A while before that, Talbert, a professor of mathematics at Grand Valley State University who is known for his books on flipped learning and grading for growth, had written a different post about how a phys-ed basketball course he watches while exercising at the campus gym demonstrates “the teaching I aspire to.”
Those points are connected: Proponents of active learning often point to music and sports as illustrations of the way we learn through practice — not passively listening to an expert. I wanted to hear more. So I reached out to Talbert for an interview.
Talbert told me about music, which is his passion. He plays bass in a few different bands, and works hard at it. He described the difference between good practice — chipping away at the thing you can’t get right consistently quite yet — and bad practice — just repeating something you can already do.
Good practice can be a slog. But at its best, it becomes a process that is fulfilling in its own right, apart from the satisfaction of accomplishing something.
He told me about the phys-ed course. Talbert exercises at the same time that this class meets. While not particularly into basketball, he can tell that these novice players have made real progress throughout the term. And he’s seen how this has happened. Their instructor will sometimes pause to tell them something. But for the most part, they’re out there trying.
How, I wondered, does this all connect to his work teaching college students math? It probably isn’t most students’ passions — heck, math isn’t even Talbert’s passion. And they’re not starting at the very beginning, like those basketball students seem to have.
Still, Talbert thinks the same work that makes him a good bass player or a student a better basketball player applies as well in math — or any other academic discipline. The work of the instructor is to figure out, in very concrete terms, what students need to be able to do, and then give them a chance to practice — maybe together, and probably supervised — until they get it.
This, Talbert said, is why flipped learning works. It’s also why students don’t always like it. Practicing is work, and it can feel unpleasant.
But once students figure out how to do it, they can apply that same process to just about anything they want — or need — to learn, in college or later.
Talbert’s observations resonated with so much of what I hear talking to professors who are well informed and think hard about teaching and learning. But this is — still — not what colleges generally tell students they’re there to do. And while I’ve heard other professors talk about their work in these terms, I don’t think it’s how most view their role.
Do you think Talbert is right about teaching students to be experts at practicing? If so, what strategies do you use to that end in your courses? Let me know at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com and your ideas may be included in a future newsletter.
Encouraging reading
Beth and I know that many professors are noticing problems where students won’t — or can’t — do the expected reading. Recently, I asked readers to share strategies that have helped in your classes.
Jeff Carlson, a professor of theology at Dominican University, has found success with the social-annotation tool Perusall, which we’ve written about a few times before.
Using Perusall, Carlson wrote, “makes it more likely that they’ll do the reading if they’re being scored on every assignment, if peers are seeing and responding to what they write, if I am flagging key comments and calling on students in class to elaborate, and if I am bringing in new things precisely in response to what students are saying. Their questions and comments, they come to see, make a tangible difference in how the class sessions themselves are then conducted.”
Carlson does think his students are doing the reading. “The way the scoring is set up makes that more likely, but more than that, it’s the expectation that I’ll be highlighting student comments during class, and calling on students to further develop their ideas. There’s a nice combination of peer pressure and peer support. Lots of “upvoting” and quoting each other before responding, and the like. And they know they can elicit all kinds of things from me in response to good comments and questions. I end up putting lots of links to things within Perusall as I’m reading their annotations — things I want to point out during class, things I wouldn’t have thought to mention but for their comments. I constantly remind them that I’m presenting certain things because I’m reacting to them.
“Really, it’s kind of thrilling to read their annotations as they emerge between the end of one class and the start of the next. We do ‘cover’ the reading’s key points, but when I say in the syllabus that students are genuinely co-creating the course, I mean it.”
Laurie Weaver, a professor and program director in Studies in Language and Culture at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, wrote in to share a strategy she calls “Conversation Club.”
“This is restructuring of a strategy used in K-12 education called Literature Circle (I teach bilingual and ESL teacher-preparation courses, mostly at the undergraduate level. Classes meet for two hours 40 minutes once a week),” she wrote.
“I put the students into groups of five. This is their Conversation Club, and they will be with this group for the semester. There are five roles in the club: Questioner, Main Idea Master, Word Finder, Connector, and Passage Finder. There is a response sheet for each role. Every week, each student in the group has a different role. For example, a student’s role one week might be the Connector, and the next week that student’s role might be Passage Finder. They read the assigned reading for the week and respond on their role sheet. The Word Finder, for example, lists five to seven important vocabulary words and writes definitions in their own words. The Connector notes three to five ideas/words/phrases and writes a brief description of a Connection they have, etc.
“When class begins, they have ten minutes to come together in their Conversation Club. They discuss the reading based on what they wrote for their role. They then hand in their role sheet. The “grade” is whether they did their role sheet or not. Essentially, they get full credit for writing ideas on their role sheet and a zero for not doing anything on the role sheet. At the end of the semester, their Conversation Club grade is based on how many they completed. All completed = 100, all but one completed = 95, all but two completed = 85, etc.
“Once they have had an experience with all five roles, I then give them choices. I tell them they should choose the role that they think will best help them understand the reading, for example. Sometimes I tell them they can choose to respond to the reading however they want, but there must be something turned in.
“I have gotten good feedback about this activity. Students like that it holds them accountable for reading. They like the variety of response formats. They say they learn more about the topic when they discuss it with one another. The benefit for me is that when I then lead a discussion of the class topic, they have some background knowledge.”
Weaver says the activity works because the assigned readings are short, students are given a specific objective for the readings, and students discuss what they’ve read, deepening their understanding.
If you’ve seen success with other strategies for getting students to read, it’s not too late to share them: beckie.supiano@chronicle.com
Exit ticket
As another semester approaches its close, I’m wondering: What did you learn — about students, or your teaching — this term?
Did something new you tried in the classroom work out — or fail productively? Did something about this generation of students click in a new way? Have current events changed the way you view your work? Share any observations with me at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com for possible inclusion in a future newsletter.
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com or beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.
—Beckie
Learn more at our Teaching newsletter archive page.
