On November 9^th, 2016, I may have witnessed the closest we can ever get to running a perfect jigsaw in a large class. Dr. James Scoates ran the activity with more than 75 students in EOSC 220 (Mineralogy) and had them working to apply previously-learned concepts to completely new material in a group setting. The entire class was using theory they had gathered throughout the semester to solve real-world problems; this connected the techniques they have learned to identify and classify minerals to using those techniques with unknowns. So, this entire activity was based upon using the theory beyond the classroom and provided the students with the perspective that they can now apply what they have learned to the natural world.

The objective was for the students to each become experts in one of three mineral groups they have not encountered yet, share their expertise with others who studied different mineral groups, and then, as a combined group, solve three higher-order questions, one based on each of the mineral types.

James started the lesson by giving a brief introduction and handing some samples around the room to add context to the activity. The students also had some homework to complete online that started them thinking about the concepts tackled during the activity, but not the activity directly. This was to save time.

Two TAs were present at the session, and then began handing around the assignment before the class started. Cleverly, the sheets were already in groups of three, so the expert groups were already next to each other, saving time. James explained the activity, giving it the jigsaw name, and explains the timing. During this introduction, the two TAs dealt with the latecomers and made sure they were organized into expert groups, too.

After giving some time for them to read their part and become ‘experts,’ they got together in their expert groups for 8 minutes and discussed a few questions that James posed on the board. They were done this part of the activity only 17 minutes into the 50-minute class, probably due to the background information they got from doing the homework.

After getting into their jigsaw groups, James gave them additional instructions about when they will be switching from one mineral type to another and what is expected of them (they had to answer a higher-order question for each). He then made sure to keep a slide up with all of this important information as they went through each of their mineral types (actually two slides on two different screens running through two different computers – James uses this a lot and it’s awesome!). The students then got one sheet of paper per expert group and worked on solving the higher-order questions, mentioned above, together. As the students were working and time started running out, James began going through some synthesis slides. With the remaining 5 minutes he solicited answers for each of the higher-order questions from groups he visited that he knew had gotten the correct answer.

I have all of the supporting material (worksheets, homework, etc.) from theis lecture and still have some questions for James … so stay tuned!

On November 16^th, I had the opportunity to run a 2-hour long lesson in an isotope geology graduate course (EOSC 523). I was asked to provide information on isotopic analyses in archaeology, forensics, and palaeontology, which is the specific field of study for my PhD. I know most of the participants in the class very well and was able to plan my content around this to some degree. Also, because we were talking about humans instead of rocks for this class, it was a great way not only for me to connect real life examples and the theory I was providing, but also to help the participants put the whole course into a human framework and connect all of the theory they have learned with something that is tangible to them in the real world: themselves!

I have never had the opportunity to teach for a full two hours, so there more planning than usual that went into this lesson. I wanted to be sure that the students were well prepared for the higher-order activity I had planned (a nested jigsaw), so I carefully constructed pretests, discussions, and postests throughout the first hour of the class, when we went over the basics. I was particularly nervous about this activity, as it was prepared for graduate students and was intended to be particularly challenging and high-order. If it was too challenging, however, would be determined only when I delivered it for the first time.

Engagement and motivation has been a bit of a challenge for the professor of the course, Dr. Dominique Weis (also my supervisor), due to the participants not necessarily being keen about active learning (and being quite vocal about this). There is also a strong, but logical, divide in the class between those who are doing isotope geology for the graduate work, and those who aren’t. It’s about a 50-50 split, and the two groups of students even sit on the opposite side of the room from one another (not out of dislike, just out of habit, I suppose). To mitigate this, I arranged for one person from each group to sit together for the first part of the lesson so they could share with one another during discussions. To explain how I did this, I first need to explain my activity, a ‘nested jigsaw’.

What is a ‘nested jigsaw’? After my lesson in EOSC 425, where we did the hominin cards jigsaw activity, I modified my approach a little to limit the amount of time it took to share the results. With a class of 12, I decided that I would find two interesting case studies that applied isotopes to archaeological problems and mix up the two groups that the students normally sit. I split each of the case studies into 3 manageable chunks, either based on the different isotopic systems used, or the different sets of archaeological remains analysed. Each 6-person group had to first work together to figure out the regional geology of their case study. They summarized this as a together and filled out the worksheet, and then split into pairs to work on one of the three smaller parts, for which they had to interpret complicated datasets. I went around and helped them during this time, and delivered important clues when they were stuck. Then, the three small groups in each 6-person group shared their piece of the puzzle with the rest of the 6 participants, and together they had to answer a few synthesis questions. Once they synthesized, they presented their findings to the other 6-person group. All in all, it took about 30 minutes to complete the activity, after I gave about an hour’s worth of lesson (including, again, lots of pre and post assessments and discussions). Everyone got where I was hoping they would, so apparently it was just challenging enough!

