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Tips marked with an * indicates that the
tip is consistent with learnng-centered teaching
Student Participation/Active Learning
*Getting students to participate in
class
Here are a few simple strategies to get students to respond to
questions or participate more:
- give students a clue regarding the kind of response that your
are expecting
- give students a minute to write their thoughts before anyone
is called upon
- break students into small groups to discuss the answer, then
bring them back o the whole group
- arrive early to class and chat with students informally (helps
them fell more comfortable)
- use non-verbal means to invite people to participate - sit
close to students, make eye contact with them individually, move
around the room, or sit in different locations.
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*Promoting class participation, discussion
among the entire class
If you want the class to actively participate in discussions, you
might consider the following:
- State it clearly in your class syllabus, establish it as an
expectation at the first day of class
- Count it as part of the grade
- If possible, arrange chairs in circle or U or have students
seat in fixed seating in such a way to foster eye contact with
each other
- Sit among the students during the discussion part of the class
- If one student is dominating the discussion at the expense
of the others - break eye contact with that student and look at
others.
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*Student classroom participation
One way to get the students to participate more in class is to
give them an assignment that they have to come prepared to speak
about. For example, you might ask them to bring a quote from the
assigned reading which they especially related to, was inspiring
or enlightening. Or you might ask them to bring a quote of a passage
that they did not understand.
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*Getting more student discussion
Faculty complain that they have a hard time getting many students
to participate in class discussions. Yet, faculty here have reported
that if you allow students to conduct both oral and written discussions,
different people participate. Written discussion help shy people
or those who are having trouble with English to add their ideas,
at their own pace. Chat rooms allow faculty to hold electronic discussions.
Mignon Adams identified a virtual environment that does not need
any html expertise to use. This virtual environment, called Speakeasy
Studio and Cafe, can be accessed by http:/speakeasy.wsu.edu/studio/,
then click start, then about to learn how the cafe can work. You
can use this type of a chat room even if your are not doing anything
else electronically with your class.
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*Active learning within a large classroom
The FSLC technique may be familiar to you
F = formulate an answer on your own
S = share your answer on your own
L = listen carefully to your partner's answer
C = create a new answer that is superior to your individual answers
Each step is important, but we often do not emphasize the listen
and create part enough.
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*Students working together on group projects,
assignments
Employers constantly tell us that they want their employees to
be able to work together in groups. Yet, students often complain
about working in groups, partly because it is difficult to get together.
To facilitate students working together, give them 5-10 minutes
in class just to set up a meet virtually either on-line or through
conference calls, etc.
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*Promoting class discussions
Here are a few tips to promote greater class discussion:
- The instructor should prepare open-ended questions in advance.
Without an agenda, it is easier to get off onto a tangent. You
can allow the discussion to flow from these questions.
- To help student focus on the question, put the question on
an overhead, the board or a slide.
- If the questions to be answered are challenging or the students
are shy about participating, consider distributing the questions
in advance to the students.
- Pause before you call on anyone. This allows student to think
before hearing an answer
- Do not answer your own questions.
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*Getting students to participate, answer
your questions
When you ask a question in class that you would like students to answer:
- Wait 15 seconds before you call on anyone - gives more people
a chance to think of an answer
- If no one has volunteered after 30 seconds, try rephrasing
the question or asking students what they need to know to answer
the question
- Try to call on different people throughout a class. You could
say, I want to hear from someone who has not yet participated
- Give verbal and nonverbal feedback to students who have participated-praise
for good answers, for non-helpful answers you might thank the
person for volunteering and ask for more responses.
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*Promoting discussion in your class
The first class is an appropriate time to establish guidelines
for class participation and discussion and to ask for students'
cooperation in implementing these guidelines. Here are a few guideline
to share with your students:
- listen carefully to everyone, particularly those with different
perspectives.
