Teaching Undergraduates: Principles and Practice

1. Teaching Undergraduates:Principles and Practice Intentionality by Design January 5, 2006 Michael Lee and Lee Seidel Center for Teaching Excellence www.unh.edu/teaching-excellence

2. Today’s Agenda • Welcome and introductions • Intentionality--What does it mean? • Designing a course for “intentionality” • Evidence-based teaching principles and practices • Conclusions

3. The Intentional Learner *Go to: http://www.greaterexpectations.org/

4. According to Greater Expectations, intentional learners are: Empowered through the mastery of intellectual and practical skills Informed by knowledge about the natural and social worlds and about forms of inquiry basic to these studies Responsible for their personal actions and for civic values

5. The intentional learner is able to: • Effectivelycommunicate orally, visually, in writing, and in a second language • Understand and employ quantitative and qualitative analysis to solve problems • Interpret and evaluate information from a variety of sources • Understand and work within complex systems and with diverse groups • Demonstrate intellectual agility and the ability to manage change • Transform information into knowledge and knowledge into judgment and action • Work well in teams, including those of diverse compositions • Resolve difficult issues creatively by employing multiple systems and tools

6. Lee Shulman's Model of College Teaching • Vision • Interaction with Students • Outcomes

7. Designing a course • When you design a course, start with a set of questions: • Who are the students? What do they already know of the subject? Why are they taking the course? • What do I want them to know and/or be able to do as a result of taking the course? • What activities will I have them do to lead them toward the course objectives? • How will I know they are reaching the course objectives as the course unfolds? • How will I know they have reached the objectives at the end of the course?

8. My students…. • Think about the “ideal student” in a course you teach. List some characteristics of this student. • Is motivated to learn. • Comes prepared to class

9. My students…. • Think about the “typical student” in a course you teach. List some characteristics of this student. • Is passive

10. Course activities, assignments, and materials • What are some of the activities and ways of interacting with students • you normally use to lead your students toward the course objectives you have set? • Lectures • Quizzes and exams

11. Evidence-based principles and practices of effective teaching • Chickering and Gamson (1987), Seven Principles for • Good Practice in Undergraduate Education http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/7princip.htm • Thomas Angelo (1993), A Teacher’s Dozen: Fourteen General, Research-based Guidelines to Inform College Teaching and Assessment and Improve Higher Learning http://aitt.acadiau.ca/research/Best_Teaching/teachersdozen1.pdf • Michael Theall (1999), New Directions for Theory and Research in Teaching: A Review of the Past Twenty Years (Available on request from CTE)

12. Chickering and Gamson’s Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education Good practice in undergraduate education: 1. encourages contact between students and faculty, 2. develops reciprocity and cooperation among students, 3. encourages active learning, 4. gives prompt feedback, 5. emphasizes time on task, 6. communicates high expectations, and 7. respects diverse talents and ways of learning.

13. Thomas Angelo’s “A Teacher’s Dozen: Fourteen General, Research-based Guidelines to Inform College Teaching and Assessment and Improve Higher Learning” 1. Active learning is more effective than passive learning. 2. Learning is more effective and efficient when learners have explicit, reasonable, positive goals, and when their goals fit well with teachers' goals. 3. High expectations encourage high achievement. 4. Motivation to learn is alterable; it can be positively or negatively affected by the task, the environment, the teacher and the learner. 5. Learning requires focused attention, and awareness of the importance of what is to be learned. 6. To be remembered, new information must be meaningfully connected to prior knowledge, and it must first be remembered in order to be learned. 7. Unlearning what is already known is often more difficult than learning new information.

14. Thomas Angelo Cont’d 8. Information that is organized in personally meaningful ways is more likely to be remembered, learned, and used. 9. To be most effective, teachers need to balance levels of intellectual challenge and instructional support. 10. Mastering a complex skill or body of knowledge takes great amounts of time and effort. 11. Learning to transfer, to apply previous knowledge and skills to new contexts, requires a great deal of directed practice. 12. The ways in which learners are assessed and evaluated powerfully affect the ways they study and learn. 13. Interaction between teachers and learners is one of the most powerful factors in promoting learning; interaction among learners is another. 14. Learners need feedback on their learning, early and often, to learn well; to become independent learners, they need to become self-assessing and self-correcting.

15. 1. Active Learning is more effective than passive learning Resources for Active Learning: http://unh.edu/teaching-excellence/resources/Activelearning.htm http://www.calstatela.edu/dept/chem/chem2/Active/index.htm

16. 2. Learning requires focused attention, and awareness of the importance of what is to be learned. Resources on Attention: http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v50/n15/teaching.htm http://www.clt.cornell.edu/campus/teach/faculty/Materials/GettingStsInvolved.pdf

17. 3. Learning is more effective and efficient when learners have explicit, reasonable, positive goals, and when their goals fit well with teachers' goals Resources for Teaching Goals: http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Columns/Objectives.html http://www.indiana.edu/~teaching/handbook_1.shtml#plan_02 http://www.uiowa.edu/~centeach/tgi/

18. 4. To be remembered, new information must be meaningfully connected to prior knowledge, and it must first be remembered in order to be learned. Resources on Prior Knowledge and Memory: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/learning/lr100.htm http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/assess-2.htm

19. 5. Unlearning what is already known is often more difficult than learning new information.

20. 6. Information that is organized in personally meaningful ways is more likely to be remembered, learned, and used. Resources: http://users.edte.utwente.nl/lanzing/cm_home.htm

21. 7. Learners need feedback, early and often, to learn well; to become independent, they need to learn how to give themselves feedback. Resources: http://www.lts.rmit.edu.au/renewal/assess/faq_feedback.doc http://teaching.berkeley.edu/early_feedback.pdf http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/online/cse142/assessments/muddiest-point.html

22. 8. The ways in which learners are assessed and evaluated powerfully affect the ways they study and learn. Resources on evaluation, grading, and rubrics: http://www.ncsu.edu/effective_teaching/Papers/TestingTips.htm http://online.bakersfieldcollege.edu/courseassessment/Section_4_Assessment_Tools/Section4_7rubrics.htm

23. 9. Mastering a skill or body of knowledge takes great amounts of time and effort.

24. 10. Learning to transfer, to apply previous knowledge and skills to new contexts, requires a great deal of practice. Resources on transfer and application of knowledge: http://www.siue.edu/~deder/assess/cats/apps9.html

25. 11. High expectations encourage high achievement Resources for Expectations: http://tep.uoregon.edu/resources/librarylinks/articles/highexpect.htmlhttp://captain.park.edu/facultydevelopment/writing_learning_objectives.htm http://depts.washington.edu/cidrweb/inclusive/convey.html

26. 12. To be most effective, teachers need to balance levels of intellectual challenge and instructional support Resources: http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/assess-2.htm

27. 13. Motivation to learn is alterable; it can be positively or negatively affected by the task, the environment, the teacher and the learner. Resources for Motivating Students: http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/motivate.html http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/unmotiva.htm http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/volumes/v51/n21/tatl.html

28. 14. Interaction between teachers and learners is one of the most powerful factors in promoting learning; interaction among learners is another. Resources: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/jte-v7n1/gokhale.jte-v7n1.html http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/collaborative.html http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/assess-1.htm

29. Conclusions….