Engaging Students in Learning

Objectives

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Methods to Engage Students

The strategies listed in this section can help engage students in learning. Most of the suggestions below are from the “Large FAQ” of the Schreyer Institute, where there are many suggestions from faculty on how to involve students in learning, useful whether your classes are large or small. See the complete FAQ at http://www.psu.edu/celt/largeclass/lcfaq.shtml (used with permission).

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Structure ANGEL Discussions to Increase Preparedness for In-Class Discussions

Below is a sample ANGEL message board. See the “Course Communication” documentation in ANGEL’s online help section to learn more about creating and using message boards. To learn more about managing student communication, select the “Teaching Using ANGEL” link in ANGEL’s online help section.

Sample ANGEL message board

Following are some examples from the Schreyer Institute’s “Large FAQ,” each followed by an ANGEL solution.

• “Hat Trick.” Select eight to ten student names at random from your class list and ask those present to work as a team to come up with questions for the class (or the instructor) based on the day’s assigned reading. They print each question on a slip of paper and put the slips into a hat. The team gets points for every question related to the assigned reading that students and/or the instructor could not answer.

ANGEL: Rotate responsibility for question creation among ANGEL teams. Have students submit these questions via an ANGEL message board. You may use the questions in class or on a quiz.

• “Hot Seat.” Select one student or a panel of students to be in the hot seat. Anyone can ask them questions about the assignment, and they get points for every question they can answer.

ANGEL: Use a message board so that students can see the questions previously asked and answered. Set up clear guidelines for the type of questions, how long before questions should be answered, the number of questions from each student, and what the hot seat students do if they cannot answer a question.

• “Planting the Audience.” At the beginning of the semester, take individual students aside as they are leaving the classroom and say, “Next class I’m going to call on you and ask you this question.” The student then prepares a thorough response to that question. When the rest of the students hear the quality of this response, they infer that everyone else is coming to class as well prepared and begin to do the same in order to keep up. According to the teacher who offered this idea, the tactic establishes a high standard for both homework and class participation. As the semester progresses, he no longer finds it necessary to use these student “plants.”

ANGEL: Contact a couple students by e-mail. Assign them each a question to answer. Rotate through the class alphabetically. Keep track of who is responsible by making notes in ANGEL.

• Some faculty post participation questions to their course Web site before class and give bonus points to those who answer correctly during class.

ANGEL: Faculty can post questions in an ANGEL course quickly by adding a page in the “Lessons” area. Use these questions as a basis for discussion.

• Use the lecture to fill in the missing pieces from the reading, clarify confusing material, correct wrong or outdated information, propose alternative theories or approaches, and/or provide meaningful contexts.

ANGEL: Assign students (or rotate among students) to ask questions about the assignment and place their questions into a discussion thread using an ANGEL message board. Review the questions prior to class to adjust in-class work. Alternatively, a teaching assistant or another student in the class can be responsible for answering questions.

• One faculty member suggested creating a FAQ on your class Web site and posting both questions and answers there to minimize time spent answering electronic questions from students. Each semester, you can add to or subtract from this list as needed.

ANGEL: Have students submit questions to an ANGEL message board. Other students, teaching assistants, or the course instructor may answer questions.

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Involve Students in Learning by Using Quizzes

Below is a sample ANGEL quiz. See the “Quizzes, Surveys, Drop Boxes, and Grading” documentation in ANGEL’s online help section to learn more about creating and using quizzes.

Sample ANGEL quiz

Following are some examples from the Schreyer Institute’s “Large FAQ,” each followed by an ANGEL solution.

• Provide a set of questions to guide students in their reading. The kinds of questions you ask can show students the difference between reading to locate specific information, skimming for main ideas, and doing a close reading for the purpose of textual analysis.

ANGEL: Put these questions into a quiz that must be completed prior to class. Use the “Advanced” mode when creating the quiz to set a start and end date and time. As time permits, develop a large pool of questions by having students suggest questions.

• Have students take quizzes as a means of helping students do readings and other homework, assess their own understanding of key concepts, and practice for hard-copy exams. Another alternative is to give small group quizzes.

ANGEL: Assign quizzes to ANGEL teams. Have one student submit for the team.