- don't stereotype people by who they are or what they have said
before
- keep what is said confidential, especially personal information
- speak from your own experience, do not generalize to other
groups
- speak from literature or other evidence you have gathered
- do not blame or scapegoat
- avoid generalizations about groups of people don't dominate
discussions
- focus on your own and other learning
Some of these suggestions come from R. Wlodkowski, Enhancing Adult
Motivation to Learn, Jossey-Bass, 1999
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*Making student presentations more of a learning
experience for the listeners
Asking students to make presentations in class is a good way to
get the presenters very engaged with the material. However, the
student-audience may not be as engaged. Therefore, give the audience
a specific assignment to do in relation to the presentation. Depending
on the level of the class, you might ask them to be critics on the
content presented, come up with an argument for the opposite side,,
think of themselves as researchers having to come up with the next
research question to follow from this work, etc. Or you might ask
the students to summarize the presentation in a few bullet points
and hand in their summaries, write down 3 questions that the presentation
raised, 3 areas the listener wanted to learn more about relating
to the topic. These hand-ins might be given to the presenters for
feedback to them.
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*Helping students learn more from lectures
Here are 3 tips for helping students to learn more from lectures:
- Many students who are new to studying a discipline often have
trouble seeing the structure to a lecture. One of the easiest
ways to provide structure is to provide an outline that contains
only the headings and subheadings with spaces in between. Students
can take notes from your headings.
- For all levels of students, if you provide too much detail in
your handout or outline, the students will not need to take notes
and perhaps will not attend to what you are saying as much.
- You might also want to provide a concept map of your lecture.
Providing a concept map facilitates learning, increases motivation
and attention during the lecture. Students will take notes to
help them understand your concept.
These ideas are supported by empirical research as described in
a chapter by deWinstanley and Bjork called Successful Lecturing:
Presenting Information in ways that engage effective processing.
In Halperin DF and Hakel, MD. Applying the Science of Learning to
University Teaching and Beyond. New Directions for Teaching and
Learning, Jossey Bass, #89 Spring 2002. This is a great book available
in the Teaching and Learning Center.
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*Making class discussions more of a group
event
One of the unintended consequences of holding class discussions
is that a few people dominant the discussion. Often the discussion
really is a series of 1:1 dialogues between the student and the
teacher and not a true discussion. Perhaps we are encouraging students
to think of only their own contributions and not how to make it
more of a collective learning experience. To encourage more people
to participate, you might give a few points to everyone if majority
or all of the people talk, depending on the size of the class; if
each person only talks once during a class; or if the discussion
really builds on othe.rs' comments - reflective, questioning, critical,
new ideas coming from other student comments and not a series of
1:1 dialogues.
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*Helping students learn more from lectures
Here are 3 tips for helping students to learn more from lectures:
- Many students who are new to studying a discipline often have
trouble seeing the structure to a lecture. One of the easiest
ways to provide structure is to provide an outline that contains
only the headings and subheadings with spaces in between. Students
can take notes from your headings.
- For all levels of students, if you provide too much detail in
your handout or outline, the students will not need to take notes
and perhaps will not attend to what you are saying as much.
- You might also want to provide a concept map of your lecture.
Providing a concept map facilitates learning, increases motivation
and attention during the lecture. Students will take notes to
help them understand your concept map.
These ideas are supported by empirical research as described in
a chapter by deWinstanley and Bjork called Successful Lecturing:
Presenting Information in ways that engage effective processing.
In Halperin DF & Hakel, MD. Applying the science of Learning
to University Teaching and Beyond, New Directions for Teaching and
Learning, Jossey,Bass, #89, Spring 2002. This is a great book available
in the Teaching and Learning Center.
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*Making group presentations better and more
meaningful learning experience
As a result of group projects, students often give a group presentation.
Many times the students divide the presentation and only prepare
their own section. The presentation is often dis-jointed and students
don't learn all of the parts. As you prepare students to give presentations
from group work tell them that only one student per group will present
and that you will randomly pick the presenter. This method ensures
that they all work together throughout the project and that everyone
learns the entire project presentation. If a student is unprepared
or has not adequately worked with the group, you should allow another
student to do the presentation and mark down only the unprepared
one.
