Half-Time Adjustments

Quick note:   This teaching blog went over 95,600 page views yesterday.   Thanks a million (and a half) to everyone who has mentioned these random writings to someone else who teaches.   I’m convinced that people throughout the world of education really do want to have conversations about better teaching just so they can bat some ideas around.   Sometimes, though, it is hard to get those conversations started.   Perhaps something that is written here can serve as a conversation starter.   College education gets beaten up a lot these days in the news.   I’m convinced that more conversations among teachers would be a good way to start solving some of those problems.

And, in case you wondered, a total of 95,600 page views is roughly the equivalent of one page view every 21 minutes, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week for the past 3.6 years.   Hopefully, that translates into a whole lot of better teaching.

**

Are you a sports fan?   One of the things that I have noted over the years of watching basketball and football is that some teams just play better after half-time.    They look lousy for the first half of the game and then, at the start of the second half, they suddenly seem infinitely better.   An apparent lose is turned into an impressive win.   As Shakespeare once wrote “All’s well that ends well.”   I thought about this last Saturday when one college team that I follow was behind by three touchdowns late in the first half and I was completely disgusted by their efforts.   However, in the second half, they looked like an entirely different team and went on to win by two touchdowns.  A horrible game became a super game.

What happened?

Some coaches just seem to have the knack for making half-time adjustments.   They are able to see what is going wrong with their team and they figure out changes that can be set up to make improvements.    In the very few minutes allowed at half-time, they manage to change how plays are run or what defenses are set up or the plays that will be called and the momentum changes abruptly in their team's favor.   The winner is often the one where the coach makes the best adjustments at half-time.  

As complex and fast as football and basketball can be, making changes that quickly and explaining them to the team has got to be tough.   But it clearly can be done because a few coaches make those adjustments so very well.

Now, here in October, most college professors are about halfway through the fall semester.    Are things going absolutely perfectly?   If so, you clearly do not need to make any changes.    If you are really happy with the class results so far, keep on keeping on (as the song says).   Or, as I often hear people say, “if ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

But, my guess is that many of you have recognized aspects of your fall class that are not making you happy.    After 43 years at this job, I'm never totally pleased; something always seems to worry me.  Some students do poorly on tests or they fail to prepare adequately for class or they refuse to participate in class.   Why not stop and consider making some half-time adjustments and see if there is improvement?   There are always things that can be done differently.   There are always changes that you can try.

Experimentation and innovation are good for education.   Don’t get stuck in a rut.   If you don’t like what is happening, try something a bit different.    If a coach can turn an entire team around in just 15-20 minutes at half-time, you (yes, YOU) can create some positive adjustments in your own classes.   

Here is a process I would suggest.  

1--Write down every concern that you have about each class so far this semester.   List out everything that could be going better.    Take your time and reflect on the first 6-8 weeks of class.   If you don’t identify problems, it is hard to fix them.

Some of those issues might be totally related to you and your teaching.   For example, maybe your class organization is not good enough or the problems you choose to work in class don’t demonstrate the issues you want to cover.  

 

Other problems might be purely student related.   For example, a percentage of students might come to class without having read the material or worked assigned problems.  

2--Put this list in order from the biggest problem to the smallest.   What really is holding back the learning that you want?   What is keeping you from having the very best class in your building, in your school?   That's always a good question to consider.    Don’t dwell obsessively on problems that you simply find irritating.   If a student shows up 2 minutes for class, that might be a problem but the education for that day has probably not been ruined.   Place problems at the top that really have a serious impact on class performance—for the individual or for the group.  

3--For each of your classes, look more closely at the five worse problems.   You cannot solve all issues so try to isolate the ones that are the biggest.   Of those five, choose the three that you are most able to influence.   There is really no reason to waste energy at half-time if a quick fix is not possible.  

4--You have now selected three of your top five problems.   These are going to be the focus of your half-time adjustments.  This is where you (yes, YOU) are going to turn the game around.  

For each of these problems, list one or two reasons for its existence.   Problems have reasons; they don’t happen by accident.   I would bet that if it is your problem (you are having trouble with some aspect of class) then the most likely reason is lack of time invested.   In truth, almost any problem can be solved with the allocation of sufficient time.   Maybe there are other reasons for specific problems but never, never overlook the obvious:   You are not investing enough time.   Faculty are like students -- they look for shortcuts.   Teachers can simply be underprepared when they walk into the classroom.   After 43 years, I am always amazed by how much time I have to spend in preparing for each class.   I must be a slow learner (my wife tells me).

