Summer 2006

Summer 2006

Did you know that...

HorizonWimba has released a program called CourseGenie that allows anybody who has MS Word to convert their word documents into web pages in just a few simple steps. The web pages automatically come up with topic menus and navigation buttons turning a written lecture into a web course in just a few minutes. One can easily add quizzes, flashcards and images to the content for more interaction. The new web course can be uploaded to Blackboard, WebCT or other online courses. The single-user license is $ 295.

Learn more and try Course Genie free at:

www.horizonwimba.com/products/coursegenie/

Visit the web site of the Program for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (PETAL) for the full schedule of Summer events, teaching tips and links to web resources www.southalabama.edu/petal

Advanced Registration by phone or email is required for all events.

Phone: 461-1563 FAX: 460-6884 email: PETAL@usouthal.edu

June 14 June 20 June 28 July 11 July 12 July 20

Petal Summer 2006 Events

3 pm- 5pm 10 am -12 pm 3 pm-4 pm 10 am-12 pm 3 pm - 5 pm 2 pm - 3 pm

Turnitin for Administrators Lab 123 Zakharova Turnitin for Faculty Lab 123 Zakharova Writing for Publication Rm 181 Wood Grade Book in Excel Lab 123 Zakharova Grade Book in Excel Lab 123 Zakharova Inviting Guest Speakers to Class Rm 181 Husain

The June-July 2006 Issue of The Teaching Professor includes these topics:         

Death by Paper: Ten Secrets for Survival Learning the Lessons of Silence Is there a Place for Games in the College Classroom?

Learning and Motivation in the Postsecondary Classroom My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student Putting Students Frist: How Colleges Develop Students Purposefully Critical Thinking: It’s a Hard Skill to Teach Getting to Know Your Students: Three Challenges In-Class Writing: a Technique that Promotes Learning and Diagnoses Misconceptions

The full text of The Teaching Professor is available through EBSCO’s Academic Search Premier PETAL Roundtable: Presenter Dr. Zohair Husain “Inviting Guest Speakers

July 20, 2 pm-3 pm Library Room 181 Light refreshments Registration Required 461-1563

petal@usouthal.edu

to Class”

Smart Classroom

Last month, PETAL hosted a presentation of the I-Clicker system that triggered an animated debate among the participants on the effectiveness of such devices in the classsroom.

We have interviewed departments who already have used such systems beginning with Dr. Richard Daughenbaugh, professor of the Department of Professional Studies, COE. Dr. Daughenbaugh, Personal Response Systems have become quite popular in today’s classroom but there are so many different models! What kind of device have you used in your teaching?

I have been using the CPS (Computer Performance System) from eInstruction.

What features did you like best about it?

I especially like the attendance taking feature. One click from each of the students and attendance is taken.

Then there is the variety of testing features that can be used by the instructor. In the Teacher mode of testing, the questions are projected onto a screen for the entire class to read and respond. The teacher clicks the Stop icon and the results are tallied and displayed as a Histogram. All questions are displayed until the quiz/ test is completed. One can immediately show an item analysis if needed. Individual results can be printed or sent to the students. In the Student mode, the student has the exam and the clicker.

What flaws or drawbacks have you discovered about your PRS? One thing I find annoying is recharging the batteries.

Without online management feature, the teacher must maintain the student clickers. A bag of 24 clickers and its receiver is $2500 including two hours of professional training. Another thing is the importing of names from PAWS, setting up and importing pre-existing exams from Word. These have to be formatted in a very, very precise manner otherwise the importing will not work.

It is simpler in the long run to just type in the student names and the quizzes, tests, exams, and so forth.

In what situation is it most effective and for what type of assignments will you never recommend its use?

I like this for all of the quizzes, but also for assessing the students’ understanding of the content of the current class lecture. The teacher can go into a Verbal mode and ask Yes or No, True and False, or Multiple Choice questions to review knowledge assimilation. A graph can show how many of the students are understanding the material. This system works well with PowerPoint and most all presentation programs. It is more difficult to pose higher order thinking skills assessments with this system.

How did it help you as an instructor?

The system records and grades the information within seconds and places this information in a grade book, and allowed me to measure the class’s assimilation at any point. My students loved the clicker assessment system, attendance increased by twenty percent, and responses to verbal questions increased over sixty percent. Even the quiet, non-participating students become active learners with this system.

Critical Thinking: It’s a Hard Skill to Teach

Are there any faculty members who don’t aspire to teach their students to think critically? In a truly excellent summary and explanation of what cognitive science contributes to our understanding and efforts to teach critical thinking, van Gelder identifies six lessons that can help our students develop their ability to think critically.

Lesson 1. Critical Thinking is Hard

Even though it’s basic, critical thinking depends on a complicated process...For teachers, this means there are no shortcuts, no magic bullets, and no technological solutions. We should expect our students to develop this skill slowly. “Critical thinking is more of a lifelong journey than something picked up in a two-week module.”(p.42) Lesson 2: Practice Makes Perfect

Even though it’s hard, some people end up being able to do it well.

How do they achieve that goal? Plain and simple, they practice. It is practice not just of the skill generically but practice of each individual part that makes up the skill. It is practice that is developmental--it gradually gets harder as more and more of the skills are mastered. It is practice accompanied with close guidance and accurate feedback.

Lesson 3: Practice for Transfer

Transferring a newly acquired skill like critical thinking can often be a problem. The skill is learned and applied in a specific context. We should not be surprised when students can’t make a transfer from problem A to problem B. Only through deliberate practice do they learn to transfer skills from one situation to another.

Lesson 4: Practical Theory

Van Gelder doesn’t think students can improve their critical thinking beyond a certain point without knowing some theory. Practice is essential but a bit of theory is like the yeast that makes the bread rise.

Lesson 5: Map it Out.

At its core, critical thinking rests on arguments, and arguments are expressed in sequences of words that become sentences and then paragraphs of collected thoughts. But arguments can also be expressed diagrammatically. The process is slow and cumbersome, but these mapping techniques enable them to see the reasoning, identify the important issues, check for assumptions and look for the presence of supportive evidence.

Lesson 6: Belief Preservation

The problems here involve those cognitive biases and blind spots that derive from those beliefs we strongly hold. When we start with strong beliefs, we look for evidence that supports what we believe and ignore that which goes against them. Good critical thinkers understand this tendency, actively monitor thinking and deploy compensatory strategies.

Some of these lessons we already know--others may be new. But the lessons together remind us that critical thinking is not an automatically acquired skill. We can and should rededicate ourselves to those activities that will help our students to learn this most important skill.

Abridged from the article by T. van Gelder, Teaching Critical Thinking: Some Lessons from Cognitive Science. College Teaching, 53 (1), 41-46.