Google 'student engagement' and you will see 5,000,000+ results.
How do you encourage peer learning in your teaching? What strategies do you use that facilitate student engagement? How do you know your students are (more) engaged: with each other? with the course content? with you?
Study groups. Peer learning groups. Peer-to-peer networking systems. Student learning communities. Together, these comprise the action plan b, to achieve engagement: Goal 3 of the University's Destination 2012.
On January 20, a roundtable for faculty to exchange ideas about effective peer-to-peer learning will be held at MSVU, followed by a 'hands on' successful practices session in February.
In the interim, we invite you to begin sharing your ideas now by posting a reply to this blog.
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4 comments:
One thing I've started doing this year is having a weekly "electronic office hour" from 10-11 p.m. I use Windows Messenger for this, so I can reach all sections of General Chemistry, but I'm sure Moodle chat would be fine for this. I heard about this idea from Bob Burk, Carleton chemistry prof and winner of the Chemical Institute of Canada award for Chemical Education.
I'd like to make several points on this:
1. Bob's suggestions was: "Don't bother going online too early. You have to do this at a time when most students are online and working on their chemistry assignments." That's why my hour starts at 10 p.m.
He also pointed out that MSN is "their space". We faculty are the visitors. I've tried to respect that, and have apologized when, for example, what I thought was a facial expression emoticon for "any more questions?" turned out to be a "rolling the eyes sarcastically" emoticon. I was forgiven, and the students had a chuckle over it. The other thing about it is, that in the MSN world, they are the experts, and they are happy to teach me about it. Somehow, this creates a very nice two-way learning space.
2. I was worried about the time commitment involved. While it does involve some evening time, I would say that it decreases office visits at other times of the day, because students know that I'll be available at this electronic office hour right at the time they are working on their prelabs.
3. The arrangement has resulted in some very nice peer-to-peer learning, because I conduct the session as a group chat by "inviting" students to join in the conversation. I've noticed that sometimes while I'm looking something up, a student will pipe in with a suggestion for another student. Sometimes, when I've "had the biscuit" at 11 p.m., I leave the chat on for them, so they can continue talking.
4. At the end of the chat, I save the session and e-mail it to those members who were unable to participate. This is appreciated by the class.
5. Some students prefer to ask questions in class, and some are more comfortable with the electronic office hour.
Would I do this again? Absolutely.
Thanks Kathy - that is a great idea. While I have used chats before, they have not been regularly scheduled (and therefore poorly attended!). I have been on sabbatical this past term and it has given me time to reflect on my courses and how to enhance the outcomes and engagements. I am really looking forward to see how all my changes and plans work out next term I will let you know how they all work.
I teach our undergraduate professional ethics course and engaging students in their learning and others’ learning is both important and challenging. For years I’ve required students to write journal-like reflections on each class, incorporating their responses to their readings, class discussions, lectures, guests, films etc. At the end of the semester, they bundled these comments up and submitted them to me. It was a way for me to see that they had actually thought about the material (especially important in professional/applied ethics), and it required them to attend all classes. This year I had an idea to update this. Rather than producing journals that only I would read, they blogged.
I use a companion site on Moodle for all of my on-campus courses and every student who is enrolled in Moodle-attached courses has a blog. So, I was able this year to incorporate both the on-going reflection as well as a bit of peer review. And this was a tremendous success.
Every student’s blog on Moodle is viewable by everyone else who has a profile on Moodle, so that students realized that their reflections could be accessed by a wide variety of people outside our own group. This was made clear from the outset. That said, it had the following results:
• The students wrote on every class, attended every peer-led seminar and were engaged in every discussion.
• Even students who speak up less in class had their voice heard.
• It was clear from class discussions and reading the blogs that they all read everyone else’s blogs.
• When I read their final blogs entries, I was gratified to be able to go back to their first ones and see how each of them had actually evolved in terms of their thought processes.
• They loved being able to use some of the ‘social media’ tools that they are so enamored of and I think we should be as well.
The only fly in the ointment is that the Moodle blogging tool isn’t very social since there is no mechanism for comments that are so important to the social aspect of this medium. That said, I’ll never go back to the old way of reflective journaling – this one had so many upsides.
PS If anyone would like to be ‘enrolled’ in PBRL 4017 so that you can read these blogs, just let me know. The students are well aware that others can and do read their entries!
Cheers, Patty Parsons
Dept. of Public Relations
Please note the roundtable originally scheduled for Tuesday, January 20 is re-scheduled to Tuesday, February 3 (same time, same place, i.e., noon-1:30 p.m., Seton Faculty Lounge).
-MSVU Teaching and Learning Centre
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