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*Helping students master the vocabulary
and definitions in a discipline quickly
Plan to spend 5 minutes in class with the following active learning
technique to help students master the vocabulary and definitions
in your discipline:
- either have the students make up and bring to class flash cards
with the word on one side and the definition on the reverse side
or distribute a set you made up or download from your textbook
auxiliary materials
- Pair off the students. Have each student ask the other person
a word or definition from the flash card. Alternate turns. If
the student gets it right, that student gets the flashcard or
it is taken out of the active pile.
- As the pile of cards gets smaller the pair is going over only
those words one did not know. Within 5 minutes most definitions
can be spoken by at least 1 person and learned by both.
You can use this exercise as a check on reading the chapter before
class, part way through a unit or as a review before a test.
Barbara Millis taught me this simple technique. She sends her regards
to USP and is happy we are employing so many of her collaborative
learning techniques.
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Getting students to participate more in class
To get more students involved in class participation, assign each
student to facilitate a class discussion. The student should prepare
the readings very well, develop focused questions, and be prepared
to answer questions raised by other students. A few days prior to
the class, the facilitator-student should meet with the instructor
to be sure the student is on the same wave length and well prepared.
After the class that student or another student should prepare a
summary of the class discussion, which after approval by the instructor,
can be posted on the Blackboard site for the class. At the beginning
of the class, the instructor needs to explicitly model and discuss
good facilitation skills. Sometimes students will participate more
for fellow students than they do for faculty. The work done as a
facilitator and summarizer should count as part of the class participation
grade.
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Evaluating students on class participation
Most faculty like to include class participation in their grading,
but find it difficult to grade for it. Develop a scoring rubric
using 2-3 criteria and 3 levels of participation for each rubric.
Suggested criteria might be what new ideas did the student contribute,
how much did the student apply content/readings, etc. to what he/she
said, and evidence of critical thinking. You might grade students
using these rubrics every month so they can see patterns. Then class
participation can be graded and it should count around 20% of the
final grade. This idea came from JoAnne Majors of Immaculata University.
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Using brief questions to students in class
Many faculty are asking students brief questions in class. These
questions are an excellent technique because they serve as a quick
check on student comprehension, to break up the lecture and to get
the students more actively involved with the material. However,
when you use these questions, please make sure the students actually
try to answer the question. You probably need to give the students
a little more time to think about the questions and not just let
the fastest students answer for everyone. Some students use this
time for questions just to finish their notes or to chat with their
neighbors.
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Calling on students in class
Some students are embarrassed or shy when they are called on in
class. An alternative is to call on 2 people, perhaps sitting beside
each other, together. Collectively they might do a better job than
asking 2 students separately. This technique works especially well
if the students have to think about an answer or do a calculation,
or work at the board. This tip was suggested by Marion Cohen, a
part time math faculty.
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*Recognizing the importance of conflict
and conflict resolution in student learning groups
Many student is think that a well functioning group should be conflict-free.
when, indeed, a certain amount of conflict is necessary to achieve
more, learn at a deeper level or expose different perspectives.
It is the teacher's responsibility to help students to understand
that conflict is necessary and should not be avoided. Teachers might
even plan exercises that forces students to have a small conflict
a few weeks into their group functioning. The teacher also needs
to help students to manage the conflict appropriately. Probably
the most important rule of conflict resolution is open and honest
communication. Students have to feel comfortable talking about the
conflict to all members of the group at once.
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Students helping peers to learn better
Students take advice much better from peers than from us. Why not
incorporate student study strategies from previous years in the
help you give current students. Sarah Spinler wrote her students
after they got back the results on her exam and asked those who
did well on specific questions (the harder concepts, I assume) to
volunteer to write down very specific strategies and tips they used
for studying. She would also like to share specific examples of
things they made up. This type of help can be posted on Blackboard
for all students to have access and you might want to spend some
class time going over some of the strategies, tips and examples
ad a way of helping students to learn how to learn your material.
