April 14, 2005
Much talk of teaching — and a little singing — at April 19 showcase
What if you could get new ideas for teaching the same way you go shopping? You browse a bit, checking out what’s on the rack, then talk to someone about the things that interest you.
At the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Showcase, you can do just that. From 2:30 to 5 p.m. on Tuesday, April 19, you can cruise the Mary Gates Commons and talk to a lot of people who are actively engaged in examining their teaching. The showcase features poster sessions and roundtable discussions that are designed to be informal and open-ended. You can spend 10 minutes or the whole two-and-a-half hours just talking about teaching.
The event — the first of its kind on campus — was initiated by a group of faculty, graduate students and staff who call themselves the Scholarship on Teaching and Learning Forum. For nearly two years they’ve been meeting to discuss their shared interest in examining the effects of their teaching on their students’ learning. Now they want to share what they’ve been learning with others on campus who are interested.
“Many faculty and TAs at the UW have been looking carefully at how their teaching affects students’ learning. At the showcase we’re creating an opportunity for people to interact and learn from one another about their teaching,” said Wayne Jacobson, associate director of the Center for Instructional Development and Research, one of the sponsors of the showcase.
Visitors will be able to choose from a wide assortment of projects; 45 faculty and TAs from 22 departments and all three UW campuses will be available to talk about their work.
Clarissa Dirks, for example, will discuss a major, grant-funded project she coordinates in the Department of Biology to help students prepare for the rigorous science courses they’ll be taking.
Students fresh out of high school, she says, simply don’t have the skills to do much more than take in information and spit it out when asked. But the tests for the basic biology sequence (180, 200 and 220) are not multiple choice. Students are expected to analyze data and to write short essays. And they are failing, Dirks said. In fact, almost half of them are at risk for failing the course after the first exam.
In an attempt to turn this around, Dirks teaches a two-quarter sequence of courses that helps students learn the skills they need to succeed in the basic biology series — skills such as reading graphs, analyzing scientific data, understanding basic statistics, designing experiments, and writing in a scientific style. Called the Biology Fellows Program, it is open to any student who hasn’t yet started Biology 180.
“I send out postcards to all freshmen who have indicated an interest in majoring in biology,” Dirks said. “I take anyone who wants to do it as long as they haven’t taken Biology 180.”
As a result, students in the program are diverse; high school valedictorians rub elbows with students from the Educational Opportunity Program. That’s good, Dirks said, because the students who have done well in high school become the leaders and help some of those who have had fewer opportunities.
So far, results have been impressive. Three years in, the students who have been through the program have a median grade point average of 3.6 in Biology 180, compared with 2.7 for students in general.
One might think it is the personal attention of the smaller class that is helping the students, but Dirks is certain it’s all about skills. “The first time I did this I concentrated on motivation and career development,” she said. “I brought in scientists and did career panels — things like that.”
That approach didn’t improve students’ performance in Biology 180 very much. It was only after Dirks began teaching the skills that student grades went up significantly.
“I’d like to see this class used as a model for a preparatory class for all students in my department,” Dirks said. “In my wildest dreams that’s what I’d like to see happen. And I’m sure the principles could be applied in other fields as well.”
Greg Crowther, another presenter at the showcase, isn’t working at the skills level. He’s a singer and songwriter who has found that introducing songs into the classroom can help students grasp and remember important concepts.
For example, when Crowther, whose doctorate is in Physiology and Biophysics, is teaching about the structure of muscle fibers, he likes to use a song he wrote to the tune of My Sharona. Here’s a sample of the lyrics:
Ooh my little filaments, filaments –
Actin and myosin myofibrils:
Proteins that are long and dense, long and dense,
Making up the structure of the myofibrils.
Signal from the brain rides the nerve to the muscle,
Where the myosin inside will slide past the actin of the
My-my-my-y-y, woo! Muh-muh-muh-myofibrils.
Just as the alphabet song helps children learn their ABCs as preschoolers, so songs like this one can help college students get concepts into their brains and keep them there. But Crowther has found it’s not enough to simply bring a boom box into the classroom and play the song. It works best, he says, if the song is performed live, and students should be given a copy of the lyrics.
If you don’t happen to have any songwriting talent, never fear. Crowther has compiled a searchable database, http://www.science-groove.org/MASSIVE/, of science songs (yes, there are a lot of them out there, he said) that you can choose from.
Richard Anderson will have a more conventional teaching tool at the showcase. A computer scientist, he has created a program called Classroom Presenter that allows a teacher to use handwriting or drawing in conjunction with Power Point slides.
“One of my colleagues once said that Power Point sucks the life out of a lecture,” Anderson said. “That’s because there’s no flexibility to it. We’ve all gone to lectures where someone read the Power Point slides, and nobody likes that.”
What Classroom Presenter does is to allow the teacher to write or draw on a tablet PC and have it appear on the same screen as the slides. So the instructor can, for example, underline something on the slide, or draw a diagram to illustrate it. And if students in the class also have tablet PCs, they can draw or write on them, then send the results to the instructor’s PC.
“This allows me to quickly look at all of the solutions and get an idea how people are learning,” Anderson said. “Then if I want to I can display the student work, which allows me to talk about it, and that can be very valuable.”
It’s especially valuable, he said, because the display is anonymous. It becomes easier to critique work without embarrassing anyone.
Working with Classroom Presenter not only facilitates student engagement, Anderson said, but it also has changed his manner of preparation. “It’s forced me to start by asking what my learning objectives are and how I’m going to assess them.”
Of course, at $1,800 each, tablet PCs aren’t cheap, but Anderson said Microsoft expects the price to come down. And he expects that within a few years, standard computers will have the capability to accept handwritten input. In the meantime, he gives out one tablet PC per three students in class, which, he says, sparks helpful discussion.
The software that Anderson created for Classroom Presenter during a sabbatical at Microsoft is free for the downloading at http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/dl/presenter/. To use it, the instructor simply creates Power Point slides, then exports them into the new file type. You can see a demonstration of the program at next week’s showcase.
Dirks, Crowther and Anderson are just three of the presenters at the showcase. To see a list of all the roundtables and poster sessions, go to http://depts.washington.edu/sotl/Showcase.html. The event is co-sponsored by the Faculty Council on Instructional Quality, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Forum, the Institute for Scholarship on Engineering Education, the Teaching Academy, and the Center for Instructional Development and Research. It is free, and no pre-registration is necessary.
