Matthew O'Brien is today's featured contributor and his great reflection focuses on enhancing student engagement in a number of creative ways. Matthew's refections on the use of social media and the incorporation of active learning are very insightful and a great tool for anyone looking to explore innovative ways to increase student engagement. I think you will agree when you read his reflection both the rationale and use of these techniques are inspiring for those thinking of exploring innovative teaching techniques. Click below to read the reflection Picture: by Lobineau at it.wikipedia |
Summer Teaching Institute Follow-Up
The 2014 Summer Teaching Institute was without a doubt one of the best experiences I have had in my young teaching career and it is something I am very grateful to have been a part of. Over the week long seminar the topics for each day focused on how to reinvigorate our courses with the emphasis on engaging today’s learner. Each speaker presented information that was informative and applicable. The topics from the teaching institute that I took and applied to my Cognitive Processes (Psyc 362) course for the Fall 2014 semester were: 1) the incorporation of Social Media to extend discussions beyond the classroom, 2) the addition of Turnitin for the class’ final paper, and 3) incorporating more Active Learning Technique. Each of these additions led to an overall improvement in my class, and this was reflected in my student evaluations of the course.
I had considered the idea of adding a Social Media component to my courses previously. It is no secret that our students are heavily “plugged-in” when it comes to things like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and so I had been interested in tapping into these mediums as a way of connecting with my students more effectively. While CougarCourses does a good job of hosting information and passing along announcements, the reality is, many students don’t check in with CougarCourses as often as they should. By alerting them to information about the class via a platform they are already spending time on, I expected that class involvement would increase. My results were good, but not great. I decided to take the plunge with Twitter and set up a hashtag (#) for our Cognitive Processes course so that the students could follow anything I posted that was related to the class. I was also able to include the twitter feed directly into the CougarCourses platform so that students who did not have Twitter could also follow the conversations I was having with students. At first the students were a little hesitant and my tweets did not garner much attention, but then something magical happened and I started getting students to re-tweet some of the information I as passing along to them. This started discussions (albeit very brief in many cases) that were able to extend the classroom beyond our 1hr 20min meeting time twice a week. I will admit that as the semester went on my Twitter activity did decrease and this led to student involvement also decreasing. It is my opinion that if you are thinking of including Social Media into your classroom that you had better be prepared to spend a decent amount of time keeping up with it. I am not a heavy Twitter user in my personal life, and so I had to make a conscious effort to post things to Twitter for my class. I imagine that this would get easier over time and that it would become a part of my daily and weekly class prep, but right now (I am still continuing to try to use Twitter in my Spring 2015 courses) it is still something I have to be cognizant of.
The decision to add Turnitin was also spurred by the instruction received at the Summer Teaching Institute. I finally decided to take the plunge and give it a shot after I learned of the ability to create and include rubrics within the Turnitin system. Furthermore, the ability to create your own marks for regularly used statements (e.g., “not APA style – see APA manual”) was incredibly useful. I found myself including much more feedback on my student’s papers as I was not suffering from the fatigue of writing out the same responses over and over again. This enabled me to include these comments to common mistakes, but to also really focus on the feedback that was relevant to each student’s paper individually, even more so than I had in the past. As an added bonus, the time I had previously spent entering grades was removed as Turnitin automatically inserted the scores after I finished grading each paper. Finally, I didn’t have to worry about lugging around stacks of papers, and because the system time-stamps all submissions there was absolutely zero complaining about a paper being turned in on time and me having “misplaced” it.
The Active Learning workshop that we all attended on the 2nd day of the classroom shed light on a number of very interesting techniques that I have been able to add to my class to increase student engagement on a daily basis. Cognitive Psychology is a challenging course for students. The material is dense and many students find themselves frustrated by the difficulty of the material because they find it hard to relate to. I took several of the active learning techniques (e.g., Think-pair-share,) and inserted them into my course on a weekly, and sometimes daily basis. Engagement shot through the roof! Instead of looking out at a sea of “dead eyes” I was now getting looks of eager anticipation for what the next activity might be. Instead of lecturing for extended periods of time, I made an effort to insert an activity, even something as easy as a quick 2-3 minute review/quiz of the material. Students began engaging with one another, and were working hard to explain these concepts in their own terms.
There were so many other things that I learned over the week long Summer Teaching Institute that I know have been responsible for my improvement and development as an instructor. Overall I must say that by applying what I learned, my class attendance and participation remained high throughout the entire semester, and several students noted in their course evaluation that this ended up being one of the classes they actually enjoyed, even though they had not been looking forward to it heading into the semester. As a relatively new instructor this is exactly what I am looking to do for my students. I want to engage them, teach them, and have them complete a course with a feeling of accomplishment. I believe that I was successful in accomplishing my goals in my Cognitive Processes course last semester, and I look forward to continuing to include other techniques I was taught (e.g., Socrative & Team-Based Learning) in future courses. I cannot thank the Faculty and Staff that put on this excellent teaching seminar for all of their hard work, and I recommend that if you have the desire to improve your teaching that you check in and attend a workshop, you will not be disappointed.