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Getting your students to work better in groups or teams
If you require your students to work in groups or teams, you probably
want them all to work effectively. Yet you probably do not have
much time to devote to the topic of group performance. One way for
students to learn how to function better in small groups is to give
them a short article about group functioning and have them write
a short reflection on the article and how it relates to their group
functioning in your course. Barbara Oakley, Richard Felder, Rebecca
Brent and Imad Elhajj have found that superficial and sloppy reflection
essays are predictors of problem team members.
We will be discussing more findings like these at the journal club
on scholarship of teaching and learning on Monday February 21st
at 2 in the Woman's Club room since we will be discussing the entire
article (Turning Student Groups into Effective Teams, Journal of
Student Centered Learning, 2004) that this tip come from. You can
borrow the article and come to the discussion.
A good article for students to read is by Barbara Oakley, "Coping
with Hitchhikers and Couch Potatoes on Teams" also in the Journal
of Student Centered Learning 2004 and available from my office.
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Introducing and reinforcing active learning
If you plan to use active learning in your course, introduce an
active learning exercise on the first day of class. Then use that
technique or similar ones a few times during the semester to help
the students master the technique and thus concentrate learning
the material from your course.
This idea comes from Barbara Tewsbury of Hamilton College.
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Helping all students to share in a pair
and share exercise
Some times especially when students are new at doing pair and share
of interviewing each other or practicing skills on each other the
first person takes too long and does not allow the second person
to fully talk, practice, interview, etc. As a way to prevent that
from happening, the instructor should be the time keeper and announce
to the class that it is now time for the second person to begin
talking or doing. You might also want to give them a little warning
before the half time period and the end of the session. As students
become more experienced with these paired activities, you can tell
them that they will start becoming their own time keepers and that
students need to learn to budget their time so both have equal access
to participate.
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Getting students to show their work or
thought processes
In many disciplines it is important for students to show their
work or their thinking. However, many students do not do a good
job doing that. If students show their thinking you can determine
where they did not make the mark exactly, and can give better constructive
feedback for them to improve in the future. One way to do is for
students to solve problems or to follow procedures using a split
page answer sheet. On one side they write what I did and on the
other side they write why I did it. Then as they solve the problem,
complete a lab or follow a procedure, they need to fill in both
sides.
Virginia Anderson from Townsend University, who writes about effective
assessment, suggested this idea.
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A way to get dominant students to allow others
to talk
This technique should work in small groups or large discussions.
Try this simple technique in order to try to achieve more equal
participation among students, help the dominate students to be quieter
and the shy once to speak up:
Give everyone 5-6 paper clips (you might want to get colored ones)
and tell them to bring them to every class.
Once a student makes a contribution to the discussion,they should
put a clip out in front of them.
Once they use up their allotted clips, they cannot talk any more.This
might help the dominate ones to save some comments for later.
This idea comes from Kina Mallard of Union University and appeared
in the October 2002 Teaching Professor.
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Getting more students to answer your questions
in class
In most classes <20 of the students do most of the participating,
especially answering most of the questions. One way to get more
students to think about your questions, is to ask students to write
the answer. Then you can call on someone who does not usually volunteer
and perhaps they will feel better about answering a question.
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*Doing a cooperative, active learning debate
in a 50 minute period
You can do a cooperative debate in literature, the sciences or
the social sciences in one 50 minute period. Follow these steps
and keep a very close watch on the time.
