Classroom time management

I like some of the student-skills and other activities for class and I sometimes have a hard time planning material to fit a course period precisely. I will try to develop a toolbox of these activities to use when needed to fill out a class meeting time.

Making up for missed class

Since this class only meets once a week attendance is important, so for the first time I award points for showing up. I found a good justification for awarding points online, as I have hesitated to do so in the past. I also want to give students an opportunity to make up for missed class, and I am doing the following this semester:

• 2 points awarded for being there when I take roll at the beginning of class.
• 8 points awarded for being there after the break (I may take roll again or have an in-class written assignment).
• 3 missed classes (whatever reason) and the student will be dropped.
• A student who misses class can earn up to 7 points by completing a written assignment. 
• 3 dropbox folders are created within the class, and students are added to them only as they ask for missed points
• question to be answered is from the publisher's test bank of essay questions
• 3-paragraph response is good, with quotes and page numbers from the text only
• full credit awarded if the question is answered, half credit without quotes, and 0 points if plagiarism detection is above 50%
• Student athletes who miss because of a scheduled event can earn 10 points for completing the same written assignment.
• If I decide not to drop a student after a third absence, no points can be earned for completing that assignment.
• Any points awarded are posted to the attendance grade item

It seems like a lot of work but does include accountability for attending class.

Twitter in the classroom and audience response

Friday I conducted my first use of an audience response system in my history class. I am using a system called Poll Everywhere, which allows me to post multiple choice or open-ended questions. I display a web page with the question and how to answer. Students can participate using Twitter, a smartphone-enabled web page, or via text message. The page updates with their answers in real time.

I am using the free version, which allows up to 40 responses per question and does not allow me to track how individuals respond. I asked two questions on the first day: how long will it take Professor Beyrer to respond to an email, and which course theme interests you the most.

I liked the interaction and my students appeared to enjoy participating. This week I plan on asking which of a set of terms they feel most comfortable explaining to another person, and I will tell them that the term with the largest number of responses will be on the list of terms to identify as part of our midterm exam. The same question will let me know which term(s) might need some additional explanation.

A couple of concerns came up for me. Not all of my students bring a cellphone or computer to class, and I do not want to disable a student just because of lack of means. That reason is why I use a service like this and avoid the use of a handheld clicker system (for my uses, I do not think the extra cost for students is worth it). I also keep the answers anonymous and in aggregate, so the fact that some do not participate is less of an issue. Since I have more than 40 students in my class, even if all of them could participate and chose to, not all would be able to. Finally, I stress that it is voluntary and tell them why I am using it (to help me get a quick assessment of their learning). I could pay for an upgrade that would allow me to track individual students, but to me the gain in data integrity is outweighed by the despair of those who do not feel able to invest in a cellphone.

Also I am a bit concerned that if I use the open-ended question I might get some inappropriate responses. For example, I thought of asking them to share a word or two describing how Congress treated President Johnson during the period known as Congressional Reconstruction. (In case you are wondering, they impeached him.) It is a great question and gets to the heart of the interpretive nature of the discipline, but it is possible that some of the budding historians in the class might not use words fit for public consumption. Poll Everywhere has a paid option that would allow me to moderate answers to open-ended questions, but I cannot see doing that in the middle of class. So I only ask multiple choice questions.

For the other uses of Twitter mentioned in the article, I would be concerned about the public nature of Twitter feeds. In that channel we leave the environment where students are able to develop their intellect guided by the caring hands of an instructor and enter a realm where they are subject to the rough grasp of uninformed and anonymous public opinion.

An instructor certainly could tweet and encourage students to follow, which might be a nice change from posting the same information within the walled garden offered by our learning management system. For student-to-student interaction, the discussion board provides a documented way for an instructor to assess how well students are doing, whether their course-related information is accurate, etc. Tweets are a bit too hasty for my taste, even if they sometimes are delicious.

I heard the following “tweetable” review of the album The Beatles on NPR:

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is a really really really really really really really really really really good song. There are others.

Student information sheet

I found an activity on collecting student information sheets and tried it in my first class. I created an activity called "Meet Me in 20 Questions." I gave each student a sheet with 20 numbered lines on it and asked a series of questions of each. I displayed the questions on the screen and answered them as I read them, sharing a little bit about myself during the process. The students handed them in and now I have a stack of papers with some interesting information. I posted my answers online as well as some aggregate data.

The next time I take roll I will spend a few seconds interacting with each student by highlighting something on their sheet. I will also try to make connections with the students later on as I cover particular topics, and I will ask them the question again about the most important event during our time period.

Welcoming new students

Mirroring something I do in the spring semester, on the first day of class in the fall I asked all those who were brand new to college to stand and the rest of us welcomed them to college with a round of applause. I hope all of them appreciated the gesture.

Poll Everywhere for audience response

On the first day of class I did two audience response questions. The first took a couple of minutes to explain and set up, and I was confused about how it worked joining a group of questions. I believe I will be able to use the same initial join code the whole semester, which means my students will be able to send a very short code (two digits) for each of the questions. It worked well, and they seemed to enjoy the task. I like breaking up lectures with questions and will keep in going.

Things to work on include how to involve those students who do not have cell phones or text plans. If I do something where I am trying to get feedback (muddiest point questions) I will likely include a paper instead so all students can participate.

Also, how often should I use a question in a long lecture? Every twenty minutes or so would be good, but it is hard to predict how many slides will take me that long.

Notes on updating - discussion descriptions with course file quicklinks

I am teaching the same prep this semester as last, so a lot of the content is ready for re-use. I notice that the quicklinks to course files within the description of a discussion topic did not get updated when I copied the material from last semester, so initially I had to re-do those. I decided to switch and make those files content topics to save myself from having to edit all those descriptions again.

Teaching from the Cloud

This semester I am going to try to teach as much as possible from the cloud. All documents will be google docs and presentations. I want it to help me keep my class content organized better.