Description: Under the category of little tricks that I have found work well:As a class exercise, work together with the students to craft a really good test question for an upcoming exam - they get a chance to actually write one of their own questions. Students are allowed to think somewhat inside out from what they are used to - offensive, not defensive strategizing. Referring to homework they have done, challenge them: ""Now what if you wanted to really make sure that someone understands this idea, how would YOU ask it?"" A lot of good thinking and discussion takes place and students appreciate the little extra credit aspect to this - kind of a buy-in for them in this joint effort of learning.

Description: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."" Thomas Edison (1931-1947), InventorTell your students you are setting up a Genius category on your grade program. During class reward a student who has made an especially fine contribution by saying, ""Take one (or two) genius points"". Genius points are extra credit. Make sure to tell students to bring up a piece of paper with their name and number of points to be given to you at the end of the class for recording.The process helps recognize students who contribute and helps you meet students in your class when they submit their points. One semester one student actually accumulated 20 Genius points."

Description: The cognitive map provides an analytical tool by which to locate specific points of difficulty in a lesson for the ultimate purpose of drawing out students' potentials. By pinpointing possible causes of student error, you can give precise feedback to students or make subtle adjustments in the lesson to increase students' comprehension. The seven parameters include the following:

1. Content: subject matter.
2. Kinds of operations involved: eg., classification, algorithmic problem solving, syllogistic, analogical, or inferential reasoning, etc. (These are theabilities and skills activated by your lesson.)
3. Modality or the ""language"" of instruction, presentation or information processing: eg., visual, graphic, numerical, symbolic, verbal, auditory,sign language, kinesthetic, tactile, etc.
4. Phase of the mental act: reception, elaboration, expression.
5. Level of complexity: number, quality, & degree of novelty of units.
6. Level of abstraction: distance between mental act & object or event on which it operates, ranging from objects perceived by the senses tohypothetical propositions.
7. Level of efficiency: rapidity/precision (often confused with capacity).
Example: On a verbal analogies test, a student may not perform well due to a lack of familiarity with the vocabulary even though she is able to think analogically. By referring to the cognitive map while evaluating the student's work, the teacher might decide to give feedback about how she could gain a greater background knowledge of key terms in the field rather than revisit how to apply analogical thinking.

Description: My tip is an idea that Margaret Hontos uses in her music appreciation and history classes. She gives students certain statements taken from each lesson with key words left out that students then must fill in as the lecture progresses. This encourages students to be looking for certain information in the lecture. Lou Spaventa in English Skills does the same thing with his syllabus and on the first day students must fill in certain information as they go through the syllabus.These are two creative ideas that our faculty use which work very effectively.

Description: In our context, the adage ""Nothing ventured, nothing gained"" points to a major factor in student success: readiness to take risks in negotiating their learning experience. This being the case, one of our chief pedagogical aims must be to encourage students to engage in such potentially face-losing ventures - behavior that naturally runs counter to perceived human needs in most contexts. How to encourage - or perhaps ""disinhibit"" - students to take risks is thus a chief issue in how we manage our courses, and in my ESL classes, I often use the following first-hand experience to good advantage. In the days of glasnost and perestroika in the USSR during the late 1980's, Russia quite naturally attracted a lot of attention throughout the world, and one of the upshots at SBCC was that we offered a course for learning Russian. I was enrolled in the course, and on one particular occasion, was called on to read a conversational exchange: ""Chto eto zdaniya?"" (What's that building?), with the reply ""Eto restoran"" (It's a restaurant) -- the last word of which tripped off my tongue as ""restorant"". Now in many Western languages, the equivalent of 'restaurant' is spelled (though not always pronounced) with a final -t, so I'd been quite puzzled when the instructor had interjected ""There's no [t]"", and in fact it was only after repetitions of increasing specificity - ""There's no T in it""; ""THERE'S NO in 'restoran'!"" -- that I realized my error. In my classes, I adapt this incident to assert that the instructor's implication seemed to have been that the restaurant under discussion had served no tea. In an ESL context, the entire story, including the fabricated misconstrual, always works very well for a number of reasons peculiar to language-learning situations. Having introduced the anecdote as an illustration of how making mistakes in class is actually conducive to learning, my only partially hyperbolic moral to the story for the students is that I've forgotten almost everything about Russian - but that as a result of this ""horrifying"" error on my part, I still remember with unshakeable certainty how to spell and pronounce the word meaning 'restaurant' in that language. Periodic exhortations during the semester to not forget ""the Russian restaurant"" recall to students' minds the anecdote and its implications: that making classrooms errors is an important component of the learning process.All of our courses are different and every class is unique, but students can be led to buy into risk-taking behavior if we offer cogent reasons for them to do so. This particular case serves as encouragement for my students by offering some self-disclosure that is mildly but safely self-deprecating while illustrating the process in a way that elevates the status of the error that was committed - and, by implication, even the ultimately unsuccessfully taken risk.

Description: If they did not get it the first time, try, try again!"" Repetition of a point is never a bad thing, even when unsolicited. However, in the repetition, vary and restate differently. What was not absorbed one way, could be understood and absorbed when presented another way. Some individuals learn very well from a deductive approach, one in which the principles are stated first, followed by characteristics, examples, illustrations, and supporting detail. Others learn more naturally from an inductive approach, one in which case studies are shared, examples are described, and details are given. Concepts are formed out of the facts and details, leading to conclusions or principles.

Description: If you would like to talk with a student about a specific academic or social behavior, I recommend inviting him or her to an office hour, and using "I statements" which allow the student to hear your message with minimal defensiveness. For example, saying "I see you have been arriving to class late often," rather than "YOU are in trouble because you are always late,"creates a different, more positive emotional atmosphere. It respects the student if you take a moment to shut the office door when s/he wishes to preserve confidentiality, or if you are giving feedback about errors that might be potentially embarrassing. If there is no office door to shut, then some professors ask the student to step outside in the hallway for short interactions. If the nature of the discussion involves more" in depth" matters, the door to the office can be kept open (as some depts. do in order to prevent harrassment difficulties), but the voice tone and volume could be kept appropriately low so as to be confidential.Remember that you have sources to support you in your work with students, such as EOPS, DSPS, Health and Wellness, Academic and Transfer counselors, all of whom are found in the Student Services building. Feel free to refer students directly to any of these resources.

Description: Research in mathematics education has shown that one of the major differences between "expert" problem-solvers and "novice" problem-solvers appears to be the amount of reflection done while problem-solving. The expert problem-solvers reflected often and many times throughout their work on a problem. They checked at each step if the path they were choosing seemed reasonable, logical, and efficient, then modified their plan accordingly. Novice problem-solvers generally do not reflect until the very end of their problem-solving process, if at all. One technique that can help encourage novice problem-solvers to reflect more in the process is for the teacher to model this behavior. In my math classes, when we are solving complicated problems, I try to let the students lead me through the process by explaining what should be done next and why. As we are solving the problem, I "reflect aloud." I try to do this each time so that it becomes part of their mindset when solving problems and so that they may see the value of it. Usually by the end of the semester, I can hear lots of "reflection" happening in the group discussions about problems. Perhaps this technique could be modified for other disciplines, for instance in writing a research paper or a computer program, drawing a portrait, or analyzing data.

