DBW1

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Directions: Discussion board forums are an essential part of this course and must be written in a professional and respectful manner that reflects graduate-level writing and mechanics. You are required to provide a 400-500-word thread in response to the provided prompt for the forum below. The initial thread must be supported with at least 2 sources to include the textbook in current APA format. I have attached the textbook.
Absolutely no plagiarism!

Question: Suppose you have been asked for advice by a newly-hired instructor who has never taught a college-level course. If you could only recommend 1 chapter from the reading assigned for this module/week, which chapter would you choose?  
In your thread, write 2 paragraphs. In the first paragraph, support your choice of the 1 chapter as more beneficial than any of the other chapters, and, for the second paragraph, provide an overview of the material in that chapter that would be most important to a first-time college instructor.  

Textbooks:

· Kanar, The Confident Student (2014)

· Nilson, Teaching at its Best (2016)

www.josseybass.com
TEACHING AT ITS BEST
This third edition of the best-selling handbook offers faculty at all levels an essential toolbox of
hundreds of practical teaching techniques, formats, classroom activities, and exercises, all of which
can be implemented immediately. This thoroughly revised edition includes the newest portrait of the
Millennial student; current research from cognitive psychology; a focus on outcomes maps; the
latest legal options on copyright issues; and how to best use new technology including wikis, blogs,
podcasts, vodcasts, and clickers. Entirely new chapters include subjects such as matching teaching
methods with learning outcomes, inquiry-guided learning, and using visuals to teach, and new
sections address Felder and Silverman’s Index of Learning Styles, SCALE-UP classrooms, multiple
true-false test items, and much more.
Praise for the Third Edition of Teaching at Its Best
“ Everyone—veterans as well as novices—will profi t from reading Teaching at Its Best, for it provides
both theory and practical suggestions for handling all of the problems one encounters in teaching
classes varying in size, ability, and motivation.”
— WILBERT MCKEACHIE, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, and coauthor,
McKeachie’s Teaching Tips
“ This new edition of Dr. Nilson’s book, with its completely updated material and several new topics, is
an even more powerful collection of ideas and tools than the last. What a great resource, especially
for beginning teachers but also for us veterans!”
—L. DEE FINK, author, Creating Signifi cant Learning Experiences

“ This third edition of Teaching at Its Best is successful at weaving the latest research on teaching and
learning into what was already a thorough exploration of each topic. New information on how we
learn, how students develop, and innovations in instructional strategies complement the solid
foundation established in the fi rst two editions.”
— MARILLA D. SVINICKI, Department of Psychology, The University of Texas, Austin,
and coauthor, McKeachie’s Teaching Tips

T H E A U T H O R
LINDA B. NILSON is the founding director of the Offi ce of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation at
Clemson University. She is the author of The Graphic Syllabus and the Outcomes Map: Communicating
Your Course from Jossey-Bass.
Cover design by Michael Cook
EDUCATION/HIGHER
LINDA B. NILSON
A Research-Based Resource
for College Instructors{ }
T H I R D E D I T I O N
TEACHING
AT ITS BEST
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TEACHING
AT ITS BEST

TEACHING
AT ITS BEST
A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors
Third Edition
Linda B. Nilson

Copyright © 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by Jossey-Bass
A Wiley Imprint
989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741—www.josseybass.com
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108
of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization
through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive,
Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the
publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street,
Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax 201-748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have
changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this
book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this
book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty
may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein
may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher
nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special,
incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer
Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax 317-572-4002.
Jossey-Bass also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be
available in electronic books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nilson, Linda Burzotta.
Teaching at its best : a research-based resource for college instructors / Linda B. Nilson. — 3rd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-40104-0 (pbk.)
1. College teaching. 2. Effective teaching. I. Title.
LB2331.N55 2010
378.1′7—dc22
2010000722
Printed in the United States of America
third edition
PB Printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

http://www.josseybass.com

http://www.copyright.com

http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions

The Jossey-Bass
Higher and Adult Education Series

CONTENTS
The Author xv
Preface xvii
Part One
LAYING THE GROUNDWORK
FOR STUDENT LEARNING 1
1 Understanding Your Students and How
They Learn 3
Your Undergraduate Student Body Profile
How People Learn
How Structure Increases Learning
The Cognitive Development of
Undergraduates
Encouraging Cognitive Growth
Teaching the Millennial Generation
The Adult Learner
Inclusive Instructing
The Challenge
2 Outcomes-Centered Course Design 17
Why Outcomes-Centered Course Design?
Writing Outcomes
Types of Learning Outcomes
Types of Cognitive Outcomes
Designing the Learning Process
Helpful Frameworks for Designing a Course
Showing Students Their Learning Process
Outcomes-Centered Course Development
3 The Complete Syllabus 33
Appropriate Syllabus Items
The Graphic Syllabus
The Online ‘‘Living Syllabus’’
Getting Students to Read Your Syllabus
The Evolving Syllabus
4 Your First Day of Class 43
Before the First Class
First Impressions
Exchanging Information
Social Icebreakers: Getting to Know You
Subject Matter Icebreakers
Drawing Class to a Close
5 Motivating Your Students 51
What We Know About Motivation in
Learning
Credible Theories of Motivation
Strategies for Motivating Students
Equity in the Classroom
vii

viii CONTENTS
Part Two
MANAGING YOUR COURSES 61
6 Copyright Guidelines for Instructors 63
Where Copyright Does and Does Not Apply
Common Copyright Misconceptions
Free Use: Fair Use, Facts, and Public
Domain
Printed Text
Visual Materials
In-Class Performances
Recording Broadcast Programming
Online/Electronic Materials and Distance
Learning
Obtaining Permission or a License
How Copyright Violations Are Actually
Handled
For Further and Future Reference
7 Preventing and Responding to Classroom
Incivility 71
What Is Incivility?
Why the Increase?
Preventing Incivility: Your Classroom
Persona
Responding to Incivility
Seeking Assistance
8 Preserving Academic Integrity 83
How Prevalent Is Cheating?
Who Cheats, and Why?
Detecting Cheating
Preventing Cheating
Honor Codes
Changing Student Values
9 Making the Most of Office Hours 89
Getting Students to See You
Making the Time Productive
Student-Active Tutoring
Students in Academic or Emotional
Trouble
10 Course Coordination Between Faculty and
Teaching Assistants 95
Before the Term: Course Review and Role
Specifications
During the Term: Regular Meetings and
Teaching Feedback
Extending Managing to Mentoring
Part Three
CHOOSING AND USING
THE RIGHT TOOLS FOR
TEACHING AND LEARNING 101
11 Matching Teaching Methods with
Learning Outcomes 103
Types of Tools
Dangerous Knowledge?
12 Making the Lecture a Learning
Experience 113
Purpose: To Lecture or Not to Lecture?
Preparing an Effective Lecture
Delivering an Effective Lecture
Incorporating Student-Active Breaks: The
Interactive Lecture
Teaching Students to Take Good Notes
Making the Lecture Effective for Everyone
13 Leading Effective Discussions 127
When to Choose Discussion
How to Set the Stage for Discussion
How to Maximize Participation Through
Skillful Discussion Management
14 Questioning Techniques for Discussion and
Assessment 137
Questioning as a Process of Inquiry
Typologies of Good Discussion Questions
Poor Questions for Discussion Purposes
Turning the Tables

Contents ix
15 Experiential Learning Activities 145
Student Presentation Formats
Role Playing
Simulations and Games
Service-Learning: The Real Thing
16 Learning in Groups 155
A Group by Any Other Name. . .
The Case for Group Work
Changing Methods, Changing Roles
The Setup and Management of Student
Groups
Management Tips
Tried-and-True Group Learning Strategies
Preparing Students for Life
17 Writing-to-Learn Activities and
Assignments 167
Freewrites
The One-Minute Paper
Journals
One-Sentence Summaries
Learning Logs
Dialectical Notes
Directed Paraphrasing
Letters, Memos, Notes, and Electronic
Posts
Mock Tests
Drafts for Peer Feedback
Multiple Purposes
Part Four
MORE TOOLS: TEACHING
REAL-WORLD PROBLEM
SOLVING 173
18 Inquiry-Guided Learning 175
Definitions of Inquiry-Guided Learning
The Effectiveness of Inquiry-Guided
Learning
Objects and Modes of Inquiry
Variations of Inquiry-Based Learning
19 The Case Method 181
The Effectiveness of the Case Method
The Appropriate Subject Matter
What Makes a Good Case
Types of Cases
Debriefing Cases
A Postscript for Pioneers
20 Problem-Based Learning 187
How PBL Works
Good PBL Problems and Where to Find
Them
The Effectiveness of PBL
What Students Think
Kudos for Creativity
21 Quantitative Reasoning and Problem
Solving 193
Understanding Students’ Problems with
Problems
Modeling Expert Reasoning
Teaching the Steps of Problem Solving
Tutoring Students out of Bad Habits
Routinizing Peer Feedback
Making Problems More Real and
Challenging
Using the Power of Group Learning
Accommodating New Methods to
Traditional Settings
22 Problem Solving in the Sciences 199
Where Science Education Falls Short
How to Help Students Learn Science:
General Advice
How the Lecture Can Be Made into a
Meaningful Learning Experience
How the Lab Can Be Made into a
Meaningful Learning Experience
The Essentials of Lab Safety and
Management
Why Science Education Is So Important

x CONTENTS
Part Five
MAKING LEARNING
EASIER 209
23 Getting Students to Do the Readings 211
Why Students Don’t Do the Readings
How We Can Equip and Induce Students
to Do the Readings
Specific Tools for Holding Students
Accountable
Managing Your Workload
24 Teaching Your Students to Think and
Write in Your Discipline 223
Cross-Disciplinary Commonalities
Teaching Critical Thinking Through the
Discipline’s Metacognitive Model
Metacognitive Differences Among
Disciplines
Making Students Better Thinkers and
Writers
Teaching Students to Write for Their
Futures
The Many Worlds of Writing
25 Accommodating Different Learning
Styles 229
Kolb’s Learning Styles Model and
Experiential Learning Theory
Fleming and Mills’s Sensory-Based
Learning Style Typology
Felder and Silverman’s Index of
Learning Styles
Parallels Across Learning Style Models
Multisensory, Multimethod Teaching: Most
Effective for All
26 Using Visuals to Teach 239
Ways That Visuals Enhance Learning
Types of Visuals for Learning
The Future of Visuals in Teaching and
Learning
27 Using Instructional Technology Wisely 253
Reliable Low-Tech Tools for the Classroom
The Choice of High-Tech Alternatives
Learning Management Systems
Lecture-Related Software
Web Resources
Laptops in the Wireless Classroom
Web 2.0 Tools
Looking Ahead
Part Six
ASSESSING LEARNING
OUTCOMES 271
28 Assessing Student Learning in Progress 273
Classroom Assessment Techniques
Formative Feedback
Student Portfolios
Extending Classroom Assessment to
Classroom Research and the
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
29 Constructing Summative Assessments 281
General Testing Guidelines
Objective Test Items
Constructed Response Instruments: Essay
Questions and Writing Assignments
Tests and Assignments: The Ultimate
Teaching Evaluations
30 Preparing Students for Tests 295
Test Preparation Measures
Anxiety-Reduction Measures
What the Effort Is Worth
31 Grading Summative Assessments 301
The Meaning of Grades
Summative Assessments and Grading
Systems
The Qualities of a Sound Grading System
Grading Constructed Responses and
Papers

Contents xi
Grading Lab Reports
How to Grade Mechanics Quickly While
Ensuring Students Learn Them
Outcome-Based Grading
Returning Students’ Work
Helping Students Use Your Feedback to
Improve
The Real Meaning and Limits of Grades
32 Evaluating and Documenting Teaching
Effectiveness 315
Defining and Measuring Teaching
Effectiveness
Student Evaluations
Peer, Administrative, and Self-Evaluations
Documenting Your Effectiveness
Comprehensive Approaches to Faculty
Evaluation
Complex Beyond Measure
Appendix: Instructional Support and Resources
at Your Institution 329
References 335
Index 367

To Greg,
the man behind the woman

THE AUTHOR
Linda B. Nilson is the founding director of Clemson
University’s Office of Teaching Effectiveness and
Innovation. In addition to writing the first two
editions of Teaching at Its Best: A Research-Based
Resource for College Instructors (1998, 2003), she has
authored The Graphic Syllabus and the Outcomes
Map: Communicating Your Course (Jossey-Bass, 2007)
and edited a number of volumes: Enhancing Learning
with Laptops in the Classroom (with Barbara E.
Weaver, Jossey-Bass, 2005) and Volumes 25 through
28 of To Improve the Academy: Resources for Faculty,
Instructional, and Organizational Development (with
Douglas Reimondo Robertson, Anker, 2007, 2008;
with Judith E. Miller, Jossey-Bass, 2009, 2010). Her
other publications are articles and book chapters
on teaching with learning objects and mind maps,
designing a graphic syllabus, improving student-peer
feedback, teaching large classes, getting students to
do the readings, critical thinking, scholarly writing
and publishing, and graduate student professional
development, along with book-length instructional
handbooks for three universities. One of her papers
(with Ernest N. Biktimirov) won the 2002 Financial
Management Association Competitive Paper Award
in Financial Education.
Dr. Nilson presents faculty and graduate student
workshops and keynotes at colleges, universities,
consortia, and conferences in the United States and
internationally. Among her faculty development
activities was developing and directing the week-long
2008 Institute for Teaching and Learning in Higher
Education, sponsored by the South Carolina Teach-
ing Excellence Network. Her workshop repertoire
spans every teaching and learning chapter in this
book—course design and development, teaching
strategies for small and large classes, assessment, class-
room management, and student evaluations—along
with career development topics, such as prepara-
tion of a teaching philosophy, peer assessment of
teaching for promotion and tenure, early academic
career management, faculty time management, and
scholarly writing and publishing.
Before coming to Clemson in 1998, Dr. Nilson
directed the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt Uni-
versity and the Teaching Assistant Development Pro-
gram at the University of California, Riverside. At
the latter institution, she developed the disciplinary
cluster approach to training teaching assistants (TAs),
a cost-effective way for a centralized unit to provide
disciplinary-relevant instructional training. This ap-
proach received coverage in the Chronicle of Higher
Education, and she similarly structured TA training at
Vanderbilt. Her entrée into educational development
came in the late 1970s while she was on the sociol-
ogy faculty at UCLA. After she distinguished herself
as an excellent instructor, her department selected her
xv

xvi THE AUTHOR
to establish its Teaching Assistant Training Program.
She supervised it for four years, and it still follows her
original organization. As a sociologist, she conducted
research in the areas of occupations and work, social
stratification, political sociology, and disaster behavior.
Her career also included several years in the business
world as a technical and commercial writer, a train-
ing workshop facilitator, and the business editor of a
southern California magazine.
Dr. Nilson is active in the Professional and
Organizational Development (POD) Network in
Higher Education, which honored her work with
the 2000 Innovation (Bright Idea) Award, and the
Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Ed-
ucation. She has held leadership positions in the
POD Network, the Southern Regional Faculty and
Instructional Development Consortium, and Society
for the Study of Social Problems, the Public Relations
Society of America, Toastmasters International, and
Mensa.
A native of Chicago, Dr. Nilson was a National
Science Foundation fellow at the University of Wis-
consin, Madison, where she received her Ph.D. and
M.S. degrees in sociology. She completed her un-
dergraduate work in three years at the University of
California, Berkeley, where she was elected to Phi
Beta Kappa.

PREFACE
W
hatever their Carnegie classification, in-
stitutions with high standards of instruc-
tional excellence, in particular at the un-
dergraduate level, should warmly welcome this third
edition, as so many did the first and second editions.
It has been updated and expanded to serve the same
audience of new and experienced instructors who are
sincerely dedicated to learner-centered teaching at its
best. They should find it useful whether they teach
young, adult, or highly diverse students and whether
they rely on traditional classroom or hybrid formats.
Liberal arts and community colleges as well
as other teaching-centered institutions have always
promoted high standards of teaching excellence.
But time was that no one really cared much what
instructors in more research-oriented universities
did in the classroom, as long as it was legal. No
one—not the students, their parents, colleagues, ad-
ministrators, accrediting agencies, employers, or any
levels of government—scrutinized a faculty member’s
teaching methods, which was usually straight lecture,
or sought evidence of student learning. Departments
barely considered the quality of one’s teaching in
hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions. Of course,
some instructors deeply cared about their student
evaluations, but they usually were the ones who
received high ratings and grateful student comments.
Otherwise they were rarely rewarded. In fact, these
“popular” faculty were suspect. So were those who
broached the subject of teaching enhancement with
their colleagues.
This time was not a hundred years ago but more
like thirty or forty. It was in this chilly environment
that Wilbert J. McKeachie was writing and publish-
ing the earliest editions of Teaching Tips. His was
the only book of its kind on the market. Of course,
the research literature on college teaching and learn-
ing was sparse back then. Today that literature would
fill rooms, and Teaching Tips is in its twelfth edi-
tion, with plenty of competition, including this book
you are reading. College instructors across all types of
institutions now face a host of internal and external
stakeholders; it seems that everyone cares about what
they do in the classroom and how they affect students.
Who says the academy never changes?
This book has gathered together the fruits of
these changes—literally thousands of research-based
methods, policies, and practices for being effective
in all aspects of teaching, course management, and
assessment—and serves them in readily consumable
portions so you can confidently try them out in your
next class.
The research on college-level teaching is the
foundation of and inspiration for this book. It has
blossomed into the fertile body of literature called the
scholarship of teaching and learning. It encompasses
xvii

xviii PREFACE
not only the impact of different instructional methods
and learning experiences on student achievement,
satisfaction, and knowledge retention, but also rec-
ommendations on how to implement these strategies
most successfully. Because few faculty have the time to
keep abreast of this literature as well as their own dis-
cipline, the concise summary of hundreds of teaching
options presented here is essential for time saving.
You should use this book as a toolbox for both
classroom and technology-enhanced instruction. The
tools include not only teaching methods and moves
but also face-to-face and online activities and
exercises, practices to enhance instructor-student rap-
port, strategies to make learning easier, and guidelines
for designing and grading assignments and papers.
With physical tools, you may have to find the right
tool for the job. But you usually have the choice of
several right tools for a given teaching job, whatever
your goals for students. Therefore, I present plenty
of alternatives. I avoid playing champion for certain
methods over others and the latest innovations over
the tried-and-true. Rather, I present the how-to’s
and why-do’s for many teaching tools, along with
their trade-offs, just as the research reports them, and
leave the choices to frontline faculty.
Guiding my decisions on the organization
and the writing style was my intention to write
this book for people like you who don’t have time
to read a book. To ensure easy accessibility and
allow rapid reading, the writing style is concise and
informal, the paragraphs are relatively brief, most
of the thirty-two chapters are short and generously
subdivided into sections, and the Contents page is
detailed with chapter section headings. In addition,
the six major parts are sequenced according to your
likely chronological need for the material. Still, you
can read the chapters in any order, and the text
makes numerous cross-references to other chapters
that elaborate on a given subject. So you can casually
browse, quickly locate specific topics, and skip over
the tools with which you are already familiar.
I wrote this book in the second person and the
first-person plural. These writing conventions both
personalize the text and make it easier to read. In
addition, the second person facilitates presenting the
directions, rules, and formulas that some techniques
follow. My goal has been to demystify the method,
simplify the instructions, and equip you with a new
tool right away.
While preserving the most appreciated features
of the second edition, this third edition incorporates
more and new material—from extensive updates of
every topic that new research has addressed to three
brand-new chapters, plus a line-by-line editing to fur-
ther improve the writing. I describe these changes for
each part of the book:
Part One, “Laying the Groundwork for Student
Learning,” guides you through the tasks to complete
before the term begins. Understanding your students
and how they learn anchors all your plans, so it is
dealt with in the first chapter. The section on how
people learn brings in more principles and findings
from cognitive psychology, as well as their concrete
implications for teaching. It is followed by a lengthy
new section on the importance of mental structure in
learning, retention, and retrieval. Finally, another new
section addresses reaching and teaching the millennial
generation. Along with updating the term learning ob-
jectives to learning outcomes, Chapters Two and Three
on, respectively, course design and the syllabus add
Anderson and Krathwohl’s revision of Bloom’s tax-
onomy of cognitive operations, Fink’s six kinds of
learning essential for creating “significant learning ex-
periences,” and a section on developing an outcomes
map to show students the learning process you have
planned for them. The advice in Chapter Four for
your first class meeting adds preclass physical and vocal
exercises for enhancing your persona and nonverbal
communication. Chapter Five on motivation greatly
expands the literature review, explicating four theo-
ries of motivation and the evidence for them, and it
offers more strategies for motivating students, most
of which must be planned into a course. Finally, the
sections on inclusive teaching and equity in the class-
room offer many more ways to create fertile learning
environments in diverse settings.
Part Two, “Managing Your Courses,” targets
the administrative side of teaching: the copyright

Preface xix
guidelines to follow, recommended course policies
regarding student conduct and academic integrity,
and the routines to establish for office hours and with
teaching assistants. All of the material on copyright
is up-to-date, and the chapter on academic honesty
incorporates the latest incidence and prevalence
statistics, addresses electronic forms of cheating,
and examines the prospect of changing students’
values. Chapter Nine includes more novel ideas for
places and settings for office hours, and Chapter Ten
adds new literature on the faculty-teaching assistant
relationship.
Part Three, “Choosing and Using the Right
Tools for Teaching and Learning,” opens with a new
chapter on selecting the teaching formats, methods,
and moves that are known to help students achieve
specific cognitive outcomes. The rest of the chapters
(and those in Part Four) describe well-researched
instructional methods and lay out ground rules for
setting up and managing them to ensure powerful
learning experiences. The menu is extensive, varied,
and applicable across the disciplines. It also includes
many new topics: using clickers (that is, personal re-
sponse systems or classroom response systems) to add
interactive learning value to the lecture; teaching and
motivating students to take good lecture notes; foster-
ing civility and managing conflict during discussions;
advancing discussion through Bloom’s hierarchy using
a question template; posing Brookfield and Preskill’s
“momentum” questions; implementing academic
games; designing and debriefing your own simula-
tions; acquainting students with small-group dynam-
ics; integrating group processing and self-assessment
into group work; and administering group tests.
Part Four, “More Tools: Teaching Real-World
Problem Solving,” extends the menu to major
methods that help students acquire various problem-
solving skills: to resolve the type of open-ended,
realistic problems that good cases and problem-based
learning present; solve closed-ended quantitative
problems; and tackle challenging scientific questions
in both lectures and labs. All of the methods covered
fall under the general umbrella of inquiry-guided
learning, the focus of Chapter Eighteen, which
opens this part. This completely new chapter
explains the competing definitions of inquiry-guided
learning, the evidence for its effectiveness, the best
practices in implementing it, possible objects and
modes of inquiry, and all the many variations on
the inquiry-guided theme. Other new sections in
Part Four address peer assessment in quantitative
problem solving, the principles of successful science
instruction, and an inspiring array of recent innova-
tions in science education, all of which are inquiry
guided, problem focused, collaborative, and more
successful in promoting learning than the traditional
lecture. Some of these innovations call for minor
changes in the traditional lecture format, such as
peer instruction, the case method, problem-based
learning, just-in-time-teaching, and experimental
demonstrations, while others transform the entire
learning process—for example, the “studio course,”
process-oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL),
and student-centered active learning environment
for undergraduate programs (SCALE-UP). Research
also finds that students similarly benefit from labs
that require inductive reasoning to derive scientific
principles and nonroutine problem solving.
Part Five, “Making Learning Easier,” groups
together types of assignments, class activities, skill
development lessons, ways of presenting material,
and technology applications that help ensure students
learn and retain as much of your material as possible.
These strategies include ensuring students do the
readings, explaining how your discipline thinks,
teaching in different modes and media, adding visual
learning aids, and using technologies—from the
traditional to the latest Web 2.0 tools—appropriately.
Chapter Twenty-Six on teaching with visuals is new.
First, it summarizes the research on how the brain
processes graphic representations to learn and store
more knowledge. Then it provides everything you
need to know to incorporate concept maps, mind
maps, and concept circle diagrams into your classes:
how other faculty have used them successfully (re-
search and examples), how you and your students can
create them, and how you can assess your students’
products. Other chapters also present new material:

xx PREFACE
ways to teach students how to read and comprehend
academic material; Felder and Silverman’s Index of
Learning Styles; the validity and reliability of learning
style models; recent enhancements to learning
management systems; updated research on the effects
of posting presentation slides online; Web resources
for assignments and activities, including learning
objects; effective uses of podcasts and vodcasts; and
the latest instructional applications of blogs, wikis,
social networking tools, and Second Life.
Finally, Part Six, “Assessing Learning Out-
comes,” offers guidance first on assessing student
learning through activities, tests, and assignments
and then on evaluating teaching effectiveness and
documenting it for review. New material appears
throughout the chapters on first-time topics: writing
multiple true-false items for tests (and why you
should use them); developing objective test items to
assess higher-order thinking skills; grading mechanics
quickly while making students learn them; using a
new version of contract grading to motivate students;
and helping them use your feedback to improve (and
why they don’t). Other topics have been expanded
or updated: formative feedback methods, ways to
prepare students for tests, techniques for grading essay
questions and writing assignments, approaches to
writing a teaching philosophy, and the complexities
of evaluating teaching. The lengthy section on
student evaluations offers additional analyses on what
they actually measure, how instructor behaviors affect
them, how to interpret and improve them, and
how they should and shouldn’t be used in personnel
decisions.
If you are familiar with an earlier edition of this
book, you may also notice that the information on
the instructional support and resources that campuses
typically offer has been moved from the first chapter
to the appendix. In addition, many of the chapters
now include Web addresses of particularly valuable
resources for you and your students.
I welcomed Jossey-Bass’s invitation to write this
third edition and accepted it as an honor. But, of
course, it kept me at the computer after hours and
on weekends for over a year. My laptop became my
faithful travel companion in many airports and on
many flights. Unfortunately, the writing and revising
cut into precious time with loved ones, especially my
dear husband, Greg Bauernfeind. Yet he was my head
cheerleader during the entire process of “eating the
elephant.” He encouraged my efforts, celebrated my
progress, and took care of business on the home front.
I lovingly dedicate this edition to him.
Linda B. Nilson
Clemson, South Carolina
November 2009

TEACHING
AT ITS BEST

P A R T 1
LAYING THE
GROUNDWORK FOR
STUDENT LEARNING

C H A P T E R 1
Understanding Your Students
and How They Learn
W
henever we prepare an oral presentation, a
publication, or even a letter, the first issue
we consider is our audience. The person
or people for whom we intend our message influence
our content, format, organization, sentence structure,
and word choice. The same holds true in teaching.
The nature of our students—their academic prepara-
tion, aspirations, and cognitive development—affects
our choices of what and how to teach. We need to
think of our job not as teaching art, biology, English,
history, math, psychology, and so on but as teaching
students.
Yet another consideration, this one unique
to teaching, is how the human mind learns. For
any given subset of knowledge, some types and
styles of delivery are simply more effective means of
communication than others—that is, they make it
easier for people to attend to, grasp, and remember.
Yet in spite of the fact that we are all responsible for
encouraging human minds to learn, it seems that
only cognitive or educational psychologists know
how the human mind works.
Knowing both who your students are and how
their minds learn is the starting point for teaching at
its best.
YOUR UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT
BODY PROFILE
If you’re not already familiar with your student
audience, or your experience tells you that its com-
position has changed, your institution’s admissions or
student affairs office can provide the type of student
data you need. At a minimum, you should find out
the distributions and percentages on these variables:
age; marital and family status; socioeconomic back-
ground; race and ethnicity; full-time and part-time
employed; campus residents versus commuters; native
versus international; geographical mix; and special
admissions. If your students are primarily young,
on-campus residents, for instance, you can afford to
make more collaborative out-of-class assignments.
You might also benefit from finding out about the
3

4 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
leadership positions and activities that individuals in
a given class engaged in when they were in high
school.
You also need to know your students’ level of
academic preparation and achievement. You can assess
your institution’s selectivity by comparing the num-
ber of applicants each year with the number of those
accepted (a two-to-one ratio or above is highly se-
lective). For each entering class, you can find out
about its average scholastic test scores (SATs, ACTs),
the percentage ranked at varying percentiles of their
high school graduating classes, the percentage of Na-
tional Merit and National Achievement Finalists (over
5 percent is high), and the percentage that qualified
for Advanced Placement credit (over a third is high).
For several hundred American colleges and universi-
ties, almost all of this information is published every
summer in the “America’s Best Colleges” issue of
U.S. News & World Report.
Another question you might want to answer is
where your students are headed in life. Your institu-
tion’s career center should have on file the percentage
of students planning on different types of graduate and
professional educations, as well as the immediate em-
ployment plans of the next graduating class. Often de-
partments and colleges collect follow-up data on what
their students are doing a few years after graduation.
HOW PEOPLE LEARN
Whatever your student body profile, certain well-
researched principles about how people learn will
apply:
• People are born learners, beginning from infancy
with an insatiable curiosity and an increasing
awareness of their learning. They absorb and
remember untold billions of details about objects,
other people, their language, and things they
know how to do (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking,
1999; Spence, 2001).
• People learn through elaborative rehearsal, which
means connecting new knowledge to what they
already know and believe (Bransford et al., 1999;
Tigner, 1999).
• People learn what they regard as relevant to their
lives (Svinicki, 2004).
• People learn socially by constructing knowledge
in a group (Stage, Kinzie, Muller, & Simmons,
1999), but they otherwise learn one-on-one and
on their own (Spence, 2001).
• People learn when they are motivated to do so
by the inspiration and enthusiasm of other people
in their lives (Feldman, 1998b).
• People don’t learn well when their major learning
context is teacher centered—that is, when they
passively listen to a teacher talk. Rather, they learn
when they are actively engaged in an activity, a life
experience. The human brain can’t focus for long
when it is in a passive state (Bligh, 2000; Bonwell
& Eison, 1991; Hake, 1998; Jones-Wilson, 2005;
McKeachie, 2002; Spence, 2001; Svinicki, 2004).
• People learn best when they receive the new ma-
terial multiple times but in different ways—that is,
through multiple senses and modes that use differ-
ent parts of their brain (Kress, Jewitt, Ogborn, &
Charalampos, 2006; Tulving, 1985; Vekiri, 2002).
• People learn when they actively monitor their
learning and reflect on their performance—a
mental operation called metacognition or self-
regulated learning (Bransford et al., 1999).
• Relatedly, people learn less by reviewing material
and more from being tested or testing themselves
on it, as the latter involves greater cognitive pro-
cessing and practice retrieving (Dempster, 1996,
1997; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006).
• People learn better when the material evokes
emotional and not just intellectual or physical
involvement. In other words, a lasting learning
experience must be moving enough to make the
material memorable or to motivate people to
want to learn it. This learning pattern mirrors
the biological basis of learning, which is the close
communication between the frontal lobes of the
brain and the limbic system. From a biological
point of view, learning entails a change in the

