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Teaching Strategies for Promoting Greater Student Engagement
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PREVIEW: Students of the 21st century spend much of their our-of-school time interacting with computers, electronic games, and "reality TV", etc. Students who spend so much time in such an engaging environment may not respond to traditional teaching approaches. Research has proven also, that learners acquire more authentic knowledge and deeper understanding as they become active, rather than passive in their learning. One colleague summed up the "opportunity" when stating, "I'm still preparing courses for Wally and the Beaver but the students in my classes are Beavis and Butthead." Although the strategies presented in this workshop probably will NOT reach Beavis, college instructors will be ENCOURAGED to expand their instructional repertoire and EQUIPPED with the ability to effectively deliver instruction utilizing "engagement strategies." Participants were taught through demonstrations and actual engagement in the instructional strategies that promote higher levels of student participation and professor enjoyment! |
54 registered for this event; 51 signed in, representing 4 colleges in the Midcentral RCTE. Of these, 24 completed evaluations at the end of the 6-hour session, a 47% return rate.
| Many respondents praised the workshop for its practicality and immediately useful strategies. Some mentioned that they already use some of the 10 strategies Dr. Mackey demonstrated, but a number of faculty must already be using some group activities, given the popularity of the method demonstrated for getting students to pause from discussion. | "I appreciate his concern for real learning, but most of all his concern for students as real people."--evaluation respondent |
The highlights below are arranged in order of popularity, according to the number of respondents who stated they would use that method this semester. Where possible, links to Web pages that explain the method are included.
Jigsaw(Aaronson, Elliot, The Jigsaw Classroom [Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1978])
I believe this was the most popular method (23% of respondents planned to use it this semester) because it has proven to be a very efficient method for getting 100% of the students in a classroom to understand 100% of the day's content. Click the puzzle pieces, above, for Aaronson's explanation in 10 easy steps. Basically, the method involves students' moving from a study group to an expert group who all discuss the same topic, perhaps with extra information beyond the first, brief reading. Once the experts in each expert group have become proficient with the information, agreeing on which is important or most testable and have an idea of how to teach the information, they return to their study groups and take turns in those groups teaching what they know. Since their study group peers have just come from other expert groups on related subtopics, by the end of the session each group has a complete overview of all pieces of the day's content. They should be ready for the day's quiz, which would have been prepared by the instructor.
| "Students are messages that we send
into a time we cannot see." --Dr. Roger Mackey |
There's an affective dimension to all of the methods that Dr. Mackey demonstrated or described in the day's handout. Here I am linking two that related to classroom management, as well as content learning. |
? of the Day: Dr. Mackey suggested
opening or closing class with a "Joke of the Day," "Word of the
Day," or "Story of the Day" to at least settle the class into a
lesson. Ideally, the content of this daily bit would also highlight the
main idea or an important idea from the day's content. Obviously, this
takes some planning ahead, but it can also involve submissions by students for
upcoming days.
The 5-Minute Pause: Basically, after a brief lecture of 15 - 30 minutes, depending on the stamina of your students, you stop and give the students a task that will cause them to review quickly, thereby reinforcing the lecture content. (This method is described by Dr. R. L. Canady of UVA and Dr. Michael Rettig of JMU in their 1995 book, Block Scheduling, published by Eye on Education press of Princeton, NJ, in its 6th printing as of 2001. Dr. Mackey earned his doctorate at UVA in the late '90s, studying under Dr. Canady.) Pauses, repeated in each class so that students get more efficient at the method and more proficient at note-taking, since they know they'll be using their notes immediately, might include activities like these:
 | Students simply review notes independently. |
| Students review in groups of 4-5, perhaps marking critical points made so
far in the lecture, or perhaps discuss anything that one or more has misunderstood. |
| Student teams complete a PMI chart (see below), or note one point that
they agree with, disagree with or find interesting; list comments or data to refute, support, amplify, or question something in the lecture; or perhaps form a couple of quiz/test questions on the content of the previous few minutes. |
Signaling for Quiet: When students are
working in pairs or groups, there needs to be some visual signal that is mutually
agreed upon by students and instructor to bring that phase to an
end. It may be as simple as the instructor raising a hand and perhaps
counting down from five to zero with the digits on one or both hands.
In their volume pictured at right, UVA professors Robert L. McNergney and Joanne M. Herbert address The Challenge of Professional Practice, as both volumes 1 and 2 are subtitled. In the 1995 volume, they offer "Professional Practice Questions" for studying a case. Dr. Mackey showed us a brief portion of the movie Teachers and asked us to respond to those questions, basically--what's the problem, who values what, what knowledge about teaching can be applied to this problem, who does what, and what are the consequences.
