Engaging More of the Brain in More of the Students

Late last February, we held a major bash at the Red Lion as an all-day workshop, "Teaching with Awareness About How the Brain Learns" by Bob Leamnson, sponsored by ISU's Academic Affairs through the Center for Teaching and Learning. This year we are pleased to offer a repeat event that extends last year's theme. Because the brain learns through building and stabilizing synaptic connections, acquiring tools and methods to engage students' brains in building and stabilizing is a terrific follow-up. A rich variety of approaches for so doing rests in the structures of cooperative learning.

The benefits of cooperative learning are known from over 600 research articles. We probably know more about cooperative learning than we do even about conventional lectures. Results from a meta-analysis of nearly two-hundred of these is available at http://www.co-operation.org/pages/cl-methods.html . Teachers who intersperse cooperative exercises in their lectures produce about 0.5 standard deviations increased learning over those who simply use conventional lectures only. The reason cooperative learning works is firmly grounded in last year's workshop themecooperative learning uses more of the brain to engage material than does listening and note-taking. Further, class exercises engage all of the students' brains in the classnot simply the brains of the few who actually answer a question. Some methods are so simple that you can use them in your next class. Try these.

Turn to Your Neighbor The next time you ask a question in class, don't wait for the single student to answer it. Instead, direct the class to "turn to your neighbor and explain your answer to your partner." Give them about a minute, then call on pairs to explain their reasoning and conclusion. You are going to experience an amazing difference in how the class engages material. Instead of the wall of silence that usually confronts a question, you are going to see an entire class engagedsometimes so intensely that you'll need to almost beat pairs apart. When you finally call on a pair of students for an answer, you'll find that student pairs are less embarrassed about giving a wrong conclusion than may be true for an individual. Further, they will have already engaged in a discourse about the reasoning that led to a chosen conclusion, and hus will furnish you something substantial to work with to advance the learning of the entire class.

Think-Pair-Share is a simple step beyond "Turn to Your Neighbor." Think-Pair-Share may involve a simple or open-ended problem. After ten to twenty minutes of instruction, place a problem or query on an overhead that could test the understanding of what you have just covered. Give individuals a minute to write an answer or solution to the query, then turn to their neighbor to share results and to compare answers and reasoning. You might add a challenge: "Convince your neighbor that your solution is the better one!" Another minute or two allows the class to grapple with the material and test their comprehension. When you bring the class back to order, you can discover the dominant level of reasoning, and you'll find that their questions now have a higher concern with process.

Visible Quiz is a superb tool that I learned from University of Nevada at Reno's Barbara Millis, author of Cooperative Learning for Higher Education Faculty. Visible Quiz is not in her book, Barbara credits its origins to University of Colorado at Colorado Spring's Constance Staley. This is my (Ed Nuhfer) color rendition of Visible Quiz. I find it one of the best ways to make PowerPoint® interactive.It takes only minutes to prepare materials for a class of 50 students. I like to use 300-point font to create four letters in four colors on single sheets (Figure 1).

I pass the sheets out to students, have them fold and tear part the sheet to produce four separate letters. I have the students keep these letters with them in their textbook for the entire semester.

To enact the visible quiz, place a multiple choice question or problem on the screen as a color overhead or a PowerPoint® slide. and ask students to respond by holding up the card with the color that corresponds to the best answer.

 

 

If the correct choice is "C," a sea of mostly green letters should appear as you look across the class. If you see a few blue ones, ask: "Someone with the blue 'A,' please tell us the reasoning behind your choice." They'll learn reasoning, you'll learn their reasoning, and you'll learn a lot about how others can interpret your questions! Although electronic “clickers” with software that quickly tabulate and save students’ responses to projected survey items and questions are gaining popularity, I rate visible quiz, as an instructional tool, as superior to clickers. With visible quiz, one gives up conveniently saving tabulated data, but in return receives feedback that permits instantly responding to and treating students as individuals. If three yellow letters appear as answers in a sea of correct green-letter responses, a teacher can focus instantly on those three students, even in a large class, and use the teachable moment.

There are dozens of such exercises to engage students. To learn lots of them, see the great opportunity to learn from one of the best in the business, described below.

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Friday, February 27 Workshop:

Cooperative Learning for Higher Education Faculty

presented by Dr. Barbara Millis,

United States Air Force Academy

Sponsored by Office of Academic Affairs and Center for Teaching and Learning

Place and Time: Red Lion Hotel 1555 Pocatello Creek Road 8:30 a.m.-3:00 p.m. with Workshop starting 9:00 a.m. Continental Breakfast & lunch provided.

BARBARA MILLIS is Director of Faculty Development at the United States Air Force Academy. She received her Ph.D. in English literature from Florida State University and served as Assistant Dean of Faculty Development at the University of Maryland University College. Barbara is a prolific writer received the US Air Force Academy's prestigious McDermott Award for Research Excellence in the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Outstanding Educator Award. Barbara's interests include cooperative learning, peer classroom observations, the teaching portfolio, microteaching, syllabus construction, classroom assessment/research, and defining teaching excellence. When she is not "spreading the gospel" of teaching enhancement, she lives with her husband, Ralph, and daughter, Jeanne, in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Registered attendants will receive, in advance of the workshop, Cooperative Learning for Higher Education Faculty (1998, 282 p., Oryx Press) by Barbara Millis and Philip G. Cottell, Jr. This is a highly rated and extremely useful compilation.

To register, simply use email: nuhfed@isu.edu. Include your campus mailbox to receive your book in advance.

Reminder!!
Don’t forget to complete the faculty survey sent to you via campus mail. It’s needed for ISU’s upcoming accreditation review. Completing one also enters you in the drawing for a $500 development prize—odds of a win are better than in any lottery!