On the other hand, if the problem is connected to students and student behavior, it usually relates to a lack of incentive.   In life, incentives matter.   If students are not doing what you ask (assuming you are asking for a reasonable amount of work), they must believe the request is a waste of time or (maybe more politely) they have seen no good reason to do what you ask.   Students will not do work without a reason and it needs to be a good reason (“do it because I say so” probably lost its effectiveness in the Eisenhower administration).   

5--Okay, so what are your half-time adjustments going to be?   For your problems, are there ways that you can allocate more time especially to specific issues that do not seem to be going well?   I realize, especially if you are also doing serious research, that time can be short.   Nonetheless, if you want to be a better teacher, decisions and sacrifices do have to be made.  

6--And, for the problems that relate to the students, can you add more effective incentives?   It is always good to look at class and class work through the eyes of your students.    What messages are you sending that are encouraging them to do the work?   What messages are you sending that are reducing their interest in doing what you want?    “Read Chapter 7 and I promise that on the next test, I’ll ask at least two questions that come directly from the material.”   Or “Read Chapter 7 because I am going to ask you the following 5 questions in class on Wednesday that come directly from this material.”  

Half-time adjustments are never perfect.   Sometime your team is going to lose regardless of what changes the coach makes.   But, you are clearly not without hope.   Adjustments are available.   Improvements are possible.   

--Identify the problems you are seeing.  

--Determine which ones could be improved in the second half of the semester.  

 

--Select ones that are important and can be impacted quickly.

--Analyze whether each one is a teacher issue or a student issue.  

--Consider changes that might turn things around.  

--For teacher issues, think about the allocation and use of time, especially time spent before you walk into class.  

--For student issues, figure out incentives that might encourage students to do what you want them to do.  

Take control of the second half.

CONVERSATION WITH BOB JENSEN

Before I get started today, I wanted to pass along a link to a great article (sent to me recently by a friend) titled “Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results”:    

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304213904579095303368899132.html

There was a lot that I loved about this article but here are two great observations:

“An entire industry of books and consultants has grown up that capitalizes on our collective fear that American education is inadequate and asks what American educators are doing wrong.   I would ask a different question. What did Mr. K (a teacher that he profiles) do right? What can we learn from a teacher whose methods fly in the face of everything we think we know about education today, but who was undeniably effective?”

“Studies have now shown, among other things, the benefits of moderate childhood stress; how praise kills kids' self-esteem; and why grit is a better predictor of success than SAT scores.”

Read it – I’ll bet you’ll gain something from it.

**

Joe:    Today, I have the great pleasure of exchanging some thoughts with Bob Jensen, one of the best known accounting educators in the US, especially because of his tireless work with technology.

Bob, I know you are kind of retired although you seem to stay extremely busy. Can you furnish us with a biography of some of your many accomplishments over the years?

Bob:   It's hard to summarize the innovative things I've done for students across 40 years of teaching. My teaching changed a lot over the years from lectures to BAM-like.   BAM-like has been described in the following manner:   The main innovation of the BAM pedagogy is that students teach themselves in a discovery learning pedagogy. The main purpose of BAM is to make students constantly confront ambiguity.
I guess you and I are similar in class where we like a Socratic method that forces students to seek their own answers. I carried it further by forcing them to find the answers on their own outside the classroom.   However, I was somewhat inconsistent, especially in Accounting Theory and in AIS when dealing with issues that had highly technical and crisp right and wrong answers such as forming a relational database in MS Access or accounting for an interest rate swap.

On very technical issues I provided value by making hundreds of Camtasia videos that students use much like students use the Khan Academy. Rather than remain totally overwhelmed by the technicality of some issues, students could watch my Camtasia videos over and over and over again until, at last, they could shout --- I got it!

That's a bit like learning on your own --- but not quite. Real learning on your own means going to the library and to the Web and to experts such that there's value added in searching experience. Viewing videos that I provided did not have the search value added. But often there was nowhere else to search on topics where I prepared my own Camtasia videos.
If there is one difference between you and me when it comes to teaching, I think I was more eager to explore the unfolding wonders of education technology.

Joe:  Since you brought it up, let’s talk a little about technology. We are certainly in the middle of a transition period in college education. You mentioned the Khan Academy but we could also bring up Coursera, Udacity, Udemy, edX, Knewton, as well as credentials and badges. One concept that you hear a lot about is the “flipped classroom” which I have seen defined as “a pedagogical model in which the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed.” Basically, students use technology in advance of class to achieve a foundation level of knowledge. Class time is then used to make sure that this level of knowledge is in place so that the teacher and students can start adding more in-depth knowledge. How well do you think this will work? Isn’t the real question how you get students to do the work in advance of class? Can technology overcome student (human) tendencies to procrastinate?