Dr. Mackey had participants complete a page titled "Sharing Our Hearts About Teaching" that contained 11 prompts, such as "the funniest thing that ever happened during my schooling/teaching was . . . " and two most important qualities of a teacher. That is, we thought about responses and wrote brief notes that we could use to prompt our fuller comments when we paired with a partner and shared our comments for about 30 seconds at a time. We were already standing in our inner and outer circles when we started sharing (see below).
A
couple of the methods Dr. Mackey demonstrated had to do with getting up and
pairing for conversations either by lining up or by forming an inner and an
outer circle that could face each other and rotate one person in order to move
to a new partner for another variation on the conversation.
Lineup works well when students arrange themselves in a continuum to demonstrate the intensity of their beliefs from strongest advocate to less strong advocate and less strong opponent to strongest opponent of a given proposition. Although students could espouse their own opinions, this method works best for CONTENT when students line up to address positions customarily taken, e.g. causes for the Civil War or American Revolution, reasons to stockpile antidotes for known diseases, etc. Since the common (testable?) reasons for a practice or procedure might be known in any field, this method could be used in any course.
How do you get the students talking to each other? FOLD THE LINE by having the either the strongest or the weakest advocate lead the line of advocates to walk single file over to face the opponents.
The wrap-up activity would ordinarily be to assemble a chart of the reasons with the class, perhaps polling the class to list them from most compelling to least compelling.
Inside and Outside Circles can be used as a test review method. The preparation phase requires students to write a review question down, e.g. on an index card with answers on the back. Students check their questions and answers with their team or study group; then the teacher has students count off 1,2,1,2. Ones form an inner circle facing outward, 2s an outer circle facing the 1s. Each 1 quietly reads his or her question to the 2 facing without revealing the answer on the back of the card; the partnered 2 tries to answer and then the partners discuss the answer. Then each 2 quietly reads his or her question to the partnered 1, awaits an answer, and then discusses the answer with that 1. Rotate one of the circles (e.g. all 2's go to their right one or two people) and repeat the process.
This strategy works best for rehearsing a procedure as part of developing a skill. Two students pair up; one works a problem or does a procedure while the other observes, praising correct work and prodding gently to alert the partner to an error. Partners exchange roles for the next problem or the next rehearsal of the procedure. If necessary, partners can get with the instructor to verify any part of the process. Allow students to use notes at first but eventually to rehearse the application of a formula for problem-solving or a set of steps in a procedure on their own.
Rationale and Planning: In addition to
these demonstrations, Dr. Mackey quickly glossed handout pages that
summarized relevant research on "retention of learning" and students'
limited
stamina during lectures, as well as other rationales for using engaging or
active learning strategies. He gave us pages listing the 10 engagement
strategies described in his handout with room to comment and asked us after each
demonstration to jot down exactly how we would use the strategy just
demonstrated, but he also stressed the value of practice in perfecting
the use of these methods. He quickly noted "Ten Sure-Fire Ways
to Get Greater Participation at Any Time (even when you 'gotta lecture')"
adapted from Mel Silberman's 101 Ways to Teach Any Subject (Boston: Allyn
& Bacon, 1996).
We didn't get to SOCRATIC SEMINARS, but
you might Google for the topic or search an educational
database
in our VCCS library's website. Look for distinctions between dialog vs.
debate.
The John Dewey Problem, which we only touched on, is a scenario for getting "subcommittees" of students to prepare 3 parts of an entire presentation rapidly. This method seems most appropriate for an intense review of one major topic in a course; in Mackey's course it was John Dewey. He provided a basic plan for students to fill in as they determined information, placing data on butcher block paper or an overhead transparency, drafting a rap song or a making a bulletin board plan.
The Plus-Minus Issue Organizer calls for students to state a problem based on data from a course, to summarize the pros and the cons, and to reach a conclusion or make a summary statement. One of the handout pages is a grid for these steps. This method seems best for issues--advantages & disadvantages, pros and cons, or other topics seen with "sides."
Start SLOW, start SMALL, start SMART (e.g. using checkpoints during jigsaw to make sure students really are experts before they return to their study groups), start SKILLED (pair with a colleague to check you on the process before you put your plan into effect), start SECURE and start with SUCCESS (by hanging around other faculty who are using the method you want to start with), but START.
Reminder for folks new to the Web: UNDERLINED WORDS (and some graphics images) ARE HOT LINKS. To preview them, hold your mouse on the hotlink (the arrow becomes a hand as you "mouseover" a link) and read the "URL" (Web address) in the "status line" (bottom) of your maximized Web browser. To visit, just click. |
1999