Day Twelve Teaching Evening (or Extended Time) Classes

This past weekend, Charlet Key gave a keynote at the adjunct academy professional development day entitled “Library Assignments Designed to Prevent Drowning.” The gist of the talk focused on the fact that when students are learning about how to find answers (i.e., information research), they don’t always need to do so to produce a 10-page research paper with a correctly-formatted (MLA? APA?) bibliography. The latter assignment may well fit into the learning outcomes of your class if it is a general education, transfer-oriented course; however, all of us know about additional information needs that people in our fields are likely to experience, ones that require deeper thinking and familiarity with the best places to find relevant information in our fields. Instead of that research paper, might it be even more valuable for your students to learn and practice information finding processes, especially ones that apply to problems they might experience in their everyday life?

Have you thought about creating meaningful research assignments that are real-world, but also develop searching/finding skills that students can use whether they end up majoring in your field or not? Today’s “idea” will focus on some of the tips and resources that Charlet shared, which can be adapted to fit your class.

For many students, the library provokes an uncomfortable feeling…perhaps:

• one of “overwhelm” (I have no idea where to begin! This place is huge!)
  
• one of “fear “(What if I can’t find the information required of me by ____ (due date)? What if the librarian thinks I’m stupid because I don’t know what a “refereed journal” is? Who can help me?)
  
• one of confusion (The markings on the books are not numbers, like they were in high school or in the neighborhood public library; how am I supposed to find anything?)
  
• general reluctance to doing something that feels strange.

As a result, all research-oriented assignments require scaffolding, such as clear instructions, getting-started resources (such as pointers to specific databases that will help students address the information need you give them), and feedback on early efforts. One way to get this process started is to confer with the reference librarian for suggestions on how to structure an assignment that would be meaningful to you and your students (see a few ideas below, but nothing beats this customized conversation!). Then, invite her to lead a library orientation session to help your students get started, get familiar with those selected databases and key research terms, and begin their information-finding thought processes in the library. When they return on their own (in person or online), it won’t feel like such a huge, strange place! And they will begin to learn about the importance of networking with experts when trying to solve an information-needy problem! Watch her encourage networking between students as well! [and yes, I checked; the BHC Library does provide this service to evening classes too!]

Here are a few of the research-oriented assignments she suggested, followed by some great online resources that might assist you in finding others that fit your learning outcomes and the lives of your students, as well:

1. Write five short papers on the same topic/problem, but each time must use different types of resources to write it (e.g., primary sources, Wikipedia article plus sources that verify info there, books, newspapers/blogs/magazines, annotated bibliography of all of the sources from above.)
   
2. Write short paper comparing a magazine article and a peer-reviewed article on the same topic.
   
3. Summarize an article from a core publication in your subject area of a library database every other week; be prepared to discuss summaries with the class
   
4. Write a documented persuasive paper in which students research and defend the opposite position they currently believe; planning and pre-research should be scheduled
   
5. Write a piece that is common in your field (e.g., bid for a construction project, letter of recommendation, press release, grant proposal…)

For more ideas on designing meaningful assignments that require research:

Designing Assignments That Work http://www.oberlin.edu/library/programs/assignments/alternatives.html

Creating Effective FYS Library Assignments
http://www.worcester.edu/Library/Shared%20Documents/Creating%20eff%20FYS%20lib%20assign%20and%20links.pdf

Tutorial for Developing and Evaluating Assignments http://www.umuc.edu/library/tutorials/information_literacy/sect4.html

Ten Sample Assignments
http://www.library.ohiou.edu/inst/creativesample.html

Characteristics of Effective Library Research Assignments http://library.nku.edu/faculty_and_staff/information_literacy/characteristics.php

Information Competent Students
http://library.csustan.edu/theld/research_assignment_tips.htm

Day Eleven Teaching Evening (or Extended Time) Classes

In several of the “ideas,” I have mentioned that students need to experience content repeatedly and in a variety of ways throughout the evening for maximum learning to occur. Listening to your explanations is one way to experience the content, but it is not sufficient; responding to clicker questions is another way, working through problem sets in small groups is a third. How about promoting further content experiences through online discussions, practicing sample exam questions with a partner, developing exam or study questions from the readings, and exploring case studies or scenarios in which the content is applied to solve novel problems?

Almost all of these activities require good questions to guide learning and move it from rote/recall to higher order thinking. Crafting good questions is an art and takes lots of practice. A mentor of mine when I was a new instructor shared with me the following information when I was trying to improve my ability to inspire student involvement in class discussions. I have returned to it again and again as I have written questions for many of the purposes mentioned above. I hope you find this helpful as well.

