NameSchoolDepartment

Scholarly Teaching:How we are all social scientists

@ Aims CC Fall Faculty Conference, 2016

Dr. Jeff LoatsAssociate Professor of Physics

WARM-UP: DISCIPLINE ABUSECan you think of a time when you were frustrated by misconceptions or misunderstandings of your field of expertise in the world at large?“The perception that it is okay to be bad at math frustrates me. When talking to people and telling them I teach math, I usually get the response "I was always bad at math." It seems that our society is okay with people not being good at math, but it holds a different standard then reading or writing.”

DISCIPLINE VS. CAREER3

Dunning-Kreuger effect:• Expertise in a discipline probably makes us

underestimate our knowledge/skill.• A lack of expertise in teaching probably makes us

overestimate our knowledge/skill. Teaching is a fundamentally social activity, regardless of topic or academic discipline.

SCHOLARLY TEACHING4

Goal 1:Apply the rigor and scholarship of our academic disciplines to the discipline of teaching.

STEALING FOR SUCCESS5

A sheepish statement from a colleague: “I’ve borrowed ideas and techniques from my own teachers and from colleagues. Of course, I always change them a bit to make them my own.”Have you “stolen” teaching ideas from colleagues?

PLEASE STEAL THIS IDEA!6

Are there fields in which “stealing” ideas is acceptable? Encouraged? Required?Practical skills: Electrician, “How To” videosSafety concerns: Where do you store poisons?Medicine: Ask your doctor, “Where do your methods and ideas about treating my condition come from?”I want a scholarly doctor:Aware of the best, most up-to-date research on how to treat my condition .

SCHOLARLY TEACHING7

Goal 2:Choose teaching methods that are strongly informed by the best empirical evidence available.

ADOPTION “RUBRIC”8

How compatible is it with my teaching style? High ↔ Medium ↔ Low

Does it addresses an area I feel is currently lacking? Yes! ↔ Somewhat ↔ No

How broad is the empirical evidence of effectiveness?

Broad ↔ Moderate ↔ Preliminary□ None/Not addressed

Is the effect size/likely impact known?

Large ↔ Moderate ↔ Small□ Not known/addressed

How much additional prep (compared to a new prep)? _______% (of a new prep)

How much class time? _______% of class time

EVIDENCE-ORIENTED PARTS9

How broad is the empirical evidence of effectiveness?

Broad ↔ Moderate ↔ Preliminary□ None/Not addressed

Is the effect size/likely impact known?

Large ↔ Moderate ↔ Small□ Not known/addressed

Ideal: Well-controlled comparisons with data analysisPreliminary: Case studies or anecdotal descriptions

Effect size: 0.2 = Small, 0.5 = Medium, 0.8 = LargeOr… some sense of how big a difference to expect.

CONSISTENT EVIDENCE-BASED THEMES

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• Active engagement during class time

• Effective preparation (students & instructors)

• Feedback loops and iterative learning

0-20% 20-40% 40-60% 60-80% 80-100%0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

2% 10% 13% 38% 37%

Consider a typical day in a typical (college) class. What fraction of class time is spent on lecture-based delivery of content?

Previous anonymous poll results (compiled):

N = 82

CHANGING THE CLASSROOM

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Are you best lecturer in the world on the topics you teach?Does the best lecturer in the world have a YouTube channel?In the 21st-century, how should students spend their 15 hours per credit with you?

0-20% 20-40% 40-60% 60-80% 80-100%0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

29% 31%

20%14%

5%

Consider a typical day in a typical (college) class. What fraction of students did their preparatory work before coming to class?

Previous anonymous poll results (compiled):

N = 232

CHANGING OUR PREPARATION

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How do we “make room” for an active-engagement classroom?Shift appropriate parts of teaching & learning outside of the classroom:• Student preparation is a “low hanging fruit”

that enhances everything else.• Instructors prepare by learning what our

students already think about the subject.

PRE-CLASS WORK15

Evidence:Sappington (1998): Students who did well on a surprise reading assessment “scored significantly better than the Zero or Fail groups.” Effect size was 0.25.Marrs (2003): Students showed an average normalized gain of

52% on test questions reinforced by either ∼Warm Up questions or Cooperative Learning (~60% if reinforced by both!).

HOW DO PEOPLE LIKE TO LEARN

16

Do we ever enjoy learning?Possible candidates:

COMMON ELEMENTS?17

Feedback is (nearly) instantaneous

Failure is expected (desired?)

The cost of failure is very low

Mastery requires iterative learning

Contrast this with a typical feedback loop in the classroom…

“MANY CHANCES TO FAIL”18

A line adopted from business:

“Fail early, fail often, fail well…”

Grounded in constructivist learning theory:• Constructing new ideas often requires facing the

failure of previous ideas.• Confusion and conflict make clear the need to

build functional ideas in place of those that failed.

ITERATIVE LEARNING LOOPS19

On a given topic…Before class: Engage with Just-in-Time Teaching

“warm-up” questions that enforce reading & require thought

During class: Respond (digitally) to difficult questions, peer discussions

After class: Online homework with immediate feedback and low(ish) stakes.

Perhaps 10-20 chances to test their understanding before they encounter a high-stakes exam.

COMBINED IMPACT20

Deslauriers, et al. (2011): Novice teachers with evidence-based teaching techniques more than doubles student learning, compared to an experienced and highly-rated traditional instructor. Effect size of 2.5! “[…] other science and engineering classroom studies report effect sizes less than 1.0. An effect size of 2, obtained with trained personal tutors, is claimed to be the largest observed for any educational intervention.”

WARM-UP: BIGGEST “TAKE AWAY”Freeman, et al., 2014: “Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics”Meta-analysis of studies on “active learning” vs “traditional lecture.” Included 225 studies that reported on exam scores an failure rates in STEM courses.

WARM-UP: BIGGEST “TAKE AWAY”What was the biggest "take away" idea that you got from the article?“Students need to have opportunities to be active learners in any type of class, including STEM courses where the convention is to lecture.”“That students learn better kinesthetically; they learn better when they do the work of learning.”

ASIDE: LEARNING STYLES“I think that many teachers teach in a way that makes sense to them, according to their learning style […]”Best current evidence: Learning styles don’t existReferences:• “The Myth of Learning Styles”

by Cedar Riener and Daniel Willingham• YouTube: Learning Styles Don’t Exist• Scholarly review: “Learning styles: Concepts

and evidence”, Pashler et al, 2008

WARM-UP: BIGGEST “TAKE AWAY”Freeman, et al., 2014: “Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics”One finding: The odds ratio for failing under traditional lecture was 1.95 (translates to a 50% higher chance of failing).In medical trials, “a recent analysis of 143 randomized controlled medical trials that were stopped for benefit found that they had a median relative risk of 0.52, with a range of 0.22 to 0.66 (15).”

Your Summary25

For yourself… or to share?

What nugget(s) from this talk do you want to keep in mind in a month or a year?

Email: jeff.loats@gmail.comTwitter: @JeffLoatsSlides: www.slideshare.net/JeffLoats

References26

Dunning–Kruger effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Louis Deslauriers, Ellen Schelew and Carl Wieman (2011). Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics Class. Science, Vol. 332 no. 6031 pp. 862-864 DOI: 10.1126/science.1201783

Sappington, J., Kinsey, K., & Munsayac, K. (2002). Two Studies of Reading Compliance Among College Students. Teaching of Psychology , 29 (4), 272-274.

Marrs, K.A. (2003). Just in Time Teaching enhances cognitive gains in biology. J. Coll. Sci. Teach.