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Observation 1: You can’t please everyone. Observation 2: If you can prepare something detailed in writing in advance, it’s more efficient to just give it to th

Observation 1: You can’t please everyone. Observation 2: If you can prepare something detailed in writing in advance, it’s more efficient to just give it to the students in advance and let them read or view it on their own time. Observation 3: Interactive discussions are the one thing that classrooms are optimized for. Don’t stop the prep work. But if you can lead classroom discussions with safe cold calling, the students with get more out of it. Don’t worry about capturing the results. You could record it, but it’s the process of struggling and discussing that creates learning. Written artifacts are supplementary. I commend you for both teaching, and for caring enough about your craft to ask for help. The Lifetime value your students can get is enormous.

kevmo 8y ago
+1 for cold-calling. What is "safe" cold-calling?
- therein 8y ago
  It's of course the kind of cold-calling where you will never have to worry about type-safety or memory-safety. You will never endure a dangling pointer, a use-after-free, or any other kind of Undefined Behavior.
- sdenton4 8y ago
  I find it better to develop strategies for 'safe' handling of student input than to resort to cold calling. If a student feels embarrassed because of a response, then not only will they never raise their hand again, but neither will anyone else. The best way to do this is to try to identify the good part or motivation in a student's statement, regardless of anything wrong that might be in there too. Provide positive reinforcement on that part, and then turn the question back to the group again, with that extra foothold that the first student provided. Example: Me: "If we wanted to look at every relationship between these objects pairs of these objects, how many relationships would we have? Student A: "N squared!" Me: "Sure that's a good start; there's N squared possible two-ples you can form. But I think you may be overcounting a bit; can anyone suggest a way to cut it down?" Student B: "You don't need to pair objects with themselves." Me: "Great; so how many are we at, then? Student B: "N^2 - N". Me: "Awesome; I feel like we can still cut it down more. Any more ideas? Anyone want to try a small example?" etc etc... --- Other bits of advice that come back to me with some writing: * Provide seeds for ideas, and let the students fill out the flesh. * Keep the conversation moving around the room. Try to engage a variety of voices. * Provide at least some positive feedback for everyone who participates. Modulate for effect: eg, bigger praise for more complete, well communicated answers, or for people contributing for the first time. * If the Super Student blurts out the final answer, take it back to the class and ask if anyone can explain it in more detail. * Choose good questions. It's easy to ask a question that only you know the answer to... Mix up easy and hard questions, and use the easy questions as a way to 'onboard' quieter students. Do it well, and there's always going to be enough hands to avoid cold calling. If I genuinely get no hands on a question, it generally means I've asked a bad question; rephrase and ask again. (And on day one, I have a dumb joke where I have everyone "raise your hand if you have a hand" and then do 'reverse' hand raising...)
  - bpye 8y ago
    In my experience, as recent student in the UK, even with that style of questioning people are reluctant to give answers. Certainly it is better than some lecturers that will just pick on people to ask though.
    - sdenton4 8y ago
      Totally. There's a relationship between the teacher and the classroom, and the students come in with a lot of expectations based on prior classes, too. A big part of the job is building and maintaining that relationship, and changing the expectations in your classroom.
  - degrews 8y ago
    > The best way to do this is to try to identify the good part or motivation in a student's statement, regardless of anything wrong that might be in there too Your example sounds very reasonable to me, but do you think that this is ever taken too far? Coming to the US as a student from Europe (not the UK), I noticed that some instructors (mostly TAs) took this effort to give a "positive" response to any answer in class to quite an extreme. I can think of many instances where a student's answer showed a very serious lack of understanding, and the instructor would say something like "okay, that would be one way to think about it, but how about... " without every correcting the student. Two negative consequences I saw were 1) a lot of missed opportunities for correcting students' misunderstandings 2) students seemed overly sensitive to any kind criticism (I had a German friend who was a TA and had quite a bit of trouble with this) Again, none of this is incompatible with your advice, I just wanted to take the opportunity to see if anyone has noticed this as a common problem.
    - hueving 8y ago
      Yes, there is a risk there. You need to make sure that you put some phrase in there indicating that the student's answer wasn't really right. Just saying "that's one way to think about it" without clarifying that it's not quite correct for reason X will definitely do more damage than good. The trick is telling them they're wrong without making it sound like you are calling them stupid.
- mathattack 8y ago
  It means there’s no shame for a wrong answer. You aren’t grading the response. (I’ve seen classes where participation grades were based on getting facts correct rather than group discussion)
philip1209 8y ago
One of my favorite classes in college was a physics course taught in this way: 1. Before class, we were assigned to read a chapter from the textbook, understand the material, and complete two or three homework problems from the material we had just self-learned. 2. After submitting homework, lectures focused on discussing the concepts more in-depth. Everybody already had a baseline knowledge, so the professor would highlight the important takeaways, applications, live demonstrations of concepts, etc. I found these lectures engaging because I had already learned the material - and the lectures focused on mastering it. 3. Sometimes there would be follow-up homework problems focusing on advanced applications or derivations. These advanced problems were closest to exam questions. Some takeaways for me: - If we didn't have homework to do before class, I doubt I would have consistently learned the material before lecture. - Lectures taught us more than the "what" - it taught us the "why" and how these concepts related to other areas. - Lectures focused on answering questions, exploring curiosities (like "what if" questions), demonstrations/experiments, and mastery. The professor added value beyond the written material! I hope this helps OP because it sounds like they have material prepared beforehand, which means that the lectures could go beyond the material.
- geophile 8y ago
  Hey, mathattack and philip1209, those are really useful points of view, thank you.
- blt 8y ago
  I like this model, but it puts a huge workload on the TA to help with questions about the homework, since the students don't get to hear the professor explain the material until after.
  - jayrwren 8y ago
    if a student can't learn from a book, the have to first learn to learn from a book.
- dyarosla 8y ago
  This method sounds appealing and reasonable. My question would be- did you have a good sense of how many of your peers did in fact do the homework ahead of class- my instinctual fear is that due to this ‘different approach’ many students may not be bothered to do this?

