Miscellaneous FAQ

How do You Define Good Teaching?

There has been much research conducted on this question, much of which attempts to discover the characteristics associated with good teaching. We have three definitions, presented here in order of complexity.

  1. A good teacher is someone who always has a back-up plan in mind.
  2. “Hardness of the head and softness of the heart” is how someone else described it (Goldsmid, Gruber, and Wilson, 1977). We take this to mean that a good teacher not only intellectually challenges students, but also supports the students in their efforts at learning. There are many ways to support students, but they all begin by taking the viewpoint of the learner: from being available for individual coaching to explicitly teaching the skills students need to successfully complete the course. Teachers err when they over-emphasize either the challenge or the support.
  3. The following is a more specific list of the characteristics of effective teaching:
    • organized and clear
    • challenges students to think
    • dynamic and enthusiastic
    • knowledgeable about subject matter
    • interacts respectfully and accessibly with individual students
    • manages classroom interactions to promote learning.

Why is Active Learning Important?

Active learning helps to overcome attention problems. Also, Delivee Wright of the Teaching and Learning Center at University of Nebraska—Lincoln says that support for active learning depends on two basic assumptions:

  1. that learning is by nature an active endeavor, and
  2. that different people learn in different ways.

On the basis of these assumptions, it follows that:

…first, students learn best when applying subject matter—in other words, learning by doing—and, second, that teachers who rely exclusively on any one instructional approach often fail to get through to significant numbers of students. As a result, both teachers and students end up dissatisfied. By increasing active learning strategies in our teaching, we increase the odds that students will leave our classrooms with more than a notebook full of “facts.” Research does demonstrate that when we use information (for example, rehearse it or solve problems with it), we are more likely to retain it (Bransford, 1979). And when we involve students in activities that lead them to discuss, question, clarify, and write about course content, we not only foster better retention of subject matter but help expand students’ thinking abilities as well (Myers and Jones, 1993, pp. xi–xii).

References

Myers, Chet and Thomas B. Jones. (1993). Promoting Active Learning: Strategies for the College Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Wright, Delivee L. (1993, November). “Active Learning: Rationale and Strategies.” Teaching at UNL, 15.3.

How can I get Students to Come to Office Hours?

Several people have told us that they have been trying to get students to come talk to them. Speaking to students one-on-one serves several important functions: you find out what they understand and what they don’t, they get their questions answered, they feel like you care about them and their learning, and you can help them learn how to study for your class. But none of this can happen if the students do not take the initiative to come.

Here are some of the innovative things that IU instructors are doing, to make their office hours more attactive and productive:

Let us know if you do something else that works well for you!

What are Students Thinking?

There are several ways to answer this important question. A general answer is that students often have enough time on their hands, even as they sit in class and listen, to think about several things at the same time. None of us puts 100 percent of our attention to a lecture for long periods of time. Instead, attention waxes and wanes.

We also know that students have seven developmental tasks they are working on during the college years: achieving intellectual, physical, and social competence; managing emotions; becoming autonomous; establishing identity; managing interpersonal relationships; clarifying purpose; and developing integrity (Chickering, 1969). At times, students are probably thinking about these other things, rather than about purely intellectual pursuits.

But good teachers will also want to know a more specific answer. In fact, a set of techniques has been developed to get at the question, “What are students thinking?” They are called Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs), and were developed by Angelo and Cross (1993). There are many varied CATs that can be used. The most important thing is that they are quick to use, easy to interpret, and provide a wealth of information about our students’ thinking, so we can have a better idea of what is going on with our students.

Using a CAT is a little like asking a research question. Is there something you would like to know about your specific students in your specific course? CATs can get at:

CATs are feedback devices to help us determine how much, how well, and simply how our students learn. CIC staff can help you identify the question you would like to ask about your students’ learning and adapt a CAT to your topic. Many faculty on the Bloomington campus are beginning to use them regularly. You can learn more about CATs at the Assess Student Learning page.

References

Angelo, T. A., and Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom Assessment Techniques: A handbook for college teachers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Chickering, A. (1969). Education and identity. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

How can I Encourage Classroom Attendance?

Richard Myers of St. Thomas University (New Brunswick) has published a very useful suggestion:

Many students have trouble making the transition from the controlled environment of high school to the hands-off approach of the modern university. Some simply don’t have the maturity to get themselves into the classroom when no one is forcing them to go. In many cases, by the time of the first exam, frequently absent students are too far behind to salvage their grade in the course. To deal with this problem, instructors often consider adopting a class attendance policy.

A class attendance policy will work only if it has teeth. Some of my colleagues base a certain percentage of the student’s grade on attendance—come to every class and you get whatever that percentage is. But this approach suffers from two problems.

First, many instructors (including me) feel awkward about giving out grades to students for just showing up. Second, when students lose points for missing class, they begin to petition the instructor to excuse certain absences. (Did you or did you not have the flu?)

After a few years of experimenting with different policies, I have developed a new approach that seems to work quite well.