So, back to setting up the room at the beginning of class. I made sure that I had preassigned the 6-person groups for the activity based on who I thought would benefit from the different case studies. Again, because of the small group size and because I TA for the course and share office space with soem of the students, I had the luxury of knowing the students quite well. After I made the 6-person groups, I took one person from each group and made pairs, keeping in mind again the students who normally worked together and those who didn’t. The case studies included worksheets, so I spread the worksheets around the room in pairs with different coloured sticky notes (indicative of their large, 6-person case study group) on the back. This spread everyone out in a good way and also ensured that there was lots of mixing between the two sets of students who normally don’t communicate much.

During the first hour, everyone was really engaged, asked lots of questions, and generally assessed well. The activity went really great (I am not even sure if I will change anything for next time), and, after the activity, we came back to a typical lesson situation and I went over some of the more interesting aspects of the relationship between isotopes and archaeology, before summing up on the big picture. I was surprised at the end to receive a round of applause from my peers, and about a half hour of additional enthusiastic discussion from the class after the allotted time was over. Overall, it was a great success and I look forward to doing it again next year!

Instructions:

PART A: (Post your responses to PART A in your own blogs.)

• Identify a focus area for your observation based on the CATL lesson we just completed on Learning Outcomes.
  • Choose one or two  things from this lesson to use as a guide for your next observation.
• Decide on a potential way you can incorporate something you learned in this CATL lesson in your teaching practicum.
  • During your practicum (both the design and the teaching) implement one or two things you learned in this lesson.

My response:

For my next observation, I am going to focus on the relationship between the LOs and the activities/assessments, and also see how those relationships vary depending on the specificity of the LO, the order of the verb(s) used, if it is more open or close ended, etc. Basically, I plan on using the frameworks given in the last CATL session to assess the cohesiveness of the different components of the class!

Fortunately, I had my first practicum right after the last CATL session, so I was already able to implement some of what I learned. I made sure that I used a range of types of LOs (low and high order, closed and open-ended and match them with my activities and assessments) and tested them accordingly. Additionally, I got some great feedback on my LOs during our session that I also implemented!

For my next practicum (Nov 16th), I will incorporate the same things as discussed above, and take what I learn from observing to try to establish a strong relationship between my activities and LOs, and also to apply the Learner Knowledge Agency Model to evaluate the order of the activities and LOs I provide. I will also keep in mind the Learning Outcomes Priorities and use that framework to modify what I have already planned (I am just starting to refine my lesson :). Additionally, I surveyed some members of the class to whom I am lecturing, and from that was able to derive some student-driven LOs to accompany the LOs I have set for them. This is particularly important in this situation because I am giving a class on almost the exact topic of my thesis, and, as one would suspect, have major expert syndrome!

More to come…

On Monday, October 24th, I was given the opportunity to lecture to a fourth-year palaeontology class (EOSC 425) for Dr. Paul Smith on human evolution. It was a lot to cover in 50 minutes (!), but with some help from active learning strategies, I was able to cover all of the necessary information and provide the students with something to take home after!

I designed the lecture around one large activity: a jigsaw. But, this wasn’t your run-of -the-mill standard jigsaw … we made hominin playing cards!

Each student was given homework to go to the Smithsonian website and research a particular hominin species. I gave them 9 guiding questions and they were asked to take simple notes. Then, in class, I formatted a flip chart paper for each of the species to look like a trading card (think: Pokemon), and the students were asked to fill the posters in with the information they collected as homework. I made sure to assign at least two people per species, and to group more consistently well-performing students (I had data since I TA the labs) with those who may not do the homework or show up to class. This worked out swimmingly, as each species had at least one person in class with notes about it!

In class, I prompted the students and introduced the topic with some big-picture ideas and some contextual information, then we dove right into the activity. It took them about 15 minutes to fill in their posters. Then, the trick was we were going to synthesise the information on their posters and make a human evolution timeline!

Starting with the oldest (Sahelanthropus) and going to the youngest species (us), each group came up and presented their playing card to the class and gave some details on it before sticking it onto the board over their temporal range (I drew the timeline with ranges before class). I augmented their presentations when necessary and also filled in some important information about the timeline that wasn’t specific to any particular species (e.g., when brain size started to drastically increase simultaneously in multiple hominins). After we finished the timeline, I brought everything back together in lecture (which we had very little time and too much content for; definitely room for improvement next year) and provided some additional context and some mechanisms for human evolution. I gave them a handout of the card format to add notes during their colleagues’ presentations. I have taken pictures of all of their posters and put them all online, so they can keep adding to their cards. The idea is for them to end up with a complete set of cards for studying purposes and to have kept them active during their colleagues’ presentations. This worked really well, I think! Most students had something written down for each hominin by the time we were done class.

