{"id":547,"date":"2014-07-29T14:58:28","date_gmt":"2014-07-29T19:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/autumnsutherlin\/?page_id=547"},"modified":"2014-09-03T15:30:07","modified_gmt":"2014-09-03T20:30:07","slug":"new-teaching-methods","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/autumnsutherlin\/new-teaching-methods\/","title":{"rendered":"New Teaching Methods"},"content":{"rendered":"

I believe that in most classes lecture is a technique that actually works reasonably well for me. Although my students have generally succeeded when I have lectured, I felt that it was not always the most interesting way to teach. While lecturing introduces students to material, it does not always make the best use of class time. Over the past several years, I have attempted to incorporate different techniques in some of my courses as an effort to better reach students. In an attempt to learn new techniques I have tried to take advantage of faculty development opportunities.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

This section overlaps somewhat with my Scholarship section<\/a><\/span>. Not only did I successfully implement new techniques in some of my courses, but I also collected data and published<\/span><\/a> or presented<\/span><\/a> the impact that was measured. This page will address some of the techniques I feel really worked to improve my teaching.<\/p>\n

I had two major concerns which lead me to implement different techniques in my classes. The first was concern that I was not preparing my students well enough for the rigors of graduate or professional school, particularly when it came to learning to read and study new material on their own. I also worried about students that were quiet and did not speak up much in class. I was afraid they were not getting everything out of class that they could.<\/p>\n

Just-In-Time Teaching and Peer Instruction<\/span><\/p>\n

Just-In-Time Teaching (JiTT) is a technique that was developed for introductory physics courses at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis and The US Air Force Academy in an effort to better reach all students not just the average students that we sometimes target in lectures.1<\/sup> In JiTT, students are given reading over the next lecture material and then asked to respond to a certain number of questions that are generally more conceptual in nature. The assignment is due before lecture. The instructor then reads the students answers BEFORE lecture and uses the students responses to shape the lecture.<\/p>\n

Peer Instruction (PI), which was also designed for physics students, was developed at Harvard University by Eric Mazur.2<\/sup> In PI, students are asked multiple choice\/ true-false questions in class and respond, often with clickers. Depending on the percentage of students who got the question correct, the professor moves on (>80% correct), goes back and re-teaches the material (<20% correct), or has the students discuss the correct answer with their neighbor and re-vote. This third option is the most common case. It then allows students to think through their answers and practice explaining their reasoning together.<\/p>\n

In some physics classrooms, these techniques were combined to great effect.3<\/sup> The JiTT helps the professor choose the best PI questions. Based on readings about these techniques and hearing about them in conferences, I decided to first implement them in Biochemistry I and later in Biochemistry II and Consumer Chemistry.<\/p>\n

I chose to have the students read an assignment and answer three questions. Two were always directly over the reading, often tying separate ideas together. The third was always “What did you find most challenging or difficult about the reading.” The students’ answers were due at midnight the night before class. Before class, I would read their answers and respond to them if it was not something I was going to specifically address in class. I would then use their answers to design what we would do in class. Because I had been teaching Biochemistry for several years, I had a general idea of where people struggled, but it varied from year to year. If everyone got a question right, which rarely happened, I knew it was something on which I did not need to spend class time. Because the reading was assigned and there were clear expectations for what the students should do, I felt free to not spend class time on topics that were straight informational, for example the structure of the amino acids. I could spend more time on things students had trouble with, like why when two amino acids bond, they do not rotate like we think they would.<\/p>\n

I introduce the purpose of these questions to my students on the first day with a picture of my brother and me.<\/p>\n

\"Autumn<\/p>\n

I tell my students that when my brother’s children were little I liked to ask the kids who was older, their daddy or me? I then explain the answer was usually “Daddy.” When I’d ask why they thought that, they would say, “Because he is taller, married, and has children.” \u00a0Which is good reasoning. But of course they are missing the key point of who is born first. Then I show them this very cute picture of my brother and me to show when our age difference was more evident.<\/p>\n

\"Autumn<\/a><\/p>\n

I then go on to explain that is the purpose of the reading questions. To find things that they can reason out, but might be missing a key point. These questions help me focus in on the things my students are misunderstanding and aid me in showing them those key points.<\/p>\n

Because I did not always cover as much material in class or focused more on a few comments, I tried to supplement the readings and what we did in class with podcasts and links to websites that I thought were helpful. Below is a screenshot of how the course was organized in OpenClass. The material was grouped by exam.Then for each exam there was a page where they could find the reading questions, a page where I posted the slides from lecture, a page with important structures, a page with other helpful things (which is shown in the screenshot below), and fill in lecture notes from when I did straight lectures to use a reading guide or in class or however students wish.<\/p>\n

