How do we get students to do the work?

There’s been a discussion about teaching going on at Dr. Crazy’s, Mano’s, and Dean Dad’s blogs, and if you haven’t read it I encourage you to check it out. Here, inspired by that discussion, I want to raise a deceptively simple question that gets at many of the issues that arose in the cross-blog discussion:

How do we ensure that students come to class prepared?

This, for me, is one of the essential questions of teaching, because – as Dean Dad points out, and join the noise confirms in a comment to that post – we are generally not teaching ourselves. Those of us who end up on the other side of the classroom were probably generally interested in learning, wanted to do well in our courses, and did the assignments as a matter of course. (I’m not going to claim this was the case all the time – I know I had my days of going to class under- or unprepared, or of not going to class at all, and I know people follow a wide range of paths to this occupation, so may not have begun as eager-beaver students. But in general, our behavior as students was not typical of the students we teach.)

Crazy and Mano take different approaches to the question of student preparation, due partly to different personalities, different goals for the classroom, and different student populations (I won't try to summarize their points - you should go read). But I think that they would agree, as would most everyone reading this, that student preparation is crucial to classroom success – both for students and professors: if students are unprepared, they will be unable to take advantage of the opportunities that the classroom provides, and professors may be unable to provide those opportunities to the best of their abilities (I know, for instance, that there are days when I can’t do anything in class if the students haven’t done the reading).

So, what do you consider the best means of ensuring student preparation?

Personally, however successfully, I try to combine the carrot and the stick. In general, my approach to the classroom is that it constitutes an intellectual community, and that one of the expectations of such a community is that everyone contributes to it. Only then can everyone benefit from the fullest range of perspectives and knowledge. And I tell them this, at the beginning of the semester and in the syllabus. When I talk about their papers, I talk about them writing as historians for other readers, and I explain footnotes as a necessary part of sharing in an intellectual conversation, to make sure that other researchers could find the information they refer to if they want to pursue the topic further. I also try to find ways to give students some control over the classroom, by requiring them to write agendas for a given day, to come up with discussion questions, or to make brief presentations – all of which are designed to let students talk about what they find most interesting in the course material.

I also make sure that what they read is directly relevant to what we do in class. If they read it, we talk about it. (This is hardly news to most people, I’d imagine; but I know that depending on what you’re teaching or the conditions under which you’re teaching it may entail assigning some material that does not get discussed as directly.) The idea behind this is that if the experience of class is pointless without having done the reading, then students will do the reading. Okay, this doesn’t always work – believe me, I know. The biggest flaw with this approach is that you often end up with a few engaged and active students, and a larger proportion of them who sit and gaze at you. The best-case scenario in this category is something I see happening in one of my classes this semester: the rest of the class is interested and happily watches the discussion going back and forth between me and a smaller group of regulars. They take notes and do well enough on the exams/writing assignments, but they’re kind of piggy-backing off the work of not-so-many. It’s better than having the bulk of them visibly checked out, but is by no means ideal.

The kinds of sticks that I use vary. I don’t generally give pop quizzes. Actually, skip generally – I can’t even remember when I last did so. I think, however, that this is less because I have a moral or pedagogical problem with them (especially if the professor makes clear at the beginning of the semester that pop quizzes will occur), than that I have not taught a student population that would really benefit from them. I’ve been able to use other techniques just as effectively. Which include? Well, usually the kinds of things I noted above – class agendas, discussion questions, or presentations. So for me, stick = some kind of assignment they have to prepare before we get to class.

These don’t always work brilliantly, of course. First, there’s no guarantee the students will write good/useful responses. Usually, making them write about something makes them read it, but some students won’t be able to pick out useful themes/points, write useful discussion questions, or present their way out of a paper bag. So it’s important to model this kind of stuff. And it’s also important to recognize that those students who blow everything else off aren’t going to magically come up with insight and analysis when it’s their turn. So you have to be willing to accept a certain percentage of dross along with the gold.

