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They increased that output of the course, but they don't
increase the fairness of the course.
So that's another way, is to actually start using
the techniques that are known to be effective after doing
a little literature reading.
And the "J Chem Ed" provides a goldmine of stuff, as do many
disciplinary teaching journals.
So though often they're not well evaluated, they're often,
I did this and it worked, which is the first level
of Scholarship of Teaching.
And I wrote an article on why you should publish your
best teaching ideas in which I site two papers written by law
professors that turned out to be very helpful to me.
You never know who's going to find something useful.
So I'm in favor of it worked, and the evidence is I think some
of the students [unclear audio].
But those don't allow you to build up good hypotheses
[unclear audio] that easily.
Though, often they allow you to form a hypothesis
and gather the data.
Other questions, comments?
Yes, sir.
(female speaker). Do you have any advice
for dealing with students who have a resistance to active
learning strategies, becoming expectant to be lectured to?
(Dr. Nelson). Sorry, it used to be spring.
[audience laughter].
And I was having some spring fever, which is resulting
in a little bit of drainage.
We're going to do a bunch of that, or at least part
of that this afternoon.
One thing I should say is the reason I'm using active learning
strategies is because the literature shows that I can
teach twice or three times as much.
I'm not doing this as an arbitrary way.
It's going to increase your outcomes for whatever purpose.
The second is to use techniques that really work.
Including, one of the things students hate about
active learning is free riders.
So the question is how are you guaranteeing that everybody
does their work?
And that's often, the kind of thing faculty members leave out
are either how do you get every student prepared, how do you get
every student to participate usefully, or how do you ask
questions that are worth discussing?
If the answer's obvious to everybody, there's no point
in discussing it.
If the students are prepared there's no point in discussing
it and if they're not participating there's no point
in discussing it.
Was that any help?
And we'll probably do a little more, and you'll certainly have
a chance to ask more about this in each of the sections
this afternoon.
Are you going to be here this afternoon?
(female speaker). Yes.
(Dr. Nelson). Yeah, okay.
Yeah?
(male speaker). What if what you're interested
in measuring the effect of is the way you test?
(Dr. Nelson). And?
(male speaker). And?
(Dr. Nelson). How do you measure factors?
You always do two different treatments, right?
(male speaker). Okay, but if you're testing
one class one way and one another,
how are you going to compare them?
(Dr. Nelson). Because the class system
could be so different?
There are a variety of, first of all the question is how do you
design the test, what are you actually trying to get
the test to do?
Are you trying, what level is the test at?
And then you ask, you can ask how much more am I getting out
of what I'm doing than out of a multiple choice question
or vise versa?
There is a guy in microbiology at IU who was an expert
on writing multiple choice questions and argued that
they're so much better in assessment than essay questions
in biology.
And for trying to deduce whether the students understand
basic concepts and facts he might be right.
And I had him come into my teaching course and explain
how to do this.
We did this teaching course for three hours in the evening
so everybody could come.
So he did an hour of that, and then I did an hour
on how to write essay questions and do essay exams.
And he said, you know Craig, if everybody went about essay
questions the way you do, multiple choice wouldn't have
near the advantage it usually does.
And I said, yeah, well then if everybody put the thought into
writing multiple choice questions you do, essay
questions wouldn't have near the advantage they normally do.
And so you have to ask about what it is you're trying to do,
what you're trying to assess, fundamentally, in the course,
and once you've got that to match up with what you're trying
to do, what's the most powerful way to do it, and check
different ways of doing that and check whether they work.
Another way to put that is you can test and then have them come
in after they've answered the test, and require everybody
to come in for an oral exam.
And check whether the ones who seem to understand it
on the exam actually understood it.
(male speaker). So do a third method that
is the same for both the control and the [unclear audio].
(Dr. Nelson). Yeah, would be one way.
Oh, I finally understand the question.
Right, if you want to know which is the better assessment,
you have to have a way of assessing that, right?
Right, so you're, sorry, I gave it much more [unclear audio]
than I could have if I grasped the dilemma on the front end.
Yes, if you're doing it two ways, then you have to have a
check on them, unless you regard one as a check on the other.
Some people would regard whether you can write an essay about it
as a check on a multiple choice question.
But if that doesn't seem to be obvious in the material, then
you have to do something like an interview, or an application.
An application program would see if there's a difference in their
ability to do application problems.
And indeed in physics there's an assessment that I was
talking about earlier.
One of the ways they check that was with the student's ability
to use the concept to solve problems that were non-trivially
redundant with the ones that they'd memorized the equations
for, where you couldn't use the memorized equation
but if you understood the concept it was obvious.
And so that would be an application way, if you've got
the application lined up right.
And in the process you'll find out a whole lot about
all three things.
So that would be a fun, that would likely be an important
project to do both in terms of refining your own teaching
and likely generating ideas about how to do both kinds
of assessment better, or maybe all three kinds
of assessment better.
So that sounds like the start of a really interesting project.
Yes?
(female speaker). You're talking about
your sole experiences.
What role did the Education Department play in interacting
with, assisting, encouraging, prodding other departments?
Was that an administrative thing, how did that come about?
(Dr. Nelson). The Education School played
approximately the same role as many of the other departments,
a source of some examples.
One of the problems, there have been two problems with
our school event, and that is that they're primary expertise
is pre-K through 10.
And the literature on college teaching is actually developed
independently of the literature the School of Education
pays attention to.
So the people in science ed actually learned about Perry's
book when their graduate students took my course
in evolution--which counted as an in-school course because
of the pedagogies I was using and the importance of the issue
perhaps--and then took it back to the department.