Understanding Your Students and How They Learn 5
brain: the establishment of desirable new synapses
(Leamnson, 1999, 2000; Mangurian, 2005).
These key learning principles have some com-
plementary teaching principles, and they echo
through the rest of this book:
• Hold your students to high expectations. But be
reasonable, and don’t use yourself as the standard.
Very few students will learn your field as quickly
as you did or choose the life of the mind as
you have.
• Start where your students are. Find out what they
already know and don’t know and what they be-
lieve to be true, and become familiar with
their lifestyles. Then relate the new content,
skills, and abilities you are helping them learn to
what is familiar to them, both cognitively and
experientially. Use examples and analogies out of
their lives and their generational experience.
• Make the material relevant to the students’
lives, which for today’s concrete learners means
connecting your material to their day-to-day
experience, future careers, or real-world problems.
• Demonstrate enthusiasm and passion for your
subject and for teaching it, as these are conta-
gious emotions. If these don’t come naturally to
you, learn how to use your voice and body to con-
vey them.
• Assign creative, inventive, and challenging tasks to
small groups and more routine learning tasks, such
as first-exposure reading and standard problem
sets, as individual homework. Some students will
need tutoring after their individual attempts at
learning, which you, a teaching assistant (TA),
or group members can provide. Reflection and
writing are also individual learning activities, even
though they can be very challenging and creative.
• Use active learning techniques, and when you do
lecture, do so interactively—that is, with frequent
breaks for student activities.
• When possible, use experiential methods: those
that place students in real-life problem-solving
situations, simulated or genuine.
• Teach in multiple modalities. Give students the
opportunities to read, hear, talk, write, see, draw,
think, act, and feel new material into their system.
In other words, involve as many senses and parts
of the brain as possible in your teaching and their
learning. If, as is commonplace, the students are
reading or listening to the material, have them take
notes on it, discuss it in pairs or groups, concept-
or mind-map it, freewrite about it, solve problems
with it, complete a classroom assessment exercise
on it, or take a quiz on it.
• Teach your students how to learn your material,
and build in assignments that make them observe,
analyze, and assess how well they are learning.
• Build into your course plenty of assessment
opportunities, including low-stakes quizzes, prac-
tice tests, in-class exercises, and homework
assignments that can tell students how much they
are really learning, as well as provide them with
retrieval practice.
• Motivate and reinforce learning with emotions.
Make a learning experience dramatic, humorous,
surprising, joyous, maddening, exciting, or heart-
wrenching. Integrate engaging cases and problems
to solve, simulations and games, role plays,
service-learning, and other experiential learning
opportunities into your courses. Let students
reflect, debate, consider multiple points of view,
write down their reactions to the material, and
work cooperatively in groups. Any emotion
will aid learning by inducing more enduring
changes—that is, the generation of new, lasting
synapses—in the brain.
HOW STRUCTURE INCREASES
LEARNING
Structure is so key to how people learn and has such
far-reaching implications for teaching that it deserves
an entire section of its own. In fact, without it, there
is no knowledge.
Students are always talking about “information”
when they refer to what they are learning. After

6 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
all, this is the “information age,” and abundant
information is constantly available. It’s a snap to find
people’s phone numbers, the capitals of countries,
the years of events, directions from one place to
another, an area’s major industries, economic figures,
political leaders, and election results, to name just a
few common pieces of information. But all of these
are only facts: isolated bits of information that do not
add up to any generalizations or conclusions about
the way the world works.
What isn’t so available is knowledge, that is,
organized bodies of knowledge, which is what we
academics have to offer that information-packed
websites do not. Knowledge is a structured set of
patterns that we have identified through observation,
followed by reflection and abstraction—a grid
that we have carefully superimposed on a messy
world so we can make predictions and applications
(Kuhn, 1970). Knowledge comprises useful concepts,
agreed-on generalizations, well-grounded inferences,
strongly backed theories, reasonable hypotheses,
and well-tested principles and probabilties. With-
out knowledge, science and advanced technology
wouldn’t exist.
Unfortunately, our students come to our
courses, and usually leave them, viewing our ma-
terial as a bunch of absolute, disconnected facts,
supplemented by technical terms—about as well
organized, meaningful, and memorable as a phone
book. These facts and “things” were out there. Hu-
man beings “discovered” them; we didn’t construct
them. From this perspective, memorization is the
only learning strategy that makes sense.
Students are not stupid; they are simply novices
in our discipline. They lack a solid base of prior
knowledge and may harbor misconceptions and
faulty models about the subject matter (Svinicki,
2004). Being unable to identify the central, core con-
cepts and principles (Kozma, Russell, Jones, Marx,
& Davis, 1996), they wander somewhat aimlessly
through a body of knowledge, picking up and mem-
orizing what may or may not be important facts and
terms and using trial-and-error to solve problems and
answer questions (Glaser, 1991). They do not see the
big picture of the patterns, generalizations, and ab-
stractions that experts recognize so clearly. As a result,
they have trouble figuring out how to classify and
approach problems at the conceptual level (Arocha &
Patel, 1995; DeJong & Ferguson-Hessler, 1996).
Without that big picture, students face another
learning hurdle as well. The mind processes, stores,
and retrieves knowledge not as a collection of
facts but as a logically organized whole, a coherent
conceptual framework, with interconnected parts.
In fact, it requires a big picture. That framework is
what prior knowledge is all about. New material
is integrated not into an aggregate of facts and terms
but into a preexisting structure of learned knowledge.
Without having a structure of the material in their
heads, students fail to comprehend and retain new
material (Anderson, 1984; Bransford et al., 1999;
Rhem, 1995; Svinicki, 2004).
The mind structures knowledge based on
patterns and relationships it recognizes across ob-
servations. In fact, it is driven to generalize about and
simplify reality. If it did not, we would experience
repetitive events as novel every time they occurred
and would learn and remember nothing from them.
No doubt, we would find reality too complex to op-
erate within and would perish. Animals too have the
need and capacity to recognize patterns. They learn to
obtain what they need and survive not just by instinct
but by learning—for instance, learning to hide, judge
distances, time their strikes, and fool their prey—and
they get better with practice. The behaviorists call
learning by pattern recognition operant conditioning,
and they have demonstrated that mammals, birds,
reptiles, and probably fish learn this way.
Human thinking is so wired to seek and build
structure that we make up connections to fill in the
blanks in our understanding of phenomena if we
don’t already have a complete explanatory “theory”
handy. Some of these made-up connections that pan
out under scrutiny are elevated to science. Charles
Darwin, for example, did not observe mutations
happening in nature; rather, he hypothesized their
occurrence to fill in the explanatory blanks for species
diversity. No one was around to watch the big bang,

Understanding Your Students and How They Learn 7
but the theory fills in quite a few missing links in
cosmology. Astronomers have never observed what
they believe to make up 30 percent of the universe:
dark matter. This term refers to undetectable matter
or particles that are hypothesized to account for
unexpected gravitational effects on galaxies and
stars. Scientists have inferred its existence to explain
anomalies in calculations of the total mass of a galaxy
cluster. In these calculations, the total mass of the
composite galaxies can be determined by compar-
ing their dynamic mass (dispersion speeds) with
their luminous mass, which is calculated from the
amount of light the cluster emits. These two measure-
ments of total mass should be similar, but the dynamic
mass, which is affected by gravity, is often hundreds
of times larger than the luminous mass. Dark matter
“explains” this otherwise inexplicable finding.
Not all imagined connections, however, stand
the test of time or science. Superstitions and prejudice
exemplify false patterns. The belief of many people,
including many of our students, that one’s intelligence
is fixed and immutable also fails under careful study.
Faculty are now recognizing and beginning
to address the misconceptions about natural and
social phenomena that students bring into their
science and social science courses. Consider the
now-classic videotape, A Private Universe (Schneps &
Sadler, 1988). It dramatically shows that Harvard gra-
duates and even professors carry around incorrect
theories about the causes of the seasons and the
phases of the moon if they have not deep-processed
the scientific explanation. It also shows that a sharp,
young, presumably open mind has a hard time
abandoning and replacing a flawed but familiar
explanatory structure with a new and better one.
The new one has to be easy to grasp, plausible, more
useful, and convincing enough to make the learner
see the failures of the old one (Baume & Baume,
2008; Posner, Strike, Hewson, & Gertzog, 1982).
The kind of deep, meaningful learning that
moves a student from novice toward expert is all
about acquiring the discipline’s hierarchical organi-
zation of patterns, its mental structure of knowledge
(Alexander, 1996; Anderson, 1993; Carey, 1985; Chi,
Glaser, & Rees, 1982; Reif & Heller, 1982; Royer,
Cisero & Carlo, 1993). Only then will the student
have the structure on which to accumulate additional
knowledge. By their very nature, knowledge struc-
tures must be hierarchical to distinguish the more
general and core concepts and propositions from the
condition specific and derivative. Experts move up
and down this hierarchy with ease.
What are the odds that a learner will develop
such a structure of knowledge on his or her own in
a few weeks, months, or even years? How long did
it take us? Most, if not all, of our time in graduate
school—or longer? People require years of specialized
study and apprenticeship to internalize the structure
of the discipline and become expert. Unfortunately,
many, if not most, of our students pass through our
discipline for only a term or two—not nearly enough
time to notice its patterns and hierarchical structure.
Yet without having a mental structure for organiz-
ing what they learn, they process our course content
superficially and quickly forget it. Is it not our re-
sponsibility as teaching experts to help our students
acquire a structure quickly, so our short time with
them is not wasted? Should we not make the organi-
zation of our knowledge explicit by providing them
an accurate, ready-made structure for making sense of
our content and storing it?
What then are the complementary teaching
principles to the central role that structure plays in
learning?
• Very early in the term, give students activities and
assignments that make them retrieve, articulate,
and organize what they already know (or think
they know) about your course material. Then
identify any evident misconceptions and address
in class how and why they are wrong.
• Again, very early, give students the big
picture—the overall organization of your
course content. The clearest way to show this
is in a graphic syllabus (see Chapter Three).
Carry through by presenting your content as an
integrated whole, that is, as a cohesive system of
interpreting phenomena—not as an aggregate of

8 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
small, discrete facts and terms. Keep referring
back to how and where specific topics fit into
that big picture.
• Give students the big picture of their learning pro-
cess for the term—that is, the logical sequencing
of your learning outcomes for them. A flowchart
of the student learning process for a course is called
an outcomes map (see Chapter Two).
• Help students see the difference between informa-
tion and knowledge. The previous discussion of
the topic, as well as the next section of this chapter,
supplies some useful concepts and vocabulary for
explaining the difference.
• Teach students the critical thinking struc-
tures that your discipline uses—for example,
the scientific method, the diagnostic pro-
cess, the rules of rhetoric, basic logic (the nature
of fact, opinion, interpretation, and theory), and
logical fallacies. Where applicable, acquaint them
with the competing paradigms (metatheories) in
your field, such as the rational versus the symbolic
interpretive versus the postmodern perspectives in
English literature, pluralism versus elitism in po-
litical science, functionalism versus conflict theory
in sociology, and positivism (or empiricism) versus
phenomenology in social science epistemology.
• Design exercises for your students in pattern
recognition and categorical chunking to help
them process and manage the landslide of new
material. These thinking processes will help them
identify conceptual similarities, differences, and
interrelationships while reducing the material
to fewer, more manageable pieces. The fewer
independent pieces of knowledge the mind has
to learn, the more knowledge it can process and
retain. Cognitively speaking, less is more.
• In addition to showing your students a graphic
syllabus and outcome map of your course, furnish
them with graphic representations of theories,
conceptual interrelationships, and knowledge
schemata—such as concept maps, mind maps,
diagrams, flowcharts, comparison-and-contrast
matrices, and the like—and then have them
develop their own to clarify their understanding
of the material. Such visuals are powerful learning
aids because they provide a ready-made, easy-
to-process structure for knowledge. In addition,
the very structures of graphics themselves supply
retrieval cues (Svinicki, 2004; Vekiri, 2002).
Chapter Twenty-Six deals with this topic in more
detail.
THE COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
OF UNDERGRADUATES
No matter how bright or mature your students may
be, do not expect them to have reached a high level
of cognitive maturity in your discipline. Almost all
students, especially freshmen and sophomores, begin
a course of study with serious misconceptions about
knowledge in general and the discipline specifically.
Adult learners are no exception. Only as these
misconceptions are dispelled do students mature
intellectually through distinct stages. As an instructor,
you have the opportunity—some would say the
responsibility—to lead them through these stages to
epistemological maturity.
Psychologist William G. Perry (1968, 1985)
formulated a theory of the intellectual and ethical
development of college students. In its simple four-
stage version, students begin college with a dualistic
perspective and may, depending on their instruction,
advance through the stages of multiplicity, relativism,
and commitment (definitions are given below).
The research supporting it accumulated rapidly,
making Perry’s the leading theory on the cognitive
development of undergraduates. Baxter Magolda’s
(1992) four levels of knowing—absolute, transitional,
independent, and contextual—roughly parallel
Perry’s, with most females following a relational
pattern and most males the abstract. Table 1.1 displays
both models.
While Perry’s framework of development ap-
plies across disciplines, a student’s level of maturity
may be advanced in one and not in another. So we
shouldn’t assume, for example, that a sophisticated se-
nior in a laboratory science major has a comparable

Understanding Your Students and How They Learn 9
Table 1.1 Stages/Levels of Student Cognitive Development
Perry’s Stages of Undergraduate Cognitive Development Baxter Magolda’s Levels of Knowing
3. Relativism: All opinions equal
• Standards of comparison
Independent Knowing
1. Duality: Black and white thinking; authorities rule
• Uncertainty
Absolute Knowing
2. Multiplicity: Poor authorities or temporary state
• Uncertainty as legimate, inherent
Transitional Knowing
4. Commitment (tentative) to best theory available Contextual Knowing
understanding of the nature of knowledge in the so-
cial sciences or the humanities.
The more elaborate version of Perry’s theory
posits nine positions through which students pass
on their way to cognitive maturity. (The stages in
Perry’s simpler model are italicized.) How far and
how rapidly students progress through the hierarchy,
if at all, depend largely on the quality and type
of instruction they receive. It is this flexible aspect of
Perry’s theory that has made it particularly attractive
and useful. The schema suggests ways that we can
accelerate undergraduates’ intellectual growth.
Let us begin with position 1, the cognitive state
in which most first-years arrive. (Of course, many
sophomores, juniors, and seniors are still at this level.)
Perry used the term dualism to describe students’
thinking at this stage because they perceive the world
in black-and-white simplicity. They decide what to
believe and how to act according to absolute standards
of right and wrong, good and bad, truth and false-
hood. Authority figures, like instructors, supposedly
know and teach the absolute truths about reality. Fur-
thermore, all knowledge and goodness can be quan-
tified or tallied, like correct answers on a spelling test.
At position 2, students enter the general cog-
nitive stage of multiplicity. They come to realize that
since experts don’t know everything there is to know,
a discipline permits multiple opinions to compete
for acceptance. But to students, the variety merely
reflects that not all authorities are equally legitimate
or competent. Some students don’t even give these
competing opinions much credence, believing
them to be just an instructor’s exercise designed ulti-
mately to lead them to the one true answer. As they
advance to position 3, they accept the notion that
genuine uncertainty exists, but only as a temporary
state that will resolve itself once an authority finds
the answer.
Entering position 4, which marks the broader
stage of relativism, students make an about-face and
abandon their faith in the authority’s ability to iden-
tify “the truth.” At this point, they either consider all
views equally valid or allow different opinions within
the limits delineated by some standard. In brief, they
become relativists with no hope of there ever being
one true interpretation or answer.
Students at position 5 formalize the idea that
all knowledge is relativistic and contextual, but with
qualifications. They may reserve dualistic ideas of
right and wrong as subordinate principles for special
cases in specific contexts. Thus, even in a relativistic
world, they may permit certain instances where facts
are truly facts and only one plausible truth exists.
At some point, however, students can no longer
accommodate all the internal inconsistencies and am-
biguities inherent in position 5. They may want to
make choices but often lack clear standards for doing
so. As a result, they begin to feel the need to ori-
ent themselves in their relativistic world by making
some sort of personal commitment to one stance or
another. As this need grows, they pass through posi-
tion 6 and into the more general cognitive stage of
commitment. When they actually make an initial, ten-
tative commitment to a particular view in some area,

10 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
they attain position 7. Next, at position 8, they expe-
rience and examine the impacts and implications of
their choice of commitment. That is, they learn what
commitment means and what trade-offs it carries.
Finally, at position 9, students realize that trying
on a commitment and either embracing or modify-
ing it in the hindsight of experience is a major part
of personal and intellectual growth. This process is,
in fact, a lifelong activity that paves the road toward
wisdom and requires an ever open mind.
ENCOURAGING COGNITIVE
GROWTH
Nelson (2000), a leading authority on developing
thinking skills, contends that we can facilitate stu-
dents’ progress through these stages by familiarizing
them with the uncertainties and the standards of
comparison in our disciplines. He and many others
(Allen, 1981, in the sciences, for example) have
achieved excellent results by implementing his ideas.
(Kloss, 1994, offers a somewhat different approach
tailored to literature instructors.)
Exposure to uncertainties in our knowledge
bases helps students realize that often there is no one
superior truth, nor can there be, given the nature of
rational knowledge. This realization helps lead them
out of dualistic thinking (position 1) and through
multiplistic conceptions of knowledge (positions 2
and 3). Once they can understand uncertainty as
legitimate and inherent in the nature of knowledge,
they can mature into relativists (positions 4 and 5).
Instructive examples of such uncertainties
include the following: (1) the range of viable in-
terpretations that can be made of certain works of
literature and art; (2) the different conclusions that
can be legitimately drawn from the same historical
evidence and scientific data; (3) a discipline’s history
of scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts; (4)
unresolved issues on which a discipline is currently
conducting research; and (5) historical and scientific
unknowns that may or may not ever be resolved.
Our next step is to help students advance
beyond relativism through positions 6 and 7, at
which point they can make tentative commitments
and progress toward cognitive maturity. To do so,
students need to understand that among all the pos-
sible answers and interpretations, some may be more
valid than others. They must also learn why some
are better than others—that is, what criteria exist to
discriminate among the options, to distinguish the
wheat from the chaff.
Disciplines vary on their criteria for evaluating
validity. Each has its own metacognitive model—that
is, a set of accepted conventions about what makes
a sound argument and what constitutes appropriate
evidence. Most students have trouble acquiring these
conventions on their own; they tend to assume that
the rules are invariable across fields. So Nelson ad-
vises us to make our concepts of evidence and our
standards for comparison explicit to our students.
By the time students reach position 5, they are
uncomfortable with their relativism, and by position
6, they are hungry for criteria on which to rank
options and base choices. So they should be highly
receptive to a discipline’s evaluative framework.
To encourage students to reach positions 7 and
8, we can provide writing and discussion opportu-
nities for them to deduce and examine what their
initial commitments imply in other contexts. They
may apply their currently preferred framework to a
new or different ethical case, historical event, social
phenomenon, political issue, scientific problem, or
piece of literature. They may even apply it to a real
situation in their own lives. Through this process, they
begin to realize that a commitment focuses options,
closing some doors while opening others.
We should remind students that they are always
free to reassess their commitments, modify them,
and even make new ones, but with an intellec-
tual and ethical caveat: they should have sound
reason to do so, such as new experiences or data or a
more logical organization of the evidence—not just
personal convenience. With a clear understanding of
this final point, students achieve position 9.

Understanding Your Students and How They Learn 11
Bringing Perry’s and Nelson’s insights into our
courses presents a genuine challenge in that students
in any one class may be at different stages, even if they
are in the same graduating class. Almost all first-year
students fall in the first few positions, but juniors and
seniors may be anywhere on the hierarchy. It may be
wisest, then, to help students at the lower positions
catch up with those at the higher ones by explicitly
addressing knowledge uncertainties and disciplinary
criteria for selecting among perspectives and creating
opportunities for students to make and justify choices
in your courses.
Keep your students’ cognitive growth in mind as
you read this book. If you use the outcomes-centered
approach to designing a course (see Chapter Two),
you may want to select a certain level of cognitive
maturity as a learning outcome for your students.
You will find more strategies for teaching
uncertainty and alternative explanations in later
chapters. Chapter Twenty-Four on teaching your
students to think and write in disciplinary contexts
revisits the notion of metacognitive models and
examines some crucial differences in argumentation
and evidence across major disciplinary groups.
TEACHING THE MILLENNIAL
GENERATION
If you are teaching traditional-age students, you
need to know some basics about this generation,
which has come to be called generation Y, the
Net generation, the NeXt generation, and most
commonly, the millennial generation. A great deal
has been written about it, and this section provides
a quick synthetic summary (Bureau & McRoberts,
2001; Carlson, 2005; Featherstone, 1999; Frand,
2000; Hersch, 1998; Howe & Strauss, 2000; Levine
& Cureton, 1998; Lowery, 2001; Nathan, 2005;
Oblinger, 2003; Plotz, 1999; Raines, 2002; Strauss
& Howe, 2003; Taylor, 2006; Tucker, 2006). The
generalizations seem to apply to at least the bulk of
middle- and upper-middle-class millennials.
This generation comprises children born
between 1982 (some say 1980) and 1995 to the late
baby boomers. These parents kept their children’s
lives busily structured with sports, music lessons, club
meetings, youth group activities, and part-time jobs.
In their spare time, young millennials spent many
hours on the computer, often the Internet, interact-
ing with peers, doing school work, playing games,
shopping, and otherwise entertaining themselves.
Unless they attended private or college-town schools,
they received a weaker K–12 education than previous
generations. Still, they flooded into colleges and
universities starting around 2000. Their combined
family and school experience, along with their heavy
mass media exposure, made them self-confident,
extremely social, technologically sophisticated, action
bent, goal oriented, service or civic minded, and
accustomed to functioning as part of a team. On
the flip side, they are also impatient, demanding,
stressed out, sheltered, brand oriented, materialis-
tic, and self-centered. They use—and abuse—alcohol
and prescription drugs more than street drugs.
Although skeptical about authority, they tend not to
be particularly rebellious, violent, or promiscuous.
With so much activity in their lives as well as
frequent interaction with friends and family (much
on computers and cell phones), they have little
time or inclination for reflection, self-examination,
or free-spirited living. Another feature of this
generation, one that distinguishes it from so many
preceding ones, is that millennials do not hunger for
independence from their parents. Quite the contrary,
they stay close to the parents through college (and
often beyond) and turn to their parents for help when
organizations don’t meet their needs. These parents
have earned the descriptor of “helicopter parents” for
hovering over their grown children to ensure their
well-being and competitive advantage in life.
For college faculty, this generation can be
challenging to deal with. Millennials view higher
education as an expensive but economically necessary
consumer good, not a privilege earned by hard work
and outstanding performance. They (or their parents)

12 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
“purchase” it for the instrumental purpose of opening
well-paying occupational doors on graduation, so
they feel entitled to their degree for the cost of
the credits. As many of them did little homework
for their good grades through high school, they
anticipate the same minimal demands in college and
are often resentful about the amount of reading,
research, problem solving, and writing that we
assign them and about the standards that we hold
for their work. Those whose grades slip in college
feel their self-esteem threatened and may react with
depression, anxiety, defensiveness, and even anger
against us. In addition, they hear a lot a “bad news”
from us in their classes: that they didn’t learn enough
in high school to handle college, that knowledge
bases are full of holes and unsolved mysteries, that
their beliefs and values are subject to question and
debate, and that both college and the real world
demand that they work and prove their worth.
Not only are we bearers of bad news, how-
ever inadvertently, but we are also very different
from them and difficult to fathom and identify with.
We prize the life of the mind, we love to read, and we
work long hours for relatively little money. We must
remember that this generation values money and
what it can buy. Aside from the materialism that their
parents and the mass media promoted, these young
people face the prospect of being the first generation,
at least in the United States, that cannot afford a
standard of living comparable to that of their parents,
let alone higher. So while some observers call
millennials hopeful, others point to their economic
anxiety (Levine & Cureton, 1998).
In any case, our modest material status, coupled
with all our education, does not inspire a great deal of
their respect. To them, we render customer service,
a somewhat menial calling, to a society that doesn’t
value abstraction, intellectual discourse, or knowledge
for knowledge’s sake. There’s just no money in them.
Therefore, if they are dissatisfied with our services
(usually workload, grades, or our responsiveness to
their desires), they complain to our “bosses,” often
involving their parents to bolster their power. They
sense they have the upper hand: that instructors
are subject to being disciplined or even fired at
administrative will and that institutions want to retain
students and keep them happy. In this quasi-corporate
model, the customer is always right, whether she is or
not. So millennials can be demanding, discourteous,
impatient, time-consuming, and energy sapping.
For the same reason, colleges and universities have
been upgrading their residence halls, food services,
recreational and workout facilities, tutoring pro-
grams, computing, and teaching (with an eye toward
boosting student ratings).
Despite the difficulties millennials may present,
this generation can be easy to reach if we make a few
adjustments. After all, they have career goals, positive
attitudes, technological savvy, and collaborative incli-
nations. In addition, they are intelligent enough to
have learned a lot, even if it is not the knowledge that
we value. Our adjustments need not include lowering
our own standards.
Although millennials are understandably cynical
about authority (so are we) and don’t assume we have
their best interests at heart, they value communication
and information and respond well when we explain
why we use the teaching and assessment methods we
do. We can “sell” them on the wisdom of our reading
selections, assignments, in-class activities, and rubrics,
reinforcing the fact that we are the experts in our field
and in teaching it. As experts, we should have solid,
research-based reasons for our choices. Why not show
our students the respect of sharing these reasons?
Millennials also want to know that we care
about them. Remember that they are still attached to
their parents and not far from the nest. They are also
accustomed to near-constant interaction, so they do
want to relate to us. Showing that we care about their
learning and well-being—by calling them by name,
asking them about their weekend, promising we will
do whatever it takes to help them learn, stating how
much we want them to be successful, and voicing
our high expectations of them—will go very far in
earning their loyalty and trust.
Finally, having led a tightly organized child-
hood and adolescence and not being rebellious,
they respond well to structure, discipline, rules, and

Understanding Your Students and How They Learn 13
regulations. If you set up or have them set up a
code of classroom conduct (see Chapter Seven),
they will generally honor it. If you promise that you
will answer their email at two specific times each
day and you follow through, they will not expect you
to be available 24/7. Whatever course policies your
syllabus states, as long as they are clear and airtight,
the students will generally respect them, though a
few may try to pressure you to bend your rules. Even
their parents will usually withdraw their demands for
grade information if you clearly explain any applica-
ble restrictions under the Family Educational Rights
and Privacy Act. What millennials consider unprofes-
sional is an instructor’s (apparent) disorganization, ill
preparation, or inability to stick to her own syllabus.
Of course, blanket statements about an entire
generation always apply to only a portion of its
members. Biggs (2003) has another take on it. He
describes an undergraduate profile applicable to
both the British Commonwealth nations and the
United States, and he puts a face on it—two faces,
actually. There is “Susan,” the archetypal “good”
student—intelligent, well prepared, goal oriented,
and motivated to master the material. Susan came
to college with solid thinking, writing, and learning
skills. While about three-quarters of today’s college
students were like her in 1980, only about 42 percent
are like her today (Brabrand & Andersen, 2006). The
rest (almost 60 percent) are like “Robert,” who is
much less academically talented, college ready, and
motivated to learn (Brabrand & Andersen). He just
wants to get by with the least amount of learning
effort so he can parlay his degree into a decent job.
He will rely on memorizing the material rather than
reflecting on and constructing it. “Good teaching,”
according to Biggs, is “getting most students to use
the higher cognitive level processes that the more
academic students use spontaneously” (p. 5)—that is,
changing Roberts into Susans.
When you divide the student population the
way Biggs does, the millennial generation doesn’t
look so monolithic, and no matter where we teach,
we find both types of students in our classes. A
sizable minority of them are interested in learning
and know something about how to do it, even
if they are also materialistic, tied to their parents,
and on Facebook. While we can generalize about
millennials, we must not forget that they are the most
diverse generation—economically, politically, ethni-
cally, racially, and culturally—that North American
institutions of higher learning have ever welcomed.
THE ADULT LEARNER
Adults learn the same way as traditional-age students,
but they respond somewhat differently to certain
instructor behaviors, teaching strategies, and content
emphases. They are less forgiving about an instruc-
tor’s shortage of experience, expertise, teaching
savvy, and suitable supplementary materials. For good
reason, they value their own life experience and
want to share and apply it in class, assignments, and
group work. They know the world to be complex,
and therefore they expect to learn multiple ways of
solving problems and to have discretion in applying
the material. They need the opportunity for reflec-
tion after trying out a new application or method.
Rote learning just won’t work with them. Finally,
adult learners are practical and usually quite disinter-
ested in theory. They demand that the materials have
immediate utility and relevant application (Aslanian,
2001; Vella, 1994; Wlodkowski, 1993). None of this
implies that they are difficult learners. In fact, they
are often highly motivated, eagerly participatory, and
well prepared for class.
INCLUSIVE INSTRUCTING
Age is but one variable on which students vary.
Add gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual
orientation, and religion. Time was when only well-
to-do white males attended college in the United
States. But now over 60 percent of all undergraduates
are female, and in 2003–2004, only 63.7 percent
were white, 14.1 percent African American, 11.9
percent Hispanic, 5.4 percent Asian American,

14 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
0.9 percent Native American, 0.5 percent Pacific
Islander, and 2.1 percent multiracial. In addition, 11.3
percent had a disability (“Profile of Undergraduate
Students, 2003–4,” 2007).
While all people learn by the same basic
processes described earlier, some of these groups
educationally thrive under circumstances that are
not always typical in the American classroom. In
addition, they often share distinctive values, norms,
background experiences, and a sense of community
that set them apart and make them feel set apart—and
not always in a positive way. Traditionally underrepre-
sented groups are more likely to struggle emotionally
in college and to leave before attaining a degree.
As an instructor, you are also an ambassador
of the academy to these groups, and you are close
enough to them to reach out and include them. How
you relate to these students has a powerful impact
on their performance and retention (Ferguson,
1989; Grant-Thompson & Atkinson, 1997; Guo &
Jamal, 2007; Jones, 2004; Kobrak, 1992). Here are
some guidelines, and you’ll find more in the section
“Equity in the Classroom” at the end of Chapter Five:
• Assign and mention the scholarly and artistic
contributions of diverse groups where appropriate
(Toombs & Tierney, 1992).
• Call a group by the name that its members prefer.
• Develop a personal rapport with your African
American, Native American, Hispanic, and fe-
male students. Their style of thinking and dealing
with the world tends to be relational and inter-
personal, which means intuitive, cooperative,
holistic, subjective, relationship focused, moti-
vated by personal loyalty, and oriented to socially
relevant topics (Anderson & Adams, 1992; Baxter
Magolda, 1992). This style contrasts with the
analytical, which values analysis, objectivity, logic,
reason, structure, sequence, the abstract, debate,
challenge, competition, and economic practical-
ity. It is prevalent among European and Asian
American males and in the academy in general
(Anderson & Adams). How closely and easily
you relate to your diverse and female students
will strongly affect their motivation to learn,
their trust in your intentions for them, and their
overall satisfaction with college (Allen, Epps, &
Haniff, 1991; Gonsalves, 2002; Grant-Thompson
& Atkinson, 1997; Kobrak, 1992; Nettles, 1988).
• Be aware that most international students stand
physically closer to others than do Americans, that
many Asian American women are taught to avoid
eye contact, and that many Asian Americans and
Native Americans have learned to listen quietly
rather than jumping into discourse.
• Don’t avoid course-appropriate topics related
to diverse groups because they are sensitive,
controversial, or applicable to only a minority of
people. Some students will see your avoidance
as prejudicial.
• Don’t avoid giving timely, constructive feedback
to diverse students about their work out of fear
of injuring their self-esteem or being accused of
racism. Indeed, diverse students may interpret
your criticisms as racially motivated disrespect,
so you should bring up this possibility yourself
and explicitly ask them rather than sweeping the
issue under the rug. Be very sure that the students
really understand your criticisms and recommen-
dations for improvement (Gonsalves, 2002).
• Don’t make so much of their successes that you
imply you didn’t expect them to succeed.
• Don’t let any students get away with insensi-
tive remarks in class. Such incidents open up
teachable moments for you to lead an open discus-
sion about cultural differences and stereotyping.
Before launching a potentially controversial
discussion, it is also a good idea to explain what a
civil intellectual discourse comprises and to set up
ground rules for it.
• Don’t ask diverse students to speak in class as rep-
resentatives of their group. Whatever the group, it
is too internally diverse to be represented by one
or a few members.

