Max Prin - SMX West 2017 - What to do when Google can't understand your JavaScript
Why Students Can't Tell if the Do Not Understand
-
Upload
rizvi-ahmadi -
Category
Documents
-
view
229 -
download
0
Transcript of Why Students Can't Tell if the Do Not Understand
-
8/22/2019 Why Students Can't Tell if the Do Not Understand
1/12
Paper to be presented in Asian Conference on Education 2009October 24-25 2009, at the Ramada Hotel, Osaka Japan
1
Getting Feedback from the
Unresponsives:
When Students Cant Tell If They Do(Not) Understand
Florita Diana Sari1, Danang Mursita2 and Jondri3
1,2,3Faculty of Science, Telkom Institute of Technology (ITTelkom), Indonesia
Abstract
Feedback is key factor in learning without which learning will be meaningless. Instead of
asking students feedback conventionally like Do you understand?, one best practice offers
three sub-methods to maximize feedback communication in large classes, i.e. seating
adjustment, tardiness management, and traffic-light cards. This paper reports that students
and lecturers responded positively toward F2M; students achieving A and B grades increased
from 45% to 58%, while those achieving D and E decreased from 35% to 21%.
Keywords: feedback communication, material comprehension, studentsachievement
A. Introduction
Do you understand? and Any questions? are possibly two of mostly asked questions that
mostly remained unanswered when university teachers try to communicate with students in
classroom. It seems that many of university teachers do not really realize that the two
expressions may not quite the successful ways of obtaining proper feedback on material
comprehension. If lecturers are lucky enough to teach high-achievers or highly curious
students, they may respond well to Any questions?. However, in all levels of education, theDo you understand? seems to be must-be-avoided type of question due to its potential
failure to engage students in responding to materials comprehension. Especially in large
classes, students may have various responses in mind, none of which is likely to be
communicated to the lecturer. Such responses may be well represented in the following
excerpt, showing what comes to students mind when lecturers ask whether students
understand.
-
8/22/2019 Why Students Can't Tell if the Do Not Understand
2/12
Paper to be presented in Asian Conference on Education 2009October 24-25 2009, at the Ramada Hotel, Osaka Japan
2
.
Burning issues thus arise as how to help classroom communication successful and mutually
useful? What is to be communicated, instead of asking Do you understand, when university
teachers want to know if their students really understand? What are possible ways of knowing
students comprehension without test, and even without asking?
To begin with all this issue, among matters and manners of communication that may take
place in class, communicating feedback can be the most useful for learning. Feedback is said
to be the most influential factor in learning (Black and William in Harmer 2007), without
which teaching/learning process will be meaningless (Taylor 2006, Mink et al 1993). Such
important is constructive feedback that William and Black (1998) believe it as at the heart of
teaching (Harmer 2007 p. 137).
Therefore, in attempts to respond the above three issues, we focus to design one method of
obtaining student feedback and manage it to be used right away as feedforward for lecturers.
Do You Understand?
Do you understand? lecturer asks student.
Understand what? thinks student.What am I supposed to understand?
What will my lecturer think of me if I say no?
If I say yes will my lecturer ask me a difficult question to catch
me out?
Why am I being asked this anyway?
Is it going to be important for me to understand this?.
How will I know when I understand it?.
What will I be able to do when I understand it?.
How will I be able to demonstrate my understanding of it?.
Do I actually have to understand it, or will it be enough simply to
demonstrate my understanding of it, by doing something I can do,
even when I dont understand it?.
Does my lecturer understand it, anyway?.
Mmmm replies student (as soon as possible after all that thinking).
So you dont understand it then? alleges lecturer.
Well, replies student.
So you understand it well? smiles lecturer.
Just about replies student.
Ah, good says lecturer. I made myself clear then?
Of course replies student.