- Divide the class into smaller sections to work on different
topics
- Students draw slips of paper to determine their team and their
topic
- Students read the assigned material closely to gather support
for their team's perspective
- Students work together briefly in their groups in class to develop
the best possible arguments
- The instructor randomly determines which topic will be debated
first and who will be the team's spokesperson
- The spoke person has 4 minutes to present their ideas
- After both sides have presented, each team is allowed an additional
3 minutes to present a rebuttal choosing their own spokesperson
- The teams who have not been presenting (because they were assigned
a different topic) vote to determine which side presented the
most convincing arguments
- Steps 5-8 should be completed in 20 minutes and then another
topic teams should repeat the same steps. If this is a large class,
it may take 2 classes to get around to all topics and teams.
Barbara Millis, who came here a few years ago and showed us many
other activities, described this one to me.
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*Getting students to come to class having read
the assignment
One way to motivate students to read and digest the assigned readings
ahead of class is to ask students to develop 1 3x5" card based
upon their reading assignment. These cards can be collected and
returned to the person who developed them during the tests over
this material. Their cards will only be as good as their preparation
Good luck getting all the grading done.
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Helping students get the key points or the
gist of material
Many of our students highlight the vast majority of their textbooks.
Then they think they need to memorize it all. The end result is
that they often do not get the key concepts or the gist of the content.
As a way to help students identify the most essential concepts,
assign the following activity:
- After they have finished reading a chapter, tell them to take
another color to highlight the next step. They can only highlight
5 critical aspects of the chapter. Each of the critical section
needs to be less than 1/4 of the page. They
can hand in a copy of the pages or a paper that identifies what
they selected, if you want.
- In class discuss what they identified as the 5 critical aspects
of the chapter. There will be differences.
- If you have a small number of students, or you can call on only
a few people you can listen to what they say and comment on it,
help them evaluate the importance of what they identified, integrate
it with other points. This can be the lead to a great review of
the chapter.
- If they number of students is large, you can ask them to work
in small groups to discuss what they identified. They might hand
in a consensus of what they decided. Try to get feedback to all
of them.
This tip comes from Aimee Luebben from the University of Southern
Indiana.
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Helping all students to share in a pair and
share exercise
Some times, especially when students are new at doing pair and
share or interviewing each other or practicing skills on each other
the first person takes too long and does not allow the second person
to fully talk, practice, interview, etc. As a way to prevent that
from happening, the instructor should be the time keeper and announce
to the class that it is now time for the second person to begin
talking or doing. You might also want to give them a little warning
before the half time period and the end of the session. As students
become more experienced with these paired activities, you can tell
them that they will start becoming their own time keepers and that
students need to learn to budget their time so both have equal access
to participate
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Helping people work in groups who feel they
always do all the work in groups
Many hard working students do not like working in groups because
they feel they do all of the work, while others take advantage of
them and they all get the same good grade. Their feelings may be
justified. Here is a way to help these students learn to negotiate,
trust and share with others.
At the beginning of the semester, before you assign students to
groups, ask the students to complete the following 1 item survey
and list their name.
Think about your experience working in groups. Please select only
one alternative that best describes your experience.
- I enjoy working in groups because we understand the material
better, produce better products or perform better.
- I question the value of group work for me, because I end up
doing more than my fair share of the work
- I have little or no experience working in groups
- None of the above choices fit my experience is: (please describe)
When you form the groups, place all the students who selected #2
in the same group or groups. These hard working students finally
are in good company and can achieve wonderful things. The other
students also benefit because they must learn to work harder without
the one who is willing to do all of the work.
The idea comes from Byrnes, JF and Byrnes, MA. (May 2007). I Hate
Groups! The Teaching Professor, 21(5):8.
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Getting and giving feedback on meaningful
class participation
Students sometimes confuse mere participation in class with making
worthwhile contributions. To help see the distinction, give the students
a self-assessment that they hand in to you. This assessment should
be done several weeks into the class, and preferably once you know
their names and can identify how much students are making worthwhile
contributions. Make sure you give the students feedback on their self-assessments
and correct their misunderstandings. Ask the following question and
allow students room to write a rationale, additional comments or cite
an example.