Description: In the lab portion of my computer classes, students ask a lot of questions, especially the beginning students. In the case in which a student asks a question that another student has recently asked, I suggest that the first student help the second student. This reinforces the concept for student 1, and is a way for the class to get to know one another. As the semester progresses, the students feel more comfortable asking other members of the class when they are having problems. If I'm not helping someone else, I eavesdrop to make sure they are getting it correctly, or I may suggest another method to accomplish the same result.

Description: As participant in a summer retreat during my second year teaching at the University of Wisconsin, and very much interested in Feminist Paedagogy, I looked at student readiness to learn, in the context of their fear of Not Knowing (a fear which seems common to all sentient beings).

William Perry watched privileged male students at Harvard during the 60's and 70's as they moved from their first through their fourth year, in an environment which supported their struggle to find their own particular and independent ways to an intellectual stance in the world. He watched as they moved from position to position (what follows is my rephrasing, trying to formulate from a student's point of view).

1) I receive the right solution from my teacher (S/He seems sometimes to willfully frustrate me)
2) When authorities disagree, I choose (My authority's) Right Solution,
3) To the problems which have ready solutions, I simply find the best Authority and take his/her word.
4) But most problems have no Solutions - so my uninformed opinion is as good as any (why study?) There's no truth and nobody's right (or: There's no truth and everybody's right)
5) Some solutions are better than others, I can learn to evaluate their soundness with reference to the problem solving rather than the Problemsolver
6) Like the other adults whose reasoning I respect, I need to make choices; I do this by thinking, listening, researching carefully
7) I choose a particular solution in the context of many (possibly good) solutions 8)I am responsible for the solution I choose, but can modify flexibly as I develop subsequent knowledge
9) I realize that commitment is an ongoing, unfolding experience, which requires intellectual and experiential knowledge and liveliness.

So as I teach in the Art Department at SBCC, I try to keep in mind that what feels to me like laziness and/or stubbornness among our (intellectually) young students is often a result of fear and of their rung on this ladder of intellectual/moral reasoning. My job? To both challenge and support them.

Description: A strategy I use to remind students how one class builds upon the next is to assign two students (just go alphabetically down the roster) to "assume responsibility" for that day's notes. (I assure other students that this cannot and should not substitute for their own note-taking, because notetakers will only provide a summary of the main ideas and the main topics with few telling details.)

A & B student come a few minutes early; A writes the notes on the board and B fills in where s/he believes it's necessary to do so (they're limited to 1/2 of 1 blackboard).  I do not ""go over"" the notes, but tell students to check their previous class notes against these while I take roll. They may ask one or two questions about material covered last class period. Notetakers get first chance to answer those questions. I usually leave those notes on the board; as I hit an idea that builds on something already covered, I just point to that and incorporate it in what I'm saying. Students have learned to make connections in their discussion groups and questions, tying new to old material... The next class period, B writes the notes, and C backs him her up. If a student skips class on that day, the back up takes over and the student has lost his/her chance at "extra points."

Description: One common problem students have is seeing the relationship between former content presented and content to be presented in the next lesson. A solution is to provide students with an advanced organizer that provides a framework for the content to be learned based on students' prior knowledge.

Advanced organizers generally take on two forms. They are comparative organizers and expository organizers. Comparative organizers form a bridge between new and old "familiar" content by comparing and contrasting new ideas with content previously presented. Here's a common example. If a teacher were to give a lecture about an atom's structure, the teacher could discuss the similarities between the electrons circling a nucleus of an atom and the moons orbiting a planet. Expository organizers set the stage for new concepts and information by giving students a general framework that becomes the basis for new content.

Here's another common example. Before introducing students to the structure of state government, have students recall the structure of the federal government of which they may already be familiar. The expository organizer acts like a bridge between old familiar content and new concepts and information to be learned.

The publication and theory of advanced organizers is generally credited to David Ausubel (1960). Ausubel (1960) argued that in order for meaningful learning to occur, students should bring to the learning situation what they already know. The teacher's job is to provide an introduction or framework that helps the students mentally organize their thoughts "before" being introduced to the details of new concepts." Ausubel (1963) also argued that "advanced organizers were different from overviews and summaries which simply emphasize key ideas and details in an arbitrary manner." Rather, he suggested that advanced organizers act as a "subsuming bridge" between new learning material and existing related ideas (Ausubel, 1963). Advanced organizers have been shown to be effective with students of all abilities and grade levels but especially with students of lower ability (Luiten, J., Ames, W., & Ackerson, G., 1980).

Ausubel, David P. (1963). The Psychology of Meaningful Verbal Learning. New York: Grune & Stratton.

Kemp, J. E., Morrison G.R. & Ross, S. M. (1998.) Designing effective instruction (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc.

Luiten, J., Ames, W., and Ackerson, G. (1980). A meta-analysis of the effects of advance organizers on learning and retention. American Educational Research Journal, 17, 211-218. 

Available: Online: http://chd.gse.gmu.edu/immersion/knowledgebase/strategies/cognitivism/AdvancedOrganizers.htm

Description: COLLEGE WHIZ KID BOWL is a 2-minute exercise--preferably at the beginning of the class hour--randomlytargeting a few students with one question each fromtheir previous lecture notes, offering "extra credit" forthe correct response (recorded promptly in the gradebook). e.g. l. What is the best evidence that the Norse are pre-Columbian?
2. Can you identify a trans-Atlantic philosophical movement during the l8th century?
3. Can you name the rationale developed during the l840's-50's to justify the westward movement?
4. During what years did Containment characterize American foreign policy?

Results:--emphasizes note-taking importance --provides continuity/clarity between prior lectures and current lecture topic --stimulates familiarity with student names/faces --creates greater teacher-student accountability & fun

Description: ESL students are not only expected to learn another language, they are also expected to retain enormous amounts of information in that new language. In order to help students organize and retain information, I have begun to use graphic organizers to help students sort through information and learn to recognize which information is the most important for them to know.The process of deciding which information is the most important has been extremely helpful to students. Organizing information so that it's manageable has increased students' retention of information as demonstrated on tests and class discussions. Comparison/Contrast charts, Spider graphs etc. have helped students focus on the key elements of a lesson. Once the lesson has been taught, students review information and work cooperatively to fill in the graph/chart together. When the students have completed working together to fill in the chart/graph, the instructor goes over the information on an overhead with the whole class to ensure that they have included all relevant information. Students use the synthesized information on the graphic organizers to study for the exam.ESL students are not the only students who need to learn how to synthesize information. I also do graphic organizers for my Education 101 classes to help them organize and retain information in each chapter.I also feel that it is very important for students to think for themselves and begin to formulate their own ideas about what we discuss in class. I have developed journal writings for each chapter in the book, where they have to write down their own ideas and thoughts. They discuss their journal responses in class in small groups and then hand them in to me for my response.