[Because of things like this, the word is best avoided in intended learning
outcomes and in life in general, except to get people thinking]
(from Race, 2000; with minor editing )
-
8/22/2019 Why Students Can't Tell if the Do Not Understand
3/12
Paper to be presented in Asian Conference on Education 2009October 24-25 2009, at the Ramada Hotel, Osaka Japan
3
We call the method Feedback-Feedforward Mechanism (F2M). This way, after learning or
doing some materials, students will give feedback on their material comprehension and
lecturers will immediately use the information to adjust the teaching techniques for the same
session. The expected outcome of this method is that not only communication will take place
successfully but also it will be used to increase the quality and achievement of learning
process.
Although F2M can potentially be applied in large classes in general, but as initial
implementation we select two Calculus-I classes in one engineering institute in Indonesia.
There are at least three reasons for the selection. First is that Calculus-I is one of the four
compulsory subjects in the Preparatory Year that usually has low level of achievement. Data
from three previous years shows that 51% Calculus-I students in average got C or lower. The
three others subjects are Calculus-II, Physics-I, and Physics-II, with achievement of C are
58%, 69%, and 79% respectively (www.itttelkom.ac.id/intranet). These students whose
grade C or less will very likely repeat the subjects in the following semesters, including in
the 6-week Short Semester inserted between academic years as remedial semester for
repeaters. Some of them even take it for the third or fourth time in order to escape the Drop-Out at the end of the 4th semester for those with GPA less than 2.0 (at the scale of 4).
The second is that Calculus-I, to be taken in first semester, trains mathematic-analytical skills
that is crucial for most engineering and science subjects in the following semesters. Its load
of 4 credit hours per week also adds importance to this Calculus subject, compared with
Physics I and II which only worth 3 credit hours. Increasing students achievement in
Claculus will more significantly improve students Grade Point Average (GPA).
The last reason is obtained from preliminary questionnaire about learning math. Students
response to the questionnaire shows that 32% students have anxiety when learning math.
Some 28% students think that learning math is dull and boring. These findings help lecturers
to introspectively examine the existing practices in math classes, motivating the lecturers to
think of ways in improving achievement and learning satisfaction. Added with the perceived
needs to obtain information on students level of understanding before tests, a mechanism on
how to get students feedback is needed. This mechanism is expected to get feedback from all
students rather than just from the active ones, so that even the most unresponsive in class will
participate and benefit from it.
B. The Existing Condition
Observation in three different Calculus-I classes provides information on the existing
condition of typical Calculus class. Such information is necessary prior to any design of
mechanism. Three main characteristics on classroom, leacturer, and students are observed
and examined as follows.
The typical classroom in the campus site of study is 9m x 18m room equipped with
white&blackboard at the center of the front walls, LCD-projector, OverHead Projector, and
100 seats. It usually provides room for 70-85 students. The seatings are 7-aisle-7, with all
seats facing the front wall. This setting does not quite help students nor lecturers. Students
sitting next to side walls will have less clear and comfortable views toward the whiteboard.
-
8/22/2019 Why Students Can't Tell if the Do Not Understand
4/12
Paper to be presented in Asian Conference on Education 2009October 24-25 2009, at the Ramada Hotel, Osaka Japan
4
Lecturers will also not be able to reach students sitting next to side walls, areas where
students will easily find a refuge to escape lecturers attention. At the same time, the rear of
the classroom is usually left empty.
Fig 1. Floor of typical class (7-A-7)
Lecturers mostly use conventional teaching method, resulting in board-to-projector oriented
lecturing. The flow of teaching is generally in one-size-fits-all approach, thus lecturer will
very likely aim to teach the middle students, i.e. those who are not very strong nor very
weak in learning. This approach is taken since these lecturers think that normally middle
students will constitute the greater number of students in the class. This way will very likelybore the stronger students while at the same time is less helpful for weaker ones. Combined
with the seating explained above, this approach will increase the possibility of undetected
failure of learning during the process.
