It's a new
academic year and I'm busy getting ready for the new year, like every other
teacher. I'm always on the hunt for new ideas to imporve my teaching, and a
couple of seemingly serendipitous events have lead to two new activities.
The first
activity came as a result of my Chair forwarding this piece about the effect of asking students to set goals
for their education. The author of that piece refers to research about goal
setting that certainly is encouraging. Two caveats to that research: 1) the
intervention in the main study he refers to (described here) is quite labor- and time-intensive, and 2) the author
tried a more modest intervention and referred to it as a "failure".
Despite those issues I decided to attempt to create an activity that would get
at the same effect. In the past I've asked
students on the first day to report their reasons for taking my class, but that
usually produces non-helpful (but honest) answers like "to fulfill
requirements" or "it fit my schedule". In this activity
I start out asking the same question (reason for taking this class), and what
grade they want to earn in the course. But I then move on to getting them to
think about their goals for the course other than a particular grade. I then
ask them to reflect on their habits that both get them closer to and prevent
them from attaining their educational goals. Hopefully this elicits some honest
reflection. Then, and I think here is where the action takes place, I ask
them to imagine their life after they graduate if they were somehow able to
increase and improve their helpful habits and minimize or eliminate their
un-helpful habits, not just in this course but in their life as a whole.
Describe what their life would be like if that happened. Conversely, I also
ask them to consider what their life would be like if they decreased their
helpful habits and increased their un-helpful habits. Finally, capitalizing on
a little cognitive dissonance research about public commitments, I ask them
to at least try to minimize the un-helpful and maximize the helpful habits for
the next semester, and ask them to sign and date the document.
I plan to hand
out the activity either the first or second class of the term and get them to
return it by the next class. I'll hold on to them until perhaps midterm (this
is a flipped class that has quizzes in every class, otherwise I would hold
them until just after the first exam) and them return the activities to them
and ask them to consider their progress on their habits. Reflecting on their
process is a metacognitive activity. My activity can be seen here, feel free to use it as you see fit.
The other
activity came about because I got an email from the Director of the Honors
program at my university talking about the students in Honors electives. I
teach several such courses and was a bit startled to be reminded that
the students were mostly first-semester sophomores. I had thought of them as
more advanced students, so the reminder was important. My Honors
electives are typically taught as seminars, much like a graduate seminar, and I
often assign empirical articles that would be appropriate for graduate
students, but perhaps a new type of reading for these students. Now, I don't shy
away from assigning challenging readings (indeed there's research about the
value of doing so), but I also don't want to overwhelm them early on. So, I
created an activity I plan to have students complete the first day we discuss a
reading -- before we get to the discussion. I first ask if they had done the
assigned reading. Then, assuming they had, I ask them how they approached the
reading activity -- did they read alone, was music playing, etc. Then I ask
them how they did the reading -- did they read it all at once, did they write
in the margin, highlight, take notes, etc. Then I ask them what their goal was
while they were reading and I give them a list of options based on Anderson and
Krathwohl's taxonomy (similar to Bloom's taxonomy), including understanding,
analysis, synthesis, etc. They can choose as many as apply. I bet this will be
the first time they realize that they can read with different goals in mind.
Finally, and this mirrors the previous activity, I ask them about what they did
that helped them understand the reading and what they did that did not help
them. I plan to have them share their responses with a classmate in the hopes
that they would get some helpful tips from others, or at least realize that
they are not alone in struggling with the reading. Again, I plan to collect the
completed activities and then return them a month or so later so they can compare their current practices
with what they said was helpful and not helpful. The activity can be seen here.
These are new
activities for me so I can't report here on their effectiveness. Perhaps I will
comment about that in a future post. Good luck with the new year!
