Winter+2011+Meeting+Summaries

Winter 2011 Meeting Summaries
Following each gathering of the teaching larger classes community of practice, Educational Development will summarize highlights of our discussion. These will be captured below under each meeting date. If you have additions or amendments to the summary of each meeting, feel free to edit.


 * March 31st, 2011**

Today Dr. Stephen MacNeil shared how he transformed his chemistry course from a traditional face-to-face setting with active learning components and technology enhancements (e.g., clickers) to a blended format in which students are engaged in the learning process before, during and after class in an integrated manner that includes both face-to-face (F2F) meetings and online components. In a true blended learning course, classroom time is typically reduced to accommodate online learning components, which is not to be confused with courses that use technology to enhance the classroom experience. The idea with blended learning is not to add or cover more content, but to strategically redistribute the teaching and learning process across various educational settings (online, face-to-face, offline).

Using Ike Shibley's work (see the [|February 2009]issue of the //Online Classroom// newsletteravailable through TRELLIS/PRIMO) as an organizing framework to present how he crafted his course, Dr. MacNeil took us through the design of his course and his pedagogical reasoning. In the development of his blended course, he emphasized the importance of having clearly articulated learning objectives which he distilled further into learning tasks for each unit of study. Refer to his PPT slides for an overview of his course. Dr. MacNeil further noted the importance of selling the concept of a blended learning approach to his students in the first week of term and reiterating how each component was designed to help students develop mastery of the material and to be successful as learners.

Online activities and content, he shared were designed to cover lower level objectives/learning that did not require the professor to do the "informing". Classroom learning included mini-lectures, clicker questions, problem sets, etc. - active learning. Attendance in class averaged 80%. Completion of online learning components was 90+%. Overall, Dr. MacNeil shared while initially a considerable investment of his time, the benefits outweighed the time commitment.

Individuals interested in seeing Dr. MacNeil's course are asked to contact him directly at smacneil@wlu.ca. If you are interested in developing a blended learning course or learning more about it, contact the Office of Educational Development.


 * Blended Learning Resources**

[|The Hybrid Online Model: Good Practice](Martyn, 2003) [|Blended Learning Guide] (Van Noord et al., 2007) [|Hybrid Courses]University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee (design topcs/considerations/pros and cons) [[|Ten Hybrid Question to Consider (2005)]]

Only a handful attended today's CoP on teaching larger classes. General musings about how things were going were shared before moving into other topics of interest.
 * March 2nd, 2011**

Our meeting today started with a brief recap of some of the first year Arts student issues that we spoke of at length during our last meeting. A few new and interesting statistics were shared, such as the fact that Science has dropped their progression requirements in Science to a 4 (from 5) in order to retain more Honours students; that Business students' grades have not dropped in the BBA courses, only in their Arts electives; and that from the research that is being conducted to try and find out some of the causes and predictors of first year academic struggles, the greatest predictor that students will struggle in university is their highschool English grades. This led into a discussion about the fact that with increasing class sizes, it is getting harder for faculty to integrate writing into their courses. We chatted briefly about how to leverage peer review to help students improve the quality of their writing as well as the importance of incorporating drafting excersises into the writing process.
 * February 3rd, 2011.**

Jeanette McDonald brought in an activity that she has used with large (150) class/workshop settings called Send A Problem. It's one of several collaborative tools that can administered in a range of classes, but it does take some extra adminitrative effort to coordinate smoothely in class. Basically, the activity requires students to work in groups on a problem, scenario, interpretation of text, etc. Each student group receives a package with the problem and some guiding questions and instructions to complete the activity and record their reactions/interpretations/problem-solving process. Each group is asked to assign a timekeeper, facilitator and recorder to ensure the activity is completed and documented in a timed and efficient manner. Once the first group completes the activity and records their response, they replace the material back in the envelope and pass it on to the next group to review the problem. The second group follows the same process and passes the envelope on to a third. The third group completes the same activity with the added role of summarize and integrating the response of all groups into one document. The last step is performed at a higher level thought process given it involves synthesis and evaluation. Once the third group completes the task, the instructor calls on group facilitators/leaders to report on their results. This activity, while taking time, facilitates deeper learning of a given concept or problem and documents the learning process in a public manner. For more information about this activity and others like it, refer to **Collaborative Learning Techniques** available in TRELLIS at LB1032 .B318.

Leanne Hagarty shared the success that she hasd had using role playing in her large first year Business course. She indicated that although the role plays were time consuming, she felt that it was time well spent as it was helping to make the subject more meaningful (and therefore better understood and retained). Students were willing to participate in the role plays, enjoying them as audience members, and were paying more attention to what was going on compared to when she was lecturing.

We had a short conversation about the necessity of making labs / tutorials mandatory in order to motivate student attendance. Laura Allan shared that in Business, students can't miss more than two labs or they forfeit a significant percentage (40%) of their course grade. Michael Imort explained that this (student attendance at labs) has become an increasing concern in Geography & Environmental Studies.

Anne Russell told us about an issue she has been having in her large English course where students are not paying attention to the film clips that she is showing and leaving the class early when she puts them on. Even though the film clips are testable material in her course, students don't seem to be engaged by them, despite the fact that she has been using them for this very purpose! Judy Bates shared that in one of the courses that she teaches that uses films, she has the students submit film reviews each time a film is shown in class. She uses eight films throughout the term and students are required to submit at least five reviews; if they submit all eight, then their best five grades will count towards the 15% allotted value. You can see a copy of Judy's Film Review Assignment on the Participant Practices page.

Steve MacNeil explained a bit about the blended learning approach he used in his 200 level Chemistry course last term and how well it was received by students. In his course, students were required to view online video lessons and complete a homework assignment (also online) before coming to class. By ceasing to use class contact time for lecturing and using it to do problem-solving instead, Steve has asked his students to assume greater responsibility for their learning. This approach resulted in a lower than average failure rate and a higher than average retention rate in CH202.

We are hoping that in our next meeting on **Wednesday, March 2nd** that Steve will share a bit more about the process of redesigining his course from a lecture-style to a more application-based blended learning environment. We hope to see you there!

We are off to a great start for the term with a very engaging and thought-provoking first meeting. Below are some of the highlights of our conversation.

Michael Imort shared that 43% of this year's first year Arts students would have grades too low to even take-up a major. This represents a 33% increase from last year. This past fall term also saw a record withdrawal rate for first year students, up 200% from last year. A task force dedicated to better understanding why we are "losing" so many first year students has been initiated. We discussed some of the various current efforts at Laurier to help first year students get back on track. Leanne Hagarty told us that in SBE, students who do poorly on the first midterm are sent a targeted email about their performance. We also debated some of the possible reasons or factors for the decrease in academic performance that we are seeing in our first year students, such as amount of time spent working or commuting, living arrangements (reports have indicated that students in dorm-style double rooms perform the best in first year), and class attendance. We will perhaps soon see a paradigm shift in the way that Laurier addresses the first year student experience (e.g. reducing course load).

This led into a somewhat related discussion about the level of engagement that students want to experience in their classrooms. Although we work hard to create an engaging atmosphere in our classes, many students want to be passive. Alex Latta shared a recent experience in his large first year class in which he tried to begin the first class with interaction and discussion, but the students were not willing to participate. Alex said that he will continue to try to engage students through the discussion of a related global issue at the start of each class.

We talked briefly about the "encourage" (force?) students to attend tutorials and labs through the relative weighting attributed to these in the course assessment scheme. Alex told us that the first year Global Studies tutorials are worth up to 45% of the students' final grade. Ken Maly explained that mandatory lab attendance is a documented course policy for the first year Chemistry classes. Leanne Hagarty told us how she made visits to the Writing Centre a mandatory, graded component of one of her assignments.

Tristan Long shared an experiment that he is trying in his large first year Biology classes this term. In order to help students to develop their writing skills, Tristan has them complete 6 handwritten half-page entries in a writing journal that will comprise part of their final grade. We are looking foward to hearing how this experiment goes.

In our next meeting on **Thursday, February 3rd at 1:00 p.m**., we decided that we'd do some "showing" and "telling," sharing practices that we are currently using in our large classes.