How much are you contributing worthwhile insights during class discussions
or furthering the understanding of the material by the entire class?
- I contribute worthwhile comments several times during every
class. Please cite an example
- I contribute one or more worthwhile comments almost every class.
Please cite and example
- I often contribute or participate in class discussions. Please
cite an example
- I occasionally contribute
- I rarely contribute
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Letting the classroom environment foster
student participation
If you can move table-chairs or tables around in your classroom,
you might get better participation. Move the chairs into a semicircle,
a U or 2 rows facing each other. Make only 1 row so everyone is
equal and part of the arrangement. Put in only as many chairs as
you need, turn the rest of the chairs toward the wall, so that all
students sit in the chairs in your semicircle and not distance themselves
from the class. Once all of the students feel the need to sit within
the seats for participants, they will start to participate more.
As a courtesy to the next class, move the chairs back to the way
they were before or ask the next teacher if she prefers them left
the way you arranged them.
This tip was suggested by Miriam Cohen, a former adjunct faculty
here, who now is teaching at Arcadia University and one of her new
math department colleagues.
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Suggestions for peer and faculty assessment
of participation in class or small group discussions
More and more faculty are giving students credit for participation
in their final grade. If you divide the class into small working
groups, you can use peer assessments as part of the participation
grade. If you have a small enough class, you might be able to assess
each student on their participation. Here are a few items that you
might ask students to assess on, or you can use yourself. Each item
can be rated on a 3-5 point scale to give you a numerical index.
Preparation - evidence of preparation for the class/discussion
Engagement - quality of engagement is active, respectful and inclusive
Initiative - questions asked show focus, clarity and/or summarize
the discussion
Response - quality of responses reflects knowledge, comprehension,
and application of the concepts, readings, etc.
Discussion - quality of the remarks extends the discussion with
peers, reflects analysis, synthesis and evaluation
You can do this assessment weekly or at several different points
in the semester. The important thing is that there be more than
one observation.
Anna Lathrop from Brock University developed these points. They
were published in March 2006 issue of The Teaching Professor.
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Giving students credit for class work
Sometimes we ask students to do significant learning work in class.
While you may want to count their work toward a grade, you do not
want to spend much time grading the products.
I suggest you grade as a 0 for not doing the work, absent or doing
a poor job, 1 for an average job and an occasional 2 for an exceptionally
good job.
You might consider grading on some of the following components:
- Interpretation of content
- Use of evidence
- Connection new content to previously learned material
- Integration concepts to real world or personal experiences
- Development of conclusions based on the above
- Reasoning/problem solving
Jennifer Romack of Ca. State University at Northridge suggested
most of these components.
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Are your students ready for class?
Although we ask students to be ready for class, they may not know
what we mean by being ready. Like so many other things, we have
to make our implicit assumptions explicit to the students. If you
ask students to read before class, what does that mean about the
desired level of comprehension and ability to apply the material?
Being prepared for class should mean that the students have already
constructed a knowledge base and that they will be able to use it
in class.
These ideas come from Jennifer Romack of CA State University at
Northridge.
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Class participation Rubric. doc
As more of us are using active learning and discussions in our
classes, we are trying to count class participation in how we grade
students. The question always is how to do it fairly? Here is a
rubric that looks at attendance, level of engagement in class, following
directions, critical thinking/problem solving, preparation, communication,
and modifying behavior. You can modify it to suit your own needs.
The URL is: From http://www.rcampus.com/rubricshow.cfm?code=BXWA83&sp=yes&
You will find many other scoring rubrics at this site.
Thanks to Lora Packel for showing this to me.
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Asking for information from the students
very early in the semester to help you meet their needs
Assign students a brief get-to-know your assignment between the
first and the second class of a new semester. Ask the students to
tell you what they think will be interesting in your course, what
they think will be challenging or difficult for them, and if they
have any questions for you.
At the third class, make a few comments to show you heard them
and are incorporating their ideas into what you are doing.
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