This step can be thought of as the same as or similar to the first blog in the series on gathering information to create in-class support structures. What we are trying to do now is to collect information to integrate the support structures in the second blog (help papers and videos) to become the primary workings of the class. Systems like Cengage, which was used in my physics class, already allow us to implement parts of, if not all of, these steps.
How you can edit assignments – the most essential part of this step is understanding how to edit assignments to resemble the help papers created in the prior blog. Students want:
- The ability to make accordion problems – These problems are broken down step by step. This helps the student focus on the process of the question.
- The ability to have the students explain their answers – This helps them understand the reasoning for a step, and pushes them to engage critically with the work.
- The ability to explain a wrong answer – The best learning environments are the ones that are hard, but also forgiving. The more mistakes a student makes, the more opportunities they have to fill in the holes of their understanding of a given topic, pushing them to mastery.
- The ability to give redos – The ability to come back from mistakes keeps the student engaged and allows the student to implement what they learned from their mistakes. Without an opportunity to redo, students may fear failure instead of seeing it as a chance to learn from and try again.
- Create practice assignments – This is more for test preparation, but provides a means for students to get hands on practice with the ideas presented. Ideally, this practice would happen in class at different times where instructors are readily available to students for feedback as they work through the problems.
If your system does not have all of the above, we should focus on how we can work with the system to have these points. If we can’t, we should look to remove and replace the system. If I use the example of my physics class, its system of choice is Cengage. This system allows instructors to go in and edit the way the questions are given, how the feedback on a given question is provided, along with other tools to create a robust learning environment for students.
The specifics surrounding how we integrate student supports from the second blog post into the broader classroom would have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis. Once there is a clear understanding of a system in a way where we can integrate the ideas from the second blog, we can move on to reorganizing the class structure.
Written by Rick, an undergraduate student at UWM.
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Relevant CETL Teaching and Learning Resources and Research
The ideas presented in this blog post align with the approach of scaffolding assignments, course content, and subsequently student learning with proven benefits to increase student engagement and deeper learning (see Simons & Klein, 2006; Erdil, 2017). Additional resources may be found in the K. Patricia Cross Academy video library which includes a variety of teaching technique videos. Faculty are able to filter and sort through the resources by teaching environment, activity type, teaching problem addressed, and learning taxonomy dimension.