Session 1

The first session was run four times in order to accommodate interested faculty: Tuesday, Oct. 16th at 11:30 am; Wednesday, October 17th at 11:30 am and again at 1:50 pm; and Thursday, October 18th at 11:30 am.

In preparation for the meeting , faculty read the introduction as well as the first two chapters of the text, which dealt with issues surrounding “prior knowledge”  and how students organize knowledge.

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 addressed Learning Principle 1 – Students’ prior knowledge can help or hinder learning. It stressed the need for assessing students prior knowledge both as a way to activate it as well as a way to identify the challenges of accurate but insufficient prior knowledge, inaccurate prior knowledge, and inappropriate prior knowledge – that is, prior knowledge that is not inaccurate, but can “skew comprehension of new material” (p. 20), such as common definitions for terms with technical meanings in the learning context.

To address these concerns, the text suggests a number of strategies.

Methods to Gauge the Extent and Nature of Students’ Prior Knowledge:

1. Talk to colleagues who teach prerequisite courses
2. Administer a diagnostic assessment
3. Have students assess their own prior knowledge (most of us felt this would not be a good indicator)
4. Use brainstorming to reveal prior knowledge
5. Assign a concept map activity (we talked about this, took a look at Appendix B of the text, and also found an instructional site as well as a concept map software site
6. Look for patterns of error in student work

We additionally looked at Student Engagement Technique 1 from Barkley’s Student Engagement Techniques – Background Knowledge Probe – where students are asked open-ended or short-answer questions on certain points to be taught and then share their answers in pairs or small groups. We thought this also might be modified by having students share answers as a class, sort of blending suggestions 2 and 4 above.

Methods to Activate Accurate Prior Knowledge

1. Use exercises to generate students’ prior knowledge (this is essentially done through assessment)
2. Explicitly link new material to knowledge from previous courses
3. Explicitly link new material to prior knowledge from your own course
4. Use analogies and examples that connect to students’ everyday knowledge
5. Ask students to reason on the basis of relevant prior knowledge

Methods to Address Insufficient Prior Knowledge

1. Identify the prior knowledge you expect students to have
2. Remediate insufficient  prerequisite knowledge

Methods to Help Students Recognize Inappropriate Prior Knowledge

1. Highlight conditions of applicability
2. Provide heuristics to help students avoid inappropriate application of knowledge
3. Explicitly identify discipline-specific conventions
4. Show where analogies break down

Methods to Correct Inaccurate Knowledge

1. Ask students to make and test predictions
2. Ask students to justify their reasoning (though I just read an article in the NY Times that said explaining, and not justifying, reveals knowledge gaps – though the article was about politics!)
3. Provide multiple opportunities for students to use accurate knowledge
4. Allow sufficient time to use new knowledge

Chapter 2

In Chapter 2, Learning Principle 2 was addressed, i.e., that how student organize knowledge influences how they learn and apply what they know. When it comes to knowledge organization, form fits function and there is a wide gap between the ways in which experts and novices organize knowledge.

The text suggests “ways for instructors to assess their own knowledge organizations relative to students’ and help students develop more connected, meaningful, and flexible ways of organizing their knowledge” (59).

Strategies to Reveal and Enhance Knowledge Organizations

1. Create a concept map to organize your own knowledge organization (this reminded me of our winter workshop a while back with Joan Middendorf on Decoding the Disciplines)
2. Analyze tasks to identify the most appropriate knowledge organization
3. Provide students with the organizational structure of the course
4. Explicitly share the organization of each lecture, lab or discussion
5. Use contrasting and boundary cases to highlight organizing features
6. Explicitly highlight deep features
7. Make connections among concepts explicit
8. Encourage students to work with multiple organizing structures
9. Asks students to draw a concept map to expose their knowledge organizations
10. Use a sorting task to expose students’ knowledge organizations
11. Monitor students’ work for problems in their knowledge organization

We additionally looked at Student Engagement Technique 8  – Classify – from Barkley’s Student Engagement Techniques, where students are asked to classify objects representative of a particular category of information.

Next Steps

We decided that each of us would try out a suggested strategy and report back to the group. We would also read Chapter 3 for next time, and meetings were set for:

• Tuesday, Oct 30 at 11:30
• Wednesday, Oct 31 at 11:30
• Wednesday, Oct 31 at 1:50
• Thursday, Nov 1 at 11:30

See you then!

Session 2

For Session 2, we shared our experiences with assessing and activating prior knowledge. We then turned to a discussion of Motivation, following Chapter 3.

Chapter 3

Learning Principle 3 states that “students’ motivation generates, directs, and sustains what they do to learn” and defines motivation as “the personal investment an individual has in reaching a desired state or outcome” (68-69).

Motivation is seen s being fed by students’ subjective value of a goal and their expectancies of achievement.

A number of types of goals were identified: performance, learning, work avoidant, social, and affective, with the most effective being learning goals. Research also should that multiple goals contribute to motivation, although goals may sometimes be conflicting – in which case values help resolve goal conflicts. Three types of values were discussed: attainment, intrinsic, and instrumental, and a combination of values can be potentially reinforcing.

Expectancies of achievement that contribute to motivation include positive outcome and efficacy expectancies, and these are determined by prior experience, but an even more powerful influence on motivation than prior success is the reasons for success. That is, internal reasons for success are more motivating that external reasons for success.  In addition, if expectancies are low, the problem may be viewed as fixed, and not malleable.

Motivation also depends upon a supportive environment, though if value is low, environment and even expectancies have little impact.

Strategies to Establish Value

1. Connect the material to students’ interests
2. Provide authentic, real-world tasks
3. Show relevance to students’ current academic lives
4. Demonstrate the relevance of higher-level skills to students’ professional lives
5. Identify and reward what you value
6. Show your own passion and enthusiasm for the discipline

Strategies That Help Students Build Positive Expectancies

1. Ensure alignment of objectives, assessments, and instructional strategies
2. Identify an appropriate level of challenge
3. Create assignments that provide the appropriate level of challenge
4. Provide early success opportunities
5. Articular your expectations
6. Provide rubrics
7. Provide targeted feedback
8. Be fair
9. Educate students about the ways we explain success and failure
10. Describe effective study strategies

Strategies That Address Value and Expectancies

1. Provide flexibility and control
2. Give students an opportunity to reflect

Next Steps

Again we thought we’d try out some strategies and report back. Meetings will be held the week of November 26th and Chapter 4 will be discussed.

Happy Thanksgiving!