Educational Psychology 302

1. Educational Psychology302 Session 13 Learning through Interaction

2. Class Discussions • Can be applied to many disciplines • Helps students see information as dynamic, evolving understanding and not simply fact. • Leads to meaningful understanding of concepts and to subsequently better transfer to new situations and problems

3. Promoting Discussions • Make sure students have sufficient prior knowledge of the topic. • Make sure students feel comfortable sharing differing viewpoints • Use combinations of small and whole class discussion • Let students help control the pace and direction of the discussion • Apply pro/con or judiciary structures

4. Reciprocal Teaching • Peer tutoring • Useful at the small group and large group levels • Replicates the summarizing, questioning, clarifying and predicting process that is helpful in teaching students to read • Effective for all age levels of students

5. Advantages of Reciprocal Teaching • Both teacher and learner model effective reading and learning strategies • Students internalize the learning process that they use in their discussions with others • The structured nature of a reciprocal teaching session scaffolds students’ efforts to make sense of the things they see and hear

6. Cooperative Learning • Definition: An approach to learning where students work in small groups to help one another learn • Promotes: • Greater comprehension • Group reinforcement • Increased perspective taking • Construct more sophisticate ideas • Higher self-efficacy with group work

7. Promoting Cooperative Learning • Give group members a common goal to work for • Identify appropriate group behaviors • Structure tasks so that success depends on students helping each other • Devise ways to make students both individually and group accountable • Have students evaluate their efforts at the end of a task

8. Peer Tutoring • Definition—Students who have mastered a topic teaching those who have not • Encourages active responses • Encourages students to organize and elaborate on what they have learned • Gives students an opportunity to ask more questions of the content • Promotes cooperation and other social skills • Benefits tutors as well as those being tutored

9. Promoting Peer Tutoring • Make sure students understand the material they are teaching and that they use effective instructional techniques • Include special needs students in peer tutoring activities • Make sure all students have the opportunity to be both tutor and tutee • Structure the interaction so that students are aware of their tasks and learning outcomes

10. DLP—Goal To help learners apply proper techniques in constructing objective and constructed response test items.

11. DLP—Objectives • Learners will state the difference between objective and constructed response items with 100% accuracy. • In a given content area, learners will appropriately identify the appropriate strategies for constructing objective test items. • In a testing situation, learners will identify the optimal conditions for using either objective and constructed response test items.

12. DLP—Methods/Strategies Introduction (10 minutes) Display items from several tests (ACT, SAT, GRE, class tests, other), ask students the following questions: • Do these tests appear to have the same purposes in mind? In what ways? • How well do you think these tests meet their objectives • How do you feel when you meet these kinds of questions on a test? • Which questions are easiest/hardest? Why? (Large group discussion)

13. DLP—Methods/Strategies Lecture (10 Minutes) Introduce, define, and illustrate each of the follow types of test items: Objective: Multiple choice, true-false, matching Constructed Response: short-answer, essay, problem-solving (illustrate all items using overhead and/or other media) (Expository)

14. DLP—Methods/Strategies • Lecture (continued) • Explain the terms recall and recognition in light of student assessment. Discuss the following: • ease of grading • reliability • relationship to instructional objectives • appropriately matching test items to the level of specified learning

15. DLP—Methods/Strategies Activity (15 minutes) • Break students up into small groups. • Have students identify a single concept from a recent class reading assignment. • Have students develop two assessment items for the concept each having a different form. • Have the students present their items to the rest of the class and identify the learned capability, the response task, and concept they were testing. • Encourage the class to question the group on process and rationale of item construction.

16. DLP—Completion Wrap-up (10 minutes) Conduct a final discussion with students asking/identifying how assessment . . . • Is used diagnostically • Responds to accountability issues • Can be instructionally useful • Requires essential attention to detail

17. DLP—Enrichment Encourage students to examine self-tests in their texts, readings, and lessons in other classes. Have them identify: • How well the item tests the concept • The nature of the response required by the item • The ability of the item to assess what they know about the concept • Alternative items to testing the concept.

18. DLP—Assessment • At least 6 assessment items • At least 3 variations (types) • Graded on alignment with instructional objectives and adherence to appropriate characteristics