Thanks for your time,
--Matthew O’Brien, Lecturer, Department of Psychology
The 2014 Summer Teaching Institute was without a doubt one of the best experiences I have had in my young teaching career and it is something I am very grateful to have been a part of. Over the week long seminar the topics for each day focused on how to reinvigorate our courses with the emphasis on engaging today’s learner. Each speaker presented information that was informative and applicable. The topics from the teaching institute that I took and applied to my Cognitive Processes (Psyc 362) course for the Fall 2014 semester were: 1) the incorporation of Social Media to extend discussions beyond the classroom, 2) the addition of Turnitin for the class’ final paper, and 3) incorporating more Active Learning Technique. Each of these additions led to an overall improvement in my class, and this was reflected in my student evaluations of the course.
I had considered the idea of adding a Social Media component to my courses previously. It is no secret that our students are heavily “plugged-in” when it comes to things like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and so I had been interested in tapping into these mediums as a way of connecting with my students more effectively. While CougarCourses does a good job of hosting information and passing along announcements, the reality is, many students don’t check in with CougarCourses as often as they should. By alerting them to information about the class via a platform they are already spending time on, I expected that class involvement would increase. My results were good, but not great. I decided to take the plunge with Twitter and set up a hashtag (#) for our Cognitive Processes course so that the students could follow anything I posted that was related to the class. I was also able to include the twitter feed directly into the CougarCourses platform so that students who did not have Twitter could also follow the conversations I was having with students. At first the students were a little hesitant and my tweets did not garner much attention, but then something magical happened and I started getting students to re-tweet some of the information I as passing along to them. This started discussions (albeit very brief in many cases) that were able to extend the classroom beyond our 1hr 20min meeting time twice a week. I will admit that as the semester went on my Twitter activity did decrease and this led to student involvement also decreasing. It is my opinion that if you are thinking of including Social Media into your classroom that you had better be prepared to spend a decent amount of time keeping up with it. I am not a heavy Twitter user in my personal life, and so I had to make a conscious effort to post things to Twitter for my class. I imagine that this would get easier over time and that it would become a part of my daily and weekly class prep, but right now (I am still continuing to try to use Twitter in my Spring 2015 courses) it is still something I have to be cognizant of.
The decision to add Turnitin was also spurred by the instruction received at the Summer Teaching Institute. I finally decided to take the plunge and give it a shot after I learned of the ability to create and include rubrics within the Turnitin system. Furthermore, the ability to create your own marks for regularly used statements (e.g., “not APA style – see APA manual”) was incredibly useful. I found myself including much more feedback on my student’s papers as I was not suffering from the fatigue of writing out the same responses over and over again. This enabled me to include these comments to common mistakes, but to also really focus on the feedback that was relevant to each student’s paper individually, even more so than I had in the past. As an added bonus, the time I had previously spent entering grades was removed as Turnitin automatically inserted the scores after I finished grading each paper. Finally, I didn’t have to worry about lugging around stacks of papers, and because the system time-stamps all submissions there was absolutely zero complaining about a paper being turned in on time and me having “misplaced” it.
The Active Learning workshop that we all attended on the 2nd day of the classroom shed light on a number of very interesting techniques that I have been able to add to my class to increase student engagement on a daily basis. Cognitive Psychology is a challenging course for students. The material is dense and many students find themselves frustrated by the difficulty of the material because they find it hard to relate to. I took several of the active learning techniques (e.g., Think-pair-share,) and inserted them into my course on a weekly, and sometimes daily basis. Engagement shot through the roof! Instead of looking out at a sea of “dead eyes” I was now getting looks of eager anticipation for what the next activity might be. Instead of lecturing for extended periods of time, I made an effort to insert an activity, even something as easy as a quick 2-3 minute review/quiz of the material. Students began engaging with one another, and were working hard to explain these concepts in their own terms.
There were so many other things that I learned over the week long Summer Teaching Institute that I know have been responsible for my improvement and development as an instructor. Overall I must say that by applying what I learned, my class attendance and participation remained high throughout the entire semester, and several students noted in their course evaluation that this ended up being one of the classes they actually enjoyed, even though they had not been looking forward to it heading into the semester. As a relatively new instructor this is exactly what I am looking to do for my students. I want to engage them, teach them, and have them complete a course with a feeling of accomplishment. I believe that I was successful in accomplishing my goals in my Cognitive Processes course last semester, and I look forward to continuing to include other techniques I was taught (e.g., Socrative & Team-Based Learning) in future courses. I cannot thank the Faculty and Staff that put on this excellent teaching seminar for all of their hard work, and I recommend that if you have the desire to improve your teaching that you check in and attend a workshop, you will not be disappointed.
Thanks for your time,
--Matthew O’Brien, Lecturer, Department of Psychology