Monday, November 26, 2012

Classroom Assessment Techniques


This week’s post is written by Claudia, a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies and Film Studies, and it’s about classroom assessment techniques.

Many of us have learned the hard way that it’s better to test students’ grasp of the material before it’s time to grade their assignments. One category for such tests are called “classroom assessment techniques.” This is the broad term for activities that teachers can do during class time to assess both the quality of the students’ retention and the effectiveness of the teacher’s strategies.

Three CATs to Try

1. Background Knowledge Probe
 Before teaching new material, ask students to make a list of what they already know about the subject area. Collect the lists, and report the results back to the students. At the end of the unit, you can repeat this activity, to show the students how much they’ve learned.

2. Misconception/Preconception Check.
This one is particularly useful if you’re teaching a subject to which students come with prior knowledge that may be incorrect. Consider what common misconceptions students bring to your subject area, and distribute a survey that asks students about these misconceptions. The teacher of a political science class on the Middle East may want to distribute a short survey that tests students’ basic assumptions on the region:

1. Arabic is the language most commonly spoken in the Middle East.

(Isn’t true)
(Might not be true)
 (Think is true)
(Certain is true)
2. Islam is the dominant religion in the Middle East.

(Isn’t true)

(Might not be true)
(Think is true)
(Certain is true)
3. Most of the oil consumed around the world comes from the Middle East.

(Isn’t true)

(Might not be true)
(Think is true)
(Certain is true)
4. List the countries generally considered part of the Middle East:


You can conclude this exercise by either correcting the students’ answers or having them research and correct their own answers as a homework assignment. It also may be useful to have a group discussion about where students’ preconceptions have come from.

3. Memory Matrix.
Have students fill in an empty chart, either individually or in groups, to assess their recall of recent material. This helps the instructor know whether students are making the right associations between people, terms and/or ideas. A teacher in a film class may want to give students the following matrix, to work on individually or in groups:
  

Country of Origin
Major Film(s)
Associated Style
Fritz Lang



John Ford



Vittorio De Sica



Satyajit Ray






The activities above are taken from  Thomas A. Angelo and K. Patricia Cross, Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993). More CATs and more detailed instructions can be found in this book.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Using Online Videos for Teaching In and Out of Class

I spent a very fun week this past summer at the American Association of Physics Teachers  meeting. As a 6th year graduate student in physics who is very interested in teaching, I found it invigorating to be surrounding by other physics-loving teachers. One of my favorite sessions from the meeting was a "YouTube Sharathon" where physics teachers would share their favorite YouTube videos for use in the class along with associated student activities. I came away with lots of exciting ideas for using videos in and out of class that I thought I would share with you here.

I mostly have physics and math examples, but videos are useful for ALL disciplines so I would love to hear your own thoughts on the use of online videos in your discipline and/or your own favorite educational online videos in the comments below!

(1) Connecting concepts to the real world in class
Teachers often say they want to connect course content to the 'real world' to (a) help with students' understanding or (b) make the content more interesting for their students. Using short online videos in the classroom can certainly help with these goals. The entertainment factor is a given (who wouldn't love spending class time watching something!), but making sure the video is effective in engaging students with the content and/or concepts you want them to learn is more tricky.

Teachers should have clear goals and objectives in mind for what they want students to take away from the video and clearly convey these objectives to their students. To help students achieve these objectives, the teacher should plan an activity around the video. These activities can vary greatly, from having students analyze the James Bond airplane stunt in Goldeneye to determine its scientific plausibility, to leading a discussion on the broader relevance of information transfer after watching the 'levitating slinky' video (see below). This experience will certainly be fun for the students, and also provide a great opportunity to connect abstract or difficult concepts to the real (or virtual) world around them.




(2) Learning content outside of class
A popular new style of teaching found to significantly enhance student learning is the flipped classroom - essentially where content coverage is moved outside of class and class time is spent addressing misconceptions and engaging with the material in more depth. Assigned reading is of course one way of pushing content coverage outside the classroom, but students rarely do this reading without extra incentives. Online videos can be a great way to cover out-of-class content, with the incentive that it will actually be entertaining and educational. And, don't worry, there are a lot of online videos that cover content in a more vibrant manner than traditional lecture.

Here are some of my favorite sites to find videos for learning content, and feel free to share your own!

(a) Vi Hart's YouTube channel for math concepts, but to get you started, here's a video exploring binary trees through doodles:


(b) Minute Physics YouTube channel, which addresses a lot of interesting physics questions.

(c) Check out Ted Ed for great educational videos on a wide variety of topics.

Those are my thoughts on online videos in and out of the classroom, but feel free to share your own in the comments section below!