I solicited feedback from the students after the class by sending out a quick survey, and in general they all really, really liked the activity but felt like the remainder of the lecture was a bit rushed. I noticed this too, and it was a result of running an elaborate activity for the first time and the activity simply taking a little too long. Next time, I think I will have the students prepare their information at home in the exact format of the poster, so the transfer of information will be faster! I will also refine my content to make sure I can deliver it in a more timely manner.

As part of my SoTL research was figuring out how to adapt jigsaw to different settings and to different types of content, this was the perfect launching point and I look forward to my second attempt next year!

As more feedback flows in from the students I will keep adding to this post…

Rhy

EOSC 220 Observation Reflection

On October 27^th 2016, I had the pleasure of attending a second-year mineralogy (EOSC 220) class led by Dr. James Scoates and Dr. Matthijs Smit. The class has about 80 participants, and the entire 50-minute lection, hold only about 10 minutes, was a group activity. The students were required to solve a bunch of problems related to a type of mineral that they had not studied yet in class. They had to apply all of the techniques the learned in the framework of the other mineral systems in previous classes to something completely new. What a cool idea!

The class started out as a homework overview and some feedback from James, which segued into a motivating bridge in that was prefaced with, “So, what’s the point of all this? We are going to apply what you learned in class to the real world today.” James then told them their task and gave them an idea of how long it would take. As the students worked on their posters in groups of 4-5 (there were three different types of posters), the instructors walked around the room and made sure they got to each group before the class was over. The content they put on their posters was assessed by a popcorn like activity at the end of the class that was augmented by James (this only took 3 minutes). Then, James is planning on reviewing the posters and providing feedback to the students during their next lab.

Once the activity started, it was great to observe how the dynamic in the room changed. Everyone was discussing, working together, and trying to solve the same collective problems. James and Matthijs went around the room and supported the students, taking any opportunity they had to sit on the floor with them, chat with them, and generally break the student-instructor barrier whenever they could. Since there was a huge time constraint on such a large activity, James used a technique called ‘shortcutting,’ or basically getting students to commit to an answer to keep the activity rolling. I found this incredibly effective and broke down the culture that ‘wrong is bad,’ which led to a better learning experience for the students. At the end of the class, students lined up to talk to James with really interesting questions and discussion. They were really motivated!

One of James’ favourite parts of the activity is another motivating force, and governed how they designed the poster: you can start anywhere! This allows a lot of flexibility and for the students to choose where they start and means that the students that James or Matthijs visit later in the process aren’t left waiting for their help on the first question!

In a conversation with James after the activity, he filled me in on some of the things he did to modify the activity from last year, and also to modify it on the fly. For example, because everyone was working so enthusiastically together in class, James cut a worksheet (that was going to serve as a post-assessment) and went over the results with the whole class instead. As mentioned above, he popcorned the responses, so he at least had some indication of who was on the right track (in addition, of course, to the discussions he had with every group as he went around the room). This was the third time that they offered this activity, and it had evolved every time. For example, on the poster, James added some extra clues this year to help the students through the parts that some of them got stuck on last year. He also removed some of the additional data that led to the confusion.

During our conversation, James identified another deviation from previous years. They usually do a gallery walk to look at all the posters (while filling in the worksheets discussed above), but, due to time constraints, they have moved this part of the activity to the lab section of the course instead. I asked if he was going to put the answers up online, and he said he didn’t want to plan an entirely new activity for next year, so, unfortunately, he didn’t want to do that. I think that allowing the students access to each other’s posters after the activity will suffice nicely, but it’s too bad that there is always the threat of cheating, etc., that hinders such transfers of knowledge.

However, James put slides online before the activity that contained all of the necessary information. Interestingly, most students didn’t realise this and didn’t use the supporting information for the activity (which is actually probably better for their learning!). This way, the students have all of the content for studying purposes and the activity taking up class time doesn’t hinder the learning of those who prefer to do it passively.

While watching the activity, I noticed that there was a big difference in the relative abilities of the different students and that those with similar skill levels seemed to group themselves together. I asked James about this, and he said that he has never pre-assigned groups because it’s challenging to ensure that everyone will be there, and also it’s hard to motivate students in mixed groups.  James suggests that it’s okay to have ‘good’ groups and ‘less good’ groups because in mixed groups you have the tendency for strong students to completely take over! This was really insightful, as part of my SoTL research project involves pre-assigning groups for jigsaws. Definitely food for thought!

This was a really great experience, and I will continue to keep checking out James’ classes, since they are doing such a wonderful job at implementing active learning in large classes!

Rhy