Second, I can use these because I have a pretty humane workload – three classes a semester, none over 25 students. If I were teaching lecture classes to crowds of hundreds, and didn’t have TAs, I wouldn’t use these kinds of assignments in quite the same way I do now. I think they can be modified (grade them on completion, not on content; select 10-15 at random each time or every other time; get the students to do some of the grading/responding), but it’s certainly harder. Even now, I don’t have every student prepare something before every class. But my hope is that even some students doing this kind of thing some of the time gets across the importance of their contributions. (An additional benefit is that they can be used quite effectively to help me plan class, if they’re submitted online or via e-mail ahead of time!)

I also tie longer assignments into the course readings/class discussion. For some papers, students get assigned to write about specific readings and turn in their papers on the days that we discuss those readings in class. If they’ve had to write a paper about the readings, they’ll certainly be able to talk about them in class. This also runs into the number-of-bodies problem: if you have 200 students (and no TAs), you probably can’t assign enough formal papers for this kind of technique to help the class dynamic much.

The reverse of this technique is to take class days when students talk about their own projects – not necessarily as formally as in an actual presentation, but getting students in groups to talk about how their own work outside of class is going can work well.

And some days, I don’t fight their lack of preparation. I have a number of conceptual kinds of questions that I raise in my courses: “what does history mean? what is the difference between history and story?” “what is the difference between religion and myth?” “what defines a community?” “what does ‘home’ mean to people today?” “what defines adulthood today?” These are my “cheating” questions, because they don’t require students to have read squat to make a contribution. And in fact, almost everyone usually does contribute – class usually gets pretty lively because everyone feels that they know something about these things. Then I switch gears and head back to the Middle Ages (“what about medieval ideas of community? how did they compare to modern ideas?”). Usually enough people have done the reading to be able to follow me, and those who may not have done the reading have at least become more engaged in the question through their participation in the discussion. And they know what “big issue” the reading is supposed to address, which they may not have realized if they just skimmed through it anyway.

Finally, the last stick is the class participation grade. I’m sort of amused by people who complain that students don’t participate in class but who’ve only assigned participation, say, 5% of the final course grade. (I do realize that not everyone has complete discretion over such decisions.) It seems to me that this kind of grade distribution sends a message totally at odds with any instructor’s expressed desire for students to speak in class (and hence be prepared). For those who complain that students shouldn’t have to be motivated by the grade to do something like prepare for class – well, yes, it would be nice if grades weren't a motivator. But then, it would be nice if they were inspired to find out about (say) medieval history by reading on their own in their spare time, too. I’d rather deal with reality. And I find it completely reasonable of students to prioritize based on what’s the most important to them, and if they have a paper that’s worth 35% of the grade versus participation at 5%, well, I can’t blame them for putting more effort into the paper. I have to admit, one of the best classes I’ve had for participation was a seminar in which participation was 40% of their grade. It’s true that grading participation can be hard, but that’s another post for another time.

So, these are my not-so-brief thoughts on the subject. What about you? I’d especially love to hear from people who teach larger classes, where it’s harder to gauge students' preparation simply by making them talk.

Comments

[ianqui]

Wow! So much to think about. And in many respects, so different from my experience.

My main undergrad course is a pretty scienc-y one, which actually can lead to radically different behavior from class to class. Last year, in my midsem evals, I got criticized for entertaining too many off-topic questions. This year, my overall silent students said that they'd like to have more discussion. So, after I got the reviews, I told the class that I too would love to have more discussion, but that they had to help me out with that. I ask more questions now to try to get them engaged, but it's not exactly discussion. So much depends on a class's collective personality.

[Elizabeth]

I've TA'ed for both small (20-25 students) and larger (65-75 students). One thing that has worked in either is a structured panel debate--these are scheduled in advance, students sign up to represent an author or a text that strikes them, and the rest of the class gets to ask questions and comment. It's not a guarantee that they'll read the rest of the semester, but on those days the whole class really gets into it--and it shows up later in their papers (which are required to focus on the readings.)

I especially like the fact that, once the assignment has been explained, the students run the discussion themselves. I participate as part of the audience, but usually they don't need a lot of prodding--with four or five participants, it's much more relaxed and less stressful than a standard presentation.

I've found that if I start them early enough in the semester, it tends to help the quiet students the most--after they've been in the front of the room, pretending to be Samuel Huntington, it must not seem as hard to speak up from their seat. And since the general rule is that they need to be able to back up panel statements with quotes, for the rest of the term we have a class "expert" ready to chime in with a reference to the Clash of Civilizations.

[Michelle P]

Hmm, lots here to absorb but immediately, I'd have to say that I am most interested in your notion of jacking up the participation points. The most I've assigned there is 10%.

As you know, I'm only into my second semester of teaching, and am still very much in the initial experimentation stages. I think that next semester, I'll move forward with something I've wanted to do from the beginning but was too wary of adding to my responsibilities as far as constant reading: journal posting, specifically one response per week. I think I'll either set up WebCT shells or a blogger host.

I have not read the conversations on the other threads; hopefully, I can.

[Ryan]

One approach to the many-students-engaged-but-few-students-talking problem is the fishbowl exercise, where 5 or 6 students sit in a small circle in the center of the class, and discuss while the rest of the students take notes. In stage two of the exercise, the outer circle of students is responsible for responding to things that get said in the fishbowl.

To keep the usual suspects from crowding the fishbowl, I will often offer some participation points, with the disclaimer that some people don't need those points, and should therefore not volunteer. It's not a foolproof way to hear from different corners of the room, but it shakes things up a little, and every once in a while, will bolster one student's confidence enough to participate in discussions from that exercise on out.

[Dr. Crazy]

The thing that concerns me about having participation be a huge part of the grade is that I'm not sure how to calculate it in a fair way. 1) if I'm involved in the discussion and listening to them I can guarantee that I will space on recording who speaks; 2) what do you do with those students who are painfully shy but who are always thinking and always prepared? Do you penalize them because they don't speak, even if they are "engaged"? My tendency is to use a small participation grade that I call participation/attendance and that grade comes just from showing up and having your book and I can boost it if you speak a lot. But then I have other grades that relate to participation but are called more specific things also included in the grade. I won't hijack your comments - I'll write about this over on my blog later :)

Great post, btw!

[ripley]

I'm sure it depends on class size, but I hit on one thing that helped people be prepared, as well as helping me factor in the quiet students who were doing the work into the participation grade:

I set up an email list for the class, so that every student was on it. Each week they all have to write a response to the readings and send it to the list. The response is graded as part of participation, but is not otherwise graded. It has to be a couple of paragraphs, but otherwise it's pretty open: "one thing I liked" "one question I had" "what the readings made me think of," how this connects to something in the present day (it's a history class), etc etc.

I have learned so much more about the students from this, especially the quiet ones! it blew my mind. And it gives me ideas for what to do next class, based on what people do and don't get, or what they seem excited by, or what nobody has talked about..

[Mommyprof]

If you give grades for participation, it helps if you share how a students' participation grade is going at regular times during the semester. This is a reminder that they need to pick it up.

It also helps if you assign them to participate in specific ways - turn in 3 discussion questions for the reading at the start of class, prof. shuffles and picks some to use.

[meg]

I have what I call "one-minute papers" -- a question answered on an index card at the beginning of every class (usually, anyway). About 75% of the time, it's an easy question that anyone who'd done the reading could answer without thinking; the other 25%, it's a total softball question ("Who was your favorite character?").

It's worth 10% of the total grade, and it definitely motivates the students to keep up. Of course, I pitch it to them as a way of rewarding them for doing the reading.

It's particularly effective with huge classes. Handing them back every day forces you to learn all the names within a couple of weeks, even for a class of 200 people. (I never let the TA hand back the 1MPs, back at Sweaty Landgrant U.) And they only take 5 minutes to mark.

[Brian]

I usually peg participation at 20-25% of the course grade, depending on the course. But like Ripley and Meg, I use response papers, one-minute papers, and the like, as well as discussion, to gauge participation. And I ask shy students to talk to me after class, or in office hours, about their shyness. (Of course, the really shy ones won't do that!) One-minute papers are great for big courses, especially if you then use them for the next class meeting.

I also like the "think-pair-share" exercise: pose a question, give students a few minutes to reflect on it and jot down ideas, and then have them share and discuss their responses with the student next to them. It's a good way to get discussion going, even with 180 students, and you can then take volunteers to report on their conclusions if you want to bring the whole class in.

The fishbowl exercise sounds like a good idea too--I'll give it a try.

[Rudbeckia Hirta]

I might have to start giving reading quizzes next semester. It's shocking how many students refuse to read a $150 textbook.

[GeoffK]

Figuring out how to grade class participation is, for me, pretty tough. Several of you mention in-class exercises (I like the one-minute papers, for instance)--but what do these measure? Written exercises like that seem pretty different from what I think of as class participation--ie, talking in class.

Michelle P -- how does your "participation point" system work? If it is what it sounds like, it might be a way to make class participation grades non-arbitrary, but I'm leery of anything that creates a lot of math & record-keeping for me, since I'd rather spend my time on other forms of class prep, but I'm curious.

What to do?

[GeoffK]

Oops-- the participation point system was Ryan's. I misread the bylines.

[Ryan]

Oh, well, participation points are sort of arbitrary, but they work this way. I have a little rubric about the kind of behaviors that constitute positive participation (talking in class discussions, working hard in group work, etc.) and what constitutes negative participation (frequent tardiness, side conversations, sleeping).

What lies in between, showing up and being silent, earns a default C.

I assign a participation grade every three weeks based on what they've done for that period (usually I stick to whole letter grades), but then participation in a fisbowl earns them an additional 5 or 10 points (depending on the type of course), essentially a letter grade boost for that one 3-week period.

[Rana]

Good points. I used to make participation a full 30% of the grade (since my courses were discussion-type seminars) and I also worried about tracking that adequately. Partly, I was obsessive and obvious about noting student participation during discussions; I'd tick off everytime a student spoke, and if it was something good, I'd add a star (to distinguish the smart-but-quiet talkers from the blah-blah-blah-ers).

The key strategy, though, was reaction cards, which, while a lot of work, were really effective for all of us. Basically, at the end of every class I gave students an index card and ten minutes during which they would write down what they thought was the most important thing they learned during the day, and a question related to the discussion. I'd respond to these in writing on the cards themselves, and give them a -, check, or +, and hand them back at the start of the class.

It really encouraged the students to know that I was paying attention to what they were thinking and wondering about, and there was sometimes competition among the students to get the most "plus" responses (which I neither encouraged nor discouraged).

But what was also really great was that it gave me a handle on which students were smart and attentive but quiet or shy, and which ones were just zoning out. That way I could pull the former ones aside and tell them that they needed to be more obvious about being prepared, that I would make sure they had space in class to speak if they wanted, that their ideas were really good and should be shared, and so on. I can't say that most of these became daily talkers, but they became a lot more confident when they did have something to share with the class.

I also included rubrics in the syllabus describing what a failing student would look like, as well as a passing, a good, and a great one would look like, in terms of participation. Things like "a failing student will show up unprepared for discussion" or "a failing student is rude to other members of the class" or "if you just show up having done the reading but don't talk about it, you might get mistaken for a student who's not done it" or "a great student will be prepared, will have useful questions and comments, and will encourage other students to contribute" etc.

Sometimes I would even have a discussion about effective discussion, what it is, and why it's important, just so that the students felt a part of the conversation. (This would be at least as much, if not more, about brainstorming "what do you think helps class discussion work better" as me saying, "this is what makes a good discussion")

Anything to avoid me having to write a lecture. *grin*

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Belatedly - thanks for all the comments, everyone! I think I will have to try the fishbowl exercise, too. And Rana's reaction cards - I've done something like that with 1-2 minutes at the end, and I find it valuable, but honestly, I just keep forgetting to do it. Next semester, however, I'm teaching a 1x a week seminar, and giving them 5-10 minutes at the end to synthesize that would probably be really valuable. (That's also the class in which participation is ~40%, so they do fairly well, but it would still be valuable.)

Elizabeth, I sometimes do what you describe, and I agree, having students run the class themselves is one of the most valuable parts.

Anyway, thanks everyone! Cool ideas.