Abstract

1. Children saw chimeras from eight different stimulus sets, and heard four referred to with perceptually counter-intuitive labels and four with the phrase “this one,” as illustrated below: Making the Most of the Minute Paper in a Psychology Course MICHELLE GUMBRECHT, Stanford University Method Participants:18 Stanford undergraduates (5 men and 13 women, M = 19 years) in two Introduction to Psychology sections (8 in Monday section; 10 in Thursday section). Abstract The minute paper (Angelo & Cross, 1993) is a popular way to obtain student feedback in many disciplines. Students write down answers to a series of questions, e.g., What is the muddiest point remaining?, and submit them to the instructor at the end of class. But how can both students and instructors make the most of this information? I looked to address this issue in my Introduction to Psychology sections at Stanford University. I replied to my students’ minute papers by writing a group email after class, presenting their questions anonymously, and answering each one. I often included links to journal articles or websites for further reading, since many of their questions were about experiments conducted on various topics discussed in section. Students responded positively to this method, as they could learn from their classmates’ questions and enhance their learning outside the classroom. Results Students also asked questions that extended upon experiments they learned about in lecture and section: “What happened to Little Albert? Is he still afraid of white rats and clanging?” “Was further research carried out as a direct result of the study we read [in section]?” “How were the kids chosen for the Kohlberg experiment?” “Would we be able to duplicate an experiment like Harlow’s monkey experiment today or would ethical dilemmas prevent it?” I selected the most common and interesting questions and wrote a group email to each section. I presented only the questions to keep the students’ identities anonymous. In the following email I included an attachment of a Psychological Science article in my reply to one student’s question: In end-of-term evaluations, students commented positively on using the minute paper: “I really liked the effort put into the minute paper.” “I like how she has (and answers) minute papers!” “Minute paper is awesome!” “I loved the minute papers – another way to interact and get important Qs answered.” • Procedure: At the end of every section, I presented these three questions to the students: • What was the most important thing you learned during section today? • What important question remains unanswered? • What was the muddiest point remaining at the end of today’s section? • Students answered the questions on paper and turned them in as they left class. I looked through all responses as soon as possible afterwards. First I looked for specific questions or statements written down for the “muddiest point”: • “I'm still a bit confused about the difference between correlational and observational studies.” • “What exactly is an observational study? Just observing characteristics of a group?” • “Do random assignments take into account geographic region, economic background, etc.?” • “What’s the difference between afferent and efferent?” • “Function of the pons[?]” • Then I looked at the “important unanswered questions” and grouped similar ones together if necessary. Students often went above and beyond the course material and were creative with their questions: • “I remember reading about MS (Multiple Sclerosis), but I’m still unsure about the disease. Can it be changed with diet? I have a friend w/ it, and she has a very restricted diet…” • “Does the 7 ± 2 affect how people teach (esp. psych professors!) teach? i.e. 7 things on a powerpoint, etc. (Just curious!)” • “One question I have is how the diff[erent] levels [of moral development] vary in criminals? Do they show a lower level or no level at all? Do they just disregard the levels?” • Discussion • Students and instructors connect through the minute paper. Students have a forum to ask more questions, and they recognize that their feedback is valuable to the class. Instructors find out immediately about students’ questions or comments on the day’s class. • Using group emails to respond to minute papers is an easy way to share answers with the class and expand their knowledge of the course material. Instructors can include attachments of journal articles and links to websites that expand upon psychological concepts and phenomena. • For beginning instructors, responding to minute papers can turn into a time-consuming process. When introducing the minute paper into a class, it’s important to let students know that all of their questions might not be answered and to establish what type of feedback to expect from their minute papers. Otherwise students will think their contributions aren’t being acknowledged and will lose motivation to create thoughtful responses. • If there is a common point of confusion that comes up in the minute papers, then it’s probably best to devote time during the next class to clarify it. • Currently I’m using a blog for my Introduction to • Cognitive Psychology course (http://stanfordcogpsych.blogspot.com) • as an alternative way of obtaining student feedback and an easy way for students and instructors to share links, attachments, and comment on each other’s posts. • Introduction • The minute paper is a classroom assessment technique that allows students to reflect on their learning process at the end of class and gives instructors ongoing feedback (Cross, 1996). • Instructors ask variations of the following questions (Cross, 1996; Mosteller, 1988): • 1. What is the most important thing that you • learned in class today? • 2. What is the main, unanswered question you • leave class with today? • 3. What was the muddiest point in the lecture? • There is little empirical research in any discipline on the effects of using minute papers. One exception is evidence of student learning gains in an undergraduate Economics course (Chizmar & Ostrosky, 1998). • Some instructors have migrated the minute paper to the Web by using bulletin boards (Chizmar & Walbert, 1999), forums (Kocaman, 2007), and emailing students (Chizmar & Walbert, 1999). • Psychology instructors’ use of the minute paper consists of mostly anecdotal reports on the Web; there is little published research (Craig, 1995). • How can Psychology instructors and students benefit most from the minute paper? I examined this in Introduction to Psychology sections by streamlining feedback, sharing it with the class, and responding quickly after class by email. Sometimes I also included links to websites in my responses to students: Student’s question: “More studies on culture and how it associates with baby attachment[?]” My response: I found a review of cross-cultural attachment studies, and the authors found that there were distinct differences in the distribution of attachment styles, depending on the country in which the study took place. Secure attachment was “modal” overall, but Western European countries had a higher frequency of avoidant attachments, and Israel and Japan had a higher frequency of resistant attachments. Article: http://www.jstor.org/view/00093920/ap030238/03a00130/0 Shortened version of email sent to students. References Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college teachers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Chizmar, J. F., & Ostrosky, A. L. (1998). The one-minute paper: Some empirical findings. TheJournal of Economic Education, 29(1), 3-10. Chizmar, J. F., & Walbert, M. S. (1999). Web-based learning environments guided by principles of good teaching practice. The Journal of Economic Education, 30(3), 248-259. Craig, J. (1995). Minute papers in a large class. Teaching Resources Center, 7(2). Indiana University. Retrieved July 5, 2007, from: http://www.ntlf.com/html/lib/bib/minute.htm Cross, K. P. (1996). Classroom research: Implementing the scholarship of teaching. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 60, 402- 407. Kocaman, A. (2007). The one-minute paper: An application in forum environments. In C. Crawford et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2007 (pp. 103-105). Cheasapeake, VA: AACE. Mosteller, F. (1988). Broadening the scope of statistics and statistical education. The American Statistician, 42(2), 93-99. Acknowledgments Thanks to my Spring 2006 PSYCH 1 students and the Center for Teaching and Learning at Stanford.