Students are less responsive in terms of voluntarily doing problems on board, asking
questions, and responding to lecturers prompts. The seating may also influence this
condition since not only the lecturer find it difficult to reach all students, but also it is difficult
for students to get themselves out of their seats to go to the board. Further, students rarely
communicate their difficulty in understanding the material. As mentioned at the beginning of
this report, students will unlikely respond well to questions like do you understand? or any
question. Lecturers may then come up with tests and quizzes to measure studentscomprehension, ways which may adversely increase students anxiety in learning math. Such
anxiety may even be greater in classes with very discipline lecturers, resulting in lower
attendance or even complete withdraw of weaker students.
Having observed the existing condition, four problems are identified and thus formulated as
follow:
1. seating in the class is not optimal for mutual engangement and feedback
communication.
2. conventional lecturing leads to monotonous and repetitive learning process, mostly
without sufficient feedback.
-
8/22/2019 Why Students Can't Tell if the Do Not Understand
5/12
Paper to be presented in Asian Conference on Education 2009October 24-25 2009, at the Ramada Hotel, Osaka Japan
5
3. ratio on lecturer-students does not help lecturer to respond to heterogenous level of
understanding, particularly in the absence of students feedback
4. anxieties hinders students from communicating difficulties or feedback to lecturers,
decreases class attendance, and may lead to complete withdraw from class activities.
In attempts to solve these problems, F2M is designed and implemented on two classes ofCalculus-I during one semester. Thus the F2M aims at general improvement of feedback
communication take place in class, with particular goals to cope with classroom problems
mentioned earlier. Thus, more specifically the aims of designing F2M are:
1. to condition classroom physical environment as to help students-lecturer to
communicate better,
2. to offer inexpensive, quick-and-easy method to encourage feedback communication
in classroom,
3. to respond to students with greater difficulty in understanding material without
reducing the size of class,
4. to deal with students anxiety in attending learning and in communicating difficulties.
The ultimate goal of this method is thus increasing students achievement as a result of better
feedback communication happening in class.
C. The F2M
We design an alternative method to promote feedback communication which in turn is
intended to increase overall studentss achievement. This method, called Feedback-
Feedforward Mechanism (F2M) consists of three sub-methods, i.e. seating adjustment,
tardiness management, and traffic-light cards.
1. Seating adjustment (3-6-3 setting)Seating adjustment is perhaps one of fundamental modifications in daily classroom practices
in the site institution. For about seventeen years, the 7-aisle-7 (7A7) seat arrangement (see
Fig. 1) has been used with no complains nor retrospective examination. One among reasons
why seating arrangement deserves better attention is that the current arrangement does not
provide equally clear views to whiteboard nor give sufficient room for lining up and exiting
the room as two of main criterias of good classroom arrangement (Pitner, 2009). The 7-aisle-
7 seat arrangement practically has given up the center space of classroom, that with best
views, to the aisle. With only one aisle, lecturer may not find it inviting to come to reach all
students up to those at the back of the class. This single aisle may in many cases evendisappear due to students moving their chairs to fill in all front row spaces available.
Therefore, F2M requires readjustment of seating first by dedicating the best center column
for students. Secondly, adding more aisles will likely ease lecturer to move around the class
to get 100% coverage on students. The last, the rear space of the class should be utilized to
allow greater amount of movement and circulation within classroom. Thus the new
arrangement will be best illustrated in the following figure.
-
8/22/2019 Why Students Can't Tell if the Do Not Understand
6/12
Paper to be presented in Asian Conference on Education 2009October 24-25 2009, at the Ramada Hotel, Osaka Japan
6
Fig. 2. The floor of 3-6-3 arrangement
In this new setting, seats are arranged in 3 seats aisle 6 seats aisle 3 seats. Such setting
dedicates the central column of the class, the area with best view toward board/screen, to
50% of total students. The remaining half of students seatings are divided into two on each
sides, facing 45o toward board/screen. This way, all students will get the best available views
with less muscular strain. Besides, if lecturer can only reach and distribute attention to 3
students at each sides of the aisle, this new setting with two aisles will naturaly provide 100%
coverage to all students. Although having 70-85 students in one classroom may not the best
practice for teaching math, this 3-6-3 setting allows better sirculation of people and air. Thus,
within all the limitations at hand, this setting may help creating a better learning environment.