Bob:   Actually, I had a type of flipped classroom.   My students each had a computer work station and usually worked in class from that station such as when solving MS Access relational database assignments or in theory courses when making journal entries for derivatives transactions. I think they hated the quizzes but that was based on the extent to which they prepared for class.
The question is class size. Top business schools and law schools often use cases and the Socratic method for upwards of 100 students. But these horror shows of filled lecture halls with 500-1500 students are more likely to require lectures and PowerPoint shows. Flipped classrooms are also not practical for MOOC classes of 5,000-250,000 students.

What would really be interesting would be a study of student performance when students are randomly divided into your preferred pedagogy that you use now versus same-sized classes where you lecture with PowerPoint shows. Most research shows that if students know what is expected of them for high grades, there will be "No-Significant-Differences" due to pedagogy.   (http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#AssessmentIssues)
But a course grade is only one measure of extent of learning. The BAM project in intermediate accounting suggests that self-learning metacognitively improves long-term retention.   (http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm)
Put another way, the top student in a lecture section of a course might also have been the top student in a self-learning BAM section of that course. But the students most likely will have better long-term recall regarding what they learned on their own even if they really, really hated having to learn on their own. However, don't look for stellar teaching evaluations in the BAM sections.

Speaking of Coursera, Udacity, Udemy, edX, Knewton, etc. I view these as fundamentally different in that prestigious universities deliver the courses and these corporations are mainly concerned with competency-based assessment of that learning.

Khan Academy, on the other hand, is a nonprofit organization that actually prepares the learning modules but does not assess the degree of learning.

The SMOC (synchronous massive online course) providers like the University of Texas are going to do both --- the teaching and the assessment.

Joe:   Let's go forward 10 years. What do you think college education will look like at that time? Will any students anywhere walk into a small classroom where a professor will give the equivalent of a lecture? Some people foresee a radical overall of the educational experience in the next few years. Others think that such predicted changes have been vastly overstated. What do you believe?

Bob:   I will give you some of my specific predictions for 2024 and 2040. In 2024 it's more likely that classrooms with 500-1500+ will virtually disappear. Universities by 2024 will replace these with either classrooms of less than 60 students or competency-based credits without contact hours required for credits.

Small classes of less than 60 students will probably increase in numbers both onsite and online. Many will be classes of less than 25 students and have intense communications with instructors and each other, including small online courses. Professors will teach more subjects and more students than is the case in 2013.

College campuses provide much more than learning for degrees. Heavily endowed universities like Swarthmore, Davidson, and Haverford will continue to thrive as Tier 1 residency campuses as will schools like Richmond (where you teach) and Trinity (where I taught). Most poorly endowed colleges will disappear or totally redefine their missions.

More students will enroll in Minerva-like programs, although these will still be a small proportion of the total number of higher education students.  Medical students and perhaps accounting, engineering, nursing, and pharmacy students will drop more and more education from their increasingly intense and streamlined training programs.

In 2024 there will be an enormous increase in degrees awarded to students who have no instructors or very few instructors.  By 2040 there won't be such things as degrees and diplomas.

Students will continue to live, learn, and mature on larger campuses like the Ivy League, Notre Dame, and BYU. Smaller classes will increase in frequency. Enormous universities like OSU, Texas, Illinois, etc. will have the hardest time adapting, but they will probably adapt with more online courses, MOOCs, and SMOCs taking the place of large lecture halls. At the same time they will offer many more small and specialized courses onsite and online.

MOOC and SMOC mentoring sections will greatly increase in number that will be somewhat similar to the recitation sections that now exist for enormous lecture courses. These mentoring sections will also be available for smaller classes, although usage by students willing to pay the reasonable fees will probably be voluntary. Mentoring fees for minority students and learning disabled students will increasingly paid for by taxpayers.

Degree programs based on course credit accumulations will probably disappear, although perhaps this will be more like 2040 than 2024. Students in virtually all universities will eventually be confronted with competency-based certifications. The “washed” will do so as residents on campuses. The “unwashed” will do so without spending many (probably not any) terms on campus.

Competency-based performance will cease to be on a pass-fail basis. Instead competency-based scores will be reported on ordinal or possible even ratio scales that have common zero points. This may also be the case for professional licensing scores on things like CPA examinations, BAR examinations, medical certification examinations, nursing examinations, etc.

Tenure will probably disappear by 2040, although it may not matter much if seniority based upon years of service is still engrained in the USA. Performance rewards may be more heavily based upon teaching performance than research.  More performance credit may be given for micro-level research.   This is a good thing.

For more predictions for the years 2000-2024 go to
http://go.rm0001.net/rmgo.asp?tid=3722512&eid=3362&sb_id=781901

Joe:   And here are some other great links to Bob’s thoughts about education:

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology and learning theory ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on listservs, blogs, and social networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

Bob Jensen's Threads on Shared Open Courseware (OCW) from Around the World: OKI, MIT, Rice, Berkeley, Yale, and Other Sharing Universities (OKI. MOOCs, SMOCs, etc.)---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Bob Jensen's threads on Higher Education Controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

Bob Jensen's Home Page ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

What Stands Between You and Greatness

In my previous blog on this site, I provided some tips for becoming a great teacher. Not surprisingly, the question came up as to what constitutes great teaching. I think most of us probably have some fairly firm definition of “good teaching” but what is the next step up the ladder? What exactly do we mean by“great teaching?” If you describe someone as a great teacher, what characteristics are you describing?

Do we know what great teaching is? As I sometimes tell my students, “if you don’t know where you are going, then a road map won’t be of any help.”

One possibility is that we are all satisfied with being good teachers so we have no real reason to consider what comes next. There is no urgency. In your dreams, do you seek to be a good teacher or a great teacher? If you say“great teacher,” then you must have some definition in mind as to what that means.

As I often mention here, I teach at the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond. My colleagues take teaching very seriously. So, I went to several of them recently and asked: “To you, what does ‘great teaching’ really mean?” I wanted to get some different ideas to mull over.

Below are some of the responses that I received. Look them over – consider what they have to say. (In case you are interested, my response is the last one on the list.)

Then, ask yourself: “For me, what does great teaching mean?” This question can take some thinking. Avoid a quick, flippant answer. Once you have identified what you believe constitutes great teaching, what would you have to do to achieve that level?

In teaching, what stands between you and greatness?

Here’s what I heard from several of my fellow teachers:

(1) - Great teaching accomplishes or exceeds instructor and institutional objectives, which ideally would focus on what students learn.

(2) - Great teaching is grounded in a thorough knowledge of a discipline, but it doesn't stop there. It calls that knowledge into question, and gives the students the tools to do the same.

Great teaching is transformative. It meets students where they are, but then it helps guide them to a place where they can take their education into their own hands, to where they become independent thinkers and seekers after knowledge. It gives them the tools to become life-long learners, rather than ending when the semester ends.

Great teaching is clear and focused, with achievable outcomes that are fairly assessed. That said, it may not bear fruit during the semester or even the college career of the student. (See "transformative," above.)

(3) - I don't know if I will actually answer your question, but I will share with you what I believe good teaching involves. Good teaching involves passion, creativity, and listening. It requires substance, an ability to challenge one to think, and the ability to motivate one to apply knowledge gained. The key element to good teaching is a motivated teacher. I am convinced that unmotivated teachers cultivate unmotivated students.

What's interesting is that I find it easier to tell you what bad teaching is. Hmmm, why is that?

(4) - A setting where students become actively engaged, probing, challenged, and at the end of the day, more interested in the subject than when they began. Great teaching would also include activities and outcomes that allow the Professor to clearly delineate the A, B, C, D, and F students. We could say that not all students have the same ability, but at a school like ours that is not necessarily the case. It is more likely not all students are motivated equally.

(5) - Great teaching creates great learning. I realize that's an inelegant sentence but it conveys what I believe. The best teacher inspires and helps a student to maximize their comprehension of a subject. The focus should always be on the student's learning.

(6) - My first thought to your question is, when I had a teacher who connected with me as a student, I had the joy of learning the topic AND I was inspired to learn more and more on my own. It made me have a desire to be inquisitive and want to dig and explore the topic even more. One of my best teachers was my 7th grade Earth Science teacher. She made studying rocks fascinating and to this day, I still want to pick up rocks, study them, and figure out how they were made. I think her joy in her topic was contagious. Obviously, my experience was at an earlier level, but I think it applies to all levels of schooling and all subjects.

(7) - First, let’s get rid of the “romanticized gentle mentor” image that constantly gets conjured up in the media. Further, let’s also admit that there is no one method of teaching that is best for all students nor for all teachers. Many of the people who I consider to be great teachers are not “cuddly” nor have a single style in which they teach.

Great teaching, in my opinion, gets the best results out of the students. These results are not simply test scores, but a greater maturity in the process of how to think about and solve problems possibly beyond the subject area. Great teachers/teaching make students better people. The difficult part about it is that great teaching may not be recognized by a student for a number of years and possibly only if the student is introspective enough to realize it. This is part of what makes teaching evaluations a flawed process. Your best teacher is not necessarily the one you enjoyed the most, but the one who got the most out of you.

(8) - Great teaching = Learning + Assessment = Convincing students to value (at least) the broad topic + convincing the instructor that the gained knowledge will provide some benefit to the students and the wellness of the world.

(9) What is a great teacher? At the end of the day, all teachers have to make that decision for themselves.

I have not thought about this for long so I might change my mind but my definition would be that a great teacher is one who assists most of his or her students in gaining a significantly deeper understanding of the subject matter. Accordingly, a teacher who got 100 percent of the students to learn a little might be a good teacher but not a great one. A teacher who gets a few students to gain a much deeper understanding might be a good teacher but not a great one. You have to influence a high percentage of the students and the increase in understanding must be eye-catching.

Popularity is not part of that definition.

Someone might ask how I measure the number who improve and the depth of improvement. Right now, I am not sure that I care. I am trying to set a theoretical goal for myself, not document a tenure decision.

Okay – now it is your turn. You have read all of these and they are quite interesting. How would you define Great Teaching? That’s what I would like to know.

How To Become A Great Teacher

My life is now officially complete.   I was mentioned recently in the Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ethan-senack/back-to-school-back-to-sk_b_3845386.html

Life will surely be downhill for me from here on out.

**

I have written about Ken Bain on this blog on a number of occasions.    He is author of What the Best College Teachers Do, a work that I have recommended to hundreds of teachers in my teaching presentations.   Several years ago, Dr. Bain spoke on our campus.   In the evening, he met with probably 75 faculty members.   During the program someone near the back of the room raised a hand and asked the direct question:   How do you become a great teacher?  Okay, the question that everyone really wanted to have answered was officially on the table.   What does a teacher need to do to become great?

Dr. Bain responded immediately with a response that went something like this:   “Oh, I can answer your question quite easily.   To become a great teacher, all you have to do is get your students to care about what you are teaching.”  

“All you have to do is get your students to care about what you are teaching.”   It sounds so simple but it can be so very difficult.

If you are teaching a course on Hamlet, a student who cares will allocate enough time to do the reading at a significant depth.   The student will check out related readings and consider their significance.  The student will pay attention in class, make comments, and ask questions.   In other words, the student will be fully engaged and do the work that is necessary to excel.   For that particular student, this class and professor will be outstanding and thought-provoking.

If a student is not enticed to care about Hamlet, the student will read (or scan) Cliff’s Notes or possibly watch one of the movie versions of the play.   The student will text during class and entirely miss the beauty of Shakespeare’s language.   Any papers will be completed with a half-hearted effort.   Although it is the same class, this student will find it boring and useless.

How much the student cares really is the key.  

As I wander around the country, I often hear faculty complaints about student apathy.

--“The students just don’t care.”

--“Why do they take the class if they don’t plan to do any work?”
--“They are not interested enough to do one bit more than is necessary.”

Great teachers rarely make those comments.

So, the question is not – how do you become a great teacher?    The real question is – how do you get your students to really care about the material?   (It is not coincidental that the two opening questions in my Financial Accounting textbook [written with C. J. Skender] are “What is financial accounting?” followed by “What makes Financial Accounting important?”   We wanted to build the concept of student caring into the material right from the start.)

Encouraging students to care about the material is a terribly complicated subject.   We could probably hold a week-long conference on that one challenge.   Obviously, we have all grown up in a system where “caring” was brought into education by the threat of a test and grades.   “You better learn this stuff or you are going to fail your test next week.”   Sounds like a haunted house warning at Halloween, doesn’t it?

I would argue that one of the problems with college education is that a lot of it is based on learning because of fear rather than developing a student who cares.

How can you get students to care about the material beyond simply threatening them with failing grades?    Here are a couple of thoughts.    This is not an all-inclusive list, just some random ideas.

1 – Communicate early and often. 

    a.   I start sending my students emails weeks before classes begin.  One of the things I tell them is “I truly believe this will be one of the most important classes you ever take in college.”   I want them to walk in on the first day with a sense of anticipation.   And, I want that feeling to be positive – there really is a potential benefit to be gained from learning this material.   Of course, then I have to back up my claim.
    b.   Whenever I see something in a movie, newspaper, the Internet, or television that relates to my course, I send a note to my students and describe why this news was relevant to them.   I really want to stretch the class beyond the four walls of the classroom.   One of my favorite comments is:   “before this semester began, you would not have understood what was written in that article but now you should understand it completely.   You are becoming educated.   Learning allows the world to open up to you.”
    c.   Whenever we talk about something in class that I think is especially important to them, I’ll drop them a quick email later and say “today we discussed X in class and here’s how this might actually prove to be beneficial to you at some point in life.”   Students often need you to make the connections for them, at least at first.   And, making connections is a skill you want to encourage.

2 – Keep the proper attitude in class.

    a.    I majored in accounting because I thoroughly enjoy it.   I try to share that interest with my students.   No one gets into college teaching because they hate the subject matter.   I hope to open that same window of interest to my students.   I do admit that there is a fine line between being enthusiastic and being obsessively geeky.   So, I try to share my excitement in small doses.
    b.   As I have written innumerable times on this blog, people love puzzles.   I try to present as much of my material as possible in the form of a puzzle.   Even students who hate accounting, enjoy puzzles.   If you work at it, everything you teach can be twisted into a puzzle.   Puzzles are so much more interesting to students than the straight conveyance of information.   Plus, digging out the solutions helps them develop their critical thinking skills.  
    c.   Students tend to resist caring about material that is boringly easy.    Students also tend to resist material that is so complex that is it beyond their reach.   For me, one of the true challenges of teaching is presenting material at a level that maximizes caring.   I believe material should be challenging without being impossible.   Work is required but that work offers success.   Most people like to be stretched as long as they know there is a reasonable chance of success.    

3 – Bend over backwards to be fair.   Student response to the perception that class is not fair is to stop caring.

    a.   Make sure the daily assignments are of an appropriate length and clearly germane to the learning process.   “That is more work than anyone could possibly do” is not what you want to hear too often.   “I spent hours on that assignment and it was never mentioned in any way” is a response that is likely to signal a future loss of caring.

    b.   Make sure that the tests and grading accomplish what you want them to accomplish.   For me, a student who understands the material should get a B; a student who understands the material extremely well should get an A.   I believe that is fair.   I think the students (deep in their hearts) believe that is fair.   If the testing process rewards students who did what you asked, more students will follow along.   If the testing process does not reward the students who did what you asked, don’t be surprised by a future lack of caring.  

You can get your students to care in many different ways.   How are you doing it now?   Is it working?   That thinking can help you become a great teacher.

Teaching Mistakes -- Do Any Of These Apply to YOU?

Periodically, I list the entries on this blog that have gained the most readership over the years.   I am not always sure why these postings have become so popular but you might find a few of these thoughts to be especially interesting as you start a new school year.

(1) – What Do We Add? – July 22, 2010

(2) – Introduction – Teaching (Financial Accounting) – January 7, 2010
(3) – What Is the Purpose of a Final Exam – May 12, 2010
(4) – What the Catcher Tells the Pitcher – August 21, 2011
(5) – A Good Suggestion – June 1, 2013
(6) – What Is the Best Book You Ever Read – June 23, 2012
(7) – The Future Is Now? – August 13, 2012
(8) – How You Test Is How They Will Learn – January 31, 2010
(9) – A Note to My Students – January 15, 2012
(10) – We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us – May 22, 2012

**

I was hunting through some old materials this morning and found the following paragraphs that I had written a number of years ago.   It is a list of what I think are five big teaching mistakes.   You can see that I even count them down heading toward Number One.    I thought these thoughts might be helpful as colleges open their fall semesters across the country.   You might disagree with me completely but the thinking process and the debate are what I am seeking more than conversion.   Some of what I write (here on this blog and other places) seems to get stale with age.   But, I thought these words still apply just as well in 2013 as they did when I first wrote them.  

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Mistake Number Five:   Overreliance on Power Point Slides.    I never use Power Point slides in my own classes but, if I did, I would make sure to ask a question on the student evaluations each year about whether students liked my usage or not.   I certainly understand how they can be very handy (especially since textbook publishers even create them for you) as a way of organizing material.   However, I think they send a message to students that you are simply going to read Power Point slides to them as they sit there in the semi-dark trying to stay awake.   Okay, I know that most teachers will say that they throw up the slides and then discuss the material but I have heard way too many students say “that lazy guy just reads Power Point slides to us that he didn’t even take the time to produce.”   The way you view the process and the way your students view it might be radically different.   Plus, I am not certain that it is easy to use Power Point slides to create active interaction with students.   If the slide provides the information, where is the conversation, where is student thinking?    My recommendation – just ask your students on their evaluations:   “Should the professor use Power Point slides more or less or the same amount as now?”   If a lot of students say “less,” I would pay serious attention to that advice.   If they say “more,” then go for it.

Mistake Number Four:   Failure to Engage Students with the Material.   College teachers often seem to have a belief that students bring an active curiosity and desire to learn with them to class.   If (when) that proves false, they appear to be mystified.    “Why do they take my class if they don’t want to learn the material?”    Well, they must take 30-40 courses to graduate so they have to sign up for something.   Over my four decades in this business, I have had a few students who walked in with an “I am dying to learn all about Intermediate Accounting” attitude.   But, a vast majority of them walk in with a neutral attitude; they need to be convinced that they are not wasting their time.   After spending 80 percent of their lives learning stuff like the state capitals, the periodic table, how to outline a sentence, and the Pythagorean theorem, many students have had the joy of learning mashed out of them before they get to you.

How do you engage students?   One possibility is to link the coverage to some personal benefit – how will their lives be better for knowing this material?   “Learn it because I say so” doesn’t hold too much power over the young people of today.   Or, show the student why you find the material interesting.   If you have read this blog for long, you know that I’m a huge proponent of trying to puzzle students.  Why is it done this way?  What does this accomplish?  Why was this action taken?   If you simply assume your students are truly curious about the Pythagorean theorem, you may be upset when they fall asleep in class or seem more interested in texting than in learning.

Mistake Number Three:   Writing Tests that Reward Memorization.    We all have heard that the purpose of college is to help develop critical thinking skills.   That is a great and worthy goal.   But students will learn based on how they expect to be tested.   If you base your tests on memorization (“name the four criteria for a capitalized lease”), you can forget about developing critical thinking skills.  If you want students to go beyond memorization, your tests have to go beyond memorization.   “If the US had not made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, what are possible impacts on the growth of slavery in this country?”   Okay, that may lead to an answer that is hard to grade but it allows students to demonstrate their understanding and thinking.   If they expect to be tested in a certain way, their learning will be directed in that same way.  Textbook publishers often provide test banks.   Those questions are primarily designed to test memorization.    You set the tone for your entire course by the way you test your students.   Work to write thoughtful questions and you will be surprised by how much more thoughtful your students will become.  

Mistake Number Two:   Most Teachers Talk Way Too Much.    Teachers get nervous during silences.   They feel uncomfortable.   Consequently, they rush in to fill up the quiet with words and words and more words.   The less the teacher talks and the more the students talk the better.   The teacher should guide the conversation and make sure everyone gets involved.   After that, the less said by the teacher the better.   However, that is hard to do.   The students would much prefer for you to do all the talking because then they can turn their brains off and just write down what you say.   Don’t let them play that game with you!   Push them to talk.   I use the Socratic Method so I just call on them in rapid fire fashion but you can push them to talk in many ways.   If you have read my Teaching Tips book at https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~jhoyle/   you know that I believe in the 50-50 Rule.   That is the teacher should never do more than 50 percent of the talking.   Push your students to do their 50 percent.

Mistake Number One:   Failure to Force Students to Be Prepared for Class.   In my opinion, the single biggest factor in having a great class is the preparation level of the students.  If they are not prepared, what can they possibly add to the class?   They can just write down notes.   But, when they are well prepared, they can add ideas, suggestions, a different perspective, and the like.   A class with well-prepared students can be a true joy as the conversation and the thinking range throughout the topics under consideration.   To me, that is education at its very best.   That is why I became a teacher.   (Later comment:   this, of course, is now well-known as a “flipped classroom” – I should have made up a cute name for it when I first came up with the idea.)

