That 0ngoing Textbook Problem

A common complaint heard pretty much any time two faculty get together is, “My students won’t buy the textbook. What do I do?”

Might one possible solution, Professor Pettaway asked in a recent email, be to have all students purchase iPads with their textbooks already loaded?  “Since most faculty complain about students not purchasing text books,” he wrote, “I have long espoused the ideas of all freshmen being required to purchase I Pads for a fee (included in the tuition bill) that would include the text book materials for all first year courses. After the freshman year, this cohort  would pay a textbook fee only for textbooks.  In four years Lincoln’s entire student body would have all textbooks delivered electronically.”

With his permission, I am posting the issue here, along with a link he provided to an article in Inside Higher Ed  about how some other universities are using iPads.

What do you think?  Could something like this work at Lincoln?  Are there other ways (cheaper, lower tech?) to solve the “they won’t buy their textbooks” dilemma? Have you tried anything that works in your classes?

Online? Hybrid? Web-enhanced?

What, from your perspective, should Lincoln most productively be doing with respect to online teaching and learning?  

• Should we be developing more totally online courses?  (If so, should they be options for our current students or just for new, non-resident populations?) 
• Should we be developing totally online programs?  (If so, in what disciplines and why?)
• Should we be focusing mainly on hybrid courses [= classes still meet face to face but some of the normal seat time is replaced by online activities]?  (If so, how do you see them enhancing student learning?)
• Should we at least be encouraging web-enhanced learning in our classes [= regular seat time but more assignments using Internet-based resources] ? (If so, what training/resources do you need to do so more effectively?)

Please add your thoughts, whether by raising additional questions or by providing your answers for any of the questions posed above.

Socrates or Social Media: How Do Our Students Want to Learn?

Is higher education’s focus on learning technologies helping students to connect with each other and the subject area content so as to learn easier and better, or is it separating them from each other and from the higher order learning that occurs through interpersonal communication?  The picture below of a group of Dutch school children circa 1930, walled off from each other behind the “learning technology” of the day, made me stop and think. 

This picture, from a Nov 7, 2004 article in Vitae by Kirsten Wilcox, was used to underscore her argument that “the classroom as a space for human interaction has become a luxury in higher education,” and that it is precisely this human interaction that students today need, connected as they already are technologically by email, Facebook, Twitter, and all the others.

“Ten years ago,” Wilcox argues, “using course blogs, wikis, or online discussion forums to teach was an exciting innovation, which students embraced.” Today, she says, things are different: “Not only have these platforms lost the aura of immediacy and creativity that they once had, but students have little desire to add an intellectual online persona to the profiles that they cultivate across multiple media.”

As a long-time proponent of technology-enhanced teaching, my viewpoint has always been, “Students like technology, so they will learn more willingly and more deeply if the course offers them a chance to use those tools.” Clearly, it’s not that cut and dried.  What do you think?  Should we be trying to provide our students with the “luxury” of modern, technology-driven best practices in learning or the “luxury” of personal, face-to-face, in-class presence? And if the answer is “both,” (as it almost always is) how do you make that happen?

Taking Note of Note Taking

by Linda Stine

What role does note taking play in student learning and retention? This is an issue I keep changing my mind about. 

In my early days of teaching, at the beginning of each semester I would show my students the Cornell method of note taking: write the notes in the main part of the page, highlight main topics/key words in the left margin and save room at the bottom of the page for summary and application. I preached the SQ3R gospel (survey, question, recite, reflect, review). Then after  awhile I went with the “don’t divide your attention by listening and writing at the same time” approach, encouraging students to focus on hearing and understanding and  participating, just jotting down a few main points if they needed to and using available technology to record the rest for review if they felt that was necessary.  Then, with the growth of PowerPoint, I found myself printing out lecture slides for students or posting them online, again thinking that it made more sense for students to watch and listen and think and participate than to spend their time and energy scribbling down verbatim what I could provide them either in print or digitally. Then, with an increased focus on active learning and workshopping, note taking did not seem to be needed; retention came with the doing rather than the recording.

In an article in the Teaching Professor blog, however, Maryellen Weimer suggests that students learn two important skills from note taking: learning to listen effectively and being able to make the material their own by translating it into their own words.  She lists some small steps teachers can take to encourage good note taking:

• Identify key concepts in the day’s lesson specifically, telling students when you get to it that what follows is important and should be written down;
• Challenge students to retrieve things from their notes to add to the present class discussion;
• Pause after giving a definition and tell students to write it in their own words, not yours;
• Give students a few minutes in the beginning of class to review the last class’s notes and have a few summarize;
• At the end of class have students trade notes with somebody sitting near them discuss what was similar and what was different
• When a number of students miss an exam question, ask them to find what they have in their notes that relates to the question and compare their notes with those of a student who got the question right;
• Tell students they may use notes during the next quiz and talk with them about how that changes what they write down.