To view an example of a graphic organizer for Education 101, click twice on the following url or enter it into your browser: http://www.west.net/%7Eger/CTL1/Nunez_Chart_Ed.htm

More of Pat's graphic organizers will be added to her article on the CTL website very soon.

Description: I believe the more fascinating and suggestive characteristics of speech-acts in lecturing, and thereby learning, are to be found in what theorists refer to as the illocutionary acts and perlocutionary acts of our speech-acts*. Thus it may not be the saying of something (the locutionary act) that is of significance in lecturing, but what we do IN saying something (illocutionary act) and then do BY saying something (perlocutionary act) in our lectures that are of greatest pedagogical significance.

I use these distinctions in speech-acts because I believe the illocutionary and perlocutionary acts within the speech-acts of lecturers, who approach learning as either an adventure or as alienated labor, tend to follow certain patterns and thereby have certain effects upon students. The adventurer extends, through her illocutionary acts, an invitation to join in the learning process.

When education is an adventure, information is not simply provided-but rather fascinating insights and the wisdom that will transform the neophyte into the erudite. Such insights are expected to be thoroughly incorporated into the student's belief system, as opposed to the simple acquisition of useful, though profoundly irrelevant, information which is only needed to pass an exam. The adventurer conveys not only a sense of importance and urgency to joining the grand intellectual journey, but expects loyalty, camaraderie. One will not abandon one's mates once the trek commences. Education, like all adventures, thus possesses intrinsic value. It is undertaken not simply to get somewhere else, but for its own sake. In the end, the belief that all participants will be personally transformed for the better, fulfilled by the adventure, is paramount.

*Anatomy of a Speech Act

Locutionary Act: To say something is to do something
The Phonetic, The Phatic, The Rhetic

Illocutionary Act: In saying something, we do something.
To Inform, Persuade, Invite, Request, Command, Warn, etc.

Perlocutionary Act: By saying something, we do something Are persuaded, invited, carried it out, stopped doing, etc.

Description: Lewis Carroll compares reading styles with dietary habits in his humorous book, Feeding the Mind. While the consequences of neglecting the body are potently evident though painful experience, he contends that it would be to our benefit if the consequences of neglecting the mind were as obvious. The analogy is made between chewing our food and thinking over what is read. The sign of good health, Carroll says, is the ability to read something in a concentrated manner that is the equivalent of a "mental bun", not too exciting, and be able to answer questions upon the subject after thinking about it.

We can encourage students to initiate a reflective discipline that involves thinking about what they have heard, read and practiced; in this way, they may move closer to making knowledge their own. Reflection would seem to be relevant in any field. Dilafruz Williams, Professor of Education at Portland State University, includes reflection as a vital part of service learning through which students become politically engaged in their communities; as a result, they see themselves as makers of democracy rather than consumers of democracy. "I suggest we teach our students contemplation, introspection, mindfulness, and imagination as they become grounded in the community's politics. Skills of deliberation force us to go beyond our personal opinions." (Williams, 2002) In addition, philosophical dialogue can lead to self-knowledge through a discipline of reflective self-examination.

Reflection is a vital key to creativity and psychological health, and helps students strengthen self-conscious choice, deliberation, and application of their knowledge. Active learning activities (projects, presentations, experiments, case studies, model visualization and building, seminars, etc.) that integrate reflection will assist students in assimilating what they have learned, and provide an opportunity to think how best to use the knowledge in the future. Reflection is often an independent activity, but can be shown through discussion and written products (i.e., journals, learning logs, essays, problem solving summaries). Thus, reflection, integrated as a natural part of the learning process, unfolds potentialities that strengthen students for life.

Description: My idea for a tip for this week is to inform faculty of some resources they may not be familiar with on the web, specifically, those we in Counseling use often.

The first is ASSIST at www.assist.org. This state-wide articulation system provides students and faculty with information on the lower division preparation for the major at most California State Universities and University of California campuses. Faculty may review requirements for specific campuses and may also see how courses they offer articulate with University courses. Assist also provides the IGETC, CSU General Education Breadth requirements, and CSU and UC transferable course lists.

DARS, the Degree Audit Reporting System is now up and running in the Transfer Center, through campus Pipeline and at http://www.sbcc.edu/current/dars. Students may use this tool to see how their SBCC courses fit into any major at SBCC, IGETC or CSU General Education.

A useful tool for information on the CSU system, its programs and requirements, impacted majors at the CSU, as well as how to apply online, is available at the following url: www.csumentor.edu.

An online resource for information on the UC system, its campuses and how to apply online, is available at www.ucop.edu/pathways.

Finally, http://www.OnCourseWorkshop.com is a web resource focusing on College Success.Their On Course Newsletter provides monthly email teaching tips free of charge. To subscribe send a blank email to: oncourse-on@mail-list.com. To submit an article, contact Skip Downing by email at skipdown@starpower.net. The most recent email newsletter is "Turning Students into Teachers".

Description: WHAT THIS TIP DOES:

The objective of this teaching/learning tip is four-fold:
~ help students better understand the nature of learning styles
~ educate students a bit about their own learning style preferences
~ provide students with advice about how to alter their practice as students to take advantage of personal learning styles
~ help students be more responsible for how they learn rather than pointing fingers when they fail to meet goals

This assignment won't take too much time and will alert students to themselves as learners in many good ways. Though the tendency is gradually shifting, many students do not spend a lot of time thinking about how they process information or, by extension, how they can most efficiently use time and resources to enhance their educations. The Felder Learning Styles Assessment is an online resource that will quickly provide a thumbnail sketch of learning preferences, place that individual report on a graph of norms, and then give students useful advice about how best to utilize learning preferences.

HOW THIS TIP WORKS:

Send students to the homepage for Learning Support Services (http://lss.sbcc.net/) and have them click on the link to Studenthub. You can also refer them to the Studenthub link from Campus Pipeline. Once at the homepage for Studenthub, they should look under the Resources banner to the left of the screen and select "Self Assessment." The next page has a sub-heading "Web Site Resources." Scroll down about half way and select Felder's Learning Styles Questionnaire. Click on that link and take the questionnaire ( it usually takes about fifteen minutes). Note: They can go directly to the page at http://www2.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/ILSdir/ilsweb.html

Tell students not to worry too much about their answers; they should answer on first impulse. If both answers seem correct, they should pick the one that seems most correct.

Once they have answered the 44 (a or b) questions, they hit "submit" and a report comes back to them very quickly. The report won't mean much without the explanation, which they can get by clicking the button at the bottom of the page containing their results report. This explanation is excellent. Even if they think their results report is utterly bogus, they will still benefit by looking at the explanation of learning styles preferences as it opens up the topic of how we learn and helps students take responsibility for how they learn. (Note: To avoid taking the entire self-assessment again in order to access the explanation link, it is located on the Studenthub, just above the link to the Questionnaire.)