Types of Cognitive Questions (an overview)

Effective teachers are highly interactive with students --that is, they ask a lot of questions and they interact extensively during the instructional process. Teacher/student interaction takes place chiefly through questioning. Most cognitive questions in educational settings fall into three types: (1) recall or memory, (2) classification, and (3) divergent.

A brief explanation of each follows:

1. Recall (memory): requires knowledge of facts only. The learner responds through rote memory. The purpose of the question is to converge ("get") the right answer.
   
   Examples: What is the largest species of whale in the world's oceans? What factors cause a person to be color blind? What is the "greenhouse effect"?
   
   
2. Classification (comprehension): requires the learner to go beyond recall in order to reason out a conclusion and/or solve a problem. This type of question usually requires higher order reasoning, calculating, solving, or comparing in order to arrive at an answer.
   
   Examples: Compare the quality of pineapples grown in Hawaii with those grown in Costa Rica? Considering what you know about the space shuttle, Challenger, what do you think were some of the reasons it exploded? Describe the conditions that must exist to result in a full eclipse of the sun?
   
   
3. Divergent: Divergent questions require creative, imaginative, or inventive responses. For the most part, divergent questions ask for possibilities, or they may state assumptive facts and ask for possible, plausible conclusions. Divergent questions do not necessarily have factual or "right" answers. There "rightness" or "wrongness" can often be judged in terms of logic or sound reasoning.
   
   Examples: How might the world be different if the giant dinosaurs still existed on earth? What kind of plan would you suggest to investigate if the Loch Ness monster actually exists?

Sample Questions That Promote Critical Thinking and Teacher/Student Interaction.

Helping students think critically can be aided by using the a variety of questions, forcing them to experience content by coming at it from various angles: hypothesizing, interpreting, seeking alternative views, raising questions, evaluating findings or opinions, discovering new knowledge/ideas

Hypothesizing

• What do you suppose would happen if ..
  
• You are suggesting that ...
  
• If I understand you correctly, you think. .
  
• Are you trying to tell me that...?

Interpreting

• What do you think this means...?
  
• These findings lead us to make what kind of assumptions. ..
  
• What are we observing here...?
  
• What do these results tell us...?

Seeking Alternative Views

• What might be another viewpoint...?
  
• Is this the only possible solution...?
  
• Have be consider all the alternatives
  
• What other options do we have...?
  
• Are there other ways to look at this...?

Raising Questions

• How do we know this is right?
  
• Do we have to accept these findings?
  
• How can you prove that?
  
• What makes this thing work?

Evaluating Findings or Opinions

• Can this be documented?
  
• Do we need to investigate this further?
  
• Do we have all the data necessary to draw a conclusion?
  
• How do we know that this is correct?
  
• Are there any flaws that exist in these findings/arguments?

Discovering New Knowledge/Ideas

• Has anyone looked at this idea before?
  
• How do these findings/ideas add to the existing body of knowledge?
  
• Are we on the verge of something new?
  
• Where do we go from here?
  
• What exciting new ideals have we just learned?
  
• Based on these findings, what do we know now that we did not know earlier?

Day Ten Teaching Evening (or Extended Time) Classes

Most of us have invited guest speakers to contribute to the learning of our students. In the evening, they can be one of those appealing activities to use to break up the evening and capture the attention and imagination of your students. Sometimes, securing a speaker during the day can be easier than evening because people consider it part of their jobs. Availability may be more restricted at night too because of personal obligations or the distance the speaker lives or works from BHC. As a result, today’s idea is about suggestions for inviting guest speaker presence when he/she is unable to attend the class in person in the evening.

Have you ever thought how exciting it would be to have the author of your textbook visit your class? Or a leader in your field (academic) or profession (working professional) that does not live in the BHC district? Or an expert of any kind who could contribute to your class for 10-15 minutes on a very focused topic? How about one of these alternative methods to an in-class presentation?

1. Have Andy create a guest account to your CE8 course site for the speaker. [If you don’t already have a CE8 site, he can create one for you for this purpose.] Invite your speaker to join your class in the CE8 chat room for a live interview/discussion. Students can access the chat box from their own lab computers to post their individual questions or comments, and to follow the discussion. Tip: Have your students discuss ahead of time the questions they’d like to ask or topics they’d like the speaker to address. Then, send these to the speaker in advance. You may find it helpful to moderate the Q&A time if you have more than 10 students in class so that the conversation is more controlled. You can save the transcript of the text conversation to revisit later or more fully discuss in class. Sharing the transcript with the speaker may also generate follow-up comments or ideas from him/her, as well.
   