In short, compared with the previous 7A7 seating, there are at least three advantages of the
proposed 3-6-3 setting, i.e. (a) providing better and more confortable view, (b) allowing
100% coverage of lecturer toward the students, and (c) allowing better air and people
sisculation. This setting is not complicated and thus can be well prepared by the cleaning
service and become the default setting in the site campus.
Pic 1. 100% lecturer-coverage on students
This 3-6-3 setting has also been implemented as pre-condition for the last sub-method of
F2M, namely the traffic-light cards. Later the rear space of the class is used for grouping and
-
8/22/2019 Why Students Can't Tell if the Do Not Understand
7/12
Paper to be presented in Asian Conference on Education 2009October 24-25 2009, at the Ramada Hotel, Osaka Japan
7
regrouping students for different instruction based on the traffic-light card that students
acknowledge. Further about traffic-light card will be explained later. At this point, below in
Fig. 3 is the complete setting of 3-6-3 with view of the rear side of classroom.
_______
Fig 3. Complete setting of 3-6-3 with rear space for on-carpet activities
2. Tardiness management (MMS rule)
Preliminary study and observation show that lower achievment in Calculus-I classes (very
likely in other classes as well) is partly due to lower attendance. Most of lower attendances
are caused by tardiness, in which lecturers decline students coming into class if they are late.
It will be unlikely for such students to keep up their pace with other fellow students, at least
for the days they come late. In the long run, it will disadvantage these students as they will
become illegible to sit for exam when their atendance is less than 80%. If late students do not
have access to learning in classroom then they will also have no access to any feedbacktaking place in classroom. The number of late students, however, tend to be increasing as
students may become busier with all intra and extra academic activities including the process
of adjusting to new life as university student.
Hence a mechanism to teach discipline to students with greater access for them to attend class
is necessary. F2M comes up with a rule for students to wait outside for a while if they come
late. This rule is dubbed MMS (in Indonesian/Malay: Mohon Menunggu Sebentar, which
means please wait a while). Applying MMS, lecturer in the course introduction will
explicitly ask that late students should not knock on the door nor enter the classroom until the
lecturer lets them in. Late students must wait outside in order, without distracting attention.
-
8/22/2019 Why Students Can't Tell if the Do Not Understand
8/12
Paper to be presented in Asian Conference on Education 2009October 24-25 2009, at the Ramada Hotel, Osaka Japan
8
This way, lecturer will be able to finish explaining parts of material and to find pause to open
the door and allow late students to attend the rest of materials for the day.
Variations to this rule can be numerous. For lecturers who wish to promote discipline, the
attendance of late students may not be taken despite the rights given to follow classrooms.
For lecturers with greater interest to train students through exercise drills, they may giveadditional assignement for late students while suspending the attendance for the day until the
assignement is turned in. Still some other variation may apply to this rule.
There are at least three advantages from applying this rule. First is that all students will
maximally be exposed to classroom learning and feedback. This will help them keep up with
learning materials and get direct assistance from lecturer when they find difficulties.
Secondly, this MMS rule will allow lecturer to treat students tardiness porpotionaly with the
amount of their tardiness. The rigid regimen of discipline will not be able to respond
differently to students 1-minute or 1-hour lateness, that like on/off button the class is started
and ended. MMS will naturally treat students who are 2-minute late differently from those
who are 20-minute late, that they will likely have different waiting time. The last is that thisrule cater all interests playing in classroom: teacher can still promote discipline and order, on-
time students will not be much interrupted by the late-comers, and still late students will hve
access to classroom learning and feedback.
3. Traffic-light cards (TLC)One crucial part in obtaining feedback during the learning process is when materials have
been delivered and there comes the time to know whether students understand it or not. As an
alternative to replace the conventional way of Do you understand?, F2M uses three
colored-cards as a means of assessing students comprehension (Pic 2). Although such cards
can appear in any colors, they are usually in red-yelow-green similar to those of traffic light
and therefore are conveniently called Traffic-Light Cards (TLC).