kevmo 8y ago

+1 for cold-calling. What is "safe" cold-calling?

therein 8y ago
It's of course the kind of cold-calling where you will never have to worry about type-safety or memory-safety. You will never endure a dangling pointer, a use-after-free, or any other kind of Undefined Behavior.
sdenton4 8y ago
I find it better to develop strategies for 'safe' handling of student input than to resort to cold calling. If a student feels embarrassed because of a response, then not only will they never raise their hand again, but neither will anyone else. The best way to do this is to try to identify the good part or motivation in a student's statement, regardless of anything wrong that might be in there too. Provide positive reinforcement on that part, and then turn the question back to the group again, with that extra foothold that the first student provided. Example: Me: "If we wanted to look at every relationship between these objects pairs of these objects, how many relationships would we have? Student A: "N squared!" Me: "Sure that's a good start; there's N squared possible two-ples you can form. But I think you may be overcounting a bit; can anyone suggest a way to cut it down?" Student B: "You don't need to pair objects with themselves." Me: "Great; so how many are we at, then? Student B: "N^2 - N". Me: "Awesome; I feel like we can still cut it down more. Any more ideas? Anyone want to try a small example?" etc etc... --- Other bits of advice that come back to me with some writing: * Provide seeds for ideas, and let the students fill out the flesh. * Keep the conversation moving around the room. Try to engage a variety of voices. * Provide at least some positive feedback for everyone who participates. Modulate for effect: eg, bigger praise for more complete, well communicated answers, or for people contributing for the first time. * If the Super Student blurts out the final answer, take it back to the class and ask if anyone can explain it in more detail. * Choose good questions. It's easy to ask a question that only you know the answer to... Mix up easy and hard questions, and use the easy questions as a way to 'onboard' quieter students. Do it well, and there's always going to be enough hands to avoid cold calling. If I genuinely get no hands on a question, it generally means I've asked a bad question; rephrase and ask again. (And on day one, I have a dumb joke where I have everyone "raise your hand if you have a hand" and then do 'reverse' hand raising...)
- bpye 8y ago
  In my experience, as recent student in the UK, even with that style of questioning people are reluctant to give answers. Certainly it is better than some lecturers that will just pick on people to ask though.
  - sdenton4 8y ago
    Totally. There's a relationship between the teacher and the classroom, and the students come in with a lot of expectations based on prior classes, too. A big part of the job is building and maintaining that relationship, and changing the expectations in your classroom.
- degrews 8y ago
  > The best way to do this is to try to identify the good part or motivation in a student's statement, regardless of anything wrong that might be in there too Your example sounds very reasonable to me, but do you think that this is ever taken too far? Coming to the US as a student from Europe (not the UK), I noticed that some instructors (mostly TAs) took this effort to give a "positive" response to any answer in class to quite an extreme. I can think of many instances where a student's answer showed a very serious lack of understanding, and the instructor would say something like "okay, that would be one way to think about it, but how about... " without every correcting the student. Two negative consequences I saw were 1) a lot of missed opportunities for correcting students' misunderstandings 2) students seemed overly sensitive to any kind criticism (I had a German friend who was a TA and had quite a bit of trouble with this) Again, none of this is incompatible with your advice, I just wanted to take the opportunity to see if anyone has noticed this as a common problem.
  - hueving 8y ago
    Yes, there is a risk there. You need to make sure that you put some phrase in there indicating that the student's answer wasn't really right. Just saying "that's one way to think about it" without clarifying that it's not quite correct for reason X will definitely do more damage than good. The trick is telling them they're wrong without making it sound like you are calling them stupid.
mathattack 8y ago
It means there’s no shame for a wrong answer. You aren’t grading the response. (I’ve seen classes where participation grades were based on getting facts correct rather than group discussion)

philip1209 8y ago

One of my favorite classes in college was a physics course taught in this way: 1. Before class, we were assigned to read a chapter from the textbook, understand the material, and complete two or three homework problems from the material we had just self-learned. 2. After submitting homework, lectures focused on discussing the concepts more in-depth. Everybody already had a baseline knowledge, so the professor would highlight the important takeaways, applications, live demonstrations of concepts, etc. I found these lectures engaging because I had already learned the material - and the lectures focused on mastering it. 3. Sometimes there would be follow-up homework problems focusing on advanced applications or derivations. These advanced problems were closest to exam questions. Some takeaways for me: - If we didn't have homework to do before class, I doubt I would have consistently learned the material before lecture. - Lectures taught us more than the "what" - it taught us the "why" and how these concepts related to other areas. - Lectures focused on answering questions, exploring curiosities (like "what if" questions), demonstrations/experiments, and mastery. The professor added value beyond the written material! I hope this helps OP because it sounds like they have material prepared beforehand, which means that the lectures could go beyond the material.

geophile 8y ago
Hey, mathattack and philip1209, those are really useful points of view, thank you.
blt 8y ago
I like this model, but it puts a huge workload on the TA to help with questions about the homework, since the students don't get to hear the professor explain the material until after.
- jayrwren 8y ago
  if a student can't learn from a book, the have to first learn to learn from a book.
dyarosla 8y ago
This method sounds appealing and reasonable. My question would be- did you have a good sense of how many of your peers did in fact do the homework ahead of class- my instinctual fear is that due to this ‘different approach’ many students may not be bothered to do this?