2. Sign-up to get a free Elluminate V-room (or borrow mine!). Send the URL to your guest speaker with very simple instructions,*** including when to join you and your class online. Then, pull up Internet Explorer or Firefox on your classroom computer and project it on the big screen. You and your students can interview/interact with your guest live! Students can ask questions orally by sharing your instructor microphone, or they can direct their questions to you or another student to type into the chat box. The V-room also has a white board area, so the guest can upload PowerPoint slides, a Web site or other demo, or other informative visual to display while he/she is talking.
   
3. Invite the speaker to audio record a short presentation or commentary that you can listen to in class (Audacity is a free download audio recorder; If you wish, you can edit the recording or cut it into pieces or ask the TLC to assist you with either task). Once the recording is ready, you can listen to it in class and brainstorm questions for your guest speaker, posting them as topics in an online discussion board. Invite the speaker to join you in the online discussion throughout the week. Students can be encouraged to join in the conversation all week, as well. Of course, you can have the speaker post the audio presentation to your CE8 or Sungard site and then conduct the Q&A live using method one or two above during class, as well.
   
4. Teach poetry? How about inviting some poets to read their poetry live using one of the above methods?
   
5. Want to direct your contact with a guest speaker to real-world settings? How about creating written scenarios/off-site video clips/case studies of common challenges or problems your guest might deal with at work and invite his/her analysis of the situation? Using any of the methods above to discuss the scenario, students have a chance to interact with the real world in meaningful ways. These can be short as well! Perhaps one per week on a problem that relates to that week’s course concepts?
   
6. If your students produce projects or designs, you might like to invite professionals in the area to do a project review. Students could post their projects online. Then, you could ask the guest to come to class live one night using the methods above and share his/her comments/suggestions, answer questions, etc.

***Instructions for live presenters using Elluminate V-room:

1. Purchase an inexpensive, USB headset with microphone or borrow one.
   
2. Visit the V-room site a day or two before to perform the automated computer checkup and audio wizard. A small download may be necessary, which you don’t want the speaker to have to do during your class time. http://www.elluminate.com/support
   
3. Practice a bit with you [instructor] so that the speaker is comfortable with the interface and how it will work. [Easy to learn and to use, but to minimize downtime or confusion, practicing a bit is always wise!] Explain your “moderator” role in the chat box.

Day Nine Teaching Evening (and Extended Time) Classes

In more than one previous post, I shared tips for managing your class time in ways that minimize mental fatigue, promote engagement, capture and recapture attention to assist students in staying focused on learning. Interspersing active learning activities with short lectures/presentations is one of those strategies. Let’s think a bit more about those short lectures. Many of us choose to use various types of visual aids when lecturing. Today I thought we would review some practical tips for using PowerPoint (or other visual aids) to support those short lectures/presentations.

For years, PowerPoint pundits included recommendations such as:

• Don’t use full sentences on the slide, unless it is ONE sentence to prompt discussion (e.g., quote).
  
• Avoid distracting background graphics that make it difficult to read the text.
  
• Limit each bullet to one line of text with 6 or fewer words, and each slide to no more than 3 bullets.
  
• Choose one animation for making each bullet point appear (mixing animations is distracting).
  
• Use a font type and font size that is easy to read from any place in the room (usually a minimum of 24 pt).
  
• Select a template that is pleasing to the eye (i.e., color) and provides good contrast between the background color and the text. Research even shows that white on dark is better than dark on light.

When using text on our slides, these “rules” still make sense. However, since those early recommendations, PowerPoint has become ubiquitous. My guess is that you all use it to some extent. The “death by PowerPoint” criticisms that have surfaced in recent years often center around problems created by presenters who either ignore the above guidelines or follow them while creating and speaking from 75 slides!

Rightfully so, PowerPoint tips nowdays tend to focus on what is really needed….. effective, persuasive presentations. If PowerPoint is used to enhance that presentation, then the tips assume the above list of guidelines, and instead, address additional recommendations, such as:

• Start the presentation with an idea and a focus, not a PowerPoint slide.
  
• Use a minimum number of slides to convey the key points that fit the learning outcome and audience. Even in a long evening class, your short presentations might each include 1-3 slides because much of the content is contained in your lively discussion with the students. Remember, it is about THEIR learning. If adding a graph or chart will help the students remember the keypoint, fine, but more words…..no.
  