Pic 2. Trafic-Light Cards (TLC)
Traffic-light cards (TLC) are not new idea in learning method, especially in K-9 education.
They are flexible and can be used in various subjects from English to Chemistry. Among
ways of using it is when teachers ask questions with A-B-C of answers, students may respond
by raising red card for A, yellow for B, and green for C (Traffic card as Starter,
www.lancsngfl.ac.uk). Another example is using the cards for ordering class, i.e. teacher may
-
8/22/2019 Why Students Can't Tell if the Do Not Understand
9/12
Paper to be presented in Asian Conference on Education 2009October 24-25 2009, at the Ramada Hotel, Osaka Japan
9
lift red card to stop all activities, yellow card to prepare starting activities, and green card
to start activities (www.ehow.com). Also, TLC can be used similar to its purpose in soccer:
as punishment and reward for students.
In university Calculus class, one application of TLC is to help students communicating their
level of material comprehension. Each color represents certain percentage of comprehension,e.g. red card for up to 50%, yellow card for 50-75%, and green card for 75-100%
comprehension. This way, after a portion of material delivery, lecturer will ask students to
assess themselves as to measure how many percent they think they understand the material. It
is important to notice that TLC will be useless if lecturer does not quantify the worth of each
card. If each card simply represents understand, half understand, and not-understand,
TLC will only confuse students. In turn the result will confuse the lecturer since students may
have misunderstood their level of comprehension, or the way students interpret the level of
understand, half understand, and not-understand may be different from that of lecturers.
TLC may appear in any dimension as long as they are easy to hold. In this, study we use 10
cm x 7,5 cm cards of green-yelow-red and blue-white-pink. We observed that both sets ofcolors worked well. Questionnaire from two classes show that none of the 109 students feel
embarrassed in using the cards, either in sessions with green-yelow-red cards or those with
blue-white-pink ones. However, further trial on this method show that TLC canot be replaced
by raising hands. Most students find that raising hands when lecturer ask their level of
comprehension is somewhat embarrassing. Therefore, TLC have helped students to eliminate
embarrasement in communicating their level of understanding.
Mechanism in using TLC is easy and quick. The method is also highly flexible in terms of
time allocation, allowing lecturer to adjust TLC to respond to students need. As a model
implemented for 100-minute session, the scenario and time allotment can be illustrated as
follows.
Fig. 5. Scenario of using TLC
Time Step
20 minutes 1. Lecturer delivers material in 20 minutes. This
limited span of material delivery will hopefully
encourage students to come on-time and learn the
materials before attending class.
10 minutes 2. Lecturer distributes TLC and quantifies them
(writing the value of each card on whiteboard: red
card for up to 50%, yellow card for 50-75%, and
green card for 75-100%)
-
8/22/2019 Why Students Can't Tell if the Do Not Understand
10/12
Paper to be presented in Asian Conference on Education 2009October 24-25 2009, at the Ramada Hotel, Osaka Japan
10
3. Students all at once lift the card relevant to their
comprehension level. Lecturer counts for the reds
and the greens.
4. Lecturer extracts the reds from the population,
and groups them at the rear space of classroom
for on-carpet activity. In cases where reds do not
appear, greens can be separated and grouped for
on-carpet activity.
30 minutes 5. Students with yellow cards are grouped with the
greens, with ratio of for example 5 yellows for 1
green. The ratio can be adjusted to class situation.
These groups will independently (without much
of lecturers help) discuss and do calculus
problem given by lecturer on tranparent mica,
using whiteboard marker as the pen and tissue
paper as the eraser. The solution on transparent
mica will be presented by the greens in front of
the class after the class resumes.
6. Students with reds will receive full assistance
from the lecturer and do calculus problem more
suitable with their capability.
(In these pictures, the reds are none. Therefore the
greens are grouped at the rear space of class, doing
calculus problems independently with their peer-
greens while the yellow groups are receiving
lecturers assistance. The calculus problems done by
the greens are still those that may appear in Calculus
exam. This way, when the solution is presented in
front of the yellows, there will be not much gap
between the greens and the yellows).
