Those Important First Five Minutes

If you missed “Small Changes in Teaching: The First 5 Minutes of Class” in last week’s Chronicle of Higher Education, it’s worth checking out.  In the article, James Lang argues that rather than using up the first part of class with logistics (taking attendance, getting technology up and running, etc.) we should use that time to focus students’ attention and get them ready for learning.  He offers four suggestions:

1. Open with a question or two that today’s class will answer (and perhaps return to that question at the end so that students can see how their understanding has changed);
2. Have students talk about what went on in your last class (asking them to retrieve information places it more firmly in long-term memory);
3. Reactivate what students learned in previous courses by asking them what they already know, or think they know, about the day’s topic (so that what you add can be fitted into their existing knowledge structure more easily);
4. Have students write for 3 – 5 minutes on a question of your choosing (such as any recommended in items 1 - 3).

Lang claims that these kinds of short activities have major payoffs for students in terms of increased motivation, memory, and engagement.  Furthermore, they help teachers understand where students are at any given point, so that class instruction can be appropriately challenging, filling in foundational knowledge as needed and correcting any misconceptions that may be present.

I typically start by posting a list of the class objectives on the smartboard and asking if anyone has questions or additions, but my new year’s resolution, since reading this article, is to add at least one general discussion question to that list so that students know right from the start that they’ll be doing more than just listening passively to what I decided they should learn.

How about you?  I’d be interested in hearing what techniques you use to start your classes.  Any suggestions to share?

Dragged Kicking and Screaming into Social Media

Full disclaimer:   I do have a FaceBook page (that I check a couple times a year…) but beyond that I admit that I pretty much limit my web-based communication to email. I’ve never felt compelled to “tweet” anything (which for all I know is now so yesterday, anyway) or use whatever else may be the flavor of the day in the apps world.

This semester, though, one of my students on the first day of class asked if he could collect everyone’s cell phone number to set up a “Group Me” class chat.  A bit reluctantly, I gave my cell phone number and waited to see what would happen.

Not surprisingly, I got a lot of “how u doin” and “boy Im tired” types of messages, ones that I just glanced at and hit Delete.  But gradually I began to see a real purpose.  One obvious use is as a place where a student can ask a general class-related question and I can answer right away, so that others don’t have to ask the same question.  (While I was typing this, a student texted to ask if Moodle was down and I let her and others know that it was fine at Lincoln’s end, while another student suggested a workaround.)   

Perhaps even more importantly, though, I think it’s a motivational tool.  Early this morning I was getting ready to head to campus when one student texted, “Good morning, wonderful people.”  A few class members chimed in with similar greetings.  While I was too busy getting things together so I could get on the road to write anything, I drove to school musing about how nice it was to have students thinking positively about class and classmates first thing in the morning and thinking that it would be an interesting research project to see if class satisfaction and course completion/persistence correlate at all with that sort of casual media use.

Do any of you have examples of constructive use of social media, whether formally for instruction or informally?   While I may be too old to use them, I’m still young enough to be curious!