Monday, November 5, 2012

The Teaching Statement out and about on the Job Market

This is Miti – one of the GTC fellows this semester. I am a 7th year in the History Department. As the year of my studies at Yale may indicate to you, I am on the job market. This is my second time around on that particular carousel. Teaching figures heavily in my applications this year, as well as last year. All the positions on my color-coded job-spreadsheet involve teaching. As last year, the vast majority ask for a teaching statement. It seems like more applications call for a teaching statement than a sample of my research.
What, then, is a teaching statement, this vital document? Let us do what most students do: turn to the Web! 

Princeton’s Center for Teaching & Learning explains: A teaching statement is a 1-2 page single-spaced essay that explains your teaching strategies and goals and in the terms of your discipline and in the context of the teaching positions you have held and seek to hold

Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching makes is a bit more personal: is a purposeful and reflective essay about the author’s teaching beliefs and practices. It is an individual narrative that includes not only one’s beliefs about the teaching and learning process, but also concrete examples of the ways in which he or she enacts these beliefs in the classroom. At its best, a Teaching Statement gives a clear and unique portrait of the author as a teacher, avoiding generic or empty philosophical statements about teaching.

Great! However, what is it in practice for me, as I prepare for the job market – or the Certificate in College Teaching Preparation here at Yale? Looking back over my double-digit number of drafts (counting only the ones that I thought were final at some point), the one hard and fast thing I can say is, that the teaching statement is the single most difficult text I have ever written. After all, this is the document that will give a hiring committee an idea of me as a teacher – something the positions I have applied for, am applying for, and will apply for put a lot of emphasis on. That is a lot to put into two legible pages: explain my teaching strategies and goals, an individual narrative that avoids generic and empty platitudes, how I am in the classroom.

Yet, the teaching statement is exactly the document that gives the hiring committee the best glimpse of me as a person – as a potential colleague. It is two pages of me in a pile of hundreds of pages of hopeful and competitive applications.


Imagine it, December 2012… 

A professor is sitting in a lit office – it is dark outside. Maybe it is snowing. Final papers will be due and students are e-mailing panic-struck messages and contesting midterm grades. The editors for the professor’s newest book are asking for changes (about image reproductions rights no less!) and a committee the professor is on had a meeting that ran late. Again. The coffee ran out. Again. In addition, she or he has a pile as high as the Eiffel Tower is tall of job applications. The massive pile has been culled once based on completeness of application (not all three letters of application have come in? Discarded.); formal requirements (only one chapter of the dissertation is completed? Discarded.); cover letter (applicant’s research and teaching interests do not jive with the department’s needs? Discarded.) 

The professor reaches for the application on top, and flips to the teaching statement. She or he begins to read.


Is that my teaching statement the poor coffee-deprived faculty member is reading? Is my first sentence captivating enough to keep the professor reading to the end? Will he or she be able to imagine me in a classroom? Will I be likeable in those two pages? In addition, above all, will my teaching statement help me get the job? That is how important this document can be. It may not be, but that is how I have written mine, and considering the emphasis on teaching in so many of the History jobs announced I do not think it is unfounded. In addition, in my one, single job interview last cycle, this was the focal point of the interview. 

We are trained in academic writing. For the last six years, I have worked hard to eliminate my personality, my voice, from my writing. Yet now I am asked to expose my teaching personality, me in the classroom, to a random stranger who really just wants the Eiffel Tower pile of applications to magically disappear. 

How do I write that statement, being read in a far-away office? This is an essay: introduction, body, and conclusion. This is thesis-driven paper: the thesis is that I am a great, dedicated teacher. The teaching statement is there to provide evidence. The best way to expose Miti the teacher (I distill from workshops, reading obsessively online, and from feedback from colleagues and GTC staff) is to use concrete examples: Teaching goal – challenge in the classroom – action teacher/you took – student response. The statement is more than an expose of a teacher; it is also a writing sample. Clarity, structure, and style are important to the document. 

There is no one, tested and true, way to write a teaching statement. However, there are many great resources out there. The Internet is filled with useful resources – you can easily waste a week surfing around looking at different universities’ tips and sample collections

 Apart from the links above, I have found The Professor Is In an invaluable resource, especially her acidic post on the eightpitfalls of the teaching statement.
  
Chronicle of Higher Education of course has articles on the Teaching Statement:
Writing a teaching statement is very difficult. Do not expect it to be easy. But there is help out there! Do not hesitate to ask professors, friends, colleagues, and random strangers to read your Statement. The GTC is an excellent resource. My statement has seen three dramatically different “master versions”, two of which were made infinitely stronger than the previous ones, thanks to conversations with GTC staff. Am I tooting our own horn, why yes I am! Thank you for noticing.

For all of us writing our teaching statements – keep your eye on the prize: the job that will let you continue to develop as an academic researcher and teacher.

Here’s to hoping that when the caffeine deprived, tired, and over-worked search committee comes to your teaching statement, he will look up, stare off into the distance, and think “Wow! I could learn so much from this applicant as a colleague and a teacher…” and then he or she moves your application into the “Interview” pile.