• Use a minimum number of words and more graphics/images/photos to illustrate what YOU are saying out loud. This helps your students because they don’t have to choose whether to read and write down what is on the screen OR listen to you! This keeps you from reading the slides and gives them a visual to anchor the ideas to! It helps you encourage spontaneous discussions, rather than feeling married to a scripted slide of text.
  
• Press CTRL-H to make the cursor invisible during the presentation (moving cursors are very distracting). If you need to see the cursor to point to something specific, press CTRL-A and it will appear again.
  
• Avoid dimming the lights; you want the focus to be on you, not the screen most of the time. Move around a lot while presenting and use a wireless mouse to advance any slides. PowerPoint is not the focus of your presentation, the content is, as it is being delivered by you and experienced by you and your students together.
  
• Provoke the class to think, come up with new ideas, provide examples, suggest solutions…throughout your presentation.
  
• If you are demonstrating a web site, it is best to use a free, virtual magnifying glass to enlarge the portion of the screen you are emphasizing (http://magnifier.sourceforge.net/ ) so that the text or image is large enough to see.

If you have worked most of your professional life on putting your ideas into words and reversing that process to turn into a visual person is a real challenge, you might like to borrow one of my books on visual presentations to get ideas. They are really great!

What other tips would you like to share with the rest of us on using PowerPoint effectively when “presenting” content to your students?

Day Eight Teaching Evening (or Extended Time) Classes

As you have all probably heard, the mission of BHC is to “provide the environment and resources for individuals to become lifelong learners.” One way we faculty can contribute to that mission is to assist students in learning how to learn on their own, how to function in the real world as a lifelong learner, how to manage personal and professional learning networks (especially in your discipline), how to select good resources from a sometimes overwhelming flood of amazing web-based tools and other sources of information. But, you say, I don’t have time to research and evaluate all of these tools and information sources to select what are best for my students!

An easy way to learn yourself without much time investment and help your students strengthen their lifelong learning skills is to engage them in doing some of the research. That process in itself shows students how you use your networking contacts to be a Master Learner (aka David Warlick), one who is engaged, active, inquisitive, skeptical, networked, connected and sharing. We can’t possibly know all, so we need to develop strategies for continuing our learning that fits into our busy lives. Engaging your students as partners in your learning network is key!

For example, if your students are doing individual or small group projects, send them to one of the web sites listed below. Have them collaborate in choosing at least one tool to use that will assist them in their work for the project, and investigate and evaluate two others. Then, add to the rubric for the project that they are to report on their experience with their chosen tool by posting their mini-report to the class wiki. They should include, for example:

• Name of the tool (and URL)
  
• What the tool does
  
• Description of how the tool was used by their group to make their work more effective or efficient
  
• A rating of the tool and the criteria that they used to rate the tool
  
• A general recommendation of what types of work the tool is best suited for.

Web sites with links to dozens of tools:

• Organizing Your Digital Self (Maria Anderson, faculty member)
  
• Top 100 Learning Tools
  
• Web 2.0 Tools and Applications Index
  
• Carrie Delcourt’s Web 2.0 Highlights/Samples
  
• Internet for Classrooms
  
• Master List of Web 2.0 Tools

Our discussion of researching information sources will be discussed in one of our other “ideas.”

Day Seven Teaching Evening (or Extended Time) Classes

Today, I want to share with you a technology that is tailor-made for keeping students engaged, awake and involved. And BHC owns enough for all of your students…upt to 155 of them for your use! They are called clickers or “audience response systems.” They are about the size of a small calculator and are often picked up from the library in groups of 20-40 in a very cute basket that Charlet Key and her staff keep refreshed! Also in the basket is a receiver unit, a small device that looks like a flash/jump/USB drive. In addition, the program that makes them work is already installed on most instructor computers in the tech-equipped classrooms on the QC campus…look for a TurningPoint shortcut icon on the desktop and if there isn’t one there, just call the Help Desk to install it for you!

OK, first let me tell you how they work (print details here later).Then, we'll talk about ways you might find them useful for your evening classes.

1. Create a PowerPoint slideshow that includes some slides with multiple choice, true-false or other objective questions. These slides can be inserted into a regular set of slides, as well.
   
2. As you arrive to class, insert the receiver in the USB port of the computer (probably near the power button).
   
3. As students arrive to class, give each of the students a clicker for the evening.
   
4. Open your PowerPoint slideshow.
   
5. As you get to each question slide, ask the question and have the students press the numbered/lettered buttons on their clicker to indicate their answers. The receiver receives and combines anonymously all of the students’ answers.
   
6. Click your mouse and the computer will display the results of the composite answers in a bar graph on the screen.

Clickers can be used in a variety of engaging ways (see specific tips here).

