[Note: this post is adapted from part of a talk I recently gave to the NJEDge Annual Faculty Showcase.]
It’s no secret that we at ProfHacker like GoogleDocs. Ryan Cordell has used Google Docs to run a peer-review writing workshop, and George Williams has previously written about using GoogleDocs to take collaborative notes at conference sessions. Guest poster Thomas Burkholder wrote about using Google Forms. I have used all of these, and today I’m going to share yet another use: for compiling a crowd-sourced study-guide. Google Docs is useful in this respect because it allows users to easily share documents. In my case, I can quickly distribute to an entire class, and students can then download or not as they wish.
Students, unsurprisingly, like study guides. I did, and most of my students appreciate them as well. As a teacher, however, my attitude has shifted: I despise them. “Despise” might be too strong a word, but as a teacher generally, I don’t like study guides. My dislike stems in no small part from the fact that creating a good study guide is just a difficult and time-intensive as creating a good exam, unless I want to duplicate the exam almost to the letter (I don’t). Not only are study-guides time-consuming to create, they also can send the wrong message. That is, often, they are sometimes seen as a key rather than a guide, a kind of silver-bullet: as long as students memorize the answers, nothing else matters.
There’s another part of me, however, that recognizes the utility of an effective study guide both as an aid for helping students succeed as well as a way to show them the kind of material that they need to focus on and they kind of work they should be doing to effectively prepare for the exam. Some of our students already know these things, but not all of them do. An effective teacher not only shares knowledge but also helps students understand how to manage and deploy that knowledge whether in the lab, the library, or the workplace.
At some point, I realized that there might be a way to work with students to create a study guide that would benefit the both of us: a way to work with students to create a study-guide and an exam that not only eased the burdens for me but also reinforced the material for them. I offered my students the opportunity to help write their exam. It seemed to me that this could be a win-win for us.
I propose this opportunity to the class, but for it to work everyone has to be willing to participate. I explain the requirements and then leave the room so the students can discuss without worrying about me hearing them. It’s important to me that they understand that turning down the crowd-sourcing be a valid option (though in the several cases where I have offered students this chance, only once have they declined). Here is what I propose:
- Each student emails me with a specific number of questions for the exam. For me, these are short answer questions based on the reading or in-class discussion, and students have seen examples of these kinds of questions in in-class reading quizzes (this model can be easily adapted to other kinds of questions or problems). Questions should have clear and specific answers, and they should follow the rules of standard written English.
- I reserve the right to edit questions or combine questions. Sometimes, students will submit questions that are very similar or that could be clarified. I also reserve the right to add questions in case essential material is overlooked.
- Once I have everyone’s questions, I compile a master list on Google Drive. Every question from the exam is on that list. There are many more questions on the list than there will be on the exam. If students wants to do well on this part of the exam, they have the tools they need to prepare. They may choose not to use those tools, but at least they have the option.
Students have responded really well to this exercise. It greatly lessens their anxiety about “The Test.” It also gives me a barometer of what they think is important and a sense of how well they understand the material thus far, which has been incredibly useful. And most importantly, it helps students learn: the act of brainstorming questions is studying though many students don’t see it as such, at least at first. So too is the act of using the study guide—they have to go back over the material to find the answers,and the guide gives them a sense of direction and purpose that can be especially useful for first-year students who are still learning how to navigate college-level academics. Best of all, they have a sense of investment in the material. That is, they aren’t studying the material because The Professor thinks it is important. Rather, they are studying it because they have identified it as important and because it will help them succeed.
I’ve used this strategy effective on several occasions, but it hasn’t always gone smoothly. One semester, several students either forgot or otherwise failed to submit their questions on time. I was then faced with a problem: do I share a partial study guide? If so, do I share it with everyone? Or do I only give it to those students who participated? What about the material that was thus-far uncovered?
In this case, the percent of students who failed to participate was low enough that I opted to share the guide with those students who had kept up their end of the deal. They could decide whether or not to share with their classmates who had missed or neglected the deadline. I did, however, inform those who got the guide that because not everyone contributed, there would be some surprise questions on the exam--not a lot but some since the exam needed to cover everything from that portion of the syllabus. Within two hours, I had questions from those students who had failed to contribute on time (which were easy enough to assimilate into the document).
How you used crowd-sourcing in your classroom? Please share in the comments section below.
[Creative Commons licensed image by Flickr user Karen].