In using this tool with tutors in training, I have found it useful to ask three questions as an assignment:

1. How did the self-assessment confirm or refute your prior understanding of yourself as a learner?

2. How accurate is the assessment as a whole?

3. Of the advice given on the explanation document, which details struck you as most helpful? How might you apply this advice to your current course of study? (Note: You might better ask the question, "How will this affect your approach to this class?")

That's all folks. I think this is a good one. It's not an exhaustive test by any means (neither will your students be exhausted by it), but it does serve as a good introduction. And you will get a lot of mileage from this instrument that takes no real class time. Finally, you may learn about your students as you scan their short responses to the three questions, information that may affect the way you teac

Description: This teaching tip comes from an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education that was passed on to me by Jack Ullom. I normally teach art studio classes and regular reading is not required since we don' t use a textbook. I have in the past handed out articles and encouraged my students to take time to read through them - but if they aren't going to be "tested" on something, they will tend not to do it.

Last semester I began teaching a new course, Design Literacy, that is patterned after art history rather than studio - that is to say it is a lecture/discussion class as opposed to a hands-on making art class. I compiled a reader made up of long and short articles, writing that is relatively dense and writing that is fairly easy to get through, some classic theory and history, as well as contemporary ideas. I assumed the students would read their weekly assignments and we would have some interesting discussions based on those readings. Well, I should have seen it coming - it was a big disappointment to realize that if they could get away with not reading, they would.

Then I read "If I Quiz Them, They Will Come." The basic premise of this article is to use a short quiz (1 or 2 easy questions) that would show that the student actually read the assignment. At our first class meeting, I announced that there would be a quiz on the reading assigned each week - just 1 or 2 questions. At our second meeting, as soon as everyone settled in, I wrote the first question on the board and gave them 5 minutes to answer. I also told them to be honest and write, "I don't know; I didn't do the reading" if that was the case. Needless to say there were a few of those that day. Since then, however, I have found that this really works - the students actually read the assignments, take the short quiz and we are then able to have a good discussion about the topic. They have understood that by keeping up with the reading, they are able to be more involved in the class and the class becomes more interesting and even 'fun' for them. Some of the students will even bring up an idea or quote directly from the article they have read to make their point. They see the relationship between the lecture topics and the readings I have carefully selected for them and it all starts to come together.

I am now working on a way to incorporate this idea into my studio classes - If I quiz them, will they draw?

Then I read "If I Quiz Them, They Will Come." The basic premise of this article is to use a short quiz (1 or 2 easy questions) that would show that the student actually read the assignment. At our first class meeting, I announced that there would be a quiz on the reading assigned each week - just 1 or 2 questions. At our second meeting, as soon as everyone settled in, I wrote the first question on the board and gave them 5 minutes to answer. I also told them to be honest and write, "I don't know; I didn't do the reading" if that was the case. Needless to say there were a few of those that day. Since then, however, I have found that this really works - the students actually read the assignments, take the short quiz and we are then able to have a good discussion about the topic. They have understood that by keeping up with the reading, they are able to be more involved in the class and the class becomes more interesting and even 'fun' for them. Some of the students will even bring up an idea or quote directly from the article they have read to make their point. They see the relationship between the lecture topics and the readings I have carefully selected for them and it all starts to come together.

I am now working on a way to incorporate this idea into my studio classes - If I quiz them, will they draw?

Description: This week we are continuing with the topic of quizzing students to be sure they do the reading, plus I am recommending an online resource with teaching tools to assist in developing quizzes and other items.

Tip one: Give a 10 minute quiz at the beginning of class on a new unit to ensure that students read the text before the class discusses the concepts of a certain chapter, and to ensure that students are in class at the beginning of the presentations on new material. Many of our current faculty are doing this with very good success and count these quizzes as a portion of each student's grade.

Tip two: The next time you wish to create an excellent new learning activity for your class go to the website: http://www.school.discovery.com/teachingtools/teachingtools.html and use the teaching tools to generate and save puzzles, quizzes, worksheets, and customized lesson plans. This is a powerful site for all levels of education.

If any teachers have trouble printing any of the quizzes or puzzles that they create have them copy them and paste into Work and then print.

Description: Case Studies can be used in any course and with any course content.
Case Studies have been used to teach English, Science, Philosophy, Business, Politics, Nursing, and Medicine, to name a few.

Case studies are useful to:
~ actively involve students with the material
~ give students experience with integrating multiple concepts in one story or situation
~ help theoretical material come to "life"
~ challenge student thinking and decision-making skills
~ build and strengthen all asp
ects of the critical thinking process ~ encourage empathy for a character or situation
~ assist students to discover where they stand on a particular issue
~ allows students to reflect on issues and problem solving in a safe environment
~ makes learning more fun and less stressful

How Case Studies Work as a Teaching Strategy:
A good case study is a well-thought out story that contains the following characteristics:
~ is a real life application
~ is thought provoking
~ contains elements of conflict
~ answers are not obvious
~ encourages students to analyze and evaluate information
~ involves students in making decisions based on information in the case study
~ should be somewhat concise.

Faculty and/or students can be encouraged to develop and write case studies that focus on particular content. Case studies can be used in class in group work or individual assignments. Case studies can also be used outside of class as written assignments.

As with any teaching strategy it is important to have the assignment well thought out and with specific guidelines for case study analysis.

Suggested Guidelines:
To introduce the study it is essential to be able to summarize it and the expectations for using it and leading the discussion.
~ Highlight key points
~ Have questions to be answered prepared
~ Have the study either on overhead or copies for each student available
~ Be able to write key points of the discussion for the class to see and think about during the discussion
~ Be patient and allow students to work through the process to analyze the information and make their own decisions
~ During the discussion be ready to ask probing follow-up questions: consider consequences of decisions, actions that can or should be taken, identification of theories or principles...
~ The discussion needs to be concluded with a summary of key points, comparing actual conclusion with those that were discussed, recommendations for further discussion or case study.

Questions for consideration:
~ Identify four key issues and how they relate to a character or idea.
~ Identify key players and the role they played in the story
~ Describe your decision and support it with information found in the story
~ Identify additional information needed to make a decision
~ Identify the theories or principles at work in the study

There are many resources that include case studies that are already developed.

The Pew Charitable Trusts funded a project to develop and advance the use of the case study approach at the University of Buffalo for teaching science. Their goal is to provide workshops for teachers and publish case studies on their web site: http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/cases/case.html
The contact person is goldbaum@buffalo.edu.

A simple and concise reference is Tools for Teaching by Barbara Davis.

Have fun and so will your students!!

I have reference materials and would glad to help or answer questions too - Jan

Description: When passing back the first exam of the semester, I tell my students that they have a chance to earn back some of the points they missed by repairing the exam in a very specific way.

