Enhancing students’ sense of responsibility in learning by a weekly reflection activity.
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Transcript of Enhancing students’ sense of responsibility in learning by a weekly reflection activity.
Enhancing students’ sense of responsibility in learning by a
weekly reflection activity
Problem
• Many Furman students believe that a meaningful and successful learning experience depends solely on the instructor.
• Why shouldn’t they think this way?– End of the course evaluation form
• Therefore, they don’t always realize that they are responsible for the success of their learning experience.– They think studying and memorizing course
content is being responsible.
Problem (on the side)
• Some faculty members use these evaluation forms as their guides for course design and to allocate their teaching efforts, for lack of a better course evaluation form.
Goals
• An activity to enhance students’ sense of responsibility in learning
• An evaluation form that is useful for course design
Hypothesis
• Students who are engaged in the “sense of responsibility in learning” enhancing activity will master each lecture topic with greater confidence.
Method• Two sections: one experimental group and one
control group• Activity: Students are asked to reflect, not to study,
what they have learned on a weekly basis, then answer these two questions:
(1) I wish my teacher had spent _______ more minutes on _______ (topic/concept).
(2) I think I can be responsible for learning ________ (topic/concept), which is _____ minutes (ideally the same # as Q1) worth of materials, on my own.
• They e-mail the answers to their instructor before Monday lecture.
Method
• We all know that any task with no points attached or no response provided, students won’t do it. Therefore…
• On Monday, or the first lecture of the week, the instructor will give a practice question on the topic/concept students identified as “needing help”.
• Also give this question to the students in the control group.
• Difference between these groups: one asks for help and one is given help.
Method
• Assessment
– Identify 10-15 key concepts I want my students to take away with.
– “How confident am I if I were to explain this concept to a high school senior/a first year college student/a biology major?”
– And other questions
Expected outcomes
• Students who reflect more frequently will be more confident in the subject matter.
• Instructors can use the results of the assessment for future course design.