The Answer: Questions

The course outline that the students receive in September contains a list of about a hundred questions, two or three for each class meeting. These questions are designed to prepare students for class by guiding them through their daily reading assignment. For example, if we are working on chapter 13 of Hobbes’ Leviathan, one question would be, “Why, according to Hobbes, is life in the state of nature ‘solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short?’ Do you agree or disagree?”

These questions give me a useful tool for promoting class attendance. Whenever a student misses a class, my policy is to have him or her submit a 350-word answer to one of the study questions assigned for that day. I refer to this exercise as a “catch-up assignment.” As the label suggests, the point of the exercise is not to punish students for being absent, but to help them keep caught up with the course.

How much work does the system create for the instructor? Not a terrible amount. I do not grade the assignments. I do not even return them. I merely look them over to ensure that the student is “in the ballpark” and then note that the assignment has been done. The process takes very little of my time.

The system has a number of advantages. In the first place, it does what it promises to do: It gives the students an opportunity to ensure that they stay caught up with their work. Instead of merely penalizing absences, it works to offset them.

Moreover, it appears to be a highly effective means of encouraging classroom attendance. (Just last week, a student told me that the prospect of writing a “catch-up assignment” prevented him from staying in his dorm to watch The Return of the Jedi.)

Finally, the system frees me of the need to evaluate excuses. Because the system rests on the objective of keeping student caught up, it makes no difference why a student is not in class. Even those who have been in the hospital for a couple of weeks will do “catch-up assignments” to get themselves back into the flow of the course.

Adapted from Myers, R. (1996). Dealing with the attendance problem. The Teaching Professor, March 1996, 7.

How Can I Help Students Feel Less Anxious about Making Presentations?

We asked Professor Michael Tansey to help us answer this question. He writes that his students fear presentations because they believe the feedback will be embarrassing. He has tried to solve this problem with a handout which discusses the nature of feedback and provides them with a vivid example of a presentation that was poorly received at first:

Evaluation of Evaluation

You will receive evaluations of your seminar presentation, from fellow students and from your instructor. These evaluations are intended to be helpful and constructive. Experience suggests, however, that occasional comments on evaluation forms might hurt your feelings or discourage you. As you gain experience, you will learn to discount some comments as being unfair or inaccurate. Other negative comments might be valid and temporarily distressing, but you will learn to value them because they help you identify correctable faults in your preparation and presentation; you will learn to be grateful for accurate pinpointing of your imperfections. But sometimes it just plain hurts to see negative criticism—valid or invalid, helpful or not—and that’s human nature. It might provide you some solace to see evidence that not all speakers are immediately perceived by their audience as excellent, not all messages get through clearly, not all thoughtful work is fully appreciated at the moment. You cannot be all things to all people at all times, and your best efforts today might go unappreciated until tomorrow.

Here are some published comments by journalists describing a well known speaker and a specific presentation he made. You might read these comments before looking at the last line which identifies the speaker and his presentation. If you feel unfairly wronged and unappreciated by your evaluators, consider yourself in good company.

Published Comments about a Speaker and His Speech, from Newspapers of the Time:

The presentation described above was Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address!

Michael R. Tansey is an Associate Professor of Biology at Indiana University—Bloomington. He is the 1996 recipient of the Weston Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Mycological Society of America.

References:

Highet, G. (1965). In Bosmajian, H.A., ed., Readings in Speech. Harper & Row, N.Y., pp. 240–247.

Reid, R.F. (1967). Quarterly Journal of Speech, 53: 50–60.

Warnick, B. (1987). Western Journal of Speech Communication, 51: 227–244.

Wiley, E.W. (1956). Speech Monographs, 23: 1-8.

How Do I Respond when Students Give a Wrong Answer?

Responding appropriately to wrong answers may be as important as encouraging correct answers. Incorrect answers tell us something about a student’s understanding (or lack of it) or about a problem the student is having. Our wording, tone, and body language can encourage students to take the risk of answering a question in class. Here are twelve ways to respond to answers.

  1. “What do you mean by…?”
  2. “Can you give me an example?”
  3. “All of your answer depends on the idea that…”
  4. “Why did you base your answers in this rather than…?”
  5. “What are your reasons for saying this?”
  6. “Can you be more specific?”
  7. “Let me see if I understand you. Do you mean…?”
  8. “Could you explain your answer further?”
  9. “Can you rephrase your answer?”
  10. “What I heard you say is… Is that what you meant?”
  11. “Pattie, do you agree with the answer Bruce just gave?”
  12. “Let me rephrase the question. Now, what do you think?”

It is important to use these same responses for correct answers sometimes, so they don’t become “code” for “wrong.” The way we respond to any student answer can either invite further discussion or simply put our stamp of approval of what we think are the right answers. By that, we mean that our approval or disapproval can be a thinly disguised, “Here’s what I think the right answer is,” rather than, “Have you students been thinking deeply about this?”

Adapted from Paul, R. (1993). Critical Thinking: How to Prepare Students for a Rapidly Changing World. Santa Rosa, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking.