movement within pedagogy to "gamify" assignments and classes. Games are highly motivating, so I think there is something to be said about this approach. What is it about games that makes them so motivating that they are actually addictive? Well, for one thing, people often get "in the groove" while playing games (this is referred to more formally as flow in the psychology literature), which involves effortless control of one's creative abilities. Games also involve failure, which is also a key aspect of learning. With games, though, the stakes are lower because one can quickly restart, learn from mistakes, and use multiple attempts. Games also have a sense of mission and a narrative, which creates user investment in the outcome. Perhaps our assignments can be designed with these tenets in mind. In particular, assignments and courses should tell learners why they are completing tasks and involve frequent low-stakes assignments (this provides lots of feedback, makes it easier to accept, and learn from, failure, and permits the slow advance toward a larger goal).

The UTLC also provided several sessions for online course design and implementation, including difficult-to-implement tasks like group work. Overall, this was a wonderful symposium.

Teach like a puma!

I attended another workshop recently (11.1) hosted by our Teaching Innovation Office here at UNCG that was provocatively titled: "Teaching Like a Puma: Strategies You Can Use to Make Learning More Interesting for You and Your Students." Dr. Todd Zakrajsek led the workshop.

You are probably wondering, as I was, about the workshop's title. I'll paraphrase Zakrajsek's explanation. Imagine you are walking down the sidewalk and suddenly encounter a tree in your way. What do you do? Most likely, you would simply slide around it and continue on your way without paying much attention. Now, imagine a puma, rather than a tree, was in your way. Your mind, of course, would attend immediately to the situation. What does this mean for learning? The brain becomes accustomed, and thus numbed, to constant stimuli. Just like our brains begin to ignore the trees we encounter every day, so too are they less likely to actively attend to, and thus less likely to learn from, repetitive learning strategies. Teaching like a puma, then, means that instructors should use a diversity of teaching strategies to cover course material so that student brains do not become numb to constant stimuli.

Zakrajsek also asked us to consider the following scenario: a pro golfer will score very, very well on an easy course and will score more poorly on a difficult course. A solid, but not spectacular, golfer will likewise score well on an easy course but, in contrast to the pro, will score much, much more poorly on a difficult course. What's going on? Well, the pro golfer is going to do pretty well regardless of the course, while a solid golfer will show vast variation when switching between an easy and difficult course (see Figure 1 below).

Figure 1. The difference in performance on easy and difficult courses between a pro and solid golfer. A pro golfer will score well in either situation while a solid golfer will show great variation in scores between the two situations. Note that, in golf, a low score is better than a high score.

Now, replace "golfer" with "learner," and "pro" and "solid" with "high achieving" and "low achieving," and the connection with teaching becomes clear. High achievers will typically do well regardless of course difficulty, while low achievers can do well in easy courses but tend to really, really struggle in more difficult courses. Instructors should seek to reduce this discrepancy by trying to modify courses, especially difficult ones, without sacrificing content and rigor. This should flatten out the top line in Figure 1. We can mix things up, as mentioned before, and introduce more dynamic lecturing methods. These modifications can make the courses "easier" for lower achieving students by engaging them more deeply in the material.

The last theme centered on mindset (see one of my past posts for more on this). It's worthwhile to reinforce the importance of hard work, that failure happens and is okay, and scaffolding (that is, the process of getting better at a skill). One interesting idea that Zakrajsek mentioned was to ask students to share (with a partner, with the class, etc.) something that they're good at. The next step is to ask them to relate HOW they became good at it. This naturally leads to a discussion of practice, hard work, etc. Students should be able to link this process to learning as well.

Cooperative learning

The Teaching Innovation Office here at UNCG hosted a workshop last month (10.12) on cooperative learning. The workshop was led by Dr. Stan Friedland, who has spent the last 50 plus years in education as a teacher, high school principal, guidance counselor, and college instructor. He is officially retired but still consults and, of course, runs workshops on cooperative learning.

I was immediately intrigued by this workshop since I had never heard of this particular learning strategy before. Cooperative learning is, in a nutshell, a very specific method of group-based learning. The approach is based on the following tenets:

• A shift away from an individualistic and competitive classroom and toward a cooperative, student-owned classroom. The former approach is in fact so deeply ingrained in the American education system that before Dr. Friedland pointed it out, I realized that I took it for granted. It's true, though: in most classrooms and in most assignments, there is little or no incentive for students to assist each other because grades are tied to each individual's performance. Students even remain competitive when working within the context of traditional group assignments. 
• The interaction of mixed ability students. This is a particularly compelling reason to implement cooperative learning: every member within the group, regardless of achievement, shares the same status, and social contact in this context leads to improved relationships between students who typically share very little in terms of socio-economic background and life experience.

The ultimate goal, then, is to motivate cooperation. A standard cooperative learning activity goes something like this:

1. Assign students to groups. It is important to create mixed ability groups, and high achieving students must be grouped with low achieving students.

2. Students are assigned to one of four roles: the coordinator, the praiser/encourager, the recorder−each of which is self-explanatory−and the gatekeeper, who is responsible for ensuring that everyone (1) understands their specific task, (2) asks questions, and (3) avoids the temptation to let others do all the work.

3. The group is given a specific task that cannot be completed without positive interdependence and face-to-face interaction. While each student is accountable for their own work, they are also responsible for the team's improvement (see below how this works).

4. Each group receives bonus points based on the scores of each team member. This is supposed to encourage cooperation and thus (1) incentivize the investment by higher achieving students in the success of lower achieving students and (2) require students to teach each other the material, which, research shows, results in higher rates of information retention than, say, simply hearing about the material during a lecture. Dr. Friedland suggested the following routine: after the first exam, students are placed into groups, and the average exam score for each group is taken as that group's baseline score. The cooperative learning task or tasks are then assigned, and the students are told that if their team's average score increases on the next exam, each member will receive bonus points equivalent to the increase in the team's average score from one exam to the other. While instructors are often leery of awarding bonus points, this method typically results in only a few extra points and, in the end, can really motivate students to work together toward a shared goal. He also stressed that cooperative learning should not, indeed cannot, replace traditional teaching methods. In fact, he said that cooperative learning activities should take up no more than about 33% of class time, and it's critical for the instructor to provide some background information prior to the activity and then wrap up and summarize the learning outcomes after each activity.

After attending the workshop, I realized that I implement some aspects of cooperative learning in my classes. I randomly place students in groups, for example, and assign specific roles like recorder and a reporter. I now realize, too, that in order to make these assignments truly cooperative, I need to be more deliberate about group assignments to ensure truly mixed-ability teams. I also need to make sure that the learning outcomes from the group assignments are assessed on exams so that students take cooperation seriously. Looking forward to trying this method out more systematically....

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. 

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.

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.             

        

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.

Apps for education

I'm part of a Learning Community at UNCG called Technological Tools for Teaching, and the group sponsored an App Fair highlighting apps that others had found useful in an educational setting. So, I thought I'd share some of the more interesting, and potentially most useful, apps:

• If your school is a subscriber, Browzine (pronounced "browsing," in the library sense) is a cool app that allows you to browse, read, and monitor academic journals. New issues are automatically displayed on your bookshelf, and they can be synced up with things like Zotero and Dropbox.
• GoSoapbox is an instant polling app (kind of like the clickers some universities utilize) that students can access and use with their smart devices (they all have them, and use them in class, anyway, so why not for education?!). Use this access code to play around with it: 403-011-389. There is a 30-day free trial, and then a $10/year fee for instructors.
• Feedly is a cool app that allows instructors to organize multimedia materials for teaching and students to designing assignments. It allows aggregation of web pages and other materials that are not easily captured via traditional programs (e.g., word processors, presentation software). Many have found this to be a good replacement for Google Reader.