• Some Professors administer open-book, out-of-class quizzes that target the things they want their students to get out of the assigned reading. They make these available online for a given time prior to class and take them down just before class begins. You can limit students to one try or let them take the quiz several times, counting only the last score.

ANGEL: Use the “Advanced” mode when creating quizzes to set a start and end date and time. You may also specify how many times students may take the quiz using the “Max Attempts” setting.

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Involve Students in Learning by Using Drop Boxes

Below is a sample ANGEL drop box. See the “Quizzes, Surveys, Drop Boxes, and Grading” documentation in ANGEL’s online help section to learn more about creating and using drop boxes.

Sample ANGEL drop box

Following are some examples from the Schreyer Institute’s “Large FAQ,” each followed by an ANGEL solution.

• Assign and collect homework (one reading-based problem will do) from all or a random selection of your students. Require that it be typed, so that students cannot copy from each other in the hall just before class begins.

ANGEL: Have students use a drop box to upload a file with answers to very focused questions. Any help students get from their friends may benefit their learning. You may choose whether or not to set the drop box to “peer review,” depending on your learning goals.

• Require students to submit a question based on the reading prior to or at the beginning of class, and give them credit for doing so. Also give extra credit for questions of extraordinary quality.

ANGEL: Have students submit questions to a drop box. Use the “Advanced” mode when creating drop boxes to set a start and end date and time.

• Many faculty require that students keep reading logs, and they collect these several times during the semester. To make the process of giving credit manageable in a large class, some use a simple check/plus/minus technique, while others divide the effort by giving written feedback only to a different subset of students each time.

ANGEL: Create a drop box for journals or logs. You could create a drop box for each student (or student team) and check more often on students who are not as self-motivated. Use the ANGEL “WhoDunIt” agent to track who has and has not used the drop box and the “Milestones” tool to check on progress.

• Ask students to submit, as homework, exam questions based on that day’s reading. Promise to use a certain number or percentage of these questions on large exams. Students could get credit for submitting any reasonable question (and answer). If you use the question on the exam, the student who submitted it will get credit again, assuming he or she remembers the answer!

ANGEL: Use this method to help create a large pool of questions. Have students submit questions to a drop box. Quizzes, automatically graded in ANGEL, can be used to prepare students for exams.

• Administer some kind of understanding check at the end of class to get feedback. The most popular example is the “minute paper,” which usually consists of two questions: “What was the most important thing you learned in today’s session?” and “What did you find most confusing or unclear?” An interesting variation is to give a “minute problem” that requires students to apply some key concept that has just been covered. A portion or all of these are collected, read, and used to plan the next session.

ANGEL: Use a drop box for one-minute papers to get feedback. Use the ANGEL “Advanced” mode to set a start and end time. Rotate this assignment among students.

• Give a reading-based “minute paper” at the beginning of class, rather than a lecture-based one at the end: (1) the most important thing you got out of the reading, and (2) the most important question the reading failed to answer.

ANGEL: Provide clear and specific guidelines and have students submit a very short paper to a drop box. Use this method as many times as appropriate during the course. Use a separate drop box for each topic.

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Facilitate and Monitor Teamwork

Below is the ANGEL “Teams Editor” screen showing sample teams. See the “Student Management” documentation in ANGEL’s online help section to learn more about creating and monitoring ANGEL teams.

“Teams Editor” screen

Following are some examples from the Schreyer Institute’s “Large FAQ,” each followed by an ANGEL solution.

• For case studies or any other group problem-solving activity to be successful, students must be prepared for the activity ahead of time and must understand how to tie it back to course objectives once they have completed it. For example, one faculty member gives an individual writing assignment prior to asking students to work in groups on a related problem so that the transition to group activities is gradual. Another gives a “prepare quiz” to make sure students understand the goals and procedures for the upcoming group project. Some of the integration of group problem-solving and course objectives can be done on a course Web page and through discussion via a class list.

ANGEL: Students can submit individual writing assignments to a drop box. If these assignments are the basis for a group project, faculty can help to guide input to the team project.

• Invite student groups or partners to present the assigned reading and lead the class in discussion (they can use questions you provide as a start). Although only a small fraction of the class gets to present, many more are willing to participate when their peers take the lead.

