Effective professional development, Take 1

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The other day, I participated in a webinar run by Stephanie Chasteen (@sciencegeekgirl on Twitter. If you don’t follow her, you should.) It was called, “Teaching faculty about effective clicker use” and the goals was to help us plan and carry out meetings where we train faculty members to use peer instruction and clickers. Did you get that subtle difference: it was not about how to use clickers (though Stephanie can teach you that, too.) Rather, this webinar was aimed at instructional support people tasked with training their colleagues how to use peer instruction. This was a train the trainers webinar. And it was right up my alley because I’m learning to do that.

And if you think that’s getting meta-, just you wait…

In the midst of reminding us about peer instruction, Stephanie listed characteristics of effective professional development. She gave us the bold words; the interpretation in mine:

  • collaborative: it’s about sharing knowledge, experiences, ideas, expertise
  • active: we need to do something, not just sit and listen (or not!)
  • discipline-oriented: If we want to be able to share, we need some common background. I want to understand what you’re talking about. And I hope you give a damn about what I’m talking about. Coming from the same discipline, like physics or astronomy or biology, is a good start.
  • instructor-driven: I take this to mean “facilitated”. That is, there’s someone in charge who drives the activity forward.
  • respectful: So open to interpretation. Here’s my take: everyone in the room should have the opportunity to contribute. And not via the approach, “well if you’ve got something to say, speak up, dammit!” It takes self-confidence and familiarity and…Okay, it takes guts to interrupt a colleague or a conversation to interject your own opinion. Relying on people to do that does not respect their expertise or the time they’ve invested by coming to the meeting.
  • research-based: One of the pillars of the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI) that I’m part of at UBC, and the Science Education Initiative at the University of Colorado where Stephanie comes from, is a commitment to research-based instructional strategies. We care about the science of teaching and learning.
  • sustained over time: We’d never expect our students to learn concepts after one exposure to new material. That’s why we give pre-reading and lectures and peer instruction and homework and midterms and…So we shouldn’t expect instructors to transform their teaching styles after one session of training. It requires review and feedback and follow-up workshops and…

Alright, time to switch to another stream for a moment. They’ll cross in a paragraph or two.

(image: Peter Newbury)

I’ve got a big box of shiny new i>clicker2 clickers to try out. I’m pretty excited. I’m also pretty sure the first thing instructors will say is, “What’s with all the new buttons? I thought these things were supposed to be simple! Damn technology being shoved down our [grumble] [grumble] [grumble]” I want to be able reply

Yes, there are more buttons on the i>clicker2. But let me show you an amazing clicker question you can use in your [insert discipline here] classroom…

 

Good plan. Okay, let’s see: Clickers? Check. Amazing clicker questions? D’oh!

We use a lot of peer instruction here at UBC and there are CWSEI support people like me in Math, Chemistry, Biology, Statistics, Earth and Ocean Sciences, Computer Science. If anyone can brainstorm a few good questions, it’s this crew. And guess what? We get together for 90-minute meetings every week.

Can you feel the streams are coming together. Just one more to add:

My CWSEI colleagues and I frequently meet with instructors and other faculty members. We’re dance a delicate dance between telling instructors what to do, drawing out their good and bad experiences, getting them to discover for themselves what could work, (psst: making them think they thought of it themselves). Their time is valuable so when we meet, we need to get things done. We need to run short, effective episodes of professional development. It’s not easy. If only there was a way to practice…

A-ha! Our weekly meetings should be effective professional development led by one of us getting some practice at facilitating. The streams have crossed. I’ll run the next meeting following Stephanie’s advice, modeling Stephanie’s advice, to gather questions so I will be able run an effective workshop on taking advantage of the new features of the i>clicker2. It’s a meta-meeting. Or a meta-meta-meeting?

It’s not like I made any of this up. Or I couldn’t find it if I talked with some people whose job is professional development. Well, I guess I did kind of talk with Stephanie. But there’s a lot to be said for figuring it out for yourself. Or at least starting to figure it out for yourself, and failing, and then recognizing and appreciating what the expert has to say.

And you’ve read enough for now. Watch for another post about how it went.

Thanks, Mr. Barsby

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Today, October 5, is World Teachers’ Day 2011. My twitter stream is full of people sharing stories about their most memorable teachers. I can’t even finish reading the first sentence of any of these stories without thinking of my teacher, John Barsby. I don’t know if I ever properly thanked him for what he did for me. One blog post is far from enough but it’s a start.

Mr. Barsby, or JTB as we called him amongst ourselves, was my high school math teacher. I went to St. John’s Ravenscourt, a private school in Winnipeg, MB. (Thanks, Dad, by the way, for sending me there instead of River Heights and Kelvin.) There were about 80 kids in my Grade 8, enough for 3 classes. For math, they divided the kids into 2 “regular” classes with excellent teachers, I’m sure, and 1 “advanced” class for the kids who held promise in math. Or something. That was Mr. Barsby’s class. And I was in it.

This happened each year so I was lucky enough to have JTB every year, from Grade 8 until Grade 12. When I think back to high school, this class was my cohort, the group of close friends and familiar friends with whom I got through high school.

I don’t have time to describe all the things that happened in that classroom. One, I’ve got a meeting in 45 minutes and 2) high school was a long time ago and I’m turning into an old fogey, according to my daughter. But two things not just float to the surface of my memory, but jump from my memory whenever I think about JTB.

Ants by ceoln on flickr

He taught us about positive and negative numbers using red ants for positive, say, and black ants for negative. Whenever they meet, they eat each other. Red ants plus red ants means lots of red ants. Black and black: lots of black. But put red and black together and the total number of ants goes down. And what is good for red ants? Taking away some black ants: that double-negative is a good thing.

