Today I’m going to highlight two more approaches. One focuses on reading strategies that encourage students to shape class discussion. The other leans into active learning that doesn’t require advance preparation.
Reading for discussion. Sherry Linkon, a professor of English and American studies at Georgetown University, described an approach she developed years ago, after students told her that when they struggle with a text, they often rely on class discussions to clarify their confusion.
Linkon created what she calls a framing document, a low-pressure, ungraded approach to encourage students to consider what questions the reading raises for them. “Students have regularly told me this is one of their favorite assignments,” she wrote.
She asks students to respond to four questions about the reading and submit them in advance:
- What do you find most interesting about this text?
- How does it connect with other things we’ve read?
- What questions should we ask about it?
- How should we approach those questions? In particular, how could we use the text itself to begin to dig into your questions?
This strategy works for a few reasons. One is that only a few students are asked to do it in any given week, which makes the assignment manageable for her to review. (Linkon teaches two courses a semester but says this strategy worked when she had a heavier teaching load.) Another is that asking students in advance what they find interesting and what questions they have helps her shape the class discussion and makes it more student-centered.
Linkon has used variations of this strategy in a range of courses, including first-year courses and master’s-level seminars.
“Yes, some students will still copy from sources or get help from AI. I’m not sure anything I can do will stop that entirely,” she wrote. “But making this mostly about what they’re interested in seems to motivate a lot of them, and it helps them learn how to begin to approach a new text on their own. I get very positive feedback from students on this.”
Guided learning. Beatriz Gonzalez, a biology professor at Santa Fe College, a community college in Florida, has long used a form of teaching called “process-oriented guided-inquiry learning,” or POGIL, in her general-biology course for majors.
“I use lecture often because of its convenience,” she wrote, “but the energy and lucidity in comprehension you get when you teach using POGIL I cannot generate any other way. It is not group learning; it’s more than that.”
Here’s how Gonzalez describes her approach. First, she assumes students come to class with little preparation. While she does assign homework, many of her students are strapped for time or just don’t do it. So she presents an activity, designed to teach a concept, that does not require any prior knowledge or preparation.
“I ask students to look at the exercise individually, and after a little while, they work in groups of four students to answer the questions in the handout. I circulate around the room to answer questions and hear their conversations. Then each group has a few of the questions from the activity that they have to report out to the class. Groups don’t know which question I’ll ask them to present, so they work on all the questions.”
Students in each group can choose a role they feel comfortable with, such as reading the question out loud or explaining the problem they solved. “Students feel a sense of accomplishment after presenting,” Gonzalez noted.
There are other benefits as well. “When students do the work in person, in class, with me in the room and their classmates, everyone is interacting and brainstorming,” she wrote. “AI is not an issue. And it builds friendships, combats loneliness, makes it worthwhile for them to come to class. So it addresses the mental-health crisis we are living through and the AI ghosts. And it really prepares them to work with others, which in the end makes college a wise investment.”
I’d like to continue the conversation about motivating students to do the work necessary for a lively class. Write to me with your ideas at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com, and they may appear in a future newsletter.
Learning Lessons
Long-time newsletter readers might recognize Martha Mullally, the professor whose work is described in the latest installment of Beckie’s Learning Lessons series. Mullally’s effort to help students find a friend in her biology courses at Carleton University, in Canada, when classes returned to in-person instruction was featured in a Teaching newsletter several years back.
Mullally’s approach has continued to evolve. As the new article describes, Mullally believes that connecting with classmates encourages attendance and creates a comfortable context for class presentations, which she sees as essential for assessing what students know in the age of AI.
Those are just some of the benefits of classroom connections, which also support learning, increase motivation, and prepare students for the kinds of collaborative work they’ll likely engage in after college.
Other stories in the series highlight how professors can help students practice, encourage them to care about writing, motivate them by offering choices, and connect with them on a human level.
Stay tuned! Two more installments will be out in the coming weeks.
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com or beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.
Learn more at our Teaching newsletter archive page.