\"Biochemistry<\/a><\/p>\n

Students have responded really well to JiTT. I honestly expected quite a bit of push back from them. I think explaining the purpose helped quite a bit. The first year I did this, I received no negative comments about JiTT in my student evaluations<\/span> <\/a>in Biochemistry and several positive ones such as “The daily homework was very helpful.” “I really liked her new method of teaching. It was very helpful to have the layout where we have reading questions and expand on the material in lecture.”<\/p>\n

The response to the Peer Instruction was mostly positive with few negative comments. As is often the case, several students mentioned liking the questions while some found it a “waste of time” when I could have been lecturing more. Because students scored statistically significantly higher on most exams, I feel that PI was not a waste of time.<\/p>\n

The effectiveness of these techniques was addressed in an email<\/span><\/a> I received from Clint Jones, who is a first year medical student at the University of North Texas Health Science Center. In the email<\/span><\/a>, he says that this technique helped prepare him for how he has to study in medical school.<\/p>\n

A sample of JiTT question and responses can be seen in\u00a0Assignment\u00a0and Student Work Samples<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Clickers in the Classroom<\/h1>\n

Since early in my teaching career, I have been attempting to find new ways to help students participate in class without requiring them to talk in front of everyone. While I am a person who is rarely shy talking in front of others, I know this is not true for everyone. One technique that I have been using for several years is clickers in the classroom. How I have done this has varied over the years. In some cases, I have used them to review from previous lectures. In others, I have used them to gauge students’ knowledge on a topic I’m about to address. I also will use them to give immediate feedback to test the understanding of something we have just addressed. I also use them in Peer Instruction which uses all three of these types of questions.<\/p>\n

As addressed in the Scholarship section<\/span><\/a>, my collaborators and I attempted to measure the effect of using clickers on students’ attitudes and performance on exams and quizzes. Overall, while students said that they liked using clickers and learned more when we used clickers in class, they performed no differently on quizzes and exams.<\/p>\n

Small Group Paper Presentations\/ Discussions<\/span><\/h1>\n

In Biochemistry II, it is important to have the students to start reading journal articles. When I first started teaching Biochemistry II, I had students individually present papers of their choosing, with my approval. While all the students were supposed to read each paper, they rarely did and seemed to gain little from the paper presentations. Because I wanted students to learn more from these papers, I began a different type of paper presentation. In this new style, I selected several papers that I thought fit well with the topics discussed in Biochemistry II. Four or five students would be responsible for each paper. The group would present the background and overview to the whole class. Then the presentation group would split up. Each member of the presentation group would lead a small group of their classmates in a discussion of the paper. At the end of the class students would take a quiz to see how much they had learned about the paper. The assignment and grading sheets as given to the students are linked below.<\/p>\n

Paper Discussion Assignment<\/a><\/span>
\n Paper Discussion Group Evaluation<\/a><\/span>
\n Paper Discussion Grade Sheet<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Additional Methods<\/h1>\n

While these were techniques used consistently in class, other new techniques were introduced in different assignments that might take part of the semester. These assignments can be found on the Assignment and Student Work page<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

1<\/sup> Novak, G.M. and J. Middendorf (2004). Just-in-Time Teaching. Volume IV: What works, what matters, what lasts [http:\/\/www.pkal.org\/template2.cfm?c_id=1316. Accessed June 2011.]
\n2<\/sup>Crouch, C.H. and E. Mazur (2001) Peer Instruction: Ten Years of Experience and Results. American Journal of Physics, 69, 970-977.
\n3<\/sup> Watkins, J. and E. Mazur, (2010) Just-in-Time Teaching and Peer Instruction. In Simkins, Scott and Maier, Mark (Eds.) Just in Time Teaching: Across the Disciplines, and Across the Academy, Stylus Publishing. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Previous Page<\/span><\/a>
\n Faith and Learning<\/span><\/a><\/td>\n		<\/td>\n\n

Next Page<\/span><\/a>
\n Student Evaluations<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I believe that in most classes lecture is a technique that actually works reasonably well for me. Although my students have generally succeeded when I have lectured, I felt that it was not always the most interesting way to teach. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3592,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-547","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/autumnsutherlin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/autumnsutherlin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/autumnsutherlin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/autumnsutherlin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3592"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/autumnsutherlin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":42,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/autumnsutherlin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":927,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/autumnsutherlin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/547\/revisions\/927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/autumnsutherlin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}