What are your thoughts about whether students should take notes in class, how they should do so, and what role, if any, you might play in helping them to learn this skill? Has technology changed the way you think about note taking?  Has the new world of active learning and “flipped classrooms” eliminated note taking, at least within the classroom setting itself?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue. 

Re-thinking My Teaching: A Midpoint Assessment

Guest Blogger:  David Royer

Last week, Dr. Kwame posed the question “Have you flipped your classroom?” which is a great lead-in to my blog because I am in the process of doing that for my General Biology II course, and while I have not completely flipped it, I have certainly rearranged it. It began when I attended a workshop last summer at NYU titled "Evidence-Based Teaching: Just the Facts or Thinking Like Scientists?"  Diane Ebert-May, the workshop leader, is from Michigan State where she uses active learning, inquiry-based instructional strategies to teach introductory biology to classes of 200 students. She does very little traditional lecture in her classes, instead relying on having the students work in groups to solve problems during class time after which the groups present their results, often using poster paper taped to the classroom walls, which is followed by whole class discussion. She describes what she does as teaching biology using the same methods that biologists use to conduct research so that students can develop higher-level cognitive skills and build conceptual connections within biology and across the curriculum. Another aspect of her work is to use a backward design to construct courses in which objectives, assessments and instruction are aligned. Diane conducted the workshop in the same way she does her classes – we worked in groups discussing educational issues followed by presentation of results and general discussion. 

I came away from the workshop enthused and ready to plunge into my sabbatical semester, the purpose of which was to redesign my General Biology II course in a way that promoted active learning on the part of the students and less lecture from me. My reason for applying for sabbatical was to explore alternative methods and design of instruction; over the past several years, I realized that, while I enjoyed delivering lectures, it was not producing enough positive results in student learning and problem-solving skills. From what I read during my sabbatical, it appears that many faculty are experiencing the same misgivings about the way that we teach. So I spent most of my sabbatical redesigning the way I would teach my course, and now that we are approaching the halfway point of the semester, I have some results to share: 

1. The students are more engaged working in groups. While I still need to occasionally remind a student to put the cell phone away, the students are working well in groups and staying on task. 
2. The students are helping each other. As I circulate through the classroom, I can hear students explaining concepts and methods to each other, and sometimes explaining it in better terms that I would use, a humbling but exciting realization. 
3. There have been positive results in student performance. Compared to last spring when I taught the course with traditional lecture methods, the average on the first quiz was nine points higher this semester as was the average on the first exam by six points. 
4. It is easy to fall back into old habits. One student group had a question recently that required more explanation than a short answer, and as I thought the entire class would benefit from the answer, I threw up a PowerPoint to illustrate the explanation – the result was that I lectured for 15 minutes and it felt completely comfortable like a pair of old slippers that fit perfectly after years of wear. 
5. Some material is challenging in terms of developing meaningful group assignments. The first part of the course covers genetics at the level of organisms, and it was easy to come up with genetics problems for the student groups. Now that we are moving into molecular genetics, the material is more challenging as is coming up with group assignments. I am beginning to feel the need to lecture, but resisting it so far. 
6. It is okay to occasionally throw in a mini-lecture (10-15 minutes) when needed. Sometimes there is a topic that requires explanation that is best delivered in lecture mode, but even then it can be interactive, forcing the students to be involved. 
7. It takes much preparation to design good group assignments and the overall flow of the class. My biggest error so far is planning too much for each class which then requires the redesign of subsequent classes. 
8. Most importantly, the students seem to enjoy the new design. I overheard one student say that she felt that she was learning more with this format, and the early assessment results support her statement. 
9. I am getting to know the students better. There is more interaction with the students using the new format, and I feel that I am more aware of each student’s strengths and weaknesses compared to when I taught this course with just lectures. 

I am excited about what I am doing as well as challenged by it. I now realize that the transition to newer methods is not a one-semester job; it is ongoing, and I will probably never be completely satisfied with the methods or results, but it does feel that I am headed in the right direction. I have not completely flipped (the classroom, of course) yet, but I am pleased with the experience so far.