1. What needs to be done: Students must redo all corrections in written form, and they must also verbally go over the exam with a college tutor or me. If they choose to discuss the exam with a college tutor, the tutor must sign the top of the exam to verify that the student discussed and now understands the concepts missed at the time of the exam.

2. What is gained: The students earn back 1/4th of the points they missed. By setting the ratio in this way, a D can be transformed into a low C but extreme grades do not change a great deal. Therefore, this method targets students on the border of passing grades. If students choose to come to my office hours, I have an opportunity to inform them of their risk and the resources that are available to them. The setting is one-on-one and non-threatening. If the students choose to go to a college tutor, then they find these resources on their own.

3. A word of caution: The main purpose of this activity is to repair foundational content and educate students about the college support services. Therefore, this activity should be done early in the semester, and it should not be overdone. It should be made explicit that increasing exam scores is not a regular part of the course. Otherwise, we are fostering unrealistic perceptions and dependency in our students.

4. Follow-up: If a student receives a low score on the second exam, after having gone through the process outlined in (1) and (2), then the student must meet with me for additional strategies and referrals. I refer many of these students to DSPS and most of them go on to be identified with a learning disability. They are much more likely to take my advice and be assessed after having met with me on more than one occasion.

5. Additional Benefit for the Instructor: This method serves another very important purpose. For the instructor, it identifies struggling students who are willing to work hard. If left to their own devices, many of these students feel they need to struggle on their own, and all too often instructors interpret empty office hours as a lack of student effort. After being bribed early in the semester, many of these students realize that office hours are specifically for them and that they should use them proactively.

Resource Link: The following URL is a flyer that can be printed and given to a student regarding learning disabilities assessment at SBCC.

http://www.west.net/~ger/LDAssessment.html

Description: I believe that there is a reasonable argument about whether to provide lecture notes to students or have them take notes during lecture. On one side, taking notes integrates the material presented in lecture into the student’s intellectual construct. We all take notes differently and what we choose to include in them and how we take them is a personal reflection of what we find important. On the other side, taking notes can be an obstacle to understanding if the student is too absorbed in the mechanical process of encoding words from the instructor’s mouth to words on an 8.5 by 11 inch piece of paper.

A partial solution to this is to provide students with lecture notes. This is traditionally done by handing out notes or having students buy them as a packet in the bookstore. The benefit to this is that students can focus on the lecture material and have the material provided in print form so that their notes are complete. The disadvantage is that students may become disengaged in lecture if they have a lexicon-crutch.  The notes that are provided are also written by someone else (instructor, TA or note-taker) and are not part of the intellectual fabric of the student.

The argument as to whether to use notes or not may be dependent on how note-taking helps or hinders the particular student. Students who integrate material into their mental fabric by writing it down can still do so in lecture. Students who prefer to focus on the lecture in order to understand it and use prefab lecture notes may benefit from having notes provided to them.  

It is with this unambiguous perspective that I began providing my students with lecture notes, review questions and animations on a CD-ROM. When I ask students what they think of the CD-ROM, to a person, they are enthusiastic. The animations are created in Macromedia Director and the notes are able to be downloaded to hard copy so that the student can print them out and bring them to lecture if desired.

I try to present each lecture in the sequence presented in the notes but every once in awhile I feel the need to move things around a little. In a liberating fit of spontaneity, I may jump around and this does provide some aggravation to the fastidious note-reading students.

The CD-ROM is not a requirement for the course and students have the liberty to take notes the old-fashioned way or try something different. I believe that it does provide some advantages for certain students.

Description: I haven't actually completed this teaching tip yet. It is something that I am planning for next semester. During the semester, I often have students come to my office and tell me that they have finally figured out what they needed to do to be successful in the course. For example, they realized when they read the section BEFORE class (rather than after class) it makes class time much more productive for them. Or they realized that if they did a third of the homework each night (they have three days to complete each assignment), it seemed easier and they were able to turn in complete assignments on time.

I've often wished that there were a way the student could share his or her insights with other students. Students don't often realize the amount of work and the type of work necessary to be successful. Though I try to explain this at the beginning of the semester and every so often during the course, I don't feel it holds as much weight with them as if a fellow student explained what was necessary.

I asked a few of these students this semester if they would be willing to write a letter to a future student explaining their methods for succeeding in the course. At the beginning of next semester, I plan to give these letters to the students, so that they may benefit from the experience of past students. I'm hoping this will help students be successful right away, instead of finding their way only after a significant amount of the course has passed.

Since I have yet to use this tip, I'm unable to share how useful it has been. However, I am hopeful that it might reach a few more students early enough to help them succeed.

Description: My teaching tip is really designed to help students teach themselves, especially when it comes to the all-important goal of truly learning material and being able to assess their work accurately. This tip can be used at all levels, but it works best with students working at a slightly higher level, perhaps because they have stronger critical skills.

Why should students be able to critique their own work?  If a student can begin to spot consistently made errors, and can see patterns in them, the student is more likely to be able to correct them. Further, the idea of assessing one's own work begins to counteract the training most students have had that teachers are always the arbiters of correctness and of ultimate judgments of the worth of a work.  

Here's how it works: One class period after an assignment is due, students must hand me a one page double-spaced evaluation of their own work.  I think it is very important to let a full class session sit between the turning in of an assignment and the turning in of the self-assessment.  Often assignments are completed in the early hours of the morning, when students aren't thinking clearly.

The whole goal of the self-assessment is to improve students' ability to think clearly about their own work, so a day away from the heat of creation or composition of the initial text aids sound judgment of their work.  Often the self-assessments begin with some version of "when I handed this in I thought X, but now I think Y."

The questions I ask are pretty broad, allowing students to choose their own focus:  What didn't work quite the way one had wished it would?  What did they wish they'd done?  What skills did they use?  What skills did they wish they have, and so on.  It's really up to the student to decide what to say since it's ultimately the student's judgment of her or his own work. I always caution them that this is not an exercise in advertising: I am not interested in being persuaded about a potential grade, rather I'm interested in seeing how accurately the students can assess their work.  

There is, of course, an issue of trust: anyone who chooses to assign a self-assessment is, of course, judging the student's judgment of her or his work, but that said, I still find the assignment produces many benefits and is well worth the extra reading time.     

Benefits: Probably the biggest benefit is getting to see what students make of their own work.  Often students are way harder on themselves than we are, but finding that out is a useful thing.  Further, when writing these self-assessments, students tend to adopt a different voice in their papers: they write more colloquially and more directly.  The exercise in multiple voices is useful for them.

Applications outside of English: I believe this technique can work in virtually any field. Although I use it after every paper, it could be used after every exam.  For instance, after a math test the students could write a self-assessment, perhaps focusing on areas of strength or difficulty. The test might bear out such judgments, or show where the student doesn't even realize certain difficulties.  The goal, as I said at the outset, is to heighten students' awareness of their strengths and weaknesses throughout the semester so that they can improve their academic performance.  