Understanding Your Students and How They Learn 15
THE CHALLENGE
With such a varied student population on so many
dimensions, including academic background, instruc-
tors sometimes wonder at what level of student to aim
their courses. Unfortunately, there is no clear answer.
Some of us find peace aiming at the top 20 percent,
where we know our efforts will be intellectually pro-
ductive. Others of us aim at the broad middle, hoping
to bring as many students along with us as possible. Of
course, where the top 20 percent and broad middle
lie varies by type of institution.
This dilemma rarely presented itself over forty
years ago. Back then, higher education was largely
a screening device for privileging the best and the
brightest—and often the wealthiest—over the rest of
the socioeconomic pack. The more selective colleges
and universities welcomed only the top performers,
regardless of cultural and economic background, and
they shamelessly discouraged or flunked out students
who did not thrive on the lecture method. In fact,
most institutions with a high attrition rate were proud
of it. The society did not hold them accountable for
effective teaching and achieving learning outcomes;
the term learning outcome did not even exist. Students
were solely responsible for their learning, and those
who survived college had to have strong study skills,
cognitive abilities, and self-motivation. Under this old
system, many of today’s students would never have
completed college—if they ever gained admission.
During the 1980s and 1990s, higher education
started to adopt a different and rather novel goal: to
educate as many as possible rather than to screen. At
the time, which wasn’t long ago, this was quite a
radical notion, but it also was a pragmatic response
to the changing demographics of our society. This
shift in the mission of higher education generated
teaching and learning centers, higher faculty standards
for teaching effectiveness, and an explosion of re-
search on how students learn and respond to different
instructor behaviors, teaching methods, and instruc-
tional settings. This book draws on and integrates
much of this research into a practical reference on the
most effective approaches to use for different types of
learning outcomes.

C H A P T E R 2
Outcomes-Centered Course Design
T
eaching has only one purpose, and that is to
facilitate learning (Cross, 1988). Learning can
occur without teaching at no loss to anyone,
but teaching can and unfortunately does occur with-
out learning. In the latter case, the students obvi-
ously lose time, money, potential gains in knowledge
and cognitive development, and perhaps confidence
in themselves or the educational system (or both). But
less obviously, instructors lose faith in their students
and in themselves. For our own mental health as well
as that of our students, we need to make teaching and
learning synonymous sides of the same coin.
The first step toward this goal is to design your
courses wisely. Whether you are teaching an estab-
lished course for the first time, developing a brand-
new course, or revising a course you currently teach,
first ask yourself what you are trying to accomplish.
No doubt, you want your students to learn certain
things, to master a body of material. But you can’t as-
sess how well you’ve met this goal, or your students’
learning, unless you have them do something with
that material that demonstrates their learning. What
they do may involve writing, discussing, acting, cre-
ating a graphic or visual work, conducting an experi-
ment or demonstration, making an oral presentation,
designing a Web page, or teaching a lesson. Any dis-
play of learning will do, as long as you can perceive it
though your senses and appraise the quality of the per-
formance. How else can you determine their internal
state—what they know, realize, and understand?
WHY OUTCOMES-CENTERED
COURSE DESIGN?
This chapter proposes starting the course design pro-
cess with what you want your students to be able to
do by the end of the course. But other approaches ex-
ist. You can develop a course around a list of content
topics you consider important to cover. In fact, before
1990, a course was always characterized by its range
of content, such as “a comprehensive survey of verte-
brate animals including their taxonomy, morphology,
evolution, and defining facets of their natural history
and behavior” or “an introduction to the process of
17

18 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
literary criticism.” Course catalogues and many syllabi
still contain these descriptions. You can also organize
a course around your favorite textbook or the one
you’ve been told to use. However, such approaches
will not ensure that your course is student active,
which we know is essential for learning, or accept-
able to your institution’s and your school’s accrediting
agencies.
Outcomes-centered course design guarantees
a high level of student engagement because the
process steers you toward student-active teaching
strategies. It also conforms to the accountability
requirements of an increasing number of accrediting
agencies. These agencies hold a unit accountable for
its students’ achieving certain learning outcomes, as
well as for formally assessing its students’ progress
toward that goal. In other words, they require
departments and schools to determine what they
want their students to be able to do, at least on
graduation, and to produce materials that show what
the students can do. Some agencies even take it on
themselves to specify exactly what abilities and skills
the graduates of a certain area should demonstrate.
WRITING OUTCOMES
A learning outcome is a statement of exactly what
your students should be able to do after completing
your course or at specified points during the course.
Some faculty set outcomes for individual classes and
units of the course. Outcomes are written from a stu-
dent’s point of view—for example, “After studying
the processes of photosynthesis and respiration, the
student should be able to trace the carbon cycle in a
given ecosystem.” Of course, they are promises, and
you should make it clear that students have to do their
part to make this promise come true. So you might
state verbally and in your syllabus something like this:
“Students may vary in their competency levels on
these abilities. You can expect to acquire these abili-
ties only if you honor all course policies, attend classes
regularly, complete all assigned work in good faith and
on time, and meet all other course expectations of you
as a student.”
Before you start composing outcomes, find
out from your dean or department chair whether
an accrediting agency has already mandated them
for your course. For instance, the National Council
for the Accreditation of Teacher Education lists the
required outcomes for many education courses. The
Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology
provides program outcomes, some of which may be
useful and even essential for your course.
If you, like most other instructors, are free to
develop your own outcomes, you might first want
to research the history of the course. Why was it
proposed and approved in the first place, and by
whom? What special purposes does it serve? What
other courses should it prepare students to take?
Often new courses emerge to meet the needs of a
changing labor market, update curriculum content,
ensure accreditation, or give an institution a compet-
itive edge. Knowing the underlying influences can
help you orient a course to its intended purposes for
student learning (Prégent, 1994).
Second, get to know who your students are so
you can aim your course to their needs and level.
Refer to the first part of Chapter One for the types
of student data you will need—all of which should be
available from your institution’s admissions office, stu-
dent affairs office, and career center—to find out the
academic background, interests, and course expecta-
tions of your likely student population. Ask colleagues
who have taught the course before about what topics,
books, teaching methods, activities, assignments, and
so on worked and didn’t work well for them. The
more relevant you can make the material to the target
group, the more effective your course will be.
If you cannot gather much information in ad-
vance, keep your initial learning outcomes and course
design somewhat flexible. On the first day of class, use
index cards and icebreakers to learn more about your
students and their expectations (see Chapter Four);
then adjust and tighten the design accordingly.

Outcomes-Centered Course Design 19
Technically an outcome has three parts to it,
though usually only the first part appears in the out-
comes section of a syllabus. Sooner or later, however,
you will have to define the second and third parts
as well:
Part 1: A statement of a measurable performance. Learn-
ing outcomes center on action verbs (for example,
define, classify, construct, compute; see Table 2.1) rather
than nebulous verbs reflecting internal states that can-
not be observed (for example, know, learn, understand,
realize, appreciate). For example: “The student will be
able to classify given rocks as igneous or metamor-
phic.” “The student will be able to describe the most
important differences between sedimentary and meta-
morphic rocks.” Table 2.2 later in the chapter offers
many more examples.
Part 2: A statement of conditions for the performance.
These conditions define the circumstances under
which the student’s performance will be assessed.
Will she have to demonstrate that she knows the
differences among igneous, metamorphic, and
sedimentary rocks in writing, in an oral presentation,
or in a visual medium (drawings, photographs)? Will
he be able to identify the parts of a computer system
on a diagram or in an actual computer?
Part 3: Criteria and standards for assessing the perfor-
mance. By what criteria and standards will you eval-
uate and ultimately grade a student’s performance?
What will constitute achieving an outcome at a high
level (A work) versus a minimally competent level
(C work)? For example: “For an A on essay 3, the
student will be able to identify in writing at least
three differences between igneous and metamorphic
rocks, at least three between igneous and sedimen-
tary rocks, and at least three between metamorphic
and sedimentary—for a total of at least nine differ-
ences. For a B, the student will be able to identify
at least six differences. For a C, the student will
be able to identify at least four differences,” and so
on. Rubrics have such criteria and standards built
into them.
TYPES OF LEARNING OUTCOMES
Virtually every college-level course has cognitive
outcomes—those pertaining to thinking. But other
types exist that may be pertinent to your courses.
Psychomotor skills—the ability to manipulate specific
objects correctly and efficiently to accomplish a
specific purpose—constitute another type that is im-
portant in art, architecture, drama, linguistics, some
engineering fields, all laboratory sciences, nursing
and other health-related fields, and foreign languages.
Affective outcomes specify emotional abilities you
want your students to develop, such as receiving,
responding, and valuing (Krathwohl, Bloom, &
Masia, 1999). Of course, you cannot observe your
students’ inner feelings, but you can observe their
demonstration of emotions. For example, in nursing,
counseling, and the ministry, students must learn
to show empathy and open-mindedness toward
patients and clients, and performances can be assessed
in a role play or a case analysis. Such abilities are
also very useful in management, medicine, human
resources, marketing, psychology, and architecture.
A wide range of disciplines integrate social learning
outcomes to their courses, since the workplace
relies on teamwork and group learning is now
widely accepted. Many instructors want their
students to be able to collaborate effectively in a
team, and they consider both the group product
and peer evaluations of the group members’ social
behavior in assessing students’ performance. With
new ethics-across-the-curriculum programs, ethical
outcomes have come to the fore. Some institutions
and schools want their students to take into ac-
count the moral considerations and implications of
various options in making professional, scientific,
technical, and business decisions. The case method,
simulations, role plays, service-learning, fieldwork,
and internships provide both learning and assess-
ment contexts for ethical objectives. Exhibit 2.1
gives more specific examples of all five types of
outcomes.

20 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Exhibit 2.1 General Types of Learning Outcomes
Psychomotor—physical performance; may involve eye-hand coordination. Examples: medical and
nursing procedures; laboratory techniques; animal handling or grooming; assembling, operating,
testing, or repairing machines or vehicles; singing; dancing; playing musical instruments; use of
voice, face, and body in public speaking.
Affective—demonstration of appropriate emotions and affect. Examples: demonstrating good bedside
manner and empathy with patients; showing trustworthiness and concern for clients, customers,
subordinates, or students; showing tolerance for differences; showing dynamism, relaxed confidence,
conviction, and audience responsiveness in public speaking.
Social—appropriate, productive interaction and behavior with other people. Examples: cooperation
and respect within a team; leadership when needed; assertive (not aggressive, passive, or passive-
aggressive) behavior in dealing with conflict; negotiation and mediation skills.
Ethical—decision making that takes into account the moral implications and repercussions (effects
on other people, animals, environment) of each reasonable option. Examples: medical and nursing
decisions involving triage, transplants, withholding care, and prolonging life; lawyers’ decisions about
whether and how to represent a client; managerial decisions involving social, economic, political, or
legal trade-offs.
Cognitive—thinking about facts, terms, concepts, ideas, relationships, patterns, conclusions.
Examples: knowledge and remembering; comprehension and translation; application, analysis,
synthesis, and creating; evaluation.
Fink (2003) takes a somewhat different app-
roach in his model of six categories of learning,
which encompass cognitive, affective, and social
outcomes. His categories are cumulative and inter-
active, and the ideally designed course incorporates
all six of them as outcomes. In fact, Fink claims
that all six kinds of learning are essential to create a
genuinely significant learning experience. These are
his categories of learning:
• Foundational knowledge: Students recall and de-
monstrate understanding of ideas and infor-
mation, providing the basis for other kinds of
learning.
• Application: Students engage in any combination
of critical, practical, and creative thinking; acquire
key skills; and learn how to manage complex
projects, making other kinds of learning useful.
• Integration: Students perceive connections among
ideas, disciplines, people, and realms of their lives.
• Human dimension: Students gain a new under-
standing of themselves or others, often by seeing
the human implications of other kinds of learning.
• Caring: Students acquire new interests, feelings,
and values about what they are learning as well
as motivation to learn more about it.
• Learning how to learn: Students learn about the
process of their particular learning and learning
in general, enabling them to pursue learning
more self-consciously, efficiently, and effectively.
(Reprinted with permission of John Wiley and
Sons, Inc.)
In the “Helpful Frameworks for Designing a
Course” section later in this chapter, we consider how
an instructor can create learning experiences that in-
terrelate all these categories synergistically.

Outcomes-Centered Course Design 21
For the time being, we will focus on writing
cognitive outcomes, since they are universal in higher
education courses.
TYPES OF COGNITIVE OUTCOMES
Bloom (1956) developed a useful taxonomy for con-
structing cognitive outcomes. His framework posits
a hierarchy of six cognitive processes, moving from
the most concrete, lowest-level process of recalling
stored knowledge through several intermediate cog-
nitive modes to the most abstract, highest level of
evaluation. (Depending on your field, you may prefer
to make application the highest level.) Each level is
defined:
• Knowledge: The ability to remember and repro-
duce previously learned material
• Comprehension: The ability to grasp the meaning
of material and restate it in one’s own words
• Application: The ability to use learned material in
new and concrete situations
• Analysis: The ability to break down material into
its component parts so as to understand its organi-
zational structure
• Synthesis: The ability to put pieces of material
together to form a new whole
• Evaluation: The ability to judge the value of
material for a given purpose
This handy taxonomy is popular to this day, but
Anderson and Krathwohl (2000) offer a few “friendly
amendments” to it in their newer model. They use
more action-oriented gerunds, update the meaning
of “knowledge” and “synthesis,” and rank “creating”
above “evaluating”:
• Remembering = Knowledge (lowest)
• Understanding = Comprehension
• Applying = Application
• Analyzing = Analysis
• Evaluating = Evaluation
• Creating = Synthesis (highest)
All of these conceptual terms become more
concrete in Table 2.1, which lists common student
performance verbs for each of Bloom’s and Anderson
and Krathwohl’s cognitive operations. Once you
select the cognitive operations that you’d like to
emphasize in a course, you may find it helpful to
refer to this listing while writing your outcomes.
Another good reference is Table 2.2, which gives
examples of outcomes at each cognitive level in
various disciplines.
Bear in mind that the true cognitive level of an
outcome depends on the material students are given
in a course. If they are handed a formal definition of
iambic pentameter, then their defining it is a simple
recall or, at most, comprehension operation. If, how-
ever, they are provided only with examples of poems
and plays written in it and are asked to abstract a def-
inition from the examples, they are engaging in the
much higher-order process of synthesis.
As you check key verbs and draft outcome
statements, think about what cognitive operations
you are emphasizing. We can foster critical thinking
and problem-solving skills only by setting outcomes
above the knowledge/remembering and compre-
hension/understanding levels. Although these lower
levels furnish foundations for learning, they are not
the end of education. Therefore, it is wise to include
some higher-order outcomes to challenge students to
higher levels of thinking. We will revisit Bloom’s and
Anderson and Krathwohl’s combined taxonomy in
Chapter Fourteen, as it is also very useful for framing
questions.
Once you draft your outcomes, go to Table 2.3,
on the last page in this chapter. It presents a rubric for
evaluating and revising learning outcomes.
DESIGNING THE LEARNING
PROCESS
When you list all your learning outcomes, you will
probably notice that some have to precede others.
Students have to achieve some of them early in the
term to prepare them to achieve more advanced ones

22 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Table 2.1 Student Performance Verbs by Level of Cognitive Operation in Bloom’s Taxonomy and Anderson and
Krathwohl’s Taxonomy
1. Knowledge/Remembering 2. Comprehension/Understanding
Arrange Omit Arrange Paraphrase
Choose Order Associate Outline
Define Recall Clarify Recognize
Duplicate Recite Describe Rephrase
Find Recognize Explain Report
Identify Relate Express Restate
Label Repeat Grasp Review
List Reproduce Identify Select
Match Select Indicate Summarize
Memorize Spell Interpret Translate
Name Tell Locate Visualize
3. Application/Applying 4. Analysis/Analyzing
Apply Illustrate Analyze Distill
Break down Interpret Calculate Distinguish
Calculate Make use of Categorize Divide
Choose Manipulate Classify Examine
Compute Operate Compare Experiment
Demonstrate Practice Contrast Identify assumptions
Determine Schedule Criticize Induce
Dramatize Sketch Deduce Inspect
Employ Solve Derive Investigate
Give examples Use Differentiate Model
Utilize Discriminate Probe
Discuss Question
Dissect Simplify
Test
5/6. Synthesis/Creating 6/5. Evaluation/Evaluating
Adapt Imagine Agree Dispute
Arrange Infer Appraise Evaluate
Assemble Integrate Argue Judge
Build Invent Assess Justify
Change Make up Award Prioritize

Outcomes-Centered Course Design 23
Table 2.1 (Continued)
5/6. Synthesis/Creating 6/5. Evaluation/Evaluating
Collect Manage Challenge Persuade
Compose Modify Choose Rank
Conclude Originate Conclude Rate
Construct Organize Convince Recommend
Create Plan Criticize Rule on
Design Posit Critique Score
Develop Predict Debate Select
Discover Prepare Decide Support
Estimate Produce Defend Validate
Extend Propose Discount Value
Formulate Set up Discredit Verify
Forward Suppose Disprove Weight
Generalize Theorize
Note: Depending on the use, some verbs may apply to more than one level.
Table 2.2 Examples of Outcomes Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy and Anderson and Krathwohl’s Taxonomy
Level The Student Should Be Able to . . .
Knowledge
/Remembering
• Define iambic pentameter.
• State Newton’s laws of motion.
• Identify the major surrealist painters.
Comprehension
/Understanding
• Describe the trends in the graph in his or her own words.
• Summarize a passage from Socrates’ Apology.
• Properly translate into English passages from Voltaire’s Candide.
Application/Applying • Describe an experiment to test the influence of light and light quality on the Hill reaction
of photosynthesis.
• Scan a poem for metric foot and rhyme scheme.
• Use the Archimedes principle to determine the volume of an irregularly shaped object.
Analysis/Analyzing • List arguments for and against human cloning.
• Determine the variables to be controlled for an experiment.
• Discuss the rationale and efficacy of isolationism in the global economy.
Synthesis/Creating • Write a short story in Hemingway’s style.
• Compose a logical argument on assisted suicide in opposition to his or her personal
opinion.
• Construct a helium-neon laser.
Evaluation/Evaluating • Assess the validity of certain conclusions based on the data and statistical analysis.
• Critically analyze a novel with evidence to support a critique.
• Recommend stock investments based on recent company performance and projected value.

24 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
later in the course. If they cannot perform the pre-
requisite outcomes, they won’t be able to achieve the
latter ones. For instance, if you want your students to
be able to develop a research proposal near the end
of the course, they will have to be able to do several
other things beforehand:
• Frame a research problem or hypothesis.
• Justify its significance.
• Conduct and write up an adequate literature
review.
• Devise an appropriate research design.
• Describe the data collection procedures.
• Outline the steps of the analysis (which is premised
on some methodological expertise).
• Explain the importance of the expected results.
• Develop a mock budget.
If your course or its prerequisite courses do not
include these skills as outcomes, the students will be ill
equipped to achieve the outcome of writing a decent
research proposal.
From this perspective, a course is a learning pro-
cess of advancing through a logical succession of out-
comes. This sequencing of outcomes serves as scaf-
folding for the entire course design.
Ultimate Outcomes
The easiest way to develop this logical succession of
student learning outcomes is to formulate your end-
of-term, or ultimate, outcomes first. These are likely
to be the most challenging skills and cognitively ad-
vanced learning. No doubt they require high levels
of thinking (application, analysis, synthesis, or eval-
uation) and a combination of skills and abilities that
students should have acquired earlier in the course.
Often assessment takes the form of a major capstone
assignment or a comprehensive final, or both, to assess
student achievement of these outcomes.
Mediating Outcomes
From here you work backward, determining what
your students will have to be able to do before
they can achieve your ultimate outcomes. These are
your mediating outcomes, and you will probably
have quite a few of them, each representing a
component or lower-level version of one of your
ultimate outcomes. You might want to visualize
the working-backward process by picturing a
branching tree that grows from three or more main
trunks (ultimate learning outcomes) on the far
right and branches back to the left. These branches
represent your mediating and foundational (the
very first) outcomes, which students must achieve
before attempting the more advanced outcomes to
the right.
Your challenge now is to figure out the most
logical and efficient order in which students should
acquire these mediating abilities. These outcomes
may have a logical internal order of their own. The
skill-building logic is probably clearest in cumulative
subjects such as mathematics, physics, and engineer-
ing. However, many courses, especially those within
a loosely organized curriculum, allow instructors a lot
of discretionary room in sequencing the mediating
outcomes. Textbooks may follow a certain order, but
the topical sequencing may be largely arbitrary. In
introductory survey courses, literature courses, and
even certain science and health science courses, the
topics students study and the skills they acquire can
be logically organized in different ways.
Foundational Outcomes
Once you work your way back to the beginning of
your course, you will reach your foundational learn-
ing outcomes: those on which the learning process
of the course is predicated. These will involve one or
more of the following:
• Your students will master the lowest-level cogni-
tive operations on the subject, recalling and para-
phrasing basic facts, processes, and definitions of
essential terms and concepts.
• They will identify, question, and abandon the
misconceptions about the subject matter that they
brought into the classroom at the beginning of
the term.

Outcomes-Centered Course Design 25
• They will identify, question, and abandon their
dualistic thinking about the subject matter (a par-
ticularly prevalent epistemological misconception)
as they come to recognize uncertainties in the
field.
These are perhaps the most basic learning objec-
tives we can set for students. After all, they can’t apply,
analyze, synthesize, or evaluate a discipline’s knowl-
edge if they cannot speak or write the discipline’s
language and summarize or paraphrase the basics. If
you organize a course into modules of knowledge
that have different sets of basic facts, terms, concepts,
or theories, you will probably have foundational out-
comes at the start of each module.
Moreover, students cannot accurately map new,
valid knowledge onto existing knowledge that is
riddled with misconceptions and misinformation.
A faulty model will not accommodate the new
material you intend for them, so they will not be
able to assimilate it, at least not at more than a surface
level. To bring about a major shift in your students’
worldview, you must create learning situations that
reveal the errors in their mental models and the
explanatory superiority of your discipline’s model.
Let us consider some discipline-specific
examples of essential shifts. To master physics on a
serious level, students must replace their Aristotelian
or Newtonian model of the physical world, both of
which are serviceable in everyday life, with Einstein’s
model. To think like a sociologist, a learner must
relinquish an individualistic free-will view to explain
people’s life courses and replace it with the deter-
ministic, probabilistic theory that their location in the
social structure at birth stacks the deck in favor of
or against possible life courses and the acquisition of
various rewards. To understand evolutionary biology,
students have to stop viewing Homo sapiens as the
purpose and destination of epochs of evolution and
see our species as just another temporarily successful
adaptation among millions of others.
In addition, to begin to internalize any body
of knowledge, students must acquire an understand-
ing of what knowledge actually is and what it isn’t.
As discussed in Chapter One, knowledge is simply
a mental grid that human beings have created and
imposed over a more complex reality to try to under-
stand and manipulate it. This grid encompasses all the
major patterns we have identified through our obser-
vations, along with our best-evidenced interpretations
of them at this point in time. The fact that that real-
ity is inherently messy and conforms only so far to
any grid we can construct is the underlying source of
the uncertainty in all disciplines. Because all grids are
more or less flawed, disciplines have evolved standards
of comparison for distinguishing the better ones. To
bring students to these insights, dualism is the first
misconception we should discredit before escorting
them into our subject matter.
HELPFUL FRAMEWORKS FOR
DESIGNING A COURSE
Three frameworks—Bloom’s (1956) and Anderson
and Krathwohl’s (2000) hybrid taxonomy cognitive
operations, Perry’s (1968) and Baxter-Magolda’s
(1992) theory of undergraduate cognitive develop-
ment, and Fink’s (2003) categories of learning—offer
schemata, alone and in combination, for designing
courses. You may find one or more of them useful as
heuristic devices.
Bloom’s and Anderson and Krathwohl’s
Framework
Both Bloom’s (1956) and Anderson and Krathwohl’s
(2000) taxonomies of cognitive operations are hierar-
chical, from lower order to higher order. They posit
that to be able to perform one level of thinking, learn-
ers must be able to perform all the lower-order think-
ing operations. By extension, a well-designed course
should sequence the learning outcomes to lead stu-
dents up the hierarchy.
It is self-evident that a student has to be able to
define certain concepts, state certain principles, and
recall certain facts before thinking about them in a
more complex way. But beyond that, both Bloom’s

26 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
and Anderson and Krathwohl’s hierarchy breaks
down. For instance, the practice of medicine, law,
and other professions is all about applying knowledge
to new, often complicated situations. But before
applying knowledge, professionals have to analyze the
elements of the problematic situation, evaluate what
knowledge and disciplinary algorithms are most useful
and relevant to the situation, and synthesize (or create)
a problem-solving strategy—for example, a legal
approach or a medical diagnosis and treatment plan.
Perry’s and Baxter-Magolda’s Framework
“The Cognitive Development of Undergraduates”
section in Chapter One summarizes both Perry’s
(1968) and Baxter-Magolda’s (1992) parallel frame-
works. As a course design heuristic, the idea is to
sequence your learning outcomes as students progress
through each of the stages or levels, whether nine or
four, as far as you think you can lead your class. For
the primary foundational outcome, which is moving
beyond dualism, students would have to explain the
multiple competing interpretations or theories for
some disciplinary phenomenon or issue, demonstrat-
ing that they realize that authorities don’t have all
the answers or the one right answer on the matter.
To achieve a major mediating outcome (moving
through multiplicity and relativism), students would
have to analyze and critique these interpretations
or theories. For the ultimate outcome (tentative
commitment), they would have to embrace one of
the interpretations or theories and justify their choice,
as well as qualify it by explicating the limitations of
the chosen viewpoint.
While this schema may not apply well to an
undergraduate science or engineering course, it
can work very effectively in high-uncertainty and
interpretive disciplines, such as literature, the arts, and
philosophy. I used it to design a freshman seminar
I taught in the past, Free Will and Determinism.
While anchored in philosophy, it featured readings
from clinical and behaviorist psychology, sociol-
ogy, political science, genetics, biochemistry, and
sociobiology. Rather than list them in the learning
outcomes in the syllabus—at the time, they were
called “objectives,” not “outcomes,” and were rarely
listed—I wrote them in the paragraphs below, starting
with the ultimate outcome:
By the end of this course, you will have developed
a well-reasoned, personal position on the role of free
will, determinism, compatibilism, fatalism, and spiri-
tual destiny in your own and others’ lives. You will
be able to express, support, and defend your position
orally and in writing while acknowledging its weak-
nesses and realizing that it can never be validated as
“the right answer” and that it may change over time
[Ultimate Outcome: Tentative Commitment]. Hope-
fully, you will also begin to feel comfortable with the
uncertainty and tentativeness of knowledge and with
making decisions in spite of it.
To help you attain these major objectives [outcomes],
you will also acquire these supporting abilities: to sift
out the various positions on free will and determin-
ism (as well as compatibilism, fatalism, and spiritual
destiny) in the assigned literature, along with their
implicit premises and “givens,” and to express them
accurately in writing and orally [Foundational Out-
come: Uncertainty]; to draw sound comparisons and
contrasts among them; to evaluate their strengths,
weaknesses, and limitations [Mediating Outcome 1:
Uncertainty as Inherent and Legitimate]; and to dis-
tinguish among the stronger and the weaker positions
[Mediating Outcome 2: Standards for Comparison].
The ultimate outcome closely reflected the final paper
and the two mediating outcomes, the tasks required
in the first two papers.
Fink’s Framework
Fink’s (2003) categories of learning do not offer a
built-in sequencing of outcomes as do the other
two frameworks. His approach is not hierarchical
but cumulative and interactive. An ideally designed
and developed course promotes all six kinds of

Outcomes-Centered Course Design 27
learning, resulting in a genuinely “significant”
learning experience. The goal is not to order the
kinds of learning but to help students interrelate
and engage in them synergistically. So a course
design based on Fink’s framework might start with
foundational knowledge and then progressively add
outcomes addressing each of the other five kinds
of learning one or more times during the course,
ensuring that all six kinds are represented by the end.
According to Fink, his framework can accom-
modate courses of all levels and disciplines, whether
face-to-face or online, and he provides a compre-
hensive, step-by-step procedure for applying it to any
course. Here is one generic example. After students
acquire some foundational knowledge, have them ap-
ply this new knowledge to solve a problem of rele-
vance to them (application) or to a situation where
they can see how some phenomenon affects them
and others (human dimension). This learning experi-
ence should promote their interest in the subject mat-
ter (caring). With their interest piqued, they should
begin to notice the relationships between the new
material and other things they have learned (integra-
tion). As they recognize more linkages, they should
start drawing additional implications for their own
and others’ lives (human dimension) as well as other
ways to apply the material to improve the quality of
life (application). At this point, they should want to
learn still more (caring) and realize their need to ac-
quire stronger learning skills (learning how to learn).
This illustration shows that a well-designed course can
generate a mutually reinforcing relationship between
learning and motivation.
SHOWING STUDENTS THEIR
LEARNING PROCESS
The younger generation of students is not as facile
with text as it is with visuals, so a wise idea is to
illustrate your course design to your students so they
can see where your course is going in terms of their
learning. You can illustrate your course design in an
outcomes map, which is a flowchart of the learning
outcomes, starting from your foundational outcomes,
progressing through your mediating outcomes, and
finally arriving at your ultimate outcomes. In other
words, it is a visual representation of the sequence,
progression, and accumulation of the skills and
abilities that students should be able to demonstrate
at various times in the term. It shows how achieving
one or more outcomes should enable students to
achieve subsequent ones.
As I have written extensively on charting an out-
comes maps elsewhere (Nilson, 2007a), I will furnish
here just a couple of examples that I have developed.
Figure 2.1 is an outcomes map for my Free Will and
Determinism course. Following Perry’s (1968) frame-
work, it contains just a few outcomes that build up
to the ultimate “commitment” outcome. These out-
comes parallel those copied from the course syllabus
above. Figure 2.2 is the outcomes map for my gradu-
ate course, College Teaching. It does not follow any
course design framework. It has a genuine flowchart
look and feel, clearly showing how achieving one
outcome equips students to achieve later ones. The
students’ major assignment is an individual course de-
sign and development project, after which they write
a statement of teaching philosophy. I make it clear to
my students that, of course, I won’t be able to assess
them on two of the ultimate outcomes—obtaining a
teaching position and meeting institutional assessment
requirements and goals—but they will leave knowing
how to meet these crucial career goals in their fast-
approaching future.
While these two examples look very different,
they cannot possibly illustrate the dozens of ways that
outcomes maps can vary: the directions in which they
flow, their spatial arrangements, their enclosures and
connectors, and their use of type sizes, type styles,
shadings, and colors. Outcomes maps may or may not
reflect one of the three course design frameworks dis-
cussed earlier. They may or may not supply a time
schedule—such as the week or class number that you