ANGEL: Student teams can use their ANGEL team space to prepare for in-class discussion.

• Create small ad hoc groups (or pairs) that work in class on a focused question, problem, or exercise; this gives students an opportunity to interact and really become engaged with the material, and it also gives them a needed lecture break. Those with recitation sections sometimes assign the group problems there, and then hear reports in the lecture. Another variation is to have group members play various roles as they debate a given claim or issue.

ANGEL: Assign questions or problems to ANGEL teams. Have team members play various roles, if you wish. Review the teamwork.

• Arthur Anderson (Architecture) gives “take-home” problems that require students to answer questions about the design of various structures within walking distance of campus. Ideally, the student would need to both visit the sites and draw from reading and lecture materials to successfully answer these questions.

ANGEL: Use ANGEL teams so that students can review each other’s work. Have students drop their first draft into an ANGEL drop box with “peer review” enabled (“Advanced” mode). Students can do several drafts. The instructor can review interim drafts or only the final draft.

Below is a sample ANGEL course roster.

 

Class roster

Following are some examples from the Schreyer Institute’s “Large FAQ,” each followed by an ANGEL solution.

• Give students a variety of reading assignments and/or content-related examples (local, state, national, and international) whenever possible. For example, if you teach art appreciation, consider including more non-Western artists than textbooks or previous syllabi do.

ANGEL: You can link to any resources that are on the Web.

• Help students see the relevance of what they are learning. For example, if one of your labs is relevant to a community issue or enterprise, bring in an article from a local paper and ask students to analyze it from various perspectives: scientific, ethical, and socioeconomic.

ANGEL: Perhaps arrange for your students (or a subset of students) to discuss the article with an author or the subjects in the article, who you add as guests in your course.

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Include Diverse Resources in your Class

Below are sample links added to ANGEL. From ANGEL you can link to any Web page—whether it is a page you created in ANGEL or a page you have found in your searches of the Web.

Links that provide diverse resources

Following are examples from the Schreyer Institute’s “Large FAQ,” each followed by an ANGEL solution.

• Conduct demonstrations that involve all or a subset of your students. For example, passing a lead brick and a plastic brick of the same dimensions around the classroom during the first part of a lecture and then asking students for a comparison to introduce the concept of density. Mathematics - use a Java applet showing triangles that make up a hexagon. Ask students to explain the value of pi to two, three, four, five, etc. decimal places. As you enter each response, the hexagon increasingly resembles a real circle.

ANGEL: Link to online simulations, tutorials, and any other Web-based resources that are valuable to your students. However, continue to use in-class interactive demonstrations.

• Case studies: Rather than using case studies of the Harvard Business School variety, many teachers employ such things as video scenarios, brief narratives, students’ own experiences, newspaper articles, mechanical design snags, graphs, and even data sets to help students apply difficult concepts to real-world problems. For example, a single case can be used in conjunction with a related data set to show that while the data may support a particular theory, that theory may be difficult to apply in the single instance.

ANGEL: You can use any type of Web-based resource during class if your classroom has a computer and Internet connection. You or your students can download or upload videos, narratives, designs, graphs, data sets, and more.

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Managing and Assessing Online Activities

Below are a few introductory ideas on managing and assessing online activities. These should help allay concern about the potential multitude of items to grade, lengthy student discussions to read, too much time online, and so on. Determine which traditional activity or homework can be eliminated as you add online activities.

• Provide very clear and specific guidelines.
• Grade only a portion of the online activities. However, make certain that credit is given for participation.
• Have students summarize the activities of student teams.
• Use peer review methods so that students help each other.
• Use message boards as “study groups.”
• Have student “leaders for the week” answer questions and only send questions they cannot answer to faculty.
• Monitor each team periodically rather than monitoring all team discussions and drafts.
• Require that students report periodically on the quality of their teamwork.

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Resources

Informationabout ANGEL

Who can I contact to ask for support, report problems, or send comments and suggestions?
Please contact angelsupport@yu.edu

As I develop a course, how can I get help in context?
On any editing or settings screen, select the underlined label of a field. A small window will open displaying helpful information about that field.

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