Description: As teachers we seek to know our students to effectively accomplish instructional goals and objectives. Vygotsky (1978) showed us that in order to understand an individual we must first understand the individual's social environment and relationships. My tip is to move beyond the behaviorist tradition that emphasizes specific, predetermined behaviors of individuals to an understanding of learning in a larger socio-cultural context. This could be one way to renew and refresh your teaching spirit.

Our experience and common sense tell us that opportunities for learning take place across a broad spectrum of activities, social settings and situations, including the school, community, classroom and home. Assuming the classroom is one locally constituted learning environment, it follows, "learning is defined in the ways in which teachers and students construct the patterns of life in each classroom" (Collins & Green, 1992). Each class is unique and opportunities for learning take place in multiple social situations that include the teacher, students, activities and a place or setting (Spradley, 1980). By the patterns of activities and other interactions you and the students tacitly negotiate what counts as learning.

Study your students to determine the patterns of classroom life. Go below the surface of individual behaviors to a deeper meaning that will shed light on their views. In doing so you can guide the educational process in each class, as Nuthall (1995) claims, "Shaping the nature of the educational process involves shaping the nature of the community in which it occurs."

Consider each class a culture where students find meaning in what they do, say, hear and understand. These meanings and patterns can be made visible by observing the students, and also in your formal and informal discussions through the language. Some of their language will be content influenced, some will be socially influenced, some will be teacher influenced, and some will be uniquely their own.

How can you make the patterns and meanings of classroom life visible? Accomplish this by being a participant observer (Spradley, 1980).  As a teacher you are already an active participant in the class culture; add observation to your participation. At the start of the semester generally observe what the students are doing and saying. After several class sessions you will start to see the patterns emerge. You can then be more focused in your observations based on what you learn in the general observations. Don't have time to take observation notes? Record classes on audiotape as a reference tool, then go back, listen to the language and take notes.

Use the notes and tapes to make comparisons and contrasts from class to class. Over time a log, or public text, can be generated that will be helpful to you in developing future class activities to create an environment for the social construction of knowledge.

    Nuthall. G. (1995). Understanding student thinking and learning in the classroom. Unpublished draft. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

    Spradley, J. P. (1980). Participant observation. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

    Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press.

Description: I am always concerned about the problem of student silence, especially among students whose first language is not English.  Deborah Tannen writes, "In a class where some students speak out without raising hands, those who feel they must raise their hands and wait to be recognized do not have equal opportunity to speak.  Telling them to feel free to jump in will not make them feel free; one's sense of timing, of one's rights and obligations in a classroom, are automatic, learned over years of interaction."  Students who come from cultures where they must raise their hand in a classroom before speaking are not comfortable  just speaking out; therefore, they don't have an equal opportunity to participate.  

One solution to this is the "talking stick", borrowed from the Sioux tradition.  The instructor begins a discussion, raising some important issues, then hands the talking stick to a student. (The stick can be anything from a tree branch to something more symbolic.  Also,  it shouldn't be something comic or silly or the exercise won't work well. )  The student  with the talking stick has the floor and no one is allowed to interrupt him/her.  When he or she is finished, he/she hands the talking stick to another student.  This works really well because it slows down the discussion:  students aren't allowed to interrupt each other, jump in, cut each other off, and so on.  Students who normally wouldn't have the floor present their ideas to the class, sometimes for the first time.  

Also, this exercise works at all levels:  my daughter did it in her Third grade class and my husband used it in his graduate level seminar.  Though I wouldn't use it everyday, it can be a wonderful change from the traditional class discussion.

Description: Does student motivation to communicate with the instructor play a role in your classroom? Does it influence the type of questioning strategies students use with you? Do either or both of those (student motivation and information-seeking behaviors) have anything to do with the students' academic and personal growth?

The answer to all of these questions is "Yes."

Student Motives

Students have five main motivations to communicate with their instructors:
1. They want to learn more about the course (functional reasons),
2. They want to show that they are understanding the course (participatory reasons),
3. They want to develop a relationship with you (relational reasons),
4. They don't have their work complete (excuse-making reasons), and
5. They want to make a good impression on you (sycophantic reasons).

Students who are motivated by the first three (functional, participatory and relational) are more likely to be satisfied with the instructor and course, and they are more likely to study and learn more. In some cases, instructors can influence these motives by being more confirming and supportive in the classroom.

Defensive behaviors in the classroom are related to excuse-making and sycophantic motivations.

Questioning Strategies

Students have five main information-seeking strategies:
1. Overt: direct communication.
2. Indirect: the student hints at the
information or gets someone to provide it without being asked.
3. Third party: the student solicits information from someone other than the desired target.
4. Testing: the student deviates from the norms, hoping you will notice it (behavioral, not meeting deadline, etc.).
5. Observing: unobtrusively watches with little or no interaction.
The only direct information-seeking strategy is #1 (overt); the rest are monitoring strategies.

The overt strategy is used by students who want to learn more about the course (functional motivation);these students have not been found to use the testing (deviation) strategy.

Indirect and observing strategies are used by students who want to make a good impression, make a relationship with you, and want to show they understand the course (even when they may not).

Increasing Learning

By encouraging (and modeling) the use of overt information-seeking strategies, we have a better chance of enhancing both affective and cognitive learning, particularly with students who are confident, and who have functional motivations.

On the other hand, some students are less confident and may be more motivated by relational aspects of the teaching situation. These students will be more likely to use one of the four monitoring (covert) strategies to seek information. Monitoring allows these students to seek information without losing face, being conspicuous or risking embarrassment.

While overt information-seeking is more efficient and immediately productive in the classroom, instructors should be aware that many students will use covert strategies. The following may improve your teaching and relationships with these students:

1. A direct discussion of "how to get information in this course" may make some of these students feel more comfortable using the overt strategy.
2. At other times, a summary of the last class period before the next begins may correct misinformation gained from third-party and/ or indirect questions that occurred between class periods.
3. Posing direct questions to the class, and then reinforcing or gently correcting the answers may also provide a more concrete method of getting across the information you want.
4. Providing a limited amount of relational information about yourself may make relationally-motivated students feel more at ease. If you can do this in a way that involves a story of past students who felt insecure and then succeeded (i.e., how you helped them overcome this coupled with some nonintimate fact about yourself), you will be more likely to help these students.

Description: What comes into your imagination when you hear the phrase, "learning languages"? Do you see yourself across the sea, trying out your Japanese or Italian? Perhaps another way to interpret the phrase is as "languages pertaining to how people learn", often called modes of learning, which involve the taking in, elaborating and expressing of ideas and content knowledge.

James L. Adams, who as a Stanford Professor of Engineering is concerned with breaking through all kinds of blocks to release the creative imagination, identified verbal, mathematical, and visual modes of learning as the primary languages of thinking or learning. He divided visual thinking into perceptual, graphic, and mental imagery (89).