To this day, when I see one of my kid’s addition and subtraction exercises, in my mind I see what it looks like when you kick over an ant hill. Ants, red ones and black ones, scurrying about, adding and subtracting, until all the reds or blacks are gone and we’re left with just the sum.

That was how he taught us math, from positive and negative numbers right through to the 1st year University of Manitoba calculus course he somehow managed to teach us at our school. He used analogies and everyday experiences so we didn’t get bogged down in the mechanics of math. He taught us concepts.

[At this moment, I have to take a break cuz I’m gettin’ all teary-eyed. Happy tears, but still… Damn.]

Here’s what else I remember and it’s what I’m most thankful for. Even then, way back in Grade 8, I asked a lot of questions. Not stupid questions (“Mr. Baaaaarsby, did you forget to square the 3 in the top line…?”) Well, maybe as many of those as the next kid, but the ones I remember were different. From what I know now, I was asking questions that made me more expert-like. Sense-making questions, which in math are often “push it to the limits and see if it still makes sense.” Like, when N gets really large, does the perimeter of an N-gon turn into the circumference of a circle? It does? Oh, cool.

I clearly remember some not-so-great moments when I’d toss out another of these. My classmates would groan, “Oh great, another question from Peter…” I could have stopped asking. I almost did. But I distinctly remember talking to my dad about not knowing what to do, and how he told me to tell my classmates, “to go suck eggs!” and keep asking questions. And I never, NEVER remember Mr. Barsbsy groaning or giving me the slightest hint of annoyance. In my head, I don’t remember any of his answers to questions but I still feel the comfort, the warmth (help me out here, I’m a science nerd with very little practice writing about feelings…) with which he welcomed and addressed my curiosity.  It’s the same feeling I’ve always had with my Dad (thanks again, Pop!).

I still ask questions. A lot of them. One of my role models is Simplicio from Galileo’s Two New Sciences. Simplicio asks a lot of questions of the wise and learned Salviati. Good questions. I like to think it’s almost like he knows what’s coming and asks just the right question at just the right time to help Salviati explain his discoveries. There’s a great line where Salviati says something akin to, “Ah, yes, excellent.  Let me just draw a diagram here in the dirt…” (I’ll update when I find it. Help me out?)

You see, I’m no longer afraid to ask those questions, the ones I suspect (or know) that other people have but are embarrassed to ask, or the ones I know (or suspect) will help the expert spit out a concept in a way the audience will get it. I’m quite happy to play the naive fool and put up with the occasional, “Oh no, here he goes again…” But I pick my questions carefully and thoughtfully. Just the right question at just the right time.

For the ability to ask think up those questions and the guts to ask them, thanks, JTB. You, too, Pop.

Peer instruction is worth the effort

astro 101 clickers teaching 2 Comments

Most blog posts, articles or books with a title like this would go on to describe the positive impact of peer instruction on student learning. I even write those kinds of posts, myself.

This one is different, though, because it’s not about peer instruction being worth the effort by (and for) the students. This one is about how it’s worth the effort by (and for) the instructor.

In my job with the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative, I sometimes work closely with one instructor for an entire 4-month term, helping to transform a traditional (read, “lecture”) science classes into productive, learner-centered environments. One of the common features of these transformations is the introduction and then effective implementation of peer instruction. At UBC, we happen to use i>clickers to do facilitate this but the technology does not define the pedagogy.

Early in the transformation, my CWSEI colleagues and I have to convince the instructor that they should be using peer instruction. A common response is,

I hear that good clickers questions take soooo much time to prepare. I just don’ t have that time to spend.

So, is that true, or is it a common misconception that we need to dispel?

Here’s my honest answer: Yes, transforming your instructor-centered lectures into interactive, student-centered classes takes considerable effort. It feels just like teaching a new course using the previous instructor’s deck of ppt slides.

What about the second time you teach it, though?

A year ago, in September 2010, I was embedded in an introductory astronomy course. The instructor and I put in the effort, her a lot more than me, to transform the course. By December, we were exhausted. Today, one year later, she’s teaching the same course.

My, what a difference a year can make.

This morning I asked her to tell me about how much time she spends preparing her classes this term, compared to last year. We’re not talking about making up homework assignments or exams or answering email or debugging the course management system or… Just the time spent getting ready for class. This year she spends about 1 hour preparing for her 1-hour classes. That prep time consists of

  • a lot of re-paginating last year’s ppt decks because they’re not quite in sync. Today’s Class_6 is the end of one last year’s Class_5 plus the beginning of the last year’s Class_6 so it needs a new intro, reminders, learning goals slide.
  • she tweaks the peer instruction questions, perhaps based on feedback we got last time (students didn’t understand the question, no one chose a particular choice so find a better distractor, and so on). The “Astro 101” community is lucky to have a great collection of peer instruction questions at ClassAction. Many of these have options where you can select bigger, longer, faster, cooler to create isomorphic questions. It takes time to review those options and pick ones which best match the concept being covered.
  • like every instructor, she looks ahead to the next couple of classes to see what needs to be emphasized to prepare the students.

“And how,” I asked, “does that compare to last year?”

Between the two of us (I was part of the instructional team, recall) we probably spent 4-5 hours preparing each hour of class. In case you’ve lost the thread, let me repeat that:

Last year: 4-5 hours per hour in class.
This year: 1 hour.

“And do you spend those 3-4 hours working on other parts of the course?”

Nope. Those 3-4 hours per class times 3 classes per week equals about 10 hours a week are now used to do the other parts of being a professor.

Is incorporating peer instruction into classes worth the effort? Yes, absolutely. For both the students and the instructors.

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