How do you get students to prepare for class?   First, I think you have to be very specific as to what you want them to do.   Don’t just throw out vague assignments.    College students do not do vague very well.   They ignore vague.    Tell them exactly what you want them to do.   Second, make sure the subsequent class actually incorporates that assignment in some way so students do not feel like they were being asked to do busy work.   I remember being infuriated in college when I would spend hours on an assignment that was never mentioned by the teacher in any way.   I certainly did not make that same mistake twice.   Third, don’t hesitate to be confrontational if the assignment is not done to your satisfaction.   College students are adults.   If they had an assignment at a job and did not do it, they would face the wrath of the boss very quickly.   You don’t have to treat them like delicate flowers.   If you give an assignment that you use in class and students are not prepared, talk to them about the need for doing the work.   I never scream and yell at my students but I certainly let them know if I feel they have not upheld their half of the class work.   I often stop students as they leave class with “you did not seem prepared today and I fully expect better from you at our next class.” 

If you want to see an improvement in your teaching, pick one of these five and work on it for awhile.  Or, pick a different one that you think applies to you.   But you do have to make an effort to work on it.   Just contemplating mistakes doesn’t do you or your students any good.

NEW YEAR STARTING: WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE IN THE CLASSROOM?

Before I get started today, I want to send out a big Thank You to all the readers of this blog.   Several days ago, we went over 90,000 total pageviews.   When I first started writing these essays, I would have bet a gazillion dollars that I’d never get 5,000 pageviews.   And, I would not have gotten to even that lower mark without folks like you passing along good words about this site.   Thanks – I would have probably stopped writing years ago except that the traffic remains strong and actually seems to grow over time.   You provide the energy.   I continue to be convinced that people really do like to think and talk about teaching because it is both extremely important to our lives and our future and a whole lot of fun.

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A new school year is starting.   For me, it will be my 43^rd year in the classroom.   I have written before that I believe every teacher should consider the “teaching personality” that you want to have with your students.  This is a great time to reconsider that question.    Do you want to be a fiery pulpit pastor who inspires everyone to do better with their lives or do you want to be a kindly nurse who helps everyone get well?   Do you want to be a coach who pushes everyone toward a winning grade or Socrates who prods student thinking with careful questions?   Those are all legitimate teaching personalities but you probably cannot be all things to all students.    You have to choose.

I think contemplating the idea of a teaching personality is important because, without one, it is easy to simply become a mechanical conveyor of information.   Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492.   Raleigh is the capital of North Carolina.   There’s nothing too exciting about that.   It doesn’t even sound terribly important.   I would argue that many teachers let themselves fall into a classroom role that really doesn’t seem important.   They then wonder why students aren’t inclined to do what they ask.   Maybe it is not the students’ fault but the personality you are projecting.

As I have mentioned previously, I was out in Anaheim, California, a few weeks ago at the American Accounting Association annual meeting.   I was sitting at a table one morning with several excellent teachers and this question of “who are you in the classroom?” came up.    It was an interesting conversation because several people knew right away their personality model while others seemed mystified by the question.

Historically, I have given one answer to that question but on that morning I gave a different answer.   People are entitled to change/evolve over time.   My comment was that I viewed myself as “half drill sergeant” because I push each of my students almost unmercifully to succeed.   In the military, the drill sergeant is in charge of turning weak civilians into strong soldiers who can survive in combat.   That requires the sergeant to get in their faces and drive them to go beyond what they ever thought they could accomplish.   My goal is to turn students (who come to me knowing little or nothing about accounting) into people who can go out into the business world and be successful.   I don’t want half of them to reach that goal.   I want them all to make it through.   During the semester, that drive is on my mind all of the time.   I feel, in a nutshell, that my responsibility as a college teacher is to push my students to succeed in learning and understanding.  

However, I also view myself as “half cheerleader.”   Yes, I demand great things from my students but I also try to help them believe in themselves and their ability to succeed.   I am not out to crush their spirits.   I want to drive them but I also want to encourage them and show them how to succeed.

Drill sergeant.

Cheerleader.

Only speaking for myself, I would not want to be one without the other.   Being only a drill sergeant seems almost sadistic.   Being only a cheerleader seems almost useless.   But, if I can successful merge those two personalities, I can push everyone forward.   I don’t care if the students like me or not (I have enough friends).   I do care, though, if they do not make the progress that I think they are capable of making.    Some need more drill sergeant.   Some need more cheerleader.   My goal is to figure out what I can do to help each of them learn and understand and make use of the information we cover.

However, keep in mind:   That is my teaching personality.   It works for me.   You are a different person.   Your goal should never be to become me.   Your goal should be to become the kind of teacher that YOU want to be.  

So, before the 2013-2014 school year gets started in a few days, think about the teaching personality that you want.   What do you want to accomplish and what type of personality is most likely to get you there?

Who are you as a teacher?