28 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Figure 2.1 Outcomes Map for a Freshman Seminar: Free Will and Determinism
ULTIMATE LEARNING OUTCOME
To develop and explain in writing a well-reasoned personal position on the role of free will, determinism,
compatibilism, and fatalism (including spiritual destiny) in your own and others’ lives, and to defend it
while acknowledging its weaknesses and limitations (capstone paper 3)
MEDIATING LEARNING OUTCOMES
To assess how research supports
or refutes each position (study
questions and in-class discussions,
weeks 6 –12; paper 2 on scientific
findings versus clinical reports due
week 12)
To assess how one’s own life
experiences support or refute
each position (journaling and
in-class discussions, weeks
6 –14)
To refute positions from the viewpoints of other positions
(simulation/mock trial week 6, based on paper 1)
To apply the positions to interpret and assess a situation
(paper 1 on criminal case, due week 6)
FOUNDATIONAL LEARNING OUTCOMES
To express accurately, both orally and in writing, the free willist, determinist,
compatibilist, and fatalist positions, along with their assumptions and justifications
(readings, study questions, in-class writing exercises, in-class discussions, weeks 1–5)
expect students to achieve each outcome. But how-
ever they look, they all furnish students with far more
information about how their learning will progress
through the course than a simple list of outcomes.
If you decide to chart an outcomes map for
any of your courses, the process will probably make
you reexamine your outcomes and their sequencing.
You might realize that you’ve previously missed a step
or two in your students’ logical learning process or
that a different ordering of some of your outcomes
would make more sense. So you may find that you
get as much out of your drawing the map as your
students do.
OUTCOMES-CENTERED COURSE
DEVELOPMENT
Your course design is a skeleton. With that in place,
you have to start developing the course into a more
detailed plan—that is, filling it out by putting muscle
and connective tissue on the bone structure.
Course Content
Only after formulating your learning outcomes
should you begin to select the content that will help
your students achieve those outcomes. The challenge
is to limit the content to only this purpose. If you

Outcomes-Centered Course Design 29
Figure 2.2 Outcomes Map for a Graduate Course, College Teaching
Note: CATs = classroom assessment techniques.
Foundational Learning Outcomes Mediating Learning Outcomes Ultimate Learning Outcomes
Students’ Cognitive
Development,
Cognition, Values,
Motivations,
Behaviors,
Learning Styles
To Set Assessable
and Attainable
Student Learning
Objectives/Outcomes
To Design
Graphic and
Text Syllabi
To Design Effective
Student Learning
Experiences,
Activities
To Assess Student
Learning (w/ CATs,
Effective Tests,
Grading Rubrics)
To Meet
Institutional
Assessment
Requirements
and Goals
To Assess and
Improve Your Teaching
Effectiveness
To Design
a Course
To Write a
Teaching
Philosophy
To Obtain a
Teaching Position
To Motivate
Students
specialize in the content area, it will be difficult
to narrow it. Prégent (1994) advises brainstorming
as many topics and themes as possible. For help,
you can consult Contents pages of reputable texts,
course catalogues and syllabi from other institutions,
and your colleagues. Then rank-order the topics
according to their relevance to your outcomes.
Do not hesitate to eliminate topics entirely. In-
structors, especially new ones, tend to pack too much
material into a course. It is better to teach a few topics
well than merely to cover the material with a steam-
roller and wind up teaching very little of anything.
You can draw a graphic of the interrelationships
among your course topics just as you can draw one
about the organization of your student learning out-
comes. We look at the graphic syllabus in the next
chapter.
Readings
Choose books in line with your learning outcomes
and content. If you are looking specifically for a
textbook, you will be fortunate to find one that
reflects your general philosophy and preferences.
If you’re not so lucky, consider selecting the best
available option for some of your reading assignments
and supplementing it with handouts, reserve readings,
websites, and a class packet. Try to avoid making
students purchase more than one expensive text.
It is one thing to assign readings and another
to get students to read them. If you have found
students’ reading compliance or even comprehension
to be a problem, then consider yourself in excellent
company and refer to Chapter Twenty-Three for
solutions.
In-Class Activities, Assignments, and
Assessments
Your learning outcomes should direct all the other
elements of your course. Let’s start with graded
assignments and assessments. Your ultimate outcomes
should suggest questions and tasks or at least foci,
themes, or formats for your final exam, final paper
assignment, or capstone student project. After all,
these outcomes delineate what you want your

30 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
students to be able to do by the end of the course.
Then move backward through the course and devise
assignments and tests that have students performing
your mediating and, finally, your foundational out-
comes. Once you’ve written sound outcomes, you’ve
at least outlined your assignments and assessments.
It’s just that simple—almost anyway. The chapters in
Part Six offer good advice about constructing these
instruments and assessing student performance on
them.
Table 2.3 Rubric for Evaluating and Revising Student Learning Outcomes
Dimension Excellent Common Errors Needs Revision Missed the Point
Outcomes are
observable,
assessable, and
measurable.
Outcomes are
assessable and
measurable. The
instructor can
observe (usually see
or hear) and evaluate
each learner’s
performance by
clear standards—for
example, how well,
how many, to what
degree.
Some outcomes use
verbs that refer to a
learner’s internal
state of mind, such
as know,
understand, or
appreciate, which
an instructor
cannot observe and
assess. Or some
outcomes are too
general to specify
standards for
evaluation.
Outcomes do not
describe (1)
observable
performances
that are assessable
and measurable
and/or (2) what
the learners will
be able to do.
Outcomes list the
topics the course
will cover or
what the
instructor will
do. Or outcomes
use verbs that
refer to a learner’s
internal state of
mind, which an
instructor cannot
observe and
assess.
Most outcomes
require high
levels of
cognition.
Most outcomes reflect
high levels of
cognition
(application, analysis,
synthesis, and
evaluation).
All or almost all the
outcomes require
low levels of
cognition
(knowledge and
comprehension),
such as recognize,
identify, define, or
describe.
Not enough
outcomes address
higher levels of
cognition, given
the level of the
course and the
learners.
Some outcomes
consistently use
verbs that refer to
a learner’s
low-level internal
state of mind,
such as know,
understand, or
appreciate.
Outcomes are
achievable.
Outcomes are realistic
for the course length
and credit hours and
the level of the
learners.
Outcomes are too
numerous for the
instructor to assess
or the learners to
achieve.
Outcomes are too
advanced for the
course length or
credit hours for
the learners.
Outcomes don’t use
action verbs to
describe what the
learners will be
able to do.
Outcomes are
relevant and
meaningful to
the learners.
Outcomes are relevant
to the learners and
their personal or
career goals.
Not all the outcomes
and their benefits
are clear to the
learners.
The learners can’t
make sense out
of the outcomes.
Outcomes don’t
indicate what the
learners will be
able to do.
Selecting in-class activities and learning-focused
assignments is a more complex process because you
have so many possibilities to choose from and so
little time to manage and give feedback on them.
So all of Chapter Eleven is devoted to helping you
make the best decisions—that is, selecting the most

Outcomes-Centered Course Design 31
effective methods for your outcomes—and the
chapters in Parts Three and Four describe your major
options and how to implement them. You will find
the class-by-class bricks and mortar for building a
successful learning experience for your students,
ensuring that your teaching translates into learning.
Indeed, your outcomes can and should guide
your choice of activities down to the individual class
level. If you want your students to be able to write
a certain type of analysis by a certain week of the
term, then structure in-class activities and assignments
to give them practice in writing that type of analysis.
If you want them to be able to solve certain kinds
of problems, then design activities and assignments to
give them practice in solving such problems. If you
want them to research and develop a point of view,
and argue it orally, then select activities and assign-
ments to give them practice in research, rhetoric, and
oral presentation, if they don’t already have it.
Figure 2.1 of my Free Will and Determinism
course shows not only the relationships among
the learning outcomes but also the activities and
assignments that helped students achieve those
outcomes and assessed their progress. These activities
and assignments are listed in parentheses after each
outcome, followed by the weeks in the term that
they occurred. They included three papers, readings,
in-class and online discussions, journaling, a simula-
tion, study questions, and in-class writing exercises.
While this does not provide a class-by-class schedule,
it served well as a general outline for developing the
schedule and detailed descriptions of the activities and
assignments.
Once you have a sound course design, your syl-
labus almost writes itself. The next chapter presents a
concise checklist of all the information that can and
usually should be included in this important course
document.

C H A P T E R 3
The Complete Syllabus
A
syllabus is most simply defined as a concise
outline of a course of study. But it is also
the students’ introduction to the course, the
subject matter, and you. In addition to providing a
schedule of class assignments, readings, and activities,
it should give students insight into the material and
your approach to teaching it. In a sense, then, it is not
only the road map for the term’s foray into knowl-
edge but also a travelogue to pique students’ interest
in the expedition and its leader.
While syllabi of just a couple of pages are com-
mon, students always have many more questions than
a brief syllabus can answer. In addition, some courses
call for a great deal of first-day information. A com-
prehensive, well-constructed syllabus may easily run
five, six, or even ten pages, and this isn’t necessarily
too long. The original “learning-centered syllabus”
can go on for twenty, thirty, or fifty pages or more,
becoming in effect a “course handbook” (Grunert,
1997). So this chapter presents a suggested checklist
for developing a shorter but comprehensive syllabus
(Altman & Cashin, 1992; Grunert O’Brien, Millis, &
Cohen, 2008), whether printed or online. The more
information you include, the less you have to im-
provise or decide on the run, and the fewer student
questions you will have to answer. If you doubt that
your students will read such a lengthy document, see
the penultimate section in this chapter on inducing
your students to read it.
APPROPRIATE SYLLABUS ITEMS
Following is an annotated list of all the information
that you should put in a course syllabus. For examples
of the recommended information and further detail,
Grunert O’Brien et al. (2008) is by far the best re-
source. At the end of this section is a box on the
items that can protect you from student complaints,
grievances, and even lawsuits:
1. Complete course information: The course
number and title; days, hours, and location of class
meetings; credit hours; any required or recommended
prerequisites, including permission of the instructor
33

34 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
for enrollment; any required review sessions; any re-
quired laboratories or recitation or discussion sections,
with the same information as given for the course;
and the titles and location of any online course mate-
rials, exercises, assignments, exams, and supplemen-
tary materials that are on the Web (give the URL) or
in your course management system (give the folder).
2. Information about yourself: Your full name and
title, the way you wish to be addressed, your office
hours, your office location, your office phone num-
ber, email address, and home page URL (if you have
one). If you decide to give students your home or cell
phone number, you may wish to limit calls to certain
days and hours. So your students do not expect you
to be on email 24/7, specify the days and hours that
you will be answering their email.
3. The same information about other course person-
nel, such as teaching assistants (TAs), technicians, and
other assistants. You might encourage your section
and lab TAs to develop their own syllabi.
4. A briefly annotated list of reading materials,
such as assigned books, journal articles, class packets,
and Web materials with full citations (including edi-
tion), price, location (bookstore, library, reserve status,
URL, or course management system folder), identifi-
cation as required or recommended, and your reasons
for selecting them. If you do not plan to give reg-
ular assignments from the text, consider making it
a recommended supplementary source. If commer-
cially prepared notes are available, say how helpful
they might be.
5. Any other materials required for the course, in-
cluding cost estimates and where to find them at a
good price. (Don’t forget eBay for pricier items.) For
example, some science labs require students to have a
personal stock of cleaning supplies and safety equip-
ment. Art and photography classes usually expect stu-
dents to furnish their own equipment, supplies, and
expendable materials. If special types of calculators,
computers, or software are called for, describe these
in detail. If the materials won’t be used immediately,
specify when in the term they will be.
6. A complete course description, including the
organization or flow of the course, your rationale for
it, and the major topics it will address. You may even
want to list topics it will not cover, especially if your
course has too much popular appeal and tends to at-
tract less-than-serious students.
7. Your student learning outcomes for the course—
not just your ultimate outcomes (what students
should be able to do or do better at the end of the
course) but also your mediating and foundational
outcomes. Chapter Two gives guidance on devel-
oping solid learning outcomes, designing a course
around them, and charting an outcomes map to
show students your plan for their learning process.
However, you don’t want your outcomes to be
interpreted as binding promises, and you know
your students have to apply themselves to achieve
these outcomes. So consider adding the caveats and
disclaimers recommended in the box on legal issues
in the syllabus.
8. All graded course requirements and a complete
breakdown of your grading scale, preferably buttressed
by a rationale. Nothing is so annoying as hearing
half your students bargain for points or ask for a
curve after an exam. Detail the point values of all
graded work: in-class and homework assignments,
peer group evaluations, class participation, discussion,
electronic communication, tests, papers, projects, and
so on. Also comment on the expected number and
types of tests and quizzes, homework assignments,
and papers. Specify whether lowest-scoring work can
be thrown out. Finally, state the grading system you
will use (criterion-referenced or a curve), along with
percentage breakdowns.
9. The criteria on which each written assignment,
project, and oral presentation will be evaluated, includ-
ing your grading system (see Chapter Thirty-One)
and your policies regarding revisions and extra credit.
As with grade protests that often follow returning
exams, the choral call for extra credit can be a nui-
sance unless your position is firmly established from
the start.
10. Other course requirements aside from those com-
puted in the grade. If you expect students to participate
in class discussions, you must tell them. If you plan
to give unannounced, ungraded quizzes to monitor

The Complete Syllabus 35
comprehension, then let it be known from the begin-
ning. It is better to ensure that all students understand
your expectations from the start than to spring new
rules on them later in the term.
11. Your policies on attendance and tardiness.
Instructors occasionally debate whether to grade on
attendance. As one side argues, how can students
learn and contribute to the class without being there?
(As Woody Allen once put it, over 90 percent of life is
just showing up.) No question, taking and grading on
attendance does increase class attendance (Friedman,
Rodriguez, & McComb, 2001). But others argue
that students should be free to learn as much or as
little as they choose by whatever means they choose.
However you decide, your syllabus should state
your policy.
Including attendance and even tardiness in the fi-
nal grade (some instructors incorporate it under class
participation) is no longer unusual. Absences are a
problem at many institutions, especially in required
courses (Friedman et al., 2001). Some colleges and
universities require instructors to report students who
are excessively absent, so you may have to keep at-
tendance even if you don’t intend to grade on it.
(Check the academic regulations in your institution’s
course catalogue.) However, most instructors do not
count certain absences, such as those for documented
medical reasons, documented court obligations, and
athletic team commitments.
12. Your policies on missed or late exams and
assignments. Students occasionally have good reasons
for missing a deadline or a test, as they do for some
absences, and you may want to ask for documen-
tation for the reason given. State whether students
can drop one quiz or grade during the term or if
a makeup is possible. If you assess penalties for late
work, describe them precisely to put to rest any later
disputes.
13. A statement of your and your institution’s
policies on academic dishonesty, as well as their applica-
tions to your course. Cheating and plagiarism are all too
common on campuses, as Chapter Eight documents.
Unless you make a strong statement about your intol-
erance of them, your students may assume that you
are naive or will look the other way. This statement
may include a summary of the official procedures you
will follow in prosecuting violations and the sanctions
a student may suffer. (See your institution’s course cat-
alogue, student handbook, or faculty handbook for
details.) If your institution has an honor code, state
that you will strictly adhere to and enforce it. An-
other reason to address academic honesty policies is
to spell out how you will apply them to cooperative
learning activities and products. Instructors have to
devise their own rules on small-group work. If you
don’t detail your rules, one of two things is likely to
happen: your students may inadvertently violate your
and your institution’s policies, or they may not work
as cooperatively as you’d like.
14. A statement of your institution’s policies on
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accommoda-
tions. The office at your institution that provides these
accommodations should be able to furnish you with
such a statement.
15. Policies on classroom decorum and academic
discourse. Classroom and general social incivility
has increased in recent years, and having policies
and ground rules defining appropriate and inap-
propriate behavior can go far in preventing class
disruptions, name-calling, personal attacks, and other
demonstrations of disrespect. State any consequences
for disruptive behavior specifically and clearly, and
explain the nature of, value of, and rules for civil
discussion. Chapter Seven sets out recommended
policies.
16. Proper safety procedures and conduct for lab-
oratories. While you would hope that students would
have the common sense to apply good safety habits
to their work, you cannot assume that these habits
are intuitive. Specify strict rules for lab dress and pro-
cedures. If you threaten to exact penalties for safety
violations, then stand ready to make good on your
word. Remember that it is better to take away a few
lab points than to risk the safety of the entire section.
(See Chapter Twenty-Two.)
17. Relevant campus support services for students
and their locations for assistance in mastering course
software, doing computer assignments, writing papers

36 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
or lab reports, learning study skills, and solving home-
work problems. The Appendix identifies these re-
sources on the typical campus.
18. Other available study or assignment aids. If
you plan to distribute study guides, review sheets,
practice problems, practice essay questions, or advance
grading rubrics, students find it helpful to know about
them from the start.
19. A weekly or class-by-class course schedule with
as much of the following as possible: topics to be
covered; in-class activities and formats (lecture, guest
speaker, class discussion, group work, demonstration,
case study, field trip, role play, simulation, game, de-
bate, panel discussion, video, computer exercise, re-
view session, and so on); dates of announced quizzes
and exams; and due dates of all reading assignments,
written homework, papers, and projects. Be sure to
accommodate holidays and breaks.
20. A concluding legal caveat or disclaimer. In our
litigious society, a few students have filed grievances
and even sued faculty for failing to follow the syllabus
schedule and policies. Although you may not intend
your syllabus to be a legally binding contract, students
may think they are not getting their money’s worth if
you significantly diverge from the syllabus during the
course or fail to get through it. Therefore, for your
own protection, take note of the last entry in the box,
“The Legal Side of the Syllabus.”
Three other syllabus items are recommended:
21. Curricular requirements your course satisfies,
such as general education; writing-, speaking-, or
ethics-across-the-curriculum; various majors; and any
other graduation requirements that your institution
or department has.
22. Background information about yourself, such
as your degrees, universities you attended, other
universities where you have taught or conducted
research, and your areas of research. After all, you
may be asking your students for some personal and
academic information. In addition, most students are
keenly interested in you as a professional and a person
and appreciate knowing something about you. A
little sharing about yourself can also help build their
sense of personal loyalty to you.
23. Your teaching philosophy. So many faculty
write such a statement for job applications and re-
views that you might want to append yours to your
syllabus or include an abbreviated version in the doc-
ument, preferably within the first page or so. It can
express your commitment to education, your hopes
and objectives for your students, your knowledge of
how people learn, your view of the mutual rights
and obligations between instructors and students, the
rapport with students you aim to develop, and your
preferred teaching and assessment methods. With it,
you can set a fruitful, congenial tone for the term.
The Legal Side of the Course Syllabus
Your course syllabus is generally regarded by your students, your institution, and the courts as a legally
binding contract. To protect yourself and meet student needs, you must supply certain information. If you
desire flexibility, you must build it into the document. Including the items that follow will help you avoid
student complaints, grievances, and even lawsuits:
• Prerequisite courses student should have successfully completed to pass this course—whether or
not these are stated in the course catalogue.
• How often and when you will answer student email.
• Days and hours you will be accessible to students by phone.
• Policies of your institution on ADA accommodations.

The Complete Syllabus 37
• Policies on missed and late exams and assignments. Describe any penalties clearly and precisely,
and state a ‘‘no exceptions’’ policy clearly. Check the academic regulation in your institution’s course
catalogue so your penalties don’t exceed what is allowed.
• Policies on attendance and tardiness. If you require class attendance and on-time arrival and take
off any points for lack of attendance or tardiness, you should state academic reasons for your
requirements (for example, you conduct learning activities or lecture important materials not in the
readings).
• Policies on class participation. If you grade on class participation, be sure you have some sort of
written record to back up this part of the grade.
• Policies on academic integrity, including in collaborative work specific to the course. Typically it is
best to follow, and to state that you follow, your institution’s policy on academic integrity: that you refer
all cases of suspected cheating and plagiarism to whatever administrative office is in charge of the
matter. Multiple incidents of academic dishonesty therefore have a cumulative impact on students.
• Policies and procedures on lab safety and health if they are applicable.
• Policies on classroom decorum and academic discourse if needed. State any consequences for
classroom incivility specifically and clearly, justifying your policies as necessary for optimal student
learning.
• Policies on extra credit, even if you will allow none. Your course grading breakdown, such as,
91–100 = A, 81–90 = B, and so on. Assume nothing.
• Caveat or disclaimer regarding your student learning outcomes. You can’t guarantee that students
will learn to do anything unless they do their part as learners. Therefore, add this or a similar
statement after you list your outcomes: ‘‘(1) Students may vary in their competency levels on these
outcomes, and (2) they can expect to achieve these outcomes only if they honor all course policies,
attend classes regularly, complete all assigned work in good faith and on time, and meet all other
course expectations of them as students.’’
• Caveat or disclaimer regarding changes to the course. Adding this statement or one like it at the
end of your syllabus will give you the flexibility you may need during the term: ‘‘The above schedule,
policies, procedures, and assignments in this course are subject to change in the event of extenuating
circumstances, by mutual agreement, and/or to ensure better student learning.’’
In addition to these twenty-three items,
Grunert’s (1997) learning-centered syllabus contains
the content of course handouts, such as instructions
for assignments, that most instructors distribute
during the term. It can also include much more:
a letter from the instructor; reading, studying,
note-taking, writing-style, and exam-taking tips and
aids; a learning-styles inventory and interpretation
key; a learning contract; team-building suggestions;
and detailed directions for projects, papers, presen-
tations, and portfolios. This type of syllabus can
become so long that it deserves and requires a title
page and a contents page. To its credit, it provides
students with all the tools they need to succeed in
your course from the start, and you have all the
elements of your course in place.
THE GRAPHIC SYLLABUS
A graphic syllabus, like an outcomes map, is a visual
tool to communicate your course to students more
effectively. Specifically, it is a flowchart, graphic orga-
nizer, or diagram of the sequencing and organization

38 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
of your course’s major topics through the term. It
may also note the calendar schedule of the topics, the
major activities and assignments, and the tests. But
however much information it contains, it can’t in-
clude everything that a regular text syllabus should, so
it is meant to be a supplement to, not a replacement
for, it. As I have already written extensively about
the graphic syllabus (Biktimirov & Nilson, 2003;
Nilson, 2002, 2007a), the discussion here will be
brief.
Perhaps the best way to understand the concept
is to see an example of it. Figure 3.1 displays the
Figure 3.1 Graphic Syllabus of Social Stratification Course
COURSE ORGANIZATION AT A GLANCE
Social Stratification
Therory-General Explanations for Inequality
Functionalism Conflict Theory
Opposed and
Talking Past
Each Other
Lenski’s
Synthesis
Economic Inequality
Power Inequality
Findings, Research, DataIII on
III
Week
I–II
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII–IX
X
MIDTERM
Prestige Inequality
Opportunity Inequality
How Stratification Persists: Political System
How Stratification Persists: People’s Response to Stratification
Human Psychology

The Complete Syllabus 39
graphic syllabus of an undergraduate Social Strati-
fication course I taught at UCLA some years ago.
It is fairly simple and unadorned, but it helped my
students see the complex interrelationships of the
weekly topics. For instance, it makes clear that the
first three weeks addressed theory and the rest of the
course empirical research. It illustrates that one of
the two major theories has spawned research on two
types of inequality (which support this theory), while
the other major theory has generated research on two
other types of inequality (which support that theory).
During the last few weeks on how social stratification
persists, the graphic shows that one explanation
derives only from one major theory and its research,
while the second one integrates both major theories
and their findings, as well as psychology. The flow of
course topics takes on a logic and internal cohesion
that a list cannot capture.
Aside from clarifying complex relationships
among topics, a graphic syllabus offers many other
learning benefits. As explained in Chapter One, it
gives students an additional level of understanding
of the course material by providing the big pic-
ture of your course content—the structure of the
knowledge as an integrated whole, a cohesive system
of interpreting phenomena. With a knowledge
structure already in hand, students are better able to
deep-process and retain the material. In addition, a
graphic syllabus reveals why you organized the course
the way you did. No doubt you put substantial time
and mental effort into your course design and topical
organization, but without any background in the
field, students can’t possibly follow your sophisticated
logic. They don’t know what many of the words
mean or how one concept or topic may relate to
another. A graphic shows such relationships using
spatial arrangements and arrows.
Additional advantages accrue from a graphic
syllabus by virtue of its being a visual represen-
tation. Students are more likely to comprehend
and remember materials they receive both verbally
and visually. In addition, they need not expend as
much cognitive energy interpreting a graphic as
they do interpreting text because visuals require
less working memory and fewer cognitive transfor-
mations. Graphics especially benefit students with
learning styles that reading materials and lectures
don’t reach effectively—those known as “visual,”
“concrete,” “holistic,” “global,” “divergent,” and
“intuitive-feeling,” depending on the learning style
framework used. (See Chapter Twenty-Five for
summaries of some of these frameworks.) Since these
learning styles are increasingly common, perhaps
dominant, among younger students but relatively rare
among college faculty (Schroeder, 1993), it is easy to
overlook our students’ needs for visuals. Moreover,
graphics communicate better than text across cultural
and language barriers, so they help meet the learning
needs of a diverse student population. Graphics also
showcase alternative ways of taking notes, outlining
papers, and organizing concepts that students with
the learning styles above can really use. Chapter
Twenty-Six explains and references the evidence
for these learning advantages as they apply to visual
representations in general.
One final benefit of designing a graphic
syllabus is for you. Not only is the activity a creative
right-brain outlet, but it can help you identify any
snags in your course organization, such as topics that
are chronologically misplaced or missing or don’t
fit at all.
Bear in mind that a graphic syllabus shows the
structure of your course, not the field, its history, or
a theoretical model. These may make fine graphics,
but under a different name. In addition, a graphic syl-
labus should flow in only one direction, as a course
does through time. A final warning: Don’t make it too
complex, cluttered, or detailed. Its intent is to clarify.
And do refer to it during the course as you would to
a map during a trip.
THE ONLINE ‘‘LIVING SYLLABUS’’
All distance learning instructors have an online syl-
labus, and even many classroom instructors have one
in addition to a hard-copy version. The beauty of an
online syllabus is that it gives you the option to make

40 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
it dynamic, growing, “living,” as Mark A. Wilson at
the College of Wooster (2008, p. 1) put it. In the
first paragraph on his website for his classroom-based
course, History of Life, he informs his students that
he will be adding links, images, alternative perspec-
tives on controversial issues, and other information on
a weekly basis as the term proceeds, and he requires
them to check the site at least once a week.
Those of us who post our course materials
on a course management system also add mate-
rials during the term—from lecture outlines
to homework assignments to review questions.
But we usually add them to various folders on
our course site and rarely, if at all, put them
into the syllabus. The advantage to doing the
latter is that students wind up reviewing the syl-
labus again and again. Depending on where we
locate the new material in the document, students
may be reminded of the various course requirements,
policies, schedule, and previously learned content.
Wilson (2008) maximizes the potential value of his
students’ scrolling through his syllabus by having two
content-rich sections of text (350 to 900 words) for
each week’s topic—Web resources for that week and
“Geology in the News”—each studded with links to
more information on concepts, proper names, and
other subjects he mentions. On the way to the new
material he has added for the week, students glance
through prior material.
GETTING STUDENTS TO READ
YOUR SYLLABUS
A solid syllabus says good things about you to your
class. Among them, it says that you understand
students, how they abhor surprises and last-minute
assignments, and how they appreciate a tightly or-
ganized, explicit course structure around which they
can plan the next few months. It says that you respect
them, as well as the subject matter of the course.
Even so, you can’t expect students to really study
your carefully constructed document. Regularly dur-
ing the term, instructors field student questions that
are answered in the syllabus. So the challenge is get-
ting students to focus on the document. Although
they may not remember every aspect of the course,
they should remember where they can look up in-
formation. Just reading through the syllabus out loud
during your first class meeting isn’t enough, and be-
sides, you have other matters to tend to during that
class period (see Chapter Four). Here are four more
effective options.
First, if your syllabus is not too long, have your
students read it in class; then break into small groups
to do one of several possible syllabus activities. For
instance, they can simply discuss the document and
answer each other’s questions about it. Alternatively,
you may want to structure their discussion around
some question, such as: “Compared to the other
courses you’ve taken in college, do you expect
this one to be more or less difficult [or require
more or less time], and why?” For another possible
activity, Ballard (2007) had her students make a list
of questions that they should never ask her, since the
answers are in the syllabus. Perhaps the most gamelike
alternative is to send the groups on a scavenger hunt
for certain critical information in the document.
You might want to bring some small rewards for the
students in the quickest and most thorough group.
Another option is to assign the syllabus as
homework, answer questions about it the second
day of class, then have each student sign a contract
with statements like these: “I have thoroughly read
the course syllabus and understand its contents. I
understand the course requirements and the grading
and attendance policies stated in the syllabus” (T.I.D.
Campbell, personal communication, September 27,
2001).
A third alternative, especially for a long syllabus,
is to assign it as homework and give a graded test
on it the second day of class (Raymark & Connor-
Greene, 2002). The test items need not be all factual
questions on the number of tests, the point value
of assignments, and the like. You can ask interesting
and thought-provoking short-answer and short-essay
questions, such as: “Which of the student learning
objectives for this course are most important to you

The Complete Syllabus 41
personally, and why?” “Of the four papers assigned,
which are you least (or most) looking forward to writ-
ing, and why?” “Which of the grading criteria for
your oral presentation play most to your strengths as
a learner or a speaker?” Answers to these questions
will give you insights into your students’ aspirations,
interests, insecurities, and self-assessments. Such ques-
tions will also motivate your students to think about
the value of your course to them personally and pro-
fessionally.
One final option is to distribute your syllabus
the first day but wait to review it in class until the third
week of the term or so, after your enrollment stabi-
lizes and students start to care about the course re-
quirements, assignments, and grading (F. A. McGuire,
personal communication, October 12, 2007). This
is just-in-time learning at its purest, and you are al-
most guaranteed an interested audience. Of course,
you will still have to refer your class to immediately
needed information on the first day, such as course
prerequisites, your office hours and contact informa-
tion, ADA accommodations, safety procedures and
conduct (if applicable), classroom conduct policies,
and early reading assignments.
THE EVOLVING SYLLABUS
Over the past few decades, the syllabus has evolved
from a short, sterile list of required readings,
topics, assignments, and dates to an elaborate,
detailed blueprint for a carefully constructed learning
experience. The document has even added several
opportunities for instructors to place their personal
trademarks, as well as graphic counterparts and
dynamic online possibilities. It is rare for an official
document to undergo such a radical transformation
so quickly.