• Take attendance
  
• Test review or mock exam practice (gives immediate feedback; best when asking application or other higher-order questions rather than recognition)


• Note: Using them for real quizzes or exams is not advised. Students worry about their reliability and will not view them as engaging for other activities.
  
• (Anonymous) quizzes on homework readings
  
• Anonymous quizzes on prior knowledge from last class or course
  
• Measure of current understanding of a concept or principle (Does the class understand it well enough to move on?)
  
• Measure of current understanding of a concept or principle (What misconceptions do the students have? Let’s resolve them!)
  
• Discussion warm-ups:
  
  
  • Stimulus for discussion on sensitive or controversial topics
    
  • Stimulus for discussion about different perspectives on a topic
    
  • Stimulus for discussion about potential solutions to problems or scenarios
  
  
• Practice in solving problems (Of several possible solutions, which is best? Why? discussions)
  
• Individual responses and level of confidence in it; turn to partner to discuss about question/problem presented; enter answer a second time
  
• Collect (anonymous) input about the class (Classroom Assessment Technique), such as when deciding about course policies or getting feedback on class activities
  

Good questions are key, of course. Our library has an excellent book with lots of sample questions for various purposes by Derek Bruff, Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creative Active Learning Environments (2009). He also has a blog: http://derekbruff.com/teachingwithcrs/

Have any of you tried clickers yet? I’d love to hear about your experience! (Hint: Click Comment button below)

DAY SIX Teaching Evening (or Extended Time) Classes

When discussing the prevention of mental fatigue strategies in Day Two, I introduced the idea of using “core content scaffolding, such as incomplete handouts, review sheets, worksheets, or other printed resources that students work with while listening or doing throughout the evening.” Today, I thought I would share some tips and resources for developing these types of documents/tools.

Learning research demonstrates that using handouts that are incomplete help students develop note-taking skills, manage their learning in and out of class, and support good study habits. Sometimes these tools are called templates, interactive study guides, word pictures, concept maps, outlines, or job aids. The purpose of each one is to help students stay focused on the activities of the evening while learning the core concepts or principles being emphasized, their structure and relationship to each other, and perhaps their varied applications to real-world problems. They also serve as excellent review tools prior to exams or job aids when trying to replicate a procedure or problem-solving sequence, in part because they can provide a visual anchor for later recall (Almost all students are visual learners these days!).

Perhaps one of the least visual of these options is an outline, given to the students near the beginning of class. The outline could delineate the core material to be emphasized that evening. Many words, phrases, or other key points are left blank, however, to be filled-in by the students as they experience the content in many different ways throughout class. Adding minimal numbers of text boxes or circles to demonstrate relationships makes for an interesting adaptation of the incomplete outline; these are often called interactive study guides. Email me if you’d like an electronic copy of Tom Cyrs chapter “Communicating with Word Pictures” to see lots of examples. I know sometimes we spend so much time trying to put our ideas into words, we find calling on our visual capabilities a challenge!

More visual, but no less troublesome to create than an outline is a basic concept map, again with many missing words/phrases or details on the various nodes of the map. These are quite simple to create using the drawing tools in Microsoft Word or free Web 2.0 tools such as FreeMind or Mindomo. Take a look at some Mindomo examples that Maria Anderson, a math instructor at Muskegon Community College, has created for her students and for the rest of us. Notice that when you see a “paper” symbol next to any of the nodes, you can hover your mouse over it to see her explanatory notes pop up. A more detailed icon near a node represents a link to another page (with perhaps another level of the concept map!). These are fun for students to develop too!

Finally, job aids can be built during class under your guidance, but be used more AFTER class (in their complete state) while doing homework or practicing. Job aids do what they imply, assist us in remembering what is important when doing a complex, infrequent, often-changing or solitary job/task. It helps us track our progress in improving while doing the tasks. It can even help in doing peer review of our colleagues as they practice doing the task. Job aids provide that scaffolding that we have been talking about until the job/task has been done so often and so well that the job aid is no longer needed. An incomplete job aid that is built during an evening class will be more effective since it is developed by each student on his own or in collaboration with his small group at various junctures during class. I have two books (written by Allison Rossett) on developing effective job aids for improving performance if this idea is useful for your type of learning outcomes and you’d like to see examples.

You may want to create a simple interactive study guide/concept map/outline/job aid for each lecture, for each core topic or one for the entire evening. In all cases, leave plenty of white space near the various elements of it so that students can take additional notes, as desired.

Have any of you used incomplete outlines, worksheets, etc. in your classes? How? Why? Tips?