Visual Modes: We know teachers often integrate visual representations of information along with verbal explanations in order to reach more types of learners. Perceptual and graphic images are available i forms such as overhead transparencies, graphic organizers, outlines, computer presentations, in addition to pictorial, figurative and cinematic images in works of fine art, print- or multimedia.

While the visual aids are usually supplied by the teacher and ensure that visual learners will be able to receive the information, visualization is something the student does, often in response to what the teacher says or sets up as an assignment. Visual imagery may begin as sensory and concrete, and may be replaced by a symbolic or representational image at the concept formation stage, which may become even more abstract and be held in mind as an idea.

What can be done to promote mental imagery or visualization? One familiar way is through the use of similes, metaphors and analogies. For example, Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan give a visual analogy to convey something about the size of the nucleus in relation to the atom in The Quantum and the Lotus: "We now know that an atom's nucleus occupies the same space as a grain of rice in a football stadium. Thus, all of the matter around us, that sofa, the chair, the walls and so on, is almost totally empty. The only reason we can't walk through walls is that atoms are linked together by the electromagnetic force. " (95) Students who learn best through visual-spatial thinking will perform much better when the language of a class presentation promotes visual thinking. When it comes time to express what they know, students who think visually can retrieve the stored information by bringing to mind the visual images associated with concepts discussed in class (in contrast with students who primarily learn verbally and who bring to mind relevant words that evoke a whole train of thought).

Questions for Consideration:
(1) How do I currently incorporate language that promotes visual thinking?
(2) Where in my presentations could language stimulating visualization be integrated?

Examples: A few preliminary examples follow that would need developing specifically in the context of a course, but which illustrate the use of visual imagery:
- Ask students to visualize a specific procedure before doing it; to check their understanding, ask them to verbalize what they are "seeing".
- Ask students to synthesize facts or details and develop concepts, i.e., seeing cycles in history; they might express concepts verbally or on a concept map.
- Ask students to engage in "what if" thinking.
- Ask students to identify principles underlying choices of action depicted in the course readings, and to discuss or write about how to apply specific principles in their lives, or how certain individuals have done so.

Mnemonics: In addition to leading students through a thought process with selected language and assignments that draw on visual thinking, a simple way to integrate visual imagery is by demonstrating a few mnemonic devices for your subject matter, and by encouraging students to devise their own.

Comprehension: Students can also learn to visualize when reading; research proves that not only is comprehension substantially increased by this process, but also auditory memory, and oral and written language expression as well. The following webpage from Gyrus is a compressed strategy for students to use to enhance their reading comprehension, and Nanci Bell's book provides extensive instruction for those who wish to pursue a step-by-step sequence:

Visualizing http://www.gyrus.nu/Learning_Skills/Reading/Visualizing.html
(The url to Bloom's Taxonomy is not working, so here is a substitute: http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/bloom.html)

Description: Many times in class we quiz our students as a means of seeing what they remembered from the last class session, as a way to find out whether they comprehended the homework assignment, or as a method for preparing for a test. In such cases, it's common for the instructor to ask the questions and the students to answer them. This has the effect of putting each student in a hot seat -  a somewhat uncomfortable space in the classroom.

   This teaching tip is very simple and straightforward. Reverse the process. Stand up in the front of the room with no book and no notes, just yourself. Now you're in the hot seat.

    Invite the students to ask you questions about the subject matter. This has the effect of freeing students to ask about things they want or need to know or to confirm things they think they know. It also has the side benefit of allowing you to informally gauge their understanding of the material because the type of question they ask will tell you something about the quality and depth of their understanding.

    If you try this activity out in class, make sure that you invite students to ask questions in a way which enables them to concentrate on what they want to know rather than how they might appear to you, their instructor, and to their classmates. One way to start the activity might be to have students skim the material and note points that they wish to ask you about. In this way, they will not feel they have to produce a question but will actually have a question or two to ask.

Description: This teaching tip grows from the premise that the questions one asks can be as, if not more, productive than the answers to which they lead. While students may not be willing or able to present material in front of a class (a presentation on course material, say), they are often very capable of asking important questions about that material. It occurred to me that written student questions can be an effective way to begin class and encourage students to read carefully and closely.

First of all, students need to have a clear sense of what counts as a good question, which is often a worthwhile discussion in and of itself. The definition probably varies from discipline to discipline, but in general, I try to define a good question as one that is not easily answered, a question that prompts more thought about the material. Thus I caution students that asking the simple definition of a word or term is not a good question because they can look it up: such questions often have a clear answer.

Here's how I use the idea: at the start of a semester, I have each student sign up to write questions on an author or reading of their choice on the syllabus. No more than two students can sign up for any reading (obviously, given class size, this might vary, but try not to have too many people on any one day). I usually ask students to write three questions to be xeroxed and handed out to the other students at the start of class. When class begins, the question writers come to the front of class and talk through why these questions are key or crucial to understanding the material (which, of course, shows how they understand the material). This usually takes no more than 3-4 minutes max. Sometimes, the students link their questions to questions asked by earlier groups of students, which provides a nice sense of continuity. As the students present their questions, I take a few notes and jot down a few more questions and hand this to the students after their presentations. I try to make my comments non-appropriative.

As the instructor, I find the questions a very useful way to encourage students to direct the course of a class discussion. This strategy also allows me to find out what they want to know about and to gauge the reactions of the other students to the questions. I think if you use this technique, it is important to refer to that day's set of questions throughout the class. From this the students see that their own questions (not just the instructor's questions) can produce important class discussion. To reinforce the worth of good questions and to make students see that I am not the only one who can write good essay questions, I also choose at least one of the students' questions for an exam question.

The fine print: The questions themselves count as part of the grade in some way, say class participation. For people who worry that students will need to take time to meet each other, they can often manage this before or after class, or they can use email. Often students start by dreading this part of a class but discover that it is much more fun than they thought it would be.

Description: In mathematics, often times you have to make mistakes in reasoning or in procedures, before you really understand them. Otherwise, you may have been simply "mimicking" methods with quite a bit of luck, but not really comprehending why you were using the method and how it works. When your luck runs out, you may be up a creek.

I use this in a few different ways in my classes. One of the ways I use this is when I have students working in groups on a new idea or concept, I try to find a group that is making some sort of mistake in their work (there are usually common mistakes made in certain types of problems or common errors in reasoning). I ask that group to write up their results and we go through them as a class. I really try to foster an environment where it is ok to make those mistakes, especially when we are learning something new. I remind them that it is a way to learn if we are thinking or computing correctly. Also, we often have a stronger memory about items that we initially made a mistake on and then were corrected. In the discussion in class, students usually discover the mistakes/errors and we talk about why they might have been made and why they are not correct. I think it forces them to have a little bit deeper understanding than they initially had.

Another way to use errors is to have questions in the homework or other assessment that do something or state something incorrectly, and have students decide if there are any mistakes and what they are. This gets at a higher order of thinking than just computing.