C H A P T E R 4
Your First Day of Class
W
hether you are teaching for the first time
or are a seasoned classroom veteran, the
first day of class can evoke anxiety as well
as excitement. Like no other day, it affects the tenor
of the entire term. It may also represent innovations
and experiments in course content, organization, and
design; teaching formats and techniques; and assess-
ment methods—not to mention all those new stu-
dent faces. This chapter suggests ways to reduce the
anxiety, heighten the excitement, and start off the
course on a positive, professional, and participatory
note. It should be particularly useful to newer instruc-
tors. With some adaptation, these strategies apply to
online courses as well.
BEFORE THE FIRST CLASS
You probably prepared your course materials well be-
fore the start of the term. If you have posted materi-
als on your course management site or independent
website, check that everything that you want to be
there is there. Avoid the copying machine bottle-
neck (and the often resulting malfunctions) by making
copies of your first-day handouts as far in advance as
you can.
Along with course materials, prepare your
agenda for the first class. This chapter contains a
range of productive activities to choose from. It may
be wise to divide your selections into “essential” and
“desirable as time remains.” Practice your first-day
presentations and your directions for the activities in
advance.
A day or two before your first class, tend to
some classroom details. First, inspect the room to en-
sure that all of the technology that you will need
(hardware, software, overhead projector) is there and
in working order and that you know how to access
and operate it. Don’t forget low-tech needs like chalk,
whiteboard markers, and erasers. Check the lights, the
clock (if any), and the heating and air-conditioning
system as well. If anything is missing or awry, ask your
department to correct the problem. Then take a few
moments to orient yourself to the setting. Stand in
43

44 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
the front of the room and imagine the seats filled with
your students. Make eye contact with the sectors of
your imaginary class, walk out toward them, move
about the room, and practice smiling.
At least a half-hour before the first class, start
preparing yourself—specifically, your body and your
voice. You want to project a successful instructor
persona to your class—one of relaxed confidence,
goodwill, and an in-command, no-nonsense pres-
ence. This will inspire your students’ respect for your
authority, their confidence in you, their goodwill
in return, and their willingness to honor your rules
and policies. Plus, you want to convey enthusiasm,
passion, dynamism, and charisma so you can get their
attention and keep them engaged for the entire class.
If you don’t think you’re naturally relaxed, confident,
in command, and charismatic, take heart in knowing
that you can look as if you are by practicing certain
behaviors that are listed in Chapter Seven under
“Preventing Incivility: Your Classroom Persona.”
Furthermore, you can make these behaviors come
more easily and naturally by performing a few
exercises shortly before class.
To make your body more relaxed, more fluid,
looser, and seemingly larger—meaning that you will
fill up your life space—do the following in this order:
• Ground yourself by standing up straight with your
feet about a foot apart, and feel them securely an-
chored in the ground.
• Breathe slowly and deeply from your diaphragm
three or more times. As you inhale, you should
feel your ribs and stomach expanding. Breathe in
through your nose (which cleanses the air) and
out through your mouth (to exhale more com-
pletely). Oxygen works wonders for shaky nerves
and cloudy brains.
• Stretch every part of your body in every direction.
It is best to stretch slowly until you feel a twinge
of strain, then hold the pose for a moment. For
your spine, bend over all the way forward, then
backward and to each side. Roll your neck and
your shoulders, stretch out your arms, and do a
few squats and lunges for your legs and thighs.
Stretching relaxes and loosens your muscles while
increasing circulation and your overall energy.
• Shake out your hands and feet as though you were
shaking off tension.
• Move your eyes from side to side and up and
down to prepare for making eye contact all over
a room.
This next series of exercises will increase your
vocal variety, resonance, articulation, and projection:
• Sing scales up and down a few times.
• Say one or more words at alternating high and low
pitches, as high and low as your voice can go.
• Read a children’s book aloud with all the exagger-
ation in vocal variety and speaking pace that you
can muster.
• Stretch your mouth and lips in every direction,
or exaggerate their movement while saying long,
complex words.
Actors and singers do similar exercises every
time before they perform. Teaching involves perfor-
mance as well, and our bodies and voices are our
instruments. These exercises may be most important
before your first class of the term, but you will
enhance your classroom presence by doing them
before your first class every teaching day.
If you are new to teaching, have strategies at
hand to combat any sudden case of stage fright. (Of
course, there is no substitute for having practiced your
first-day presentation and directions in advance.) Just
before you begin class, take a few long, slow, deep
breaths and balance yourself by focusing on some spot
on the wall or an inanimate object in the room. You
might also try looking just over the heads of your
students for the first few minutes (but no longer, or
students will notice). Or visualize yourself conducting
a one-on-one tutorial instead of talking to a class. Al-
ways feel free to take a quiet moment to breathe and
collect your thoughts. Remember that many students
are impressed by anyone with the courage to speak
in public and are forgiving of the occasional lapse of
continuity.

Your First Day of Class 45
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
What you do and do not do the first day of class
will affect your students’ and even your own expecta-
tions and behavior for the rest of the term. So think
ahead of time about the expectations and behaviors
you want to establish in your classroom for the next
ten to fifteen weeks. Lay out these expectations and
lead the kind of class activities that model the level
of student engagement you have in mind for the rest
of the course. For example, if you hope for consid-
erable discussion, engage your students in discussion,
perhaps about their expectations of the course or their
current conceptions of the subject matter. If you in-
tend to have several in-class writing exercises, start
with a short one that first class. If you plan on us-
ing cooperative learning, have a small-group activity
the first day.
No doubt you want to establish a serious,
professional classroom atmosphere, and you com-
municate this tenor in several ways. First, have a
comprehensive, well-structured syllabus ready to
distribute (see Chapter Three). It tells your class that
you are careful, well organized, conscientious, and
serious about teaching. Make extra copies for last-
minute enrollees, and bring extras with you during
the first two weeks of class.
Second, say a few words to market the course
and the material. Enthusiasm is contagious. Show-
ing some of your own for the subject matter and the
opportunity to teach it will motivate your students’
interest in learning it and inspire their respect for you
as a scholar.
Third, dress a little more formally than you
normally would, at least if you’re inclined to more
casual attire. A touch of formality conveys profession-
alism and seriousness. It also gives instructors who
are female, youthful looking, or physically small an
aura of authority and a psychological edge that help
separate them from their students (Johnston, 2005;
Roach, 1997).
Since you expect students to be prompt, set a
good example from the start. Arrive in the classroom
early, and set a welcoming tone by chatting with stu-
dents informally as they arrive. Make students feel
comfortable with you as a person as well as an in-
structor, but don’t confuse your roles; remember the
difference between being friendly and being friends.
Not only are you not friends, but students ex-
pect you to maintain an orderly, civil classroom, with
or without their voluntary cooperation. If you don’t,
your teaching effectiveness and their respect for you
will suffer. In fact, many students were never social-
ized to arrive to class on time, stay seated the whole
period, speak only when sanctioned by the instructor,
or show respect to both the instructor and their peers.
You have to give them—and enforce—your rules of
classroom decorum. The first (or second) day of class
is the optimal time to set up a code of conduct for the
term, and the students who come already motivated
to learn will love you for it. Chapter Seven offers
several effective approaches to getting this somewhat
unpleasant job done without alienating your class.
Finally, make productive use of the entire class
period. The rest of this chapter suggests several social
and content-oriented activities that you can organize,
even if the students have no background in the subject
matter. The most important point is not to waste the
first class—not to treat it as a throwaway day or dismiss
it early. Only if you treat class time like the precious
commodity that it is will your students do so as well.
EXCHANGING INFORMATION
Information flow should be a two-way street, even
(and perhaps especially) on the first day. But you as
the instructor initiate the exchange, first by displaying
the following information before class convenes: the
name and number of your course, the section num-
ber (if appropriate), the meeting days and times, your
name, your office location, and your office hours.
This information assures students that they are in the
right place.
The next several activities need not come in the
order presented, but they are strongly recommended

46 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
for setting an open and participatory as well as profes-
sional tone for the rest of the term.
Student Information Index Cards
Get to know your students, and let them know that
you are interested in them personally, by passing out
blank index cards and asking them to write down this
information for you: their full name, any preferred
nickname, their year in school, their major, and
their previous course work in the field. Additional
information such as hometown, outside interests, and
career aspirations may help you relate class material
to your students on a more personal level. Consider
also asking them to write out what they expect
from this course, why they are taking it (again,
aside from requirements), or what topics they would
like to see addressed. You may be able to orient the
material toward some of their interests and advise
those with erroneous expectations to take a more
suitable course.
Your Background
Since you’re asking students about themselves, it’s
only fair to tell them something about yourself. (They
are interested.) You needn’t divulge your life history,
but giving them a brief summary of your educational
and professional background, orally or in your syl-
labus, helps reinforce your credibility as an instructor
and your humanness as a person. A bit of openness
also enhances your students’ personal loyalty to you.
Include some information about your own re-
search and interests, what attracted you to your disci-
pline, why you love teaching it, and the implications
and applications of the subject in the world. See this
as an opportunity to make the material more relevant
to your students.
Course Information
Mark on your copy of the syllabus the points you
want to elaborate, clarify, and emphasize. For instance,
do mention your office hours and urge students to
seek your help outside class (see Chapter Nine). But
rather than reading through the whole document,
consider choosing one of the options under “Getting
Students to Read Your Syllabus” in Chapter Three.
The first one describes several syllabus activities in
which small groups of students discuss the document,
raise questions about it, or find information in it.
These are ideal for the first day of class. Two other
options are to assign the syllabus as homework and
follow up with a test or a contract at the next class
meeting. Don’t otherwise expect students to read the
syllabus carefully.
Whether you share your teaching philosophy,
explain why you’ve chosen the teaching and assess-
ment strategies you plan to use and what benefits
they have over other reasonable options, especially if
your methods are innovative or collaborative. Your
explanation will not only reassure students of your
professionalism and commitment to their learning but
also reduce their resistance to unusual formats. They
will also see your effort as a sign of respect for them.
In turn, clearly state your expectations of stu-
dents and their responsibilities for preparing for class
and participating. For example, if your course calls
for considerable discussion, emphasize the importance
of their doing the readings, your rules for calling on
them, and your criteria for assessing their contribu-
tions. Also, offer them some advice on how to take
notes on discussion; this remains a mystery even to
the most verbal students (see Chapter Thirteen). If
you plan to lecture at all, give students some pointers
on your lecture organization and good note-taking
strategies (see Chapter Twelve). You might also share
some helpful reading and study skills and problem-
solving strategies appropriate to your subject matter.
You cannot possibly anticipate all the questions
that students will have, especially about your testing
and grading procedures. But here are some likely ones
that you should be prepared to field:
• How will you make up the tests?
• What types of questions will they have?
• What kinds of thinking will they require?
• How should students best prepare for them?
• Will you distribute review sheets?

Your First Day of Class 47
• Will you hold review sessions?
• How will you evaluate papers and other written
assignments?
• How many As, Bs, Cs, and so on do you usu-
ally give?
• How possible is it for all students to get a
good grade?
Reciprocal Interview
This two-way interview, which takes about fifty min-
utes in small classes, is a structured activity for you and
your students to exchange course-related information
(Case et al., 2008). You distribute a handout that asks
questions like these:
1. What do you hope to gain from this course?
2. How can I help you reach these goals?
3. What concerns do you have about this course?
4. What resources and background in the subject
matter do you bring to it?
5. What student conduct rules should we set up to
foster the course’s success?
6. What aspects of a class or an instructor impede
your learning?
Students write their answers to these questions
as individuals for the first five minutes and discuss
them in groups for the next ten minutes. Then each
group spokesperson reports these responses aloud to
the class (fifteen minutes). For the second part of the
exercise, your handout should also suggest questions
to pose to you about your course goals, student
expectations, and views on grading. (Students can
ask other questions as well.) First as individuals, then
back in their groups, students select and develop
questions for you, which requires about ten minutes.
Then each group spokesperson reads these questions
aloud, which you answer over the next ten minutes.
According to student feedback (Case et al.,
2008), this activity establishes a comfortable class
environment, fosters a sense of community, commu-
nicates your openness and commitment to student
success, and serves as a social icebreaker. Minority
students especially appreciate it. If you plan on a lot
of group work and class discussion during the term,
this exercise will prepare students to participate.
Learning Students’ Names
Most students, especially at smaller and private
colleges and universities, expect their instructors to
learn their name. Students expect less personal treat-
ment in very large classes (over one hundred students),
in which case learning their names will make you a
legend. To borrow an old cliché, learning your stu-
dents’ names shows you care. So begin learning and
using names to address students early. If you have trou-
ble remembering names, here are some strategies to
help you.
You can seat students in specific places and make
a seating chart. Students may not prefer a seating
chart, but they will tolerate it graciously if you say the
reason is to learn their names. Seating them in alpha-
betical order will probably make learning their names
easiest for you, and it ensures that proximity-based
small groups will be randomly mixed. In addition,
it will facilitate your taking attendance (just look for
the empty chairs).
Some instructors learn names by taking notes
about each student’s physical appearance on the class
roster—information such as body shape and size, hair
color and length, dress style, age, and any distinguish-
ing physical traits. It is best to conceal such notes from
your students’ view.
Taking roll in every class helps you learn names
as well as take attendance. While learning names, you
can also use the roll to call on students more or less
randomly as long as you tell your class what you’ll
be doing. Or you may use the index cards to call on
students. Just shuffle them as you would a deck of
cards every so often.
Still another strategy is to have students wear
name tags or badges or display name cards or tents
on their desks. To avoid the hassle of making new
name tags or cards for every class, print up permanent,
convention-style tags or cards, distribute them at the

48 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
start of each class, and collect them at the end of each
session. This is also a subtle way to take attendance.
If you want to become a legend in a large class,
your most effective strategy may be collecting pho-
tographs of your students with their names attached
and reviewing them over and over. First check to see
whether your institution makes the ID photos of the
students enrolled in your classes available to you on
your course management site. If not, you or your
teaching assistant can take digital photographs of in-
dividual students or small groups of students; just be
sure each person is associated with the right name.
Or you can ask your students to give you a picture of
themselves with their name on it. Using photographs,
you can probably master the names of over a hundred
students within a few weeks.
SOCIAL ICEBREAKERS: GETTING
TO KNOW YOU
If your class size allows it, try to incorporate one or
two icebreaker activities on the first day. There are
two types: the social or getting-to-know-you variety,
which gets students acquainted, and subject matter
icebreakers, which motivate students to start think-
ing about the material. Feel free to move beyond the
popular examples given here and devise your own.
Let’s first consider some social icebreakers. If you
plan on discussion or group work, these smooth the
way for broad participation and cooperative group
interaction. First-year students in particular appreci-
ate the opportunity to meet other students, including
more senior ones, who can serve as role models.
Simple Self-Introductions
Perhaps the simplest social icebreaker is to have stu-
dents take turns introducing themselves to the class by
giving their name, major, maybe their reason for tak-
ing the course (once again, aside from fulfilling some
requirement), and perhaps something about them that
they are proud of having done or become. This ac-
tivity may work best in a smaller class, however, as
the prospect of speaking in front of a large group of
strangers can mildly terrify some students. If you will
have your students make speeches or oral presentations
in front the class during the term, this first-day exercise
can help them get used to the assignments to come.
Three-Step Interviews
Students can share the same type of information with
a neighbor. Then, without knowing beforehand the
second part of the task, each partner can introduce his
or her counterpart to another pair or to the class as a
whole. This exercise has the added benefit of teaching
careful listening skills (Kagan, 1988).
Class Survey
For an informal class survey like this icebreaker,
you do not want to use clickers (personal response
systems, explained in Chapter Twelve) because you
want your students to see who is giving this or
that answer. So begin by asking students to raise
their hands in response to some general questions:
How many students are from [various regions of the
country]? East/west of the Mississippi? First year,
sophomores, juniors, seniors? How many work full-
time? How many are married? How many have
children? How many like golf? Reading? How many
have traveled abroad? To Europe? To Asia? Then you
may venture into opinion questions, perhaps some
relevant to the course material. Students soon start to
form a broad picture of their class and to see what
they have in common. They will find it far easier to
interact with classmates who share their interests and
backgrounds.
Scavenger Hunt
In this more structured activity, give students a list of
“requirements” and tell them to move about the class-
room seeking fellow students who meet each one.
No one may use a given student for more than one
requirement. Some possible requirements are “has
been to Europe,” “prefers cats to dogs,” “has a birth-
day in the same month you do,” “can speak two or

Your First Day of Class 49
more languages fluently,” and “cries at movies.” The
“found” students sign their name next to the require-
ment they meet. You might give prizes to the three
fastest students.
Human Bingo
This icebreaker is a variation on scavenger hunt. In-
stead of a list of requirements, make a page-size four-
by-four table with a different requirement in each
box, and give one copy of the table to each student.
Be sure your class as a whole can meet all the require-
ments. As in the scavenger hunt, no one may use a
given student for more than one requirement. When
a student has all the boxes signed by qualified fellow
students, she shouts out, “Bingo!” and gets a prize.
Bring a few prizes in case of ties.
The Circles of .
Give each student a sheet of paper with a large cen-
tral circle and other smaller circles radiating from it.
Students write their names in the central circle and
the names of groups with which they identify most
strongly (such as gender, age group, religious, eth-
nic, racial, social, political, ideological, athletic) in the
satellite circles. Then have students move around the
room to find the three classmates who are the most
or the least similar to themselves.
Like Scavenger Hunt and Human Bingo, this
exercise helps students appreciate the diversity in
the class, as well as meet their fellow students. This
icebreaker also generates homogeneous or heteroge-
neous groups of four if you need them for another
activity.
SUBJECT MATTER ICEBREAKERS
This second type of icebreaker stimulates your stu-
dents’ interest in the subject matter and informs you
about what they know, think they know, and know
they don’t know about it. Some of these can also help
you identify or confirm their faulty models and mis-
conceptions about the subject matter.
Classroom Assessment Techniques
Classroom assessment techniques (CATs) are un-
graded activities and exercises that you assign to your
students (often anonymously) so you can appraise
their academic skills, intellectual development,
self-awareness as learners, reactions to the material,
and understanding of the material (Angelo & Cross,
1993). Chapter Twenty-Eight examines CATs as
tools to assess student learning in progress, but several
of them are designed for the first day of class or the
day you introduce a new topic. The Background
Knowledge Probe, for example, is a diagnostic test
and a stimulus to recall previously learned material.
Focused Listing also activates students’ prior know-
ledge. And in a Self-Confidence Survey, students
assess how secure they feel about their cognitive and
learning skills or their mastery of a body of knowl-
edge, depending on how you design the survey. Such
an exercise enhances students’ self-awareness as learn-
ers along with giving you insight into their cognitive
and psychological preparation for your course.
Problem Posting
To whet students’ appetites for the material, one
particularly useful first-day activity is problem posting
(McKeachie, 2002). First, ask students to think
about and jot down either problems they expect to
encounter with the course or issues they think the
course should address. Then act as the facilitator,
recording student responses on the board, a slide, or
an overhead transparency. To build trust with your
class, avoid seeming judgmental, and check the accu-
racy of your understanding by restating the students’
comments and requesting their confirmation.
As the frequency of student suggestions begins
to decline, propose stopping. Make sure, however,
that the whole class has a chance to contribute, even
if you have to coax the quiet members. If some stu-
dents wish to speculate on how to address any of the
points listed, keep a close rein on the discussion so
that it does not stray too far afield. Tell students which
of their questions the course will address—this gives

50 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
them something to look forward to—but also be hon-
est about the ones it will not.
Problem posting is useful not only at the begin-
ning of the course, but also later when broaching a
particularly difficult topic. The exercise accomplishes
several purposes. First, it opens lines of communica-
tion between you and your students, as well as among
students. Second, it lends validity to their concerns
and assures them they’re not alone. Third, it reaffirms
that you are approachable and as capable of listening
as you are of talking. Finally, it encourages students
to devise solutions to problems themselves, reducing
their reliance on you for the definitive answers.
Commonsense Inventory
Another way to break students into the subject
matter, as well as help them grasp its relevance, is to
have them respond to a brief inventory or pretest
(Nilson, 1981). Assemble five to fifteen common-
sense statements directly related to the course
material, some or all of which run counter to popular
beliefs or prejudices—for example: “Suicide is more
likely among women than men.” “Over half of all
marriages occur between persons who live within
twenty blocks of each other.” Then have students
individually mark each statement as true or false and
share their answers in pairs or small groups. You
can let your students debate their differences among
themselves, or you can thicken the plot by making
each pair or group reach a consensus around certain
statements. Have a spokesperson from each group
explain and defend its position. After these presen-
tations, you can give the correct answers, which
may spark even more debate, or take the cliff-hanger
approach and let the class wait for them to unfold
during the term.
DRAWING CLASS TO A CLOSE
At the end of this first class, you may want to ask stu-
dents to write down their reactions and hand them in
anonymously (McKeachie, 2002). Pose general ques-
tions such as: What is the most important thing you
learned during this first day? How did your expecta-
tions of this course change? What questions or con-
cerns do you still have about the course or the subject
matter? Such questions show your interest in students’
learning and their reactions to you and your course.
You should also give them plenty of time to ask you
questions in class.
Finally, and it’s worth repeating, do not dismiss
the first class early. If you conduct some of the ac-
tivities in this chapter, the time will be more than
adequately filled and productively spent. Not only
will your students enjoy an introduction to the course
and its subject matter, but they will also have a chance
to get acquainted with you and their classmates.

C H A P T E R 5
Motivating Your Students
I
n the context of education, the term motivating
means stimulating the desire to learn something.
When we in academe use the term, we’re usually
talking about stimulating students’ interest in the sub-
ject matter—in other words, intrinsic motivation. We
want to induce a genuine fascination with the subject,
a sense of its relevance and applicability to life and the
world, a sense of accomplishment (for its own sake)
in mastering it, and a sense of calling to it. But this is
only one type of motivation.
Extrinsic motivators are external to one’s feelings
about the subject matter, and we see them operating
in our students strongly enough to eclipse their
intrinsic motivation. Among the most powerful are
the expectations of significant others, such as parents,
spouses, employers, and teachers. Many of today’s
younger students pursue a major because of its
earning potential. For them, high achievement in
the form of top grades may mean entrance into
a professional or business school and ultimately a
high-paying occupation. Other students may care
about grades only so they can stay in school or have
someone else pay for it. A few just want to extend
their adolescence and put off adult responsibilities.
Returning students often have their eye on a pro-
motion or a favorable career change. In the 1960s,
some male students were motivated to excel at least
in part to stay out of the military during the Vietnam
War. To them, their lives depended on decent
grades.
While we can’t always affect extrinsic forces,
we can enhance our subject matter’s intrinsic appeal
to students, and intrinsic motivators are often more
potent than extrinsic ones (Hobson, 2002; Levin,
2001; Svinicki, 2004). We know that motivation isn’t
fixed, but it isn’t easily modified in the short term ei-
ther (Frymier, 1970). How can we enhance students’
intrinsic motivation? Most of us don’t feel very
successful at doing it. It seems that students come to
us either motivated or not, and they leave the same
way. Do we have to reduce their extrinsic drive for
good grades first? If we do, how can we? If we don’t,
why can’t we be more effective at getting students
engaged in our material?
51

52 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
In spite of a huge literature about motivation
in psychology and education psychology, we know
precious little about the topic. In the educational
context, we don’t seem to know how to manipulate
people’s values, attitudes, and belief systems very well,
at least not as well as politicians and advertisers seem
to know. Yet if it is true that when all is said and
done, learning is “an inside job,” motivating students
is our primary task.
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT
MOTIVATION IN LEARNING
The vast body of literature on the relationships
among intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and
student performance comes to no clear conclusions.
One stance claims that extrinsic rewards undercut
intrinsic motivation (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999;
Kohn, 1993), but some say only under certain
circumstances: not if the reward is positive feedback
and verbal reinforcement (Deci, 1971) and only if
the person was intrinsically motivated to begin with
(Svinicki, 2004). These findings have been used to ar-
gue against grading, but think about it: Does the fact
that you get paid for teaching make it less appealing to
you? Another contingent finds almost the opposite:
that extrinsic rewards have either no effect or an
enhancing one on intrinsic motivation (Cameron &
Pierce, 1994; Eisenberger & Cameron, 1996). Still
others say the two types of motivators have interactive
curvilinear effects on student performance, which is
optimized by moderate extrinsic motivation coupled
with high intrinsic motivation (Lin, McKeachie, &
Kim, 2001). Yet another position is that autonomy
of action trumps intrinsic-extrinsic distinctions
(Rigby, Deci, Patrick, & Ryan, 1992; Ryan & Deci,
2000). On the extreme end is the argument that
intrinsic motivation simply doesn’t exist (“Intrinsic
Motivation Doesn’t Exist, Researcher Says,” 2005).
A related body of research has addressed the impact
of performance goals. Performance-avoidance goals
(to avoid looking incompetent) clearly undermine
motivation, but the effects of performance-approach
goals (to look competent) on both motivation and
performance have been positive in some studies and
negative in others (Urdan, 2003).
Fortunately, a couple of studies have solicited
college students’ opinions of what makes them
want to learn, so we have a good idea of what
students think motivates them. Sass (1989) found
the critical factors to be the instructor’s enthusiasm
for the material and teaching it, the high relevance
of the material, the clear organization of the course,
the appropriateness of the difficulty level, active
learning strategies, variety in the instructor’s teaching
methods, the instructor’s rapport with the students,
and the use of appropriate examples. These are all
known to be highly effective in enhancing both
student learning and student ratings. More recently,
Hobson (2002) identified the most powerful positive
and negative motivators for students. In order of
descending importance, the former are the instruc-
tor’s positive attitudes and behaviors, a cohesive
course structure, a student’s prior interest in the
material, the relevance of the course content, and the
appropriateness of the performance measures. The
most potent demotivators are the instructor’s negative
attitudes and behaviors and a disorganized course
structure. Further down on the list are a poor learning
environment, boring or irrelevant course content,
and a student’s prior disinterest in the material.
To the extent students perceive themselves ac-
curately, these findings are good news. Although we
cannot control students’ attitudes about our material
before they come into our courses, we definitely have
control over our own attitudes and behavior and the
learning environment, and we usually determine the
course organization, course content, and assessment
measures.
CREDIBLE THEORIES
OF MOTIVATION
Before we explore concrete strategies for enhancing
students’ motivation, let’s consider the major theo-
ries that anchor these strategies. In everyday practice,

Motivating Your Students 53
these models work best when two or more are applied
together.
Behaviorism
Behaviorism posits two types of reinforcement as
powerful shapers of behavior. In the positive variety,
students get (are rewarded with) something they want
for their behavior, and in the negative type, they
avoid something they don’t want for the behavior.
Either way, the students are the acting agents, and
the reinforcement makes them more likely to repeat
the behavior. Punishment following a behavior will
tend to decrease that behavior’s likelihood in the
future, but with less effectiveness than reinforcement.
Again there are two types. In one type, students
get something they don’t want for their behavior,
and in the other, they are deprived of something
they do want for the behavior. The problem is that
punishment teaches students what not to do, but it
tells them nothing about what they should do.
While behaviorist theory is straightforward and
rings true, the key to applying it is determining what
students (and people in general) do and do not want.
All around the world, the educational system rests
on grades as the universal student currency, but even
they don’t always motivate and they certainly aren’t
sufficient. But this is not to say that were it not for
our institutional obligation to give grades, we should
abandon behaviorism in teaching.
In fact, Darby Lewes applies behaviorist princi-
ples very effectively in her English literature courses
at Lycoming College, a small, private liberal arts in-
stitution (Lewes & Stiklus, 2007), and her secret has
nothing to do with grades. At the beginning of every
course, she confronts her students’ natural aversion to
the subject matter—one rooted in their fear of fail-
ure, a fear they acquired over years of schooling. Until
we conquer this aversion, she contends, students will
not learn the material at a deep level no matter what
we do or don’t do. So early in the term she moti-
vates students to think about a piece of literature and
participate in class discussion about it by rewarding
each good-faith contribution with a quarter—yes, a
twenty-five-cent piece. Money is a more universal
currency than grades. A quarter isn’t much, and it’s
only a secondary reinforcer (of value only when ex-
changed), but it motivates her students to partake in
literature from the beginning, which is no mean feat.
Lewes doesn’t give out quarters willy-nilly all
term. First, she doesn’t always give one out for a
second contribution during a class, thereby inducing
the talkative students to hang back and the quiet
ones to speak out. Second, since the effect of pure
positive reinforcement weakens over time, she soon
replaces regular reinforcement with the selective
variety, rewarding only high-quality contributions
with a quarter. At this point, the reward provides
informational feedback about the relative strength of
varying responses, and by this time, she has overcome
students’ natural aversion to literature. In addition,
the delay students encounter in earning the next
quarter enhances their motivation to work harder and
develop their answers more fully. Third, she incorpo-
rates regularly scheduled negative reinforcers—in the
form of daily quizzes on the readings—to ensure her
students are keeping up. Finally, she reserves a jackpot
of a ten-dollar bill for extremely special occasions,
such as when especially resistant or fearful students
volunteer worthy responses. The prospect of earning
ten dollars has made Lewes legendary among students
at her college, and anyone who has ever observed
gambling knows how the possibility of a jackpot
positively reinforces behavior. But rather than risking
money, these students are learning.
Lewes’s approach may be controversial, but her
students respond well to it and give her teaching high
ratings. They acquire confidence and pride as they
learn. Many of them even acquire a taste for literature.
It’s hard to argue with this kind of success.
Goal Orientation
Students who work primarily for good grades have
what is called a performance goal orientation. They
aim to display higher competency than others and to
avoid making mistakes and “failing” in front of oth-
ers. Given the stakes, they tend to eschew risk taking.

54 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
For them, learning often exerts stress on their self-
esteem and induces insecurity. By contrast, students
who work out of a desire to learn have a learning
goal orientation. Because they don’t care about what
others may think of their performance, they willingly
take risks, make mistakes, and seek feedback so they
can improve. As instructors, we want to foster this
type of goal orientation because it engenders deeper
learning and retention of our material than does the
former (Dweck & Leggett, 1988).
Using this model, we can encourage learning
over performance goals by doing what we can to cre-
ate a safe and secure classroom environment, reduce
students’ stress over tests and assignments, deempha-
size grades and competition, allow alternate ways to
satisfy course requirements, reward risk taking and
persistence, and role model a learning goal orien-
tation (Svinicki, 2004). Specific ways to implement
these recommendations are under “Strategies for Mo-
tivating Students” below.
Relative Value of the Goal
This social cognitive model posits that the more value
students give to learning our material, relative to
meeting other needs in life, the more motivated they
will be to learn (Bandura, 1997). Therefore, we have
to create experiences in which their learning serves
important needs. In other words, we must add value
to their learning.
The purest value we add to our material is to
make it more stimulating, interesting, and emotion-
ally engaging—that is, more intrinsically motivating.
But we shouldn’t stop there. We can also enhance its
value by giving students some control and choice over
the course content, their learning strategies, and their
performance options. In addition, we can highlight
its practical utility to students, for now and in the
future. Going deeper into the human psyche, we can
position our material to meet some immediate psy-
chological needs, such as those for cognitive balance,
social affiliation and approval, and self-esteem. For
instance, we can help students put their learning to-
ward resolving inconsistencies in their beliefs, values,
and worldview. We can also make their learning
more of a social than an individual enterprise. Finally,
we can give students a taste of achievement by
encouraging them to tackle some genuine learning
challenges and rewarding them accordingly (Svinivki,
2004). Again, more specifics are in the section on
strategies later in this chapter.
Expectancy of Goal Achievement
Expectancy theory rests on a pragmatic premise: Why
aspire to achieve something you know you can’t get?
Students won’t even try to learn something that seems
impossibly difficult. To set and pursue a goal, students
need to believe they have the agency and the capabil-
ity. Agency depends on their sense of self-efficacy and
their beliefs about the malleability of intelligence and
locus of control. Students with low self-confidence,
the view that intelligence is fixed by heredity, or the
fatalist belief in an external locus of control have a
weak sense of agency and a low expectancy of goal
achievement. Capability depends on their perception
that the goal is reachable and that they have (or soon
will have) the skills, prior experience, and support to
reach it. Students feel capable when they view the
learning task as doable, given their abilities, academic
background, and resources: time, encouragement, as-
sistance, and so on (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000).
Although it can be hard to find the right
balance, we have to try to make our readings,
assignments, and tests just right—that is, neither too
long and hard nor too short and easy. But just as
important, we must foster our students’ beliefs that
they have the agency and capabilities to achieve. Too
many students sailed through the K–12 system and
never had to meet an academic challenge before
coming to college. While they may have high self-
esteem, they may have a weak sense of self-efficacy
at the college level. They may even sabotage their
own success by not studying in order to protect their
self-esteem since, if they do poorly, they can blame
their lack of studying rather than their lack of ability.
It is likely that such students also believe that they
can’t raise their intelligence.