30 minutes 7. Class is resumed and the greens present the
solution to their problems on the OHP. Lecturer
gives feedback on their creativity and analysis.
-
8/22/2019 Why Students Can't Tell if the Do Not Understand
11/12
Paper to be presented in Asian Conference on Education 2009October 24-25 2009, at the Ramada Hotel, Osaka Japan
11
10 minute 8. Lecturer distributes cek-out papers on which
students can communicate additional difficulty
found in the session. Written feedback will allow
all students to communicate their ideas/problems
at once in shorter span of time rather than
allowing students to communicate it orally.
D. Conclusion
Implementing F2M, 109 students and their lecturers found it useful in communicating
feedback about material comprehension. Students responses on Likert-scale classroom
questionnaire revealed that 63% supported the tardiness management and 78% found traffic-light card helpful or very helpful. None of the 109 students in two classes think that F2M,
especially the traffic-light cards, embarrassing. Assuming that calculus classes have typical
students inputs and they learn same materials, comparison between year prior to F2M and
that after F2M showed increase in student achievement: students achieving A and B grades
increased from 45% to 58%, while those achieving D and E decreased from 35% to 21%.
We believe that due to its flexibility and effectivity in obtaining feedback for quality teaching
and learning, F2M can be well responded in other classes especially those involving problem
solving. Classes with full lecturing, such as Civics, may not be really benefitted from F2M.
However, application on other science classes such as Calculus-II, Physics-I, and Physics-II
can be considered. This way, overall achievement especially for students in their Preparatory
Year (first year) is expected to increase and will help students to achieve greater success the
following years.
References
Edge, Donald and Ellen Freedman. Ten Commandments (for Math Teachers). Available
online: http://www.mathpower.com/tencomm.htm. (9 Sep 2008)
-
8/22/2019 Why Students Can't Tell if the Do Not Understand
12/12
Paper to be presented in Asian Conference on Education 2009October 24-25 2009, at the Ramada Hotel, Osaka Japan
12
Furner, Joseph M "Math anxiety: Overcoming a major obstacle to the improvement of
student math performance". Childhood Education. . FindArticles.com. Available online:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3614/is_200304/ai_n9229964. (08 Sep 2008).
Harmer, Jeremy. 2007. The Practice of English Language Teaching. Pearson Longman.
Lacampagne.Carole B. 1993. Transforming Ideas for Teaching and Learning Mathematics.
Available online: http://www.ed.gov/pubs/StateArt/Math/readings.html
Math Study Skills Inventory. Available online:
http://www.uvm.edu/~jrosebus/mathanxiety.html
Mink, Oscar et al. 1993. Developing High-Performance People. Addison Wesley
Pitner, Suzanne. 2009. How to Plan a Classroom Seating Arrangement Create a Comfortable
Learning Space to Maximize Student Productivity Available online: http://classroom-
organization.suite101.com/article.cfm/how_to_plan_a_classroom_seating_arrangement (Sep25, 2008)
Race, Phil. 2008. How can we help students to learn more effectively? And efficiently? And
enjoyably? Presentation in Assessment, Learning and Teaching Visiting Professor,
Leeds Metropolitan University. Available online: phil-race.co.uk/wp-
content/plugins/download.../download.php?id=90 (Oct 17, 2008)
Taylor, Charlotte. 2006. Integrating Feedforward on Academic Writing into Undergraduate
Science Course. www.creative.commons.org (16 Sep 2008)
Thilmany, Jean "Beating Math Anxiety". Mechanical Engineering. . FindArticles.com.
Available online: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5325/is_200412/ai_n21360662 (08
Sep. 2008).
Traffic Card as Starter. Available online:
http://www.lancsngfl.ac.uk/nationalstrategy/ks3/science/index.php?category_id=15&s=!B121
cf29d70ec8a3d54a33343010cc2 (Sep 25, 2008)
Using Traffic Light Colors to Control the Classroom. Available online:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2145282_traffic-light-colors-controlling-classroom.html (Sep 25,
2008)