On days when I am lecturing, I try to make a few strategic errors (in addition to all of my unplanned errors!) to make sure they are paying attention and to see if they are gaining enough confidence in their understanding to correct me. The goal is that eventually they will get away from viewing me as their math "authority"-the one who tells them if it is right or wrong-and that they begin to make those judgments for themselves.

There is a caveat to these ideas. There is research that shows that sometimes what students will remember is the mistake and not why it is incorrect. During an exam situation, they may recall the error and use it rather than doing or writing the correct thing. I'm not sure how to handle this except to make sure there is discussion about why something is incorrect and connect it to the understanding of the topic or method.

I would appreciate any suggestions regarding this techniques!

Description: One of the goals in teaching is to help students see the structure of thought in one's discipline, to see the kinds of questions considered important to address, and the reasoning process and evidence deemed acceptable in answering those questions. In the field of History this means helping students understand that underlying the interesting narratives about the past are constructions of cause and effect explanations, as well as assumptions about how change occurs.

One technique that encourages students to examine the connections among historical events is to have them make up essay questions as a review for a test. I give them some examples of essay questions, not short-answer questions that ask for recall, but questions that require them to think about the facts in a new way in an extended essay written in 45-50 minutes.

Students are assigned to write essay questions as homework (answers not required) in preparation for a review session the class period before the first midterm test. At the beginning of class I elicit from them criteria for good essay questions which I write on the board. The students then form small groups to discuss the questions they have prepared. Their task is to write what the group considers their best possible question, either adapted from what someone wrote, or created from their joint efforts. I circulate among the groups to make sure that each group is working on a different body of material and to help them over hurdles. Someone from each group writes their question on the board, so that we have a sample of 5 or 6 model essay questions that pretty well cover everything they should be studying for the midterm.

We evaluate each question and I often make changes in wording or emphasis. Then I use these questions to talk about how to tackle an essay test: how to determine just what the question is asking, jot down what one knows about the subject, organize an answer, and establish a thesis statement. I'm always careful to remind them that they are learning these techniques in their English classes, and have the opportunity to practice them in History classes. More than instructing them in a particular skill, however, I hope that students are learning something about historical inquiry.

Asking students to "play teacher" by figuring out possible essay questions encourages them to consider the larger themes that emerged to this point in the course. Of course I have been posing questions during the previous weeks so that they have some practice in framing answers, and they have some models for making up questions. From the more narrowly focused questions (Why did nineteenth century Irish immigrants encounter a great deal of discrimination in the U.S.? How did they respond to that discrimination?) they can, after studying the reception of a number of immigrant groups and their adaptation to the U.S., discuss a broader question (Why were Germans received differently than Irish immigrants, and how did their differing receptions affect their acculturation in the United States?). When they can formulate such questions they are beginning to think like historians.

Description: Critique is an important teaching tool in the studio arts. It is a way to train students to assess and discuss their work in front of others and watch and listen as others talk about their work in front of them. It is also a way of discovering new ways of looking at and understanding one's own work that goes beyond the initial problem-solving task of the assignment. In the Fundamentals of Drawing class, I have many students who are absolute beginners, a few with some drawing experience, and the occasional 10-steps-ahead-of-everyone student. It is generally a very vulnerable and scary experience to put your work out there and have a group of strangers discuss your drawing. With a few guidelines and some humor, we get through the initial group critique and all feel better the next time around.

I will often have a time of critique after a particular long or significant drawing project. I have found that it helps to take it out of the classroom - to some other space where all the work can be seen in a more neutral environment. Given the space constraints we have, I have the students bring their work out into the hallway and line the drawings up against the wall. These "hall-way critiques" have been a long tradition in the 2-D area of our department. It works fairly well, but for finals we will clear out the studio rooms or use the Gallery for a more formal crit.

So what is critique all about? The dictionary defines it as "a critical review or commentary, especially one dealing with an artistic work" and "the methodology used to think and communicate about art." The following brief outline was gleaned from a much more extensive one that Christopher Bates put together for one of our departmental flex activities. It is one approach that we use in the Art department and we often use some variation on the basics that are more particular to our style or to the class.

General Guidelines
I. Initial Reception
What did you feel or think when you first saw the piece?
Did your response change after further examination?
II. Pointing
Point out areas within the piece that you believe work well or conversely, don't seem right. Try to describe what you think about these areas.
III. Discussing the Content
What is the piece about? What are the artist's intentions?
For whom was the piece made? Where does it fit into our culture?
Think of a metaphor or phrase that can summarize the piece?
IV. Examining the Object
Study the basic aesthetic elements within the piece. This can help the artists determine the strengths and weaknesses of the individual parts of the piece.
These include:
Composition
Color and Value range
Form and Space
Technique
Visual Attitude of the Piece
V. Feeling
After going through this procedure - after gathering information about the piece - what are your feelings for the piece?

For Those Doing the Critique
I. If you don't take the time, you can't give an honest reaction. Look at the piece at least twice.
II. Your initial critique can be followed up with other reactions. You don't have to say it all at once - someone else's statement may remind you of something.
III. Never quarrel with another's reaction.
We each bring our particular mood, temperament, and experience to our critique.
IV. No kind of reaction is wrong. Your reaction is one part of the whole group's reaction. The group's reaction is one part of the total response that the piece will get during its lifetime. Keep in mind that your reaction is for the purpose of building stronger artwork, not for the destruction of the artist.
V. Although no reaction is wrong, you still need to work hard to see accurately. Figure out why you like it or don't like it.
VI. You are always right and always wrong. No one else knows what you perceive and experience and you never see or experience enough. Be simultaneously sure of yourself and humble.

For The Artist Being Critiqued
I. Be quiet and listen.
Don't give long introductions. No apologies: "I didn't have time to finish," or "It's not how I wanted it to be," etc. Never say what you want your piece to do for the viewer. Don't get defensive. Take the responses in and later reflect on them as a whole. People will ask questions, "Why did you do??" Before you answer, find out why they asked.

II. You won't be able to understand everything you are being told. Try to understand how people tell you their reactions. Attitudes are as important as words.
III. Don't be tyrannized by what is being said. Listen openly and try to be clear about it.
IV. Remember who has which job. The 'critics' give responses and evaluations. Their responsibility is to make sure their attitudes are clear and helpful, not destructive. You decide what to do with their responses and evaluations. There are many ways to solve a problem - your solution is yours alone and belongs to your piece.
V. You are always right and always wrong. Your decision is final. It is your work, the product of your development, but you cannot dispute their experiences and perceptions.

Application
Although these guidelines are clearly particular for the Art department and for looking at art, I believe that with some variation they can be adapted to many other disciplines. Regardless of the class, the important thing is to engage the students in their own learning process so that they learn how to ask questions and be willing to be challenged by the questions of others.

Description: As teaching professionals, we have clear goals and objectives of what we expect our students to learn before the end of the s