Motivating Your Students 55
Other students don’t believe they have control
over their academic fate. In their experience, studying
and working hard seems to make little difference
in their grades. They feel they just get lucky when
they encounter readings they can understand, test
questions they can answer, and assignments they can
handle. In their view, most of the control resides in us.
Sometimes they get an instructor who likes them and
what they produce, but most instructors don’t. With
this belief system, students don’t perceive themselves
earning an A, a C, or an F; rather, they truly think
that we give them an A, a C, or an F. While it is true
that faculty grading criteria and standards may vary,
many of these students lack basic learning skills. They
don’t know how to focus their mind, read carefully,
take decent notes, think critically, study effectively,
and write clearly. Without these skills, they may fall
short—not on the agency but on the capability to
achieve an academic goal. To foster their success, we
need to refer them to the campus resources that can
help them learn how to learn and to communicate
(see the Appendix) and to do what we can to
help them.
Many other specific suggestions for enhancing
students’ sense of agency and capability, and therefore
their expectancy to achieve, are set out in the next
section.
STRATEGIES FOR MOTIVATING
STUDENTS
Happily, effective motivational techniques and effec-
tive teaching techniques greatly overlap. Of course,
by definition, more motivated students want to learn
more, so they achieve more. But it is also true that
better teaching generates more rewarding learning
experiences, which beget more motivation to learn.
It is not surprising, then, that you motivate students
using the same methods and formats that you do to
teach them effectively. To reach as many students as
possible, use as many of the following strategies as
you can (Biggs, 2003; Cashin, 1979; Ericksen, 1974;
Gigliotti & Fitzpatrick, 1977; Hobson, 2002; Levin,
2001; Marsh, 1984; Owens, 1972; Panitz, 1999;
Paulsen & Feldman, 1999; Sass, 1989; Svinicki, 2004;
Theall & Franklin, 1999; Watson & Stockert, 1987).
Your Persona
• Deliver your presentations with enthusiasm and
energy. Strive for vocal variety and constant eye
contact. Vary your speaking pace, and add dra-
matic pauses after major points. Gesture and move
around the class. Be expressive. To your students,
be they right or wrong, your dynamism signifies
your passion for the material and for teaching it.
As a display of your motivation, it motivates them
(see Chapters Seven and Twelve).
• Explain your reasons for being so interested in the
material, and make it relevant to your students’
concerns. Show how your field fits into the big
picture and how it contributes to society. In so
doing, you also become a role model for student
interest and involvement.
• Make the course personal. Find out your students’
birthdays, and when one comes along, put up a
slide with “Happy Birthday, !” on it. Email
students with your concern if they haven’t been in
class for a couple of days. Write students congrat-
ulatory letters when they do well on a test.
• Get to know your students. Ask them about their
majors, interests, and backgrounds. This infor-
mation will help you tailor the material to their
concerns, and your personal interest in them will
inspire their personal loyalty to you (see Chapter
Four).
• Foster good lines of communication in both dire-
ctions. Convey your expectations and assessments,
but also invite your students’ feedback in the form
of classroom assessment exercises (see Chapter
Twenty-Eight) and some form of midterm
evaluation (for example, your own questionnaire
or some type of class interview conducted by
your institution’s teaching center).
• Use humor where appropriate. A joke or hu-
morous anecdote lightens the mood and has the
synapse-building benefits of emotional intensity

56 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
(see Chapter One). Just be sensitive to context,
setting, and audience.
• Maintain classroom order and civility to earn your
students’ respect as well as to create a positive
learning environment (see Chapter Seven).
Your Course
• Design, structure, and develop your course with
care, and explain its organization and your ratio-
nale for it to your students (see Chapter Two).
• Allow students some voice in determining the
course content, policies, conduct rules, and assign-
ments. If they have input, they will feel more
invested and responsible for their learning.
• Build in readings and activities that will move stu-
dents beyond their simplistic dualistic beliefs about
your field (see Chapters One and Two). The con-
stricted, naive view of “learning” as memorizing
definitions and facts isn’t very motivating.
• Highlight the occupational potential of your sub-
ject matter. Inform students about the jobs and
careers that are available in your discipline, what
attractions they hold, and how your course pre-
pares students for these opportunities. Whenever
possible, link new knowledge to its usefulness in
some occupation.
• For numerous ways to motivate students to do
the readings on time, see Chapter Twenty-Three.
When students come prepared, you can fill class
time with engaging and intrinsically motivating
activities.
Your Teaching
• Explain to your class why you have chosen the
teaching methods, readings, assignments, in-class
activities, policies, and assessment strategies that
you are using.
• Help students realize that they can transfer skills
they have learned in other courses into yours and
vice versa.
• Make the material and learning activities mean-
ingful and worthwhile to students by connecting
them to their futures and the real world.
• Use examples, anecdotes, and realistic case studies
freely. Many students learn inductively, experien-
tially, and concretely.
• Use a variety of presentation methods to ac-
commodate various learning styles (see Chapter
Twenty-Five).
• Teach by inquiry when possible. Students find it
satisfying and intrinsically motivating to reason
through a problem and discover underlying
principles on their own (see Chapter Eighteen).
• Use a variety of student-active teaching formats
and methods, such as discussion, debates, press
conferences, symposia, role playing, simulations,
academic games, problem-based learning, the
case method, problem solving, writing exercises,
and so on—all covered in later chapters. These
activities directly engage students in the material
and give them opportunities to achieve a level of
mastery for achievement’s sake.
• Share strategies and tips for them to learn
your material, including reading, studying, and
thinking about it. Also teach students relevant
problem-solving strategies.
• Use cooperative learning formats. They are stud-
ent active and add the motivational factor of
positive social pressure. But be sure you set up and
manage the groups properly (see Chapter Sixteen).
• Bring the arts into your teaching to stir student
emotions. This is a standard culture-learning
strategy in the foreign languages, but it has far
broader application. In mathematics courses, you
can show the utility of concepts and equations in
visual design and musical composition. In history,
anthropology, literature, and comparative politics
courses, you can acquaint students with the art of
the age or place. If possible, you can have them
read native literature and listen to native music.
Such experiences give students an intuitive feel
for other times and places.
• Make the material accessible. Explain it in com-
mon language, avoiding jargon where possible.
• Hold students to high expectations. Refuse to ac-
cept shoddy work. Give it back to them ungraded

Motivating Your Students 57
and tell them they have to do the assignment again
at a high level of quality to get credit.
• Use Lewes’s progressive behaviorist method to
overcome your students’ aversion to the material
and reinforce their thoughtful contributions to
discussion.
Assignments and Tests
• Reinforce the idea that all students can improve
their cognitive and other abilities with practice and
are in control of their academic fates. In other
words, build up their sense of self-efficacy and
their belief in an internal locus of control.
• Provide many and varied opportunities for graded
assessment so that no single assessment counts too
much toward the final grade.
• Give students plenty of opportunity to practice
performing your learning outcomes before you
grade them on the quality of their performance.
• Sequence your learning outcomes and assessments
to foster student success.
• Give students practice tests.
• Provide review sheets that tell students what cog-
nitive operations they will have to perform with
key concepts on the tests. In other words, write
out the learning outcomes you will be testing
them on.
• While students must acquire some facts and termi-
nology to master the basics of any discipline, focus
your tests and assignments on their conceptual un-
derstanding and ability to apply the material, and
prepare them for the task accordingly. Facts are
only tools with which to construct broader con-
cepts and are thus means to a goal, not goals in
themselves.
• Set realistic performance goals, and help students
achieve them by encouraging them to set their
own reasonable goals. Striving to exceed a per-
sonal best is a mighty motivator.
• Design assignments that are appropriately chal-
lenging given the experience and aptitude of the
class. Those that are either too easy or stressfully
difficult are counterproductive.
• Assess students on how well they achieve the
learning outcomes you set for them, and remind
them that this is what you are doing.
• Allow students options for demonstrating their
learning, such as choices in projects and other
major assignments.
• Design authentic assignments and activities—those
that give students practice in their future occupa-
tional and citizenship activities.
• Give assignments that have students reflect on their
progress. For example, have students write a learn-
ing analysis of their first test in which they appraise
how they studied and how they can improve their
studying.
• Evaluate work by an explicit rubric (a specific set
of criteria with descriptions of performance stan-
dards) that students can study and ask questions
about before they tackle an assignment.
• Place appropriate emphasis on testing and grading.
Make tests fair, which means consonant with your
learning outcomes, topical emphases, and previous
quizzes and assignments. Tests should be a means
of showing students what they have mastered, not
what they haven’t.
• Give students prompt and constant feedback
on their performance, as well as early feedback on
stages and drafts of major assignments.
• Accentuate the positive in grading. Be free with
praise and constructive in criticism and suggestions
for improvement. Acknowledge improvements
made. Confine negative comments to the parti-
cular performance, not the performer.
• Let students assess themselves. Of course, you must
teach them how to do this first.
• Show your students instances of peers who have
succeeded.
• Reduce the stress level of tests by lowering the
stakes—for example: Test early and often. Drop
the lowest quiz or test score. Let students write
explanations for their multiple-choice and true-
false item answers. Provide chances for them to
earn back some of their lost points.

58 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
• Use criterion-referenced grading instead of
norm-referenced grading (see Chapter Thirty-
One). The former system allows all the students
in a class to get high grades.
• Use contract grading for some of your assign-
ments or your entire course. Contract grading (or
contract learning) means assigning grades ac-
cording to how well students fulfill certain work
requirements (as specified in the syllabus or an
appendix to it)—not according to what grade
they aspire to earn. To get higher grades, they
have to successfully complete either more work
that shows evidence of more learning or more
challenging work that shows evidence of more
advanced learning. Under these conditions, stu-
dents are often more motivated to learn because
they have a greater sense of choice of assignments,
self-determination, and responsibility for their
grade, as well as less fear about creative risk taking
and grade anxiety (see Chapter Thirty-One).
• Give extra credit or bonus points (or the chance to
earn back lost points) only for work that depends
on students’ having done their regular assigned
work. For example, Golding (2008) increased her
class attendance and on-time homework turn-ins
by giving students bonus problems to work on at
the beginning of class in exchange for their as-
signed homework problems.
EQUITY IN THE CLASSROOM
Equity and its opposite have a powerful impact on
student motivation, and thus achievement. Not that
instructors purposely show favoritism, but research
documents that some have, however unconsciously.
K–12 teachers have sometimes praised (or at least
have failed to punish) boys for being aggressive but
have discouraged girls from acting similarly. Many
college instructors have expressed this same bias by
allowing males more time to respond to discussion
questions and giving disproportionate approval to
males’ marginal answers. Females, as well as minority
and disabled students, have been more likely to be
ignored or interrupted and their correct answers
merely accepted (Hall & Sandler, 1982; Krupnick,
1985; Sadker & Sadker, 1992).
No doubt classrooms have become more equi-
table over recent years. But this progress began as
instructors became aware of the unconscious dynam-
ics just described. The following guidelines translate
this awareness into behavior (Guo & Jamal, 2007;
Jones, 2004; Toombs & Tierney, 1992):
• Create a safe climate for the expression of different
points of view. Set ground rules for civil discussion
in class, and intervene if any students act disre-
spectfully to others (see Chapter Seven).
• Give attention to all students as equally as possible.
After asking a question, lengthen your wait time
by ten to fifteen seconds to allow more students
to mentally prepare their responses before you
call on anyone. This will help you broaden
participation.
• Praise students equally for equal-quality responses.
• Use nonstereotypical examples in presentations. If
you use a female in an example, make her a sci-
entist, an accountant, or a surgeon rather than a
nurse, a teacher, or a secretary.
• When possible, integrate course content that in-
cludes the contributions and perspectives of both
genders and all cultural, ethnic, and racial groups
that may be represented in your classes.
• Use gender-neutral language. Try to avoid using
the pronouns he and him exclusively when dis-
cussing people in general.
• Use pedagogical strategies that appeal to multiple
learning styles (see Chapter Twenty-Five). When
possible, allow students to choose the mode in
which you will assess their learning (paper, poster,
Web page, video, oral presentation, art form, con-
cept or mind map, and so on).
• Resist falling into reverse discrimination. Do not
give inordinate attention to minority and disabled
students, as this may appear to reflect your expec-
tation of their failure.
• Discretely ask your students with disabilities and
non-English-speaking backgrounds whether you

Motivating Your Students 59
can do something in class to make their life easier,
such as facing the class when you are talking.
• Be sensitive to difficulties your students may have
in understanding you. International, English as a
Second Language, and hearing-impaired students
may have trouble with idiomatic expressions and
accents. Ask such students privately if they do, and
urge them to watch your lips and to request clari-
fication.
The “Inclusive Instructing” section in Chapter
One and all of Chapter Thirteen on discussion offer
many more suggestions for ensuring equity in the
classroom. Equity is really about increasing and broad-
ening student participation, not only in discussion but
in higher education and beyond. In fact, it is a by-
product of the best practices in teaching, so just about
every chapter in this book provides recommendations
that, at least indirectly, enhance equity.

P A R T 2
MANAGING YOUR
COURSES

C H A P T E R 6
Copyright Guidelines for Instructors
A
s you prepare to teach a course—classroom,
online, or hybrid—you will likely bump into
the issue of copyright. No doubt you will
want to assign, play, or show works of other peo-
ple beyond the required books, CDs, and DVDs you
expect your students to buy.
If so, you have just entered the through-the-
looking-glass world of “fair use,” “educational pur-
poses,” and other such Cheshire categories that make
most of us instructors think twice before we press the
start button on a copying machine or even consider
showing a videotape in class. This is the unwieldy
wonderland in which the only legally correct answer
to your simplest query may be “probably,” “unlikely,”
and “it depends on the specific case.” For example,
Q: Is a classroom a public place? (This issue may af-
fect the legality of showing a videotape in class.) A:
Experts disagree and the courts have not yet settled
the issue.
In the absence of simple, clear rules of thumb, it
is little wonder that we tend to pick up copyright law
by word of mouth—and wind up swapping myths
and misconceptions. The legal ambiguities only feed
our fears of what might happen to us if we were actu-
ally caught by the copyright enforcers (whoever they
may be) violating their rules, even unknowingly.
The laws, guidelines, and enforcement policies
are not well publicized in the academic world and
may surprise you. Many of them are highly technical,
make questionable sense, and are frankly difficult to
absorb and remember. Those governing newer tech-
nologies also change as lawsuits are resolved and the
U.S. Copyright Office issues new regulations and ex-
emptions, some of which have expiration dates.
All of the legal information in this chapter
comes ultimately from Title 17 of the United States
Code, which includes the Copyright Act of 1976
and its subsequent amendments—literally dozens
of them. The Conference on Fair Use (CONFU,
1995–1997), the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
of 1998 (DMCA, one of the amendments to the
1976 law), and the Technology Harmonization and
Education Act of 2002 (TEACH Act, another such
amendment) set the guidelines for multimedia use
63

64 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
and online and distance learning, some of which
have an ambiguous legal status. I focus on the fair use
exemptions that are granted for educational purposes.
Laws, statutes, and guidelines are written to
obfuscate, so credit is due those who interpreted
them and served as invaluable factual sources for this
chapter: Brinson and Radcliffe (1996), Davidson
(2008), Emett and New (1997), Foster (2008a),
Harper (2001), Jordan (1996), Nemire (2007), and
Orlans (1999).
WHERE COPYRIGHT DOES
AND DOES NOT APPLY
Copyright law does not protect facts, ideas, discover-
ies, inventions, words, phrases, symbols, designs that
identify a source of goods, and some U.S. govern-
ment publications (you must check on each one).
This doesn’t mean we don’t cite the sources of our
facts, other people’s ideas, and certain key phrases, for
example. We just need not ask permission or pur-
chase a license to use them. Many inventions are pro-
tected by patent law, yet another realm of intellectual
property.
Copyright law does protect creative works,
whether literary (fiction and nonfiction), musical
(including lyrics), dramatic (including accompanying
music), choreographic, sculptural, pictorial, graphic,
architectural, audiovisual (including motion pictures),
and sound recorded.
COMMON COPYRIGHT
MISCONCEPTIONS
Let me dispel some popular misconceptions. First,
giving credit to the author of a work is not a way
around or substitute for copyright law compliance.
All a citation exempts you from is plagiarism. Second,
the absence of a copyright notice does not mean
the work is not protected. While most works have
a notice, those published on or after March 1, 1989,
are protected even without one. Third, changing
someone else’s copyrighted work here and there will
not make it legally yours. In fact, such action may
make you doubly liable: for infringement of copying
right and of the copyright holder’s modification right.
Finally, flattering or showcasing a work is not
likely to allay the copyright owner’s objections to your
free use of the work. This is especially true of multi-
media works; their producers view licenses as a new
source of income. Freelance writers, music publishers,
and musical performers have successfully sued major
companies like the New York Times for the unau-
thorized publication or distribution of their work on
online computer services.
FREE USE: FAIR USE, FACTS, AND
PUBLIC DOMAIN
“Free use” means no license or written permission
from the copyright holder is required to copy, dis-
tribute, or electronically disseminate the work. How-
ever, whether a given case qualifies depends on three
rather gray criteria: (1) your use is “fair use,” (2) the
material you wish to use is factual or an idea, and (3)
the work you wish to use is in the public domain.
In general, fair use means use for noncommer-
cial purposes and specifically for purposes of teaching,
scholarship, research, criticism, comment, parody, and
news reporting. The courts are most likely to find fair
use where the copied work is a factual as opposed to a
creative work. However, no legal guidelines are avail-
able to distinguish factual material or an idea from
something else; determinations are made on a case-
by-case basis. Another consideration is whether the
new work poses market or readership competition for
the copyrighted work.
The amount and the significance of the pro-
tected work used also figures into the determination
of fair use. Use of a tiny amount of the work should
not raise concerns unless it is substantial in terms of
importance—such as the heart of the copied work.

Copyright Guidelines for Instructors 65
For instance, a magazine article that used 300
words from a 200,000-word autobiography written
by President Gerald Ford was found to infringe
the copyright on the autobiography. Even though
the copied material was only a small part of the
autobiography, it included some of the most powerful
passages in the work.
Public domain is a clearer legal concept but
is sometimes redefined. If published in the United
States, a work is now in the public domain if (1)
it was published on or before 1923, (2) ninety-five
years have elapsed since its publication date if it was
published between 1923 and 1977, or (3) seventy
years have elapsed since the author’s death if it
was published after 1977. However, if a work was
published between 1923 and 1963 and the copyright
owner did not renew the copyright after the twenty-
eight-year term that once applied, the work has come
into public domain. Corporate works published after
1977 enter the public domain ninety-five years after
publication.
The fair use exemption does not permit
unlimited copying and distribution. The “privilege”
is highly restricted by “guidelines” with legal force,
though they are often ambiguous and arcane, and
they do not cover all situations. They were negotiated
among educators, authors, and publishers. Of course,
no copyright exemption excuses you from citing and
crediting your sources.
PRINTED TEXT
While you may find it restrictive, print media is the
realm that most liberally allows fair use. It is, of course,
the oldest realm.
Single Copying
As an instructor, you may make single copies, in-
cluding a transparency or slide, of the following for
teaching purposes without obtaining prior permis-
sion: a chapter of a book; an article from a periodical
or newspaper; a short story, essay, or poem; a dia-
gram, graph, chart, drawing, cartoon, or picture from
a book, periodical, or newspaper.
Multiple Copying
You may make multiple copies—specifically, one
copy per student in a course—without first obtaining
permission if the work meets the criteria of brevity,
spontaneity, and cumulative effect and if each copy
contains a copyright notice.
The guidelines define the “brevity” criterion in
this way: (1) an entire poem printed on no more than
two pages or an excerpt from a longer poem, not to
exceed 250 words copied in either case; (2) an entire
article, story, or essay of fewer than 2,500 words or
an excerpt of fewer than 1,000 words or less than 10
percent of the work, whichever is less, but in either
event, a minimum of 500 words to be copied; or (3)
one chart, graph, diagram, drawing, cartoon, or pic-
ture per book or periodical issue. Multiple copying
meets the “spontaneity” criterion when you do not
have a reasonable length of time to request and re-
ceive permission to copy. What a “reasonable length
of time” may be is not specified.
The “cumulative effect” is considered accept-
ably small (permission not required) when your copy-
ing is for only one course, and you do not make
multiple copies in more than nine instances per term
per course. Furthermore, you may not make multiple
copies of more than one short poem, article, story,
essay, or two excerpts from the same author or more
than three from the same collective work or periodical
volume in one term.
If you want to copy and distribute entire or mul-
tiple works that in any way violate the rules above,
you must first obtain permission.
Copying Short Works
Short works such as children’s books are often fewer
than 2,500 words, and you may not copy them as a
whole. All you may reproduce without permission
is an excerpt of no more than two published pages

66 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
containing not more than 10 percent of the total
words in the text.
Additional ‘‘Privileges’’ and Prohibitions
You are allowed to incorporate text into your mul-
timedia teaching presentations, as can your students
into their multimedia projects.
Notwithstanding the guidelines above, your in-
tentions and the specific work also come into play.
You may not make copies under these conditions to
create, replace, or substitute for anthologies, compila-
tions, or collective works; substitute for replacement
or purchase of “consumable” works such as work-
books, exercises, standardized tests, or answer sheets
or of the same item term after term; or if you charge
students beyond the copying cost or on direction of
a higher authority. In addition, you may make copies
for your students in only nine instances per term.
Course Packets
You must limit the materials to single chapters, single
articles from a journal issue, and small parts of a work,
such as several illustrations, charts, or graphs. Those
who sell the packets must put copyright notices on
the originals you provide and limit sales to students
enrolled in the course for that term. These packets
are being replaced by course management systems and
electronic reserves, which are governed by somewhat
different rules (see below).
VISUAL MATERIALS
The guidelines in this section apply only to pho-
tographs and illustrations not in the public domain,
which never require permission to use. However,
if the one you want to use is part of a copyrighted
collection, you should obtain permission for use
from the copyright holder. Go to www.mpa.org or
www.loc.gov to check.
You may use entire single images but no more
than five by a single artist or photographer. If you
are taking images from a collection, you may use no
more than fifteen images or 10 percent of those in the
collection, whichever is fewer.
If an image is not designated for sale or license,
you may digitize and use it if you obtain prior per-
mission and limit access (password-protect) to enrolled
students and other instructors of the course. Further-
more, your students may download, print out, and
transmit it for personal academic use, including course
assignments and portfolios, for up to two years. You
may also use the image at a professional conference.
An alternative to obtaining permission to show
copyrighted visual materials is to take and display
photographs of them. This option is legal for fair use
as long as the quality of the photographic reproduc-
tions is lower than that of commercial reproductions,
such as professionally produced slides and prints—in
other words, as long as the amateur photographs can’t
compete in the same market (University of Minnesota
Libraries, 2007).
Academic art librarians know where to locate
specific pictorial, graphic, artistic, and architectural
works and what the restrictions for their use may be.
The library may already have permission or a license
to display certain works. You can find unrestricted fair
use materials (no permission required) at the Creative
Commons (www.creativecommons.org).
IN-CLASS PERFORMANCES
Assuming your institution is accredited, you and your
students can freely show videos, play music, recite po-
etry, read and perform plays, and project slides in a
classroom setting. You can show websites or videos
off the Web in a live class. None of these actions re-
quires permission. Copying sheet music, however, is
restricted to out-of-print music and performances “in
an emergency.”
You can also play, without prior permission, a
DVD, videotape, or musical CD (or excerpts from
it) in class that you have legally bought or rented.
But here is the murky part: if a videotape or DVD
carries the warning “For Home Use Only,” the

Copyright Guidelines for Instructors 67
law is unclear on whether you may show it in your
classroom. If the classroom is considered a “public
place,” you may not, but the courts have not resolved
this issue. Legal experts reason that you probably can
because instructors are clearly permitted to display
or perform works in face-to-face teaching situations.
Of course, you may show any rented videotape or
DVD that has been cleared for public presentation
as long as it serves a purely instructional objective.
Even the hint of entertainment purposes, such as the
presence of nonstudents in the classroom, can raise a
legal flag.
Movie studios have built the home video and
DVD industry into a multibillion-dollar business,
in part by strictly enforcing the distinction between
instruction and entertainment. To illustrate, in 1996
the Motion Picture Licensing Corporation, a Los
Angeles copyright policing agency representing the
studios, sent threatening letters to fifty thousand day
care centers across the nation. The letters demanded
up to $325 per year for what they termed “a
public-performance video license” for showing
children’s videos (for example, Pooh and Scrooge) to
their “public” of toddlers. Apparently Hollywood
does not regard its standard products as educational
and therefore exempt from licensing fees under the
fair use (Bourland, 1996).
The rules are also ambiguous about whether you
can record a television program off-the-air at home
and then show it in class. If it is a commercial pro-
gram, some experts consider this illegal, while others
recommend that you demonstrate compliance with
the spirit of the law by following the guidelines for
campus media units in the next section.
RECORDING BROADCAST
PROGRAMMING
The guidelines given here specify what educational
institutions (campus media units) can record off-the-
air for educational purposes without obtaining a per-
mission or license from the copyright holder.
Broadcast Programming (Major National
and Local Stations)
These guidelines apply only to off-the-air recording
by nonprofit educational institutions, which are re-
sponsible for ensuring compliance:
• DVDs or videotapes may be kept for only forty-
five calendar days after the recording date. After
this time, they must be erased.
• The recording may be shown to students only
during the first ten class days after the recording
date and may be repeated only once for reinforce-
ment.
• Off-the-air recordings may be made only at the
request of an individual instructor and not in an-
ticipation of an instructor’s request. The same in-
structor can request that the program be recorded
only once.
• Duplicate copies may be made if several instructors
request the recording of the same program.
• After the first ten classes allowed for showing, the
recording may be used only for evaluation, such as
for a test.
• Off-the-air recordings may not be edited or com-
bined with other recordings to create a new work
or an anthology.
• All videotapes, including copies, must contain a
copyright notice when broadcast.
Public Television
The Public Broadcasting Service, the Public Tele-
vision Library, the Great Plains National Instruc-
tional Television Library, and the Agency for Ins-
tructional Television have somewhat less restric-
tive rules for off-the-air recording for educational
purposes:
• Recordings may be made by instructors or stu-
dents in accredited, nonprofit educational institu-
tions.
• Recordings may be used only for instruction in a
classroom, lab, or auditorium but are not restricted
to one classroom or one instructor.

68 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
• The use of recordings is restricted to one institu-
tion and may not be shared outside it.
• Length of allowed retention varies.
Cable Channel Programs
Cable channels require you to ask permission to show
any of their programming, even for fair use purposes,
but instructors may be allowed to keep their record-
ings for much longer. The rules vary by program.
ONLINE/ELECTRONIC MATERIALS
AND DISTANCE LEARNING
Course management systems and electronic reserves
have pretty much replaced course packets and hard
copy library reserves, and millions of courses are de-
livered in part or entirely online. As with print, online
content must be accessible only to the students en-
rolled in the class and only for that term. But because
these materials are digitized, the fair use laws govern-
ing them are somewhat different, often murky, and
more restrictive than those governing course packets.
For starters, the readings on e-reserve should not
comprise more than a small amount of all the assigned
reading for the course. As specified in the Digital Mil-
lennium Copyright Act of 1998, copyright-protected
digital materials also include a wide range of content
you might not expect: print and electronic books,
analog and digital musical recordings, websites, works
embedded in websites, print and email messages and
attachments, and possibly even databases. In addition,
the Technology Harmonization and Education Act of
2002 requires instructors to add a legal notice in your
syllabus that online materials “may” be copyright
protected.
Most legal and library authorities argue that you
or your institution’s library must obtain permission
to post any copyrighted digital course content, even
when it is available elsewhere on the Internet, is being
used in a course for the first time, or is supplemental,
unless you get your general counsel’s approval to skip
obtaining permission. In fact, some university lawyers
contend that fair use protection makes permissions
unnecessary (Foster, 2008a). Libraries, however, tend
to err on the conservative side and routinely obtain
permissions.
Probably your easiest alternative is providing
your class with links to materials that are already
available online through your institution’s library,
which already has a license or permission to make the
materials available. But what if you want to link to
sites not in your library? Here again the law is cloudy.
Some say you “may” need the permission of the
website owner, and others claim you don’t. Another
safe bet is to use vendor-provided digital content that
is sold along with many textbooks (course cartridges,
CDs, DVDs). Because the cost includes the copyright
license, no restrictions apply to its use.
The legal area surrounding copyright and fair
use of electronic materials is the most volatile as well
as the most restrictive. Recall that in the traditional
face-to-face classroom, you and your students can lis-
ten to music, read poems aloud, perform plays, display
slides, or play excerpts from a DVD, all without prior
permission, as long as the purpose is educational. Be-
tween 1997 and 2002, you and your students could
not do any of these things electronically under fair use
protection. The CONFU guidelines required you to
obtain a license. Finally, Congress closed this odd le-
gal gap in mid-2002 when it passed the TEACH Act
without debate (after the bill languished for an entire
year in the House Judiciary Committee). As the rules
stand now, you may without prior permission down-
load images from the Internet for your teaching, and
students may do so for their projects. You may do the
same for sound and video files, but they are subject
to severe length limitations: videos to three minutes
or 10 percent, whichever is shorter, and music to
10 percent of the composition, up to a maximum of
thirty seconds. The same length limits apply if you or
your students take excerpts from a lawfully purchased
or rented videotape, DVD, or CD. Permission is re-
quired only when you or a student wants to exceed
these length limits or to post or repost any of the files
online.

Copyright Guidelines for Instructors 69
Don’t even think about trying to get permission
to put an entire commercially produced motion pic-
ture or musical CD on electronic reserve or online.
This would require a very costly license.
Electronic copyright law is unsettled, ambigu-
ous, and subject to challenge from both commercial
and educational interests. So stay tuned to the news
media, especially the Chronicle of Higher Education and
the websites listed at the end of this chapter, to keep
abreast of the latest legal developments and clarifica-
tions. Another good idea is to make materials available
in ways that avoid potential trouble. For example, re-
fer your students to URLs rather than incorporating
Internet-based text, images, and performances into
your online course materials. Also make the most of
any vendor-provided digital content that may accom-
pany your textbooks.
OBTAINING PERMISSION
OR A LICENSE
Perhaps you wish to reproduce, display, or play a work
or a portion of a work that exceeds the length limits
or otherwise violates the guidelines just discussed. Or
perhaps your campus library or copy center cannot
obtain the necessary permissions or licenses in time
for you or your students to use the work. You and
your students may follow these procedures to obtain
them on your own.
Request in writing (email is okay) the permis-
sion of the copyright holder (which is not necessarily
the author or creator) to reprint, display, or post on-
line, identifying the exact portion of the work, the
number of copies you wish to make and distribute
or the planned location on the Internet, the expected
readership or viewership, and the purpose or planned
use of the work (for example, instruction in a given
course for a specific term at a given institution). A
permission granted for classroom use applies only to
one course during one term. Or you can contact the
Copyright Clearance Center at www.copyright.com.
It offers an electronic service that usually obtains your
permission in a day or two.
Or you can request a license of the copyright
holder in writing, giving the same precise information
as above. Licenses are often required to show a work
or portion of a work or to include some nontrivial
portion of it in your own scholarship or multimedia
production. Licenses always entail fees, but they may
be negotiable.
HOW COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS
ARE ACTUALLY HANDLED
So what if you forgot to put a long, important journal
article on e-reserve, and you decide to make copies of
the whole thing and hand them out to your students
in class? What penalties might you face?
The laws state that you face a judgment of up
to $100,000 for each willful infringement, and igno-
rance of the law won’t get you off. What may get you
off is a convincing argument that you were acting in
good faith, believing on reasonable grounds that your
case qualified as fair use. Your institution will probably
defend you if you follow its fair use policies.
However, the law doesn’t always operate by the
law. In the educational arena, institutions, not indi-
viduals, are usually sued, and very few of these have
been over the past several decades. Obviously colleges,
universities, school systems, and private K–12 schools
have much deeper pockets than their teaching staff.
So copyright enforcers send them threatening letters
every once in a while to remind them of the law
and potential penalties. Sometimes a threat is based
on a tip that violations have occurred. (Some en-
forcement agencies maintain tip hotlines.) But even
in this case, the designated agent-for-service receives
not a summons but a cease-and-desist order. Educa-
tional institutions have generally induced its violators
to cease and desist immediately and have avoided fur-
ther legal action.
Historically, the most aggressive copyright en-
forcer has been the Software Publishers Association,
which patrols software pirating (installation or repro-
duction without site licenses), and even it confines

70 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
its efforts to organizations and stays out of people’s
at-home offices.
Corporations, which can rarely claim fair use
protection, have never enjoyed such gentle treatment.
But then they have the most to gain financially by
copyright violations. The copyright cops have en-
sured that they also have the most to lose. So be
aware that publishing houses, which are corporations
no matter how academic they may be, interpret fair
use very conservatively (Orlans, 1999).
FOR FURTHER AND FUTURE
REFERENCE
These resources provide further detail on copyright
protections, restrictions, and exemptions, as well as
the latest changes in the laws and guidelines. All web-
sites were retrieved November 18, 2009:
U.S. Copyright Office: www.copyright.gov; Ad-
dress: 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, DC
20559–6000; Public information phone services, 8:30
a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through
Friday: (202) 707-3000, (202) 707-5959. Circulars
and forms are available free at www.copyright
.gov/circs.
Copyright Website LLC: www.benedict.com.
Copyright Clearance Center Campus Guide to
Copyright Compliance for Academic Institutions:
www.copyright.com/Services/copyrightoncampus.
Indiana University Information Policy Office: http://
copyright.iu.edu/about.
Cornell University Copyright Information Center:
www.copyright.cornell.edu/resources.
Hall Davidson Copyright Resources: www
.halldavidson.com/downloads.html#anchor923173.
University of Minnesota Libraries Copyright Infor-
mation and Education: www.lib.umn.edu/copyright.
University of Texas System Crash Course in Copy-
right: www.utsystem.edu/OGC/intellectualproperty
/cprtindx.htm.

C H A P T E R 7
Preventing and Responding to
Classroom Incivility
C
lassroom incivility has become a national and
even international problem in higher edu-
cation. The topic includes preventing and
sanctioning disciplinary problems and maintaining
a controlled, orderly environment that is conducive
to learning. Knowing preventive measures and con-
structive responses to disruption can greatly enhance
your relationship with your students because even
minor incivilities can mar the atmosphere, break your
concentration, and really get under your skin. And
losing your temper is not an option. How effectively
you control your classes may even affect your life in
general. Boice (2000) found this ability to be the
best single predictor of junior faculty persistence and
success in an academic career.
WHAT IS INCIVILITY?
Students surveyed at Wright State University cited six
common classroom behaviors that they found annoy-
ing (Ballantine & Risacher, 1993):
1. Talking in class
2. Noisily packing up early
3. Arriving late and leaving early
4. Cheating
5. Wasting class time—a general category spanning
being unprepared for class, dominating discussion,
repeating questions, and asking for a review of the
last class meeting
6. Showing general disrespect and poor manners to-
ward the instructor and other students
Instructors surveyed at Indiana University,
Bloomington, also identified these student behaviors
as unacceptable (Royce, 2000):
7. Eating in class
8. Acting bored or apathetic
9. Making disapproving groans
10. Making sarcastic remarks or gestures
11. Sleeping in class
12. Not paying attention
13. Not answering a direct question
14. Using a computer in class for nonclass purposes
71

72 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
15. Letting cell phones and pagers go off in class
16. Cutting class
17. Dominating discussion
18. Demanding makeup exams, extensions, grade
changes, or special favors
19. Taunting or belittling other students
20. Challenging the instructor’s knowledge or cred-
ibility in class
21. Making harassing, hostile, or vulgar comments
to the instructor in class
22. Making harassing, hostile, or vulgar comments
or physical gestures to the instructor outside class
23. Sending the instructor inappropriate emails
24. Making threats of physical harm to the
instructor.
While the most extreme forms of incivility are
rather rare, the Indiana University faculty reported
that all the other behaviors listed above occurred at
least “sometimes” in their classes (Royce, 2000).
We can always add a few, such as talking on a cell
phone, listening to music, coming to class in pajamas
or beachwear, putting on makeup, reading a newspa-
per or magazine, chewing and popping gum loudly,
doing work for another class, refusing to participate,
acting entitled, coming on sexually to the instructor
or another student, and leaving trash in the classroom.
But none of the above compares with the ultimate in-
civility we’ve been seeing with increasing frequency:
faculty being murdered in cold blood. Whether ma-
jor or minor, these students behaviors were almost
unheard of up through the mid-1980s.
WHY THE INCREASE?
Over the past four decades, the academy has changed
in many ways that have no doubt exacerbated behav-
ioral and disciplinary problems. Increasing diversity
has brought in many students who don’t share tradi-
tional academic values, norms, and communication
styles. The student-instructor chasm has also widened
as faculty have become older and increasingly special-
ized. In addition, as universities have grown in size,
they have become more transient and impersonal,
generating an atmosphere of distrust and indifference
(Baldwin, 1997–1998; Leatherman, 1996).
Other changes have contributed as well. Col-
leges and universities have been working harder than
ever before to retain students, so they now sanction
only the most seriously offensive behaviors. Unfor-
tunately, the same is true in the K–12 system, which
does little to enforce discipline or nurture a love of
learning. In addition, the factors that are associated
with classroom incivility have become more common
in the academy: large classes and instructors who are
young, female, and low status—adjuncts, lecturers,
and TAs (Royce, 2000). Large classes taught by
low-status instructors are also often required courses,
which breed incivility as well.
Kristensen (2007) offers a list of other reasons
collected from several sources: the “dumbing down”
of K–12 education, indifferent or indulgent parent-
ing, dysfunctional families, students living at home
and not maturing, media violence, upward mobility
pressures in a weak economy, students’ indifference
to learning, their sense of entitlement, and their con-
sumer attitude.
This last reason deserves some elaboration
because it has two facets. The first is students’ view
of higher education as a high-priced commodity that
they or their parents are purchasing. This attitude
feeds into their feelings of entitlement to good
grades; after all, they think, they bought them. The
second facet is students’ regard for faculty. From
the consumers’ point of view, instructors are just
well-educated service workers who are supposed to
cater to students (Rice, Sorcinelli, & Austin, 2000).
In fact, despite their education, instructors aren’t very
well-paid service workers either. No doubt the high
valuation that the millennial generation places on a
lucrative career and material possessions also lowers
its respect for faculty and for education.
Then again, the entire American culture has
lost trust in and respect for authority in general. Too
many business, religious, and political leaders have
proven themselves to be dishonest, greedy, immoral,
and indifferent to the interests of their customers,

Preventing and Responding to Classroom Incivility 73
congregations, and constituencies. Moreover, they
have profited from their lack of integrity and corrupt
behavior. So while the public has grown cynical of
authority, some sectors, including many students, still
view these leaders as role models and believe that
corruption, dishonesty, and greed help people get
ahead. Therefore, this book devotes all of Chapter
Eight to preserving academic honesty.
Another change in the culture has been in-
creasing informality in most forms of self-expression,
including dress, language, and behavior. This trend
is evident in churches, restaurants, stores, offices,
airports, and schools, as well as artistic reflections
of the culture, such as popular music, television,
and movies. A few decades ago, public and private
schools at all levels enforced strict dress codes for both
students and teachers. Similarly, offices permitted
only business suits, dresses, and skirts and blouses, all
with dress shoes. People expected and encouraged
displaying a sense of propriety in behavior much
more than they do today.
Of course, that was then, and this is now. The
rest of this chapter suggests strategies for minimizing
and responding to specific types of incivilities in and
out of the classroom. Of course, prevention is the pre-
ferred outcome, but this behavior is not always in your
control. So acceptable ways to stop the behaviors are
also covered. Unfortunately, none of these strategies
are absolutely foolproof given the unpredictability of
human behavior. Still, your well-considered efforts at
both prevention and response are likely to inspire the
respect of the vast majority of your students, as they
too are bothered by their peers’ annoying behaviors
and expect you to quell such distractions (Ballantine
& Risacher, 1993; Young, 2003).
PREVENTING INCIVILITY: YOUR
CLASSROOM PERSONA
What kind of personality do you project in the class-
room? Is it at all weak, timid, and self-effacing? Is
it innocent and naive about students’ instrumental-
ist attitudes toward education and their efforts to cut
corners and do minimal work for their grades? Is
it laid back, anything-goes, and permissive? If you
are a mature female, do you convey a sweet mater-
nal image, specifically one of a protective and overly
nurturing pushover who will show endless mercy to-
ward irresponsible student behavior? Or perhaps you
project quite the opposite—that of a cold, distant,
condescending professor, possibly with a cynical atti-
tude, a sarcastic sense of humor, an uncaring heart, or
a mean, critical streak? (Remember that students are
very sensitive and prone to overinterpret small slights.)
If your students perceive you as any of these types, you
are likely to encounter a disproportionate amount of
classroom incivility. In the first four cases, many stu-
dents will feel free to take advantage of your apparent
vulnerability or tolerance and will walk all over you.
In the last case, they will feel justified in returning
your seemingly “bad attitude” in kind.
Your students will see you as having one
persona or another, whether you put any energy into
constructing one or not. This is a good part of the
performance dimension of teaching (Carroll, 2003b).
So why not consciously project a persona that will
command students’ respect—and perhaps just a
touch of fear—and inspire their trust and loyalty?
Why not exude relaxed confidence, goodwill, and an
in-command, no-nonsense attitude—the elements of
a successful faculty image? It is not difficult to do; all
it requires is certain concrete behaviors, some verbal
and some nonverbal. Whether or not you carry this
aura naturally, it is not dishonest to behave in ways
that will make you more effective in the classroom.
After all, aren’t we willing to do almost anything to
help our students learn?
Balancing Authority and Approachability
Most students accept the authority of a tenure-track
faculty member without question. But some students
are reluctant to accord the same respect to an adjunct,
a graduate student, a TA, or an instructor who
violates the traditional professorial stereotype of the
mature, white male with an imposing stance and
a low, deep voice. Clearly if you look young, are

74 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
physically small, have a relatively high voice, are
nonwhite, or female, you may well encounter some
student resistance. If you project any weakness,
nervousness, softness, or too easy-going an attitude,
you’re likely to find students pushing the envelope
with you, behaving discourteously, and expecting
special favors of you. A few of these simple strategies
will add the air of authority to your persona and help
you take stronger control of your classes (Nilson,
1981):
• Stand up in front of your class instead of sitting,
move around the room, and use broad gestures.
The dramatic effect is to make you appear larger
than life. Increasing one’s apparent size is a com-
mon aggressive and defensive posture throughout
the animal kingdom.
• Try to deepen your voice slightly and to project
it farther by speaking from your diaphragm. Also
avoid ending a declarative sentence with a ques-
tioning rise in pitch.
• Favor more formal dress to convey that you are
serious and business minded, especially if you are
female (Johnston, 2005; Roach, 1997).
• Add an air of formality and dignity to your class-
room. For instance, address students by their last
names, and ask that they address you by your title
(Dr. or Professor) and last name.
• Refer in class to your own scholarship where ap-
propriate. This establishes you as an authority on
the subject and elevates you in your students’ eyes.
Female instructors, in particular, must take
measures to reinforce their legitimacy and authority.
Students tend to underestimate the educational
attainment of female instructors, even controlling
for many other instructor characteristics (Miller &
Chamberlin, 2000). Students are also more likely
to challenge female and minority instructors about
their legitimacy, expertise, opinions, and teaching
methods (Moore, 1996; Turner & Myers, 2000). In
addition, many students expect females to display
an empathetic softness that they think they can take
advantage of. While research shows that female
gender does not depress student evaluations of
teaching in any consistent or significant way, it very
well may in more male-dominated fields, such as
engineering (Feldman, 1992, 1993; Marsh & Roach,
1997; Nilson & Lysaker, 1996).
Other instructors face the opposite problem of
intimidating students. They can do so by too perfectly
matching the somewhat chilly professorial stereotype
or by coming off as domineering. From your students’
viewpoint, you may fall in this category if you are
male and are some combination of very tall, physi-
cally large, deep-voiced, rugged looking, serious and
reserved, or have an aggressive or curt social style. The
following behaviors can warm up your persona, mak-
ing you seem more approachable and likable (Nilson,
1981):
• Assume a relaxed posture in the classroom. Sit
down or perch casually on the corner of a desk.
• Speak more softly in class, as long as everyone can
still hear you. Also interact with the class more,
perhaps by tossing out more questions to answer
or problems to solve.
• Dress down slightly—for example, wear a loos-
ened tie and a sports jacket or a two-piece suit
rather than a three-piece suit.
• Chat casually with students before and after class
so they can see you as friendly, warm, and person-
able. Address students by their first names. (If you
are a TA, consider asking them to call you by your
first name.) Consciously practice social immedia-
cies (see the next section).
• Smile whenever appropriate.
• If you are a TA or a faculty member still taking
courses, mention that you too are a student, so
you can identify with the academic demands they
are facing.
Showing That You Care
Wherever your persona falls on the authority-
approachability continuum, you can help prevent
class incivility and conflict by practicing social
immediacies—that is, conveying both verbally and

Preventing and Responding to Classroom Incivility 75
nonverbally that you care about your students as
learners and as people. Like everyone else in the
world, students want to be loved on some level. You
can verbally express, for example, concern for their
learning and future success, high expectations for
them, interest in their activities outside class, empathy
with their learning challenges and stress, and your
availability to help them outside class. You can also
learn and use their names. Nonverbally, you can
communicate your respect for and interest in them by
making regular eye contact, speaking with energy and
enthusiasm, listening intently without interrupting,
standing with an open body posture, and smiling
frequently. When students raise a problem in the
course, you can clarify your course objectives and
schedule and enlist students to help resolve the issue.
All of these instructor behaviors, along with
teaching interactively, are associated with more civil
student conduct and greater student attentiveness
in class (Meyers, 2003; Meyers, Bender, Hill, &
Thomas, 2006; Wilson & Taylor, 2001). They
may even override the negative effects of being
female, young, less experienced, and a member of a
racial/ethnic minority group (Meyers et al., 2006).
Setting Ground Rules
All the literature on classroom management considers
setting ground rules essential (Baldwin, 1997–1998;
Ballantine & Risacher, 1993; Boice, 1996; Brooks,
1987; Feldmann, 2001; Gonzalez & Lopez, 2001;
Nilson, 1981; Sorcinelli, 1994). Most students
respond very well to them; they want to know
what is expected of them. In addition, ground rules
convey that you are in command and no-nonsense
Therefore, announce on the first day, especially in a
large class, exactly what disruptive behaviors you will
not tolerate in your course—and why. Your most
convincing reason—and one that is research based—is
that such behaviors annoy the other students in the
class. This conveys your goodwill. (Reiterate this
reason when handling a noisy disruption.)
Some rules also belong in your syllabus,
especially your expectations and any grade-relevant
policies regarding attendance, tardiness, class par-
ticipation, extension requests, missed assignment
deadlines, and makeup exams (see Chapter Three).
You may want to add statements forbidding sleeping
in class, eating in class, side conversations, live
cell phones and pagers, and displays of disrespect
for fellow students. (Focus on the most common
incivilities you encounter; don’t make the list too
long.) Then be prepared to ask any offenders to stop
the behaviors immediately or leave the room.
You may prefer to emphasize appropriate be-
haviors rather than disruptive ones. If so, express your
rules in a positive way—for example, “Students are
expected to hand in assignments on time” rather than
“Students will be penalized for late assignments.”
Even so, you must specify the consequences for
violating the rules.
Some instructors have reduced incivilities
by having their students collectively draw up a
classroom-conduct contract, or set of rules for behav-
ior to which they will agree. Here’s the procedure.
On the first day of class, lead a discussion on the
student behaviors that genuinely bother the members
of the class. As a member, you can add one or two
behaviors to the list. Then from the notes you take,
type up a contract for all students to sign at the next
class meeting in which they promise not to engage in
the disruptive behaviors listed. If someone refuses to
sign it, let the other students decide what to do; after
all, it’s their contract. Instructors who use contracts
claim that for the rest of the semester, students
pretty much police themselves, keeping even minor
violations to a minimum (Baldwin, 1997–1998;
Ballantine & Risacher, 1993). Some institutions
publish a student code of conduct, but students often
don’t buy into what they don’t feel they own.
A variation on a class contract starts out as a
student bill of rights and leads to a larger life lesson
(Nilson & Jackson, 2004). Students should have no
problem coming up with rights for themselves, and
you should ensure these are written down. A few will
quickly realize, however, that rights come with re-
sponsibilities. In fact, each right comes with at least

76 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
one responsibility. For instance, the right to be eval-
uated fairly obligates students to hand in work that
accurately reflects their best abilities. The related right
to receive timely and consistent feedback from the in-
structor requires that they hand in work on time and
use that feedback in improving their work. The right
to be safe to express their opinions in turn commits
them to respect the opinions of other students and the
instructor. For a final example, the right to a well-
organized course with well-organized, well-prepared
classes obligates students to come to class prepared to
make the most of the course. Because students gen-
erate these rights and responsibilities themselves, they
are likely to police themselves, as in the case of a con-
tract. When they don’t, all you have to do to enforce
the rules is to smile at the offenders and gently remind
them by saying contract or bill of rights.
Rewarding Civil Behavior
As we saw in the case of motivating students
(Chapter Five), applying behaviorism wisely can
change student behavior for the better. Of course,
setting ground rules and course policies and ensuring
violators face unpleasant consequences, whether
social pressure or lost points, represent the negative
reinforcement and punishment side of the equation.
But what about using positive reinforcement, which
is more powerful than negative reinforcement and
punishment, to discourage such violations?
In addition to noticing and sanctioning mis-
behavior, we can notice and reward good behavior.
We can compliment a class when everyone arrives
on time or when attendance is especially high. (This
shows that you do see these things.) When a student
is often late, we should not only correct the behavior
by speaking to her in private about it but also thank
her when she does arrive on time. When a noisy class
quiets down, express your appreciation. Research
shows that these little positive reinforcers are effective
at the workplace as well as in the classroom. They
also help create a pleasant and fruitful learning
atmosphere (Daniels, 2000; Daniels & Daniels, 2004;
Wiesman, 2006, 2007).
Modeling Correct Behavior
Sometimes classroom incivility starts with the in-
structor’s behavior toward the students, such as being
rude, sarcastic, condescending, indifferent, insensitive,
or inflexible (Boice, 1996; Gonzalez & Lopez,
2001). Your efforts to model good manners do not
guarantee that students will always imitate you. But
students will consider your standards and require-
ments fairer if your behavior reflects them, and no
doubt more students will honor them. For instance,
if you don’t want students to interrupt one another
during discussions, judiciously try not to interrupt
students yourself. If you value punctuality, come to
class ahead of the bell and complete your board work
before class begins. If you want assignments turned
in on time, return papers promptly. If you expect
students to come to your office hours, keep to your
schedule faithfully. These constitute instructor rights
and matching responsibilities.
However, students may have somewhat different
conceptions of unacceptable faculty behavior than we
do. The Teaching Assistant Program at Michigan State
University conducted a small (N = 50) but reveal-
ing survey of undergraduate perceptions of irritating
instructor behaviors. More than 20 percent of the stu-
dents mentioned these six:
1. Showing up late for class
2. Not showing up for office hours
3. Making students feel stupid (put down, inferior,
dumb) or showing lack of respect
4. Not getting to know students
5. Writing on the board while blocking the infor-
mation or talking to the board
6. Not following the syllabus
Less frequently mentioned were not preparing
for class, being disorganized, giving inadequate expla-
nations of difficult material, not controlling the class,
assigning busywork, lecturing too quickly, speaking
too softly or in a monotone, reading lecture notes,
starting class early and ending it late, not grading
assigned work, and assigning too much homework

Preventing and Responding to Classroom Incivility 77
(Teaching Assistant Program, Michigan State Univer-
sity, n.d.). We may not think of talking to the board,
straying from the syllabus, or talking fast as offensive,
but it is to students. In fact, after a first-day-of-class
discussion of what they shouldn’t do, we should ask
them in turn what they don’t want us to do.
From the students’ point of view, defining
and modeling correct behavior means meeting their
learning needs and showing them respect by living
up to their professional expectations of us. We can
start by reversing all the don’ts above into do’s. For
instance, we should display a brief agenda, outline,
or list of student outcomes at the beginning of every
class. Not only will we appear well prepared and
organized; we will also communicate nonverbally
that we are in command of the classroom.
We should also explain why we have chosen
the readings, teaching methods, class activities, and
assignments that we have without students having
to ask. They don’t assume that we do what we do
for their own good or because of our knowledge
of how people learn, so we need to convince them.
We can tell them how many other inferior textbooks
we reviewed, how much research stands behind
the effectiveness of our methods, and how well our
assignments will prepare them for their future careers.
We might even summarize our teaching philosophy
(see Chapter Thirty-Two on writing one).
Yet another way to show respect for students is
to hold them to high expectations. Communicating
this point may initially require some tough love, such
as refusing to accept shoddy work (in this case, you
quickly return it to the student and require him to
revise it up to standard before you will grade it). The
work may be docked for being late, but at least it will
merit some points. Taking this strong action early in
the term will motivate students to stretch their abili-
ties, and you’ll probably not have to take it again.
Commanding Class Attention
Sometimes students become restless, apathetic, and
potentially disruptive because their attention is
wandering or they’re bored. Your practicing good
platform (public speaking) skills both projects a
strong persona—one who is relaxed, confident, in
command, and no-nonsense—and enables you to
command student attention and engagement for
longer periods of time. These skills come up briefly
again in Chapter Twelve because they strongly
influence the motivational and teaching effectiveness
of a lecture. They also affect how easily you can keep
students awake, quiet, orderly, and on task for all or
part of a class period. Aristotle had good reason for
evaluating rhetorical oratory on not only invention
(content) and arrangement (organization) but also
style (sentence structure and word use), delivery
(vocal and physical performance), and memory
(freedom from notes).
Excellence in public speaking encompasses
many different behaviors. Because Chapter Twelve
addresses invention and arrangement and since you
are probably gifted with respect to style, let us
proceed directly to delivery. It too comprises many
different behaviors, most of them “small,” so to
speak. But they add up to a tremendous difference in
the way the speaker and the message are received and
regarded. Following is a simple listing of major plat-
form skills (adapted from Toastmasters International
speech manuals and related materials):
• Effective use of voice: Volume adjusted to be audible
for the room and audience; words enunciated
clearly; rich, resonant voice quality, projected
from chest and diaphragm; vocal variety
(changes in intonation to complement content
and for emphasis); volume variety (either extreme
for emphasis); varied and appropriate speaking
pace (never hurried and dramatically slower for
more important content); pregnant pauses for
emphasis before and after major points; imagery
plays on words (for example, drawing out “slow”
and “long,” saying “icy” in an icy tone, saying
“soft” softly, saying “strong” with especially deep
resonance).
• Effective use of body: Solid, natural stance (unless
moving, legs comfortably apart, knees slightly
bent, arms hanging at sides, shoulders relaxed, and

78 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
back straight); natural movement around lectern
or stage and out toward audience (for emphasis
and to complement content); abundant gestures
to complement content (especially broad ones
before large audiences); word dramatization (for
example, momentarily acting out “timid,” “an-
gry,” “anxious,” “huge”); varied facial expressions
(more dramatic in a large room), including smiles
where appropriate; only occasional glances, if any,
at notes; steady eye contact with the audience
(at least three seconds per audience sector or
quadrant are recommended).
• Effective use of visual aids and props: In addi-
tion to rehearsing their use to avoid awkwardness,
see Chapters Twenty-Six and Twenty-Seven for
pointers.
• Emotions to project: Relaxed confidence, con-
viction; enthusiasm, excitement, passion, a sense
of drama, curiosity; sincerity, concern, honesty,
openness, warmth, goodwill, caring, a sense of
humor.
• Minimization or elimination of distracting be-
haviors: Um, uh, you know, sort of, kind of,
and-and, that-that; mispronunciations; false sen-
tence starts; midsentence switches to the start
of a new sentence; volume fade-outs at end of
sentences; pacing, swaying, or other repetitive
movements; leaning on the lectern, against the
wall, against the chalkboard; lengthy checks of
notes; ritual apologies to audience (for example,
“I hoped to have prepared this lecture more
carefully”).
• Not speaking for too long. As you will read in
Chapter Twelve, students have a rather short
attention span for lecture. Unless you already
project a charismatic persona, you’re inviting
disruptions if you lecture beyond ten to twenty
minutes at a time. Whenever you spot a bored
expression or glazed eyes while you are lecturing,
pause and change the pace. Pose a question,
open the floor for questions, or use any of
the student-active breaks suggested in Chapter
Twelve. If you don’t shift your students’ attention
to a learning activity, they will shift their attention
to a nonlearning activity.
Of course, all of these skills assembled together
seem impossibly numerous and precise to master.
But you probably have inadvertently learned most of
them already and may need to polish only a few. If
your institution has a teaching center, it probably
will videotape you teaching a class and offer you the
chance to view your tape with a trained specialist.
This service can help you assess your platform skills
and identify ways to hone your public speaking
effectiveness.
For now, the most important skill you should
check is your eye contact with your students. It is
a powerful form of crowd control. In large classes,
it is easy to forget the far half of the class, and that
is exactly the half you usually need to control the
most. Eye contact also personalizes your comments,
encourages students to return your attentiveness to
them in kind, and enables you to read their faces to
gauge their interest and understanding.
Another key skill to monitor is your voice. Its
tonal variety and pace reflect your level of engage-
ment in the material and your enjoyment of teaching.
A voice can sound monotone to an audience because
the person speaks at the same pitch or at the same
pace for long periods of time. If you find yourself
droning this way through a dry section of your lec-
ture, try consciously to modulate your voice and vary
your speaking pace to keep student interest.
Singers and actors have something to teach us.
They do warm-up exercises for their voices and bod-
ies before they perform, and as performers in our
own right, we might consider doing the same to get
ready for class. These exercises are described in de-
tail in Chapter Four because they also relieve first-day
jitters, so a brief summary should suffice here.
For example, to enhance your vocal variety, res-
onance, and projection, you can sing scales, alter-
nate high and low pitches, and read children’s books
aloud with exaggerated changes in pitch and pace.
To loosen up, relax, and eliminate tension from your
body, take three or four slow, deep breaths all the way
into your diaphragm and pushing out all the old air
before inhaling again. This breathing is also good for
your vocal resonance and projection as well as your
brain, since oxygen enhances cognitive functioning.

Preventing and Responding to Classroom Incivility 79
Another excellent exercise is standing with your legs
about a foot apart and stretching every part of your
body in every direction you can. It’s best to stretch
slowly, stop when you feel any strain, and hold the
position for a few moments. Finally, extend your arms
out in front of you and send energy along them and
out your fingertips. This mental practice enhances
your ability to send energy out to your audience.
Taken together, these physical exercises will help you
fill up your life space in front of your class. Your re-
laxed state, coupled with your improved blood flow,
will make an open body posture feel natural and will
add energy, spring, and flow to your movements. You
will seem larger, more animated, and more dynamic.
Add greater vocal variety and richer voice quality,
and your persona will begin to take on charisma. If
you observe a charismatic speaker closely, you will see
that charisma can be broken down into a number of
small but powerful behaviors carefully orchestrated in
combination.
RESPONDING TO INCIVILITY
If you encounter a discipline problem in your
classroom, stay calm and in control. Count to ten,
breathe deeply, visualize a peaceful scene—anything
to keep you from losing your temper. No matter
how much an offensive student tries to bait you, you
lose credibility if you lower yourself to his level. If
you keep your composure, you win the sympathy
and support of the other students. They may even
start using social pressure to discipline the offenders
themselves.
In fact, whenever you sanction a student for
mild, garden-variety uncivil behavior, smile through
your firmness. A smile conveys not only warmth and
approachability but also unflappable cool and relaxed
confidence. It says you don’t take the misconduct per-
sonally, that you are just doing your job to maintain
a productive learning environment, and that student
misbehavior doesn’t get under your skin. With this
kind of cool, students sense they can’t bait you, so
they won’t.
Keeping your composure, however, does not
mean accepting and tolerating the abuse. It is critical
that you do not ignore or otherwise tolerate the
behavior. You must respond immediately. The worst
thing you can go is to ignore the behavior (Meyers et
al., 2006). The longer you let the incivility continue,
the higher the level of response you will have to take
later (Feldmann, 2001; Gonzalez & Lopez, 2001).
Here are some specific, appropriate measures you can
take in response to disruptive behaviors (Baldwin,
1997–1998; Ballantine & Risacher, 1993; Boice,
1996, 2000; Feldmann, 2001; Gonzalez & Lopez,
2001; Nilson, 1981; Sorcinelli, 1994; Watkins, 1982).
Always be especially strict in enforcing the rules early
in the term.
Talking in Class
Occasional comments or questions from one student
to another are to be expected. However, chronic talk-
ers bother other students and interfere with your train
of thought. To stop them, you have several options.
The simplest is simply to pause, allowing their voices
to fill the silence. You may also want to accompany
your pause with a long stare at the offenders. Star-
ing at them with a smile suggests you’re nonplussed
by the violation. Another option is to walk over to
the offenders while you continue to teach. Still an-
other, and an especially classy alternative, is to han-
dle it with a little humor, such as an invitation to share
the conversation with the class. If appropriate, refer
to the classroom conduct contract or bill of rights and
responsibilities that the class authored and signed. If
you don’t have a contract, pleasantly say something
like, “I really think you should pay attention to this;
it will be on the test” or “You are disturbing your
classmates.” If the problem persists, get stern with the
offenders outside class. Public embarrassment is a last
resort that should be avoided, since it can turn some
students against you.
Packing Up Early
Routinely reserve some important points or
classroom activities—quizzes, writing exercises,
clarification of the upcoming readings, study guide

80 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
distribution, a classroom assessment technique (as in
Chapter Twenty-Eight)—until the end of class. Or
have students turn in assignments at the end of class.
Paper rustling and other disruptive noise making
during class can be stopped the same way as talking
in class.
Arriving Late or Leaving Early
State your policies clearly on these offenses in your
syllabus and on the first day of class and never reteach
material for the tardy. You can insist that students in-
form you in advance of any special circumstances that
will require them to be late to class. You can even sub-
tract course points for coming late and leaving early
as long as you set this policy at the start. You might
draw attention to offenders by pausing as they walk
in and out. Alternatively, you can set aside an area
near the door for latecomers and early leavers. Finally,
as you can do to discourage packing up early, you
can routinely schedule important class activities at the
beginning and the end of class.
Chronic offenders of these policies deserve their
day in court—that is, talk to them or email them pri-
vately about the problem. They may be late because
the previous hour’s class tends to run late or is a long
walk away. Or they may have to leave your class a little
early to get to their job on time.
Cheating
Academic dishonesty is such a serious and widespread
problem in higher education today that the entire
next chapter is devoted to preventing and responding
to it.
Coming to Class Unprepared
This problem too is so widespread that all of Chapter
Twenty-Three addresses getting students to do the
readings.
Dominating Discussion
If certain students habitually try to monopolize class
time, tell them to speak with you after class to clarify
their questions and discuss more of the issues. You can
also broaden the discussion and call attention away
from the disruptive student by asking the rest of the
class for the answers.
If a student is rambling around or off the subject,
take control by seizing the chance to interrupt her and
paraphrase whatever meaning you can salvage. Then
supply an answer and move along. Alternatively, you
can defer answering it for the sake of saving class time
and advise her to raise it outside class.
Asking Questions You’ve
Already Answered
A student asks you about the procedure for doing an
assignment that you’ve already explained. Rather than
putting down the student (“Where were you when
I gave the assignment?”), just answer the question
civilly and quickly, or say that you already answered
the question and will repeat the answer only outside
class. Another option is to refer that student to the
written instructions you’ve provided and ask exactly
which part needs clarification.
Asking Wheedling Questions
Occasionally students try to wheedle answers out of
you to avoid having to work out the answer for them-
selves. In class, you can invite other students to suggest
leads and possibly get a discussion going. But one-on-
one, the best way to avoid giving in is to answer each
of the student’s questions with another question that
should help him think through the answer. A student
who is asking questions solely to pry answers out of
you will soon tire of your questions and go away.
Asking Argumentative Questions
A student who tries to entrap you in an argument
for the sake of arguing either wants attention or has
an authority problem. Just acknowledge his input
and quickly move on. To lower yourself to the bait
jeopardizes your credibility with the class. If another
incident occurs, tell the student you will discuss the
issue outside class. After class, inform him in private
that you do not appreciate and will not tolerate such

Preventing and Responding to Classroom Incivility 81
uncalled-for hostile behavior in your classroom. Also
mention that it disturbs other students and wastes
their class time.
Another strategy is to handle questions through
a different medium. You can collect written ques-
tions in a box and briefly address some of them at
the next class meeting. You can also encourage stu-
dents to email their questions to you or put them on
the course website. While less personal, these options
offer a less confrontational format.
Asking Loaded Questions
The rare nefarious student may design a question just
to embarrass you and put you on the defensive. Like
the argumentative student, this type is also probably
seeking attention and respect from his peers and de-
serves the same response. You may also be able to turn
the loaded question back on the student asking it:
Student: You’re not really saying . . . ?
Instructor: What I’m saying is . . . Now, what is your
perspective on this topic?
Demanding a Grade Change
To discourage this situation from happening often,
set a policy in your syllabus that if a student wants
to protest a grade, either you will regrade the
entire test or assignment, or better yet, you will not
accept a grade protest unless the student submits
a written justification for the change, citing exact
book pages and class period dates, within forty-eight
hours. Do not accept email messages; they are too
informal.
If a student still comes to you demanding a grade
change, try to neutralize her emotion and delay deal-
ing with the issue until she calms down. Schedule
an appointment with her in your office at least a
day or two later. Then open with a positive, empa-
thetic statement: “I understand your frustration. Let’s
take a look at your paper [or test] and talk about the
grading.” Have the student read her answer aloud to
help her hear her errors. Maintain eye contact and
try to agree with her whenever possible. If necessary,
explicitly disassociate the grade from her worth as a
person. Even if you can’t turn the student’s opinion
around, you can reduce both your own and her anx-
iety levels by showing yourself to be an ally (at least
partially). Finally, try to give her a graceful way to re-
treat from the situation. Just don’t be intimidated into
changing the grade.
It is very rare that an instructor feels physically
threatened by a hostile student, and it invariably hap-
pens when others are not around. While verbal hos-
tility calls for a private approach, the physical version
requires quite the opposite: try to move yourself and
the student into as public a place as possible, even
if just the hallway. A colleague or student may call
campus security on your behalf.
Using a Computer in Class
for Nonclass Purposes
Some students claim they are facile at multitasking,
so they can read and respond to their email, text or
“messenger” with a friend, participate in a chatroom,
make purchases, surf the Web, and pay attention in
class at the same time. But if this were true, people
could simultaneously talk on their cell phones and
drive safely (a low-concentration cognitive task), and
we know that no one can do this.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to monitor
students’ screens unless you teach from the back
of the room, and you may or may not be able
to roam around to see what students are doing.
But you can take measures to reduce the behavior
drastically. When you assign an in-class computer
task, keep your students extra busy by giving them
minimal time to complete it. Also have them work in
small groups, each group at one laptop or terminal.
Chances are that three or four students won’t be
able to agree on a renegade site. Between computer
assignments in class, have students turn off their
computers or close their laptops.
Of course, discouraging this behavior is the best
approach. In your syllabus, have a policy that stu-
dents engaging in renegade computer activities will
be marked absent for that day.

82 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Cutting Classes
These are the top three reasons students give for cut-
ting class: (1) attendance is not taken or does not affect
the grade, (2) the instructor does not see or care if a
student is missing, or (3) the class content is available
elsewhere. We also know that attendance drops off
in required, large, and more lecture-oriented classes
(Friedman, Rodriguez, & McComb, 2001).
From these findings, the best ways to increase
attendance, especially when used in combination,
suggest themselves: basing part of the course grade
on attendance; taking attendance regularly (even if
you don’t calculate it in the grade); basing part of
the course grade on participation in discussion (see
Chapter Thirteen); making the class more interactive
and participatory; giving frequent, graded quizzes;
regularly taking up homework to be graded; covering
in class a great deal of material that isn’t in the
readings; not allowing commercial production of
your lecture notes; not putting your lecture notes
on the Web (skeletal outlines are okay); requiring
students to catch up with any classes they have missed
on their own; conducting cooperative learning group
activities in class and grading students in part on peer
performance evaluations (see Chapter Sixteen); and
conducting other frequent, graded in-class activities.
Asking for Extensions and Missing
Assignment Deadlines
In your syllabus, specify penalties for late work (for
example, docking a portion of the grade), with or
without an “approved” extension. Some instructors
feel comfortable strictly enforcing this policy, while
others prefer to be flexible. Students occasionally
have good reasons for not meeting deadlines, but they
also occasionally lie. You must assess each extension
request and excuse on a case-by-case, student-by-
student basis, perhaps allowing a single, documented
incident but drawing the line at the second.
A student with a habitual problem deserves a
private talk and the full penalties. You might ask other
instructors in your department for the names of any
chronic cases that they have encountered.
Showing Disrespect in General
If your prevention measures fail, talk to offenders
privately and explain that their behavior is affecting
their fellow students’ ability to learn. Avoid showing
or inciting anger by keeping your voice low. Be
aware that sometimes students show disrespect to get
the attention they believe they can’t get through any
other means. They want to vent their anger toward
authority or express some other deep-seated emo-
tional problem. Leave such cases to the professionals,
and refer them to your institution’s psychological or
counseling center.
If your warnings fail or you face grievous
and repeated displays of disrespect and abuse, don’t
hesitate to order the offenders out of the classroom,
at least for that day. Should they refuse to leave, call
campus security. After the incident, review it with
the students in class so they can serve as witnesses, tell
your department chair, and make a written record
of the verbal exchange. While calling security is a
last-resort response, it’s a good idea to memorize the
number or have it on speed dial. Taking this tack
should end your incivility problems in the course for
the rest of the term (Carroll, 2003a).
SEEKING ASSISTANCE
You are not alone in having to deal with student
incivilities. Ask your more respected colleagues how
they handle them. Requesting their advice will not
lead them to believe you are an ineffective teacher.
Another source of strategies is the student affairs
staff. These officers usually understand students and
their worlds and how to communicate with them
better than most faculty, and the dean of student
affairs should know about even mildly threatening
incivilities. In addition, refer students with ego,
authority, or anger management problems to your in-
stitution’s psychological or counseling center. Finally,
speak outside class with your best-behaved students,
enlisting them to help you keep an orderly learning
environment.

C H A P T E R 8
Preserving Academic Integrity
T
he term cheating refers to a wide variety of
behaviors generally considered unethical (Bar-
nett & Dalton, 1981), at least by faculty. In its
basic form, it is misrepresenting one’s knowledge and
effort. Plagiarism, a type of cheating, is claiming the
ideas or words of others to be one’s own, if just pas-
sively by not referencing their true source—in short,
theft of intellectual property. A student who plagia-
rizes a report, fails to cite sources, copies an answer on
a test, or pays someone to write a term paper has dis-
honestly obtained information and has lied in passing
off the product as her own original work.
HOW PREVALENT IS CHEATING?
Since the late 1980s, surveys have documented that
cheating is a way of life for American college students.
Over two decades ago, 45 percent of undergraduates
nationwide reported having cheated at some time
in college, and an additional 33 percent copped to
being habitual or “hard-core” cheaters—that is, they
cheated in eight or more classes while in college
(Collison, 1990a). The figures were comparable at
thirty-one highly selective American universities,
where 67 percent of the students admitted to cheating
(Kibler, 1992). Plagiarizers numbered fewer: only
about 10 percent (Collison, 1990b).
A more recent survey shows that little has
changed. Seventy-five percent of American college
students reported having cheated (Center for Aca-
demic Integrity survey cited in Hutton, 2006), the
major differences being the use of cell phones for
test answers and the Internet for purchased papers
and stolen sources (Altschuler, 2001). But plagiarism
increased a great deal, no doubt due to the Internet.
One-quarter of the students said that they at least
sometimes copied and pasted text from the Web
without attribution, and 28 percent admitted lifting
text from printed material (Kellogg, 2002). As
shocking as these figures may seem, other sources
have reported even higher ones (Kleiner & Lord,
1999). In one survey 90 percent of the students
admitted that they use the Internet to cheat (Berry,
83

84 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Thornton, & Baker, 2006). Even worse, not even
30 percent of those who cheat regret doing it, and
getting caught deters only 7 percent of them from
doing it again, according to a survey conducted by
CollegeHumor (cited by Poythress, 2007).
We know that cheating in high school bears a
strong relationship to cheating in college (Harding,
Mayhew, Finelli, & Carpenter, 2007), so let’s look
at a 2006 national survey of high school students to
project to more contemporary college students. Sixty
percent admitted to cheating on at least one test, one-
third to plagiarizing at least one assignment from the
Internet and 62 percent to lying to a teacher about a
significant matter—all within the previous year. This
behavior reflects their perceptions of the real world.
Fifty-nine percent believe that “successful people do
what they have to do to win, even if others consider
it cheating,” and nearly one-quarter agree that “peo-
ple who are willing to lie, cheat, or break the rules
are more likely to succeed than people who do not.”
Yet 92 percent claim to be “satisfied with my own
ethics and character,” and 84 percent say that most
of the people who know them would count them
among the most ethical people they know (Josephson
Institute, 2008). Cheating and lying are so entrenched
in this generation that most of its members consider
them ethical.
WHO CHEATS, AND WHY?
Student cheating mirrors the ethics and behavior
of the broader society. An overall decline of public
morality started in the self-centered 1970s and 1980s
and has just gotten worse. Media depictions of the
good life whet students’ appetites for something
that they are not sure they will be able to afford.
Moreover, the now commonplace scandalous antics
of business and political leaders make amoral and
immoral behavior seem normal, and the small price
these leaders pay makes it look profitable (Collison,
1990a; Josephson Institute, 2008). In fact, 90 percent
of college students don’t think that cheaters ever pay
the price (Kleiner & Lord, 1999). As one student
put it, “Cheating is a very common practice in our
country. Everyone wants to make a lot of money, and
cheating is a way to beat out other people” (Collison,
1990b, p. A31).
When asked why they cheat, 32 percent of stu-
dents cite laziness, 29 percent better grades, and 12
percent pressure to succeed (Center for Academic In-
tegrity survey cited in Hutton, 2006). In an earlier
survey, some students mentioned grade competition
and peer pressure from fellow fraternity and sorority
members (Collison, 1990b). Disinterest in the mate-
rial explains why students may cheat in certain courses
but not others (Kleiner & Lord, 1999).
Some student demographics and activities are
related to the prevalence of cheating. While religious
affiliation and major are not (Nowell & Laufer,
1997), the findings are mixed on the relationship to
gender and grade point average (Barnett & Dalton,
1981; Hutton, 2006; Kerkvliet, 1994; Nowell &
Laufer, 1997). However, cheating does seem to be
associated with younger age (Hutton, 2006; McCabe
& Trevino, 1997; Nowell & Laufer, 1997), fraternity
or sorority membership, extensive extracurricular
involvement, heavy drinking and partying behavior
(Hutton, 2006; Kerkvliet, 1994; McCabe & Trevino,
1997; Nowell & Laufer, 1997), and being employed
(Nowell & Laufer, 1997).
Still, the most important determinants of
cheating are student perceptions. If they anticipate
peer disapproval for the behavior, they are less likely
to do it. If, however, they see cheating as widespread
and acceptable among their peers, the likelihood
rises (Anderman, Freeman, & Mueller, 2007; Barnett
& Dalton, 1981; Bunn, Caudill, & Gropper, 1992;
Hutton, 2006; McCabe & Trevino, 1997; Mixon,
1996). Another critical perception is the opportunity
to cheat. The lower the chances of getting caught
(low supervision) and the lower the sanctions for
getting caught (low threat)—as students size up
their odds—the more prevalent cheating is. So not
surprisingly, the behavior is related to class size and
the use of multiple-choice tests (Barnett & Dalton,
1981; Kerkvliet & Sigmund, 1999; Mixon, 1996;
Nowell & Laufer, 1997). Anonymity no doubt plays
a role with respect to both class and institutional
size. Cheating is more common in classes taught by

Preserving Academic Integrity 85
non-tenure-track and graduate student instructors
(Kerkvliet & Sigmund, 1999; Nowell & Laufer,
1997), a situation that frequently occurs in larger,
research-oriented public universities.
Sadly enough, faculty play a role in setting stu-
dent perceptions as well. According to surveys, half of
the instructors admit to ignoring at least some of the
cheating they are aware of (McCabe, 2005; Nadel-
son, 2007). After all, pursuing a cheating case takes
time and yields no rewards for faculty. In general, col-
leges and universities turn a blind eye to much of the
cheating that goes on and understate the prevalence
of the behavior (Bok, 2006; Haney & Clarke, 2007).
Even so, student perceptions are malleable,
and institutions and instructors can influence them.
Colleges and universities with honor codes weave
academic integrity into the student culture (see the
section on honor codes below), and with or without
an honor code, small private institutions nurture
bonds of trust and caring between students and
faculty. In these contexts, cheating is less acceptable
and, as a result, less prevalent (Hutton, 2006). How
much you as an instructor emphasize academic
honesty and how dedicated you seem to teaching
and your students have a sizable impact as well. If
students view you as lax or indifferent about integrity,
if they consider your tests confusing and unfair, or if
they can’t see the relevance of your material, some
will feel entitled to cheat (Hutton, 2006; Kerkvliet
& Sigmund, 1999; Whitley, 1998). In other words, if
you don’t seem to care, they won’t either.
DETECTING CHEATING
Catching incidences of cheating is not rocket science.
During tests, an observant eye can often see wander-
ing glances and students passing notes, cheat sheets,
and even bluebooks to one another. Sometimes you
can spot a ringer by an unfamiliar face. Other tip-
offs are a heavily erased exam, suspicious behavior (for
example, leaving the room during the exam, rustling
through one’s things, hiding a cell phone in one’s lap,
repeatedly looking at one’s hands and arms), and, of
course, a considerable number of identical answers,
even incorrect ones, across exams. Be concerned, too,
if a student improves his exam performance mete-
orically without having seen you or your teaching
assistant (TA) for extra help.
Plagiarism is possible when a student hands in
a paper (1) without quotations or references, (2) with
references that don’t fit with the text, (3) with odd, es-
oteric, or inaccessible references, (4) on a topic other
than the one assigned, (5) with a format different
from your requirements, (6) with a cover page type-
face different from the text’s, (7) late, (8) on a recently
changed topic, (9) with a shifting writing style, (10)
with familiar-sounding sections, (11) heavy on facts
not tied together, (12) very similar to another student’s
paper, (13) that is photocopied, or (14) that is just too
perfect and mature for the student in question.
Realize that you may not be able to trace all
purchased papers to their source, and there are dozens
of paper mills on the Web. However, you can uncover
most cases of plagiarism by using one of several online
text-matching services (for a fee) or by typing, in quo-
tation marks, a distinctive suspect phrase or sentence
into one or more Web search engines (for free).
PREVENTING CHEATING
Except for your instructor status, the crucial de-
terminants of cheating are within your control. So
you can stop or at least drastically reduce academic
dishonesty in your classes with proven prevention
measures. Most of these either make cheating more
difficult or heighten students’ perceived chances of
getting caught and facing dire consequences, and the
rest reduce students’ motivation to cheat (Barnett
& Dalton, 1981; Brauchle, 2000; Hutton, 2006;
Johnson & Ury, 1998, 1999; Kerkvliet & Sigmund,
1999; Kleiner & Lord, 1999; McCabe & Trevino,
1996, 1997; Office of Educational Development,
1985; Whitley, 1998; Wilhoit, 1994):
1. Motivate your students’ interest in your subject,
and help them understand its relevance to their
careers and the broader world so they will want
to learn it (see Chapter Five).

86 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
2. Define cheating and plagiarism to your students,
and give examples and hypothetical cases. Your
students may not understand these terms. Also
teach them how to cite sources correctly.
3. State verbally and in writing your own and your
institution’s policies on academic dishonesty and
their applications to each assignment and test you
give. State that you strictly enforce these poli-
cies and will check for plagiarism electronically.
Include statements in your syllabus (see Chapter
Three).
4. If you’re a graduate student or adjunct instructor,
be especially assertive. Students may think they
can get away with more in your class since you’re
supposedly less savvy and more sympathetic to
students than regular faculty are.
5. Make your exams as original as possible to reduce
student reliance on old tests for study. Solicit po-
tential new test questions from TAs and students.
6. Ensure equal access to study aids by placing a
file of old tests and assignments on your course
website for all students to use. Fraternities and
sororities often keep test files for their members.
7. Make up different forms of tests, especially
multiple-choice tests, by varying the order of the
questions. The test tools in course management
systems such as Blackboard will usually do this
for you.
8. Firmly remind your class before each test that
academic integrity is important to you, your in-
stitution, and the larger society, and that you will
enforce it using all the institutional means you
have available.
9. Although even good students don’t want to
“squeal,” appeal to their social ethics and their
desire to protect their own intellectual property
to report cheating.
10. During tests, if the room permits, seat students
with space between them and place their
personal belongings, especially cell phones, far
away from them (for example, at the front of the
room).
11. In large lecture halls, have assigned test seats, and
keep a chart of students’ names.
12. Supply scratch paper if needed.
13. Clear all calculators before passing out a test.
14. If blue books are used, have students turn theirs
in just before the test, then redistribute them
randomly.
15. Proctor tests judiciously, enlisting the aid of your
TAs and colleagues. Don’t allow yourself or
your assistants to work on any other project
while proctoring. Charge only one proctor
(perhaps yourself) with answering any questions
during the test.
16. Check for cheat notes in nearby restrooms, on
the underside of baseball cap bills, on students’
skin (perhaps visible only through a hole in their
jeans), on the labels of beverage bottles, and in
other highly imaginative places.
17. Collect tests from students individually to avoid
a chaotic rush at the end of class.
18. When grading tests manually, clearly mark in-
correct answers with an X or a slash in ink. Also
place a mark at the end of each answer to make
any later additions obvious.
19. Return exams, papers, and assignments to stu-
dents in person or electronically.
20. Collect your test questions after you review the
tests. If the test question forms are separate from
the answer sheets, have students put their names
on the forms to ensure you can account for all
of them.
21. Assign paper topics that are unique and specific
and require original critical thinking or critical
self-examination.
22. Give explicit collaboration rules for all out-of-
class assignments.
23. Change your writing assignments as often as pos-
sible to discourage paper recycling.
24. Take class time to discuss difficulties in the as-
signments and how to overcome them.
25. Make specific format requirements, and grade in
part on adherence to them.
26. Require a certain combination of sources—so
many from the Web, so many from print ma-
terial in the campus library, so many from videos
in the campus collection, and so on.

Preserving Academic Integrity 87
27. Teach students how and when to cite sources.
28. Warn students that you will be checking the
originality of their papers with plagiarism-
detection software. This deterrent is much
more effective that just cautioning them against
plagiarism (Braumoeller & Gaines, 2001).
29. Require a personal interview as a source, prefer-
ably taped or conducted over e-mail, with the
documentation to be turned in.
30. Meet with students early and often to moni-
tor their progress on a major assignment and to
gauge the development of their ideas.
31. Guide and monitor students through the process
of researching and writing. Have them complete
assignments in stages and turn in progress reports.
32. Require students to submit first drafts. This en-
sures you see a work in progress and allows you
to provide early feedback.
33. Require students to turn in photocopies of the
print and Web material they use, at least the first
page.
34. Require students to turn in the original of their
paper and a copy for your files. You can refer to
the file copy if you suspect piracy later.
35. Strive to be fair, clear, and authentic in all
the ways you assess. Explain to students your
rationales behind your assessment instruments
and grading standards.
If you suspect any form of academic dishonesty,
take swift, decisive action. Know your institution’s
policies and the person to whom to report the vi-
olation. (Ask your dean or chair, or refer to your
institution’s faculty handbook, student handbook, or
course catalogue.) Our hope is that the judicial pro-
cess won’t be discouragingly time-consuming, labori-
ous, and biased in the student’s favor. Some instructors
don’t take the official route instead and handle cases
quietly on their own—for example, giving an F to pa-
pers and tests where plagiarism or cheating is evident
(Schneider, 1999). Ask senior colleagues how much
de facto discretion you have and should take. Usually
an instructor’s ad hoc penalties are more lenient than
institutional ones and don’t go on a student’s record.
We don’t know very much about the incidence
of cheating in online classes, but what we do know is
discouraging. Milliron and Sandoe (2008) uncovered
evidence of cheating on low-stakes online quizzes
involving 20 percent of the three hundred students
in their hybrid introductory information systems
course. Most frequently, students were taking the
quizzes in groups or giving one another answers.
After their hybrid course ended, Haney and Clarke
(2007) surveyed their students about their quiz-
taking practices, 54 percent of whom admitted to
exchanging answers and 79 percent of whom were
aware of online cheating. Perhaps the intimacy of
small, online courses counteracts the anonymity,
and older students who don’t know each other
outside the course are probably less likely to cheat.
But it’s almost impossible to know who is taking
an online exam unless the students have Webcams
on their computers or a remote proctor is available
(Carnevale, 1999).
HONOR CODES
Campuses with a well-established and well-enforced
honor code have a somewhat lower incidence of
cheating, by as much as 25 percent, than those that
do not (Collison, 1990a; Gordon, 1990; McCabe
& Trevino, 1996; McCabe, Trevino, & Butterfield,
1999). Students are responsible for policing one
another, and cheating violations usually carry a heavy
penalty, such as expulsion. However, these codes
only reflect the real reason for the difference, which
lies in the campus culture’s high regard for academic
integrity and honor (McCabe & Trevino, 1996;
McCabe et al., 1999). Typically students pledge their
adherence to the honor code in writing on every
graded test and assignment, which serves to remind
them of the code and reinforce their commitment to
it. Such campuses are predominantly private.
In the hopes of changing the culture, several
large, public institutions are testing the efficacy of
modified honor codes. While instructors still take
precautions such as proctoring tests and checking for

88 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
plagiarism, students take an honor pledge and to an
extent police themselves (Wasley, 2008). For instance,
a student-dominated judicial board is often established
to try alleged violators and decide their fate. Thus far,
various forms of cheating have dropped to rates about
midway between those of honor-code campuses
and those of no-code campuses on the campuses
that have adopted modified codes (McCabe &
Pavela, 2000).
Another quite new and little-used strategy to
change the campus culture or begin a transition to
an institutional honor code is to encourage faculty
to introduce classroom honor codes. Students are re-
quired to sign the code at the beginning of the course
and again on each piece of graded work. Preliminary
results are promising but are based on small classes
(Pavela, 2008).
The success of traditional, modified, and class-
room honor codes is modest yet shows that the stu-
dent culture has an impact independent of the larger
societal culture. But it only makes sense that cheat-
ing will remain prevalent as long as the larger culture
tolerates unethical behavior.
CHANGING STUDENT VALUES
What about the future of this larger culture? As
studies cited early in this chapter found, younger
students feel little remorse about cheating, and they
consider themselves ethical in spite of it. We are
facing the prospect that this generation’s culture of
cheating will carry over into the broader society
and economy. In fact, those who cheat in college
intend to violate norms and rules in the future to
get ahead (Lovett-Hooper, Komarraju, Weston, &
Dollinger, 2007). It seems many, if not most, students
don’t perceive cheating as wrong. Can we possibly
convince them that it is?
No doubt, we can convince some. According to
a survey by Staats, Hupp, Wallace, and Gresley (2009),
only 24 percent of the students definitely planned to
cheat in the future, and almost 30 percent were un-
certain. Perhaps this undecided group can be swayed.
Wueste (2008) is even more optimistic. He believes
that we can persuade as many as 60 percent of our
students by pointing out the damaging consequences,
the injustice, and the character implications of cheat-
ing. He offers these specific arguments to share with
students:
• Cheating misleads employers into thinking you
have mastered knowledge and skills that you
haven’t. What harm will you do to the world
lacking that knowledge and those skills?
• Relatedly, cheating cheapens your degree. If you
graduate poorly prepared, you will lower your in-
stitution’s regard among employers and your fel-
low citizens.
• Cheating undermines the faculty’s ability to give
you honest feedback and evaluation of your work.
• Cheating gives you an unfair advantage over your
fellow students who do not cheat.
• Cheating violates the social contract that you vol-
untarily enter into with your institution when you
arrived here.
• Cheating damages your character. If you cheat
now in college, you will cheat later in other
contexts—in the workplace, on your taxes, in
your marriage, and so on.
• Cheating obstructs any hope of your achieving
excellence in whatever matters to you. You will
never accomplish what you are capable of; you
won’t even know what you’re capable of.
We can add to Wueste’s list Staats et al.’s hopeful
findings (2009): compared to cheaters, academically
honest students hold a higher opinion of others and
score higher on measures of courage, empathy, and
honesty in general.
Will reasoning this way with students change
their values? If we have taught long enough, we
know firsthand that we indeed have the power to
create learning experiences that induce students to
change their values. Our prevention and policing
efforts haven’t solved the cheating problem, and
Wueste’s and Staats et al.’s approach has barely been
tried. Its time has come.

C H A P T E R 9
Making the Most of Office Hours
W
hen you think of your role as an instruc-
tor, you may picture yourself lecturing,
facilitating discussion, managing student
groups, answering questions, and the like in a class-
room or laboratory—in any case, interacting with and
helping a number of students to learn. During office
hours, however, you interact with and help individual
students. This is a golden teaching opportunity
because one-on-one tutoring yields more learning
by far than does class instruction (Bloom, 1984). Yet
we rarely discuss or conduct research on holding
effective office hours. Face-to-face and in private,
students share their confusions, misunderstandings,
and questions more candidly and completely than
they do in class, and you are in the best position
to give them the individual attention and help they
need. The problem is getting them in your office.
Find out the number of office hours per week
that your institution or department requires or expects
of instructors. You may want to add another hour
when you have a relatively large class or a writing-
intensive course or if you are a professor without a
teaching assistant (TA).
GETTING STUDENTS TO SEE YOU
Students see TAs during their office hours with little
hesitation. But most of them, freshmen in particu-
lar, are intimidated by the prospect of visiting even
the most kind-hearted, hospitable faculty member. If
you’re a TA who teaches your own course, you may
be mistaken for faculty and face the same problem.
Students have their reasons for avoiding office
hours. Those most likely to seek individual help tend
to be getting middle-range grades in a course, in the
B− to C+ range; those least likely are either doing
quite well or doing very poorly and in most need of
individual tutoring. The latter students have appar-
ently decided that they are incapable of succeeding
and are beyond help (Karabenick & Knapp, 1988).
Other types of thinking may keep students away from
your door. For instance, some personalities and cul-
tures view help seeking as demeaning—threatening
to either their self-esteem (Nadler, 1983) or perceived
autonomy (Ryan, Pintrich, & Midgley, 2001). Spend-
ing your office hours alone with your research and
89

90 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
writing may seem attractive at first, but it won’t after
you see those disappointing first papers, lab reports,
or quizzes. So you have to make efforts to induce the
students to see you. These efforts include finding the
right place, establishing the right setting, scheduling
the right times, and giving a lot of encouragement.
The Right Place
Office hours need not always be in your office.
Richardson (2006) moved his office hours to a bench
under a shade tree (he lives in a warm, sunny climate)
and found the change energized his scholarship and
his connection to students and the campus. Some
years back, Gogel (1985) conducted an informal
experiment that broadened the location possibilities.
During a three-year observation period, he scheduled
his office hours in a remote office building for the
first and third years and in a common study area
in the medical library the second year. In the first
and third years, only one student showed up each
year, predictably just prior to an exam. In the second
year, a full 20 percent of his students paid him visits
at various times during the semester to discuss the
material and ask questions.
Could it be that students are more intimidated
by your office than by you? Or perhaps the issue is the
convenience of your office location. Does this mean
you should move your office hours out of your office?
If your office is out of the way for your students, the
idea is worth considering, especially before exams and
paper deadlines.
You might even split your office hours between
two locations—some in your office and some in the
student union or an appropriate library.
The Right Setting
Chung and Hsu (2006) experimented with supple-
menting their office hours with a weekly one- or
two-hour “course center” in a regular classroom.
With a course instructor or TA present, students
could come to ask questions or just study on their
own or in small groups for as long as they wanted.
Some weeks no one came, and at other times (before
major tests and project due dates), almost 20 students
(out of 150 enrolled one semester and 185 enrolled
another semester) showed up. The researchers then
administered surveys to the students asking where
they sought help with the class. Almost 60 percent
used the course center, versus 36 percent office hours,
and almost 80 percent said the course center increased
the likelihood of their getting help. Furthermore,
54 percent preferred the help offered by the course
center over office hours, due in part to the group-
work option and the informal, collegial atmosphere.
Students could study or work on their homework
and get an answer to a question as soon as it arose.
Those struggling with the material could see that they
were in good company and make visible progress.
No doubt the course center is a successful draw
for students needing help, and it is worth your con-
sideration as a supplement to your office hours. You
may even be able to share center staffing duties with
other instructors or TAs teaching different sections of
the same or a similar course.
The Right Times
Be careful and considerate in scheduling your office
hours. If you are available only briefly during prime
class time—that is, when students are attending their
other classes—then you immediately reduce your stu-
dents’ ability to see you. To maximize your availability
to students, straddle your office hours over two class
periods, allowing students with a class over one pe-
riod the chance to see you during the other time
slot. If you teach a discussion, recitation, or laboratory
section, make sure that your office hours do not over-
lap with the lecture portion of the course. If you run
out of hours in the day, consider scheduling an early
evening office hour, perhaps in the student union, an
appropriate library, or another student-friendly loca-
tion. Also, consider the day. Try to schedule at least
an hour on Mondays or Tuesdays, when students are
most likely to have questions from the readings and
other homework they did over the weekend. During
the term, remind your classes periodically that you
also meet by appointment.

Making the Most of Office Hours 91
The Right Encouragement
Start out by publicizing your office hours, first in your
syllabus, then on the board or a slide during the first
day of class, and intermittently during the term be-
fore high-traffic weeks, such as before tests and major
assignment deadlines. Put a supportive statement in
your syllabus graciously offering your willing counsel
and urging students to take advantage of your office
hours. Perrine, Lisle, and Tucker (1995) found this
effort effective in attracting younger students (under
age twenty-five) to seek help. You might have your
students write your office hours and locations on the
front of their course notebooks. In addition, post your
hours prominently outside your office door.
It also helps to establish a friendly classroom
atmosphere on the first day of class by having stu-
dents fill out index cards on themselves, conducting
icebreaker activities, and sharing highlights of your
own background (see Chapter Four). On that day
and throughout the rest of the term, warmly invite
students to stop by your office to talk about the
course as well as the material.
But even the warmest series of invitations may
not provide enough encouragement. You may have
to require the pleasure of their company. Here are
several acceptable ways:
• Make it a regular course requirement for each stu-
dent to schedule a time to meet with you as early
in the term as possible. The first meeting will pave
the way for future voluntary visits.
• Have students schedule individual meetings while
they are writing the first paper. You can use this
opportunity to review their first draft and clarify
your expectations for the paper.
• Have students turn in papers, problem sets, lab
reports, extra-credit work, and