In-class activities: When the students come to class they sit in groups of 4 or 5. We provide power for their web enabled devices and a whiteboard. Figure 1 shows a typical class. Students are given activities via a bring-your-own-device clicker system. We use LearningCataltics.com, a tool developed by the Mazur group that was recently purchased by Pearson Publishing. Any device that has a web browser can use the tool. We deliver questions to the students, first individually, and then as a group. We ask the students to do the problems or derivations on their whiteboards so our instructional team (faculty member, grad students, instructional aides) can see which groups are getting it and which are not. Then we deploy staff to help where needed. What is nice about Learning Catalytics is that they offer question types that go far beyond most other systems, including questions where students draw their answer, put a dot on a figure, draw a vector (length and direction), provide an expression (parsed by the code to give credit to identical correct forms), as well as the traditional clicker type questions (multiple choice, multiple selection, numerical answers, etc.).
The questions are based on the learning objectives for the legacy lecture notes used for this class in the past. Most lectures consist of definitions, derivations, concepts, and examples. Sometimes there are demonstrations and even experiments done in classes. We reproduce all of these except that the students do it instead of the professor. Because the students have all read the book via Perusall.com, we do not have to spend much time on definitions and even on derivations. Hence, we spend most of the class on activities that push us higher up Bloom’s Taxonomy. The groups do example problems to warm up, and then move to an estimation exercise and finally to a higher level question that forces them out of their comfort zone. This last type of question is very difficult to write. We try to find at least one question per session that requires students make assumptions and build a model based on the covered topics. The best kind of problems are those that the students asked each other in the reading annotations. Our experience so far is that the students ask much higher level questions than we typically do. Many of our in-class sessions, in this sophomore level class, have ended up with discussions of graduate level material using this method.
Some times, the groups are not able to solve the problems or to find a way to even address a concept of activity. In this case, we actually do a short lecture to help them. Lecture, by itself, is an excellent and efficient way to transmit information - as long as the students are ready to receive the information. We have found that if the students have read the book thoughtfully and have invested some time honestly attempting the problem, then they will be very motivated to learn from a short lecture that is focused on what they have been attempting. These lectures last no more than 15 minutes and are only given if the students have become frustrated. In fact, we tell the students that they can ask us to deliver a short lecture anytime they want as long as they have made a serious attempt (as evidenced by the work on their whiteboard) to solve the problem.
Demonstrations are also shown in class by creating an activity around the demonstration. The demonstration is begun by telling the students what experiment we plan to show them but we do not tell them what will happen. We always ask the students to make a prediction before we do the demonstration. This is based on research from the Mazur group that shows significant learning gains using this process[6].
Some times, the groups are not able to solve the problems or to find a way to even address a concept of activity. In this case, we actually do a short lecture to help them. Lecture, by itself, is an excellent and efficient way to transmit information - as long as the students are ready to receive the information. We have found that if the students have read the book thoughtfully and have invested some time honestly attempting the problem, then they will be very motivated to learn from a short lecture that is focused on what they have been attempting. These lectures last no more than 15 minutes and are only given if the students have become frustrated. In fact, we tell the students that they can ask us to deliver a short lecture anytime they want as long as they have made a serious attempt (as evidenced by the work on their whiteboard) to solve the problem.
Demonstrations are also shown in class by creating an activity around the demonstration. The demonstration is begun by telling the students what experiment we plan to show them but we do not tell them what will happen. We always ask the students to make a prediction before we do the demonstration. This is based on research from the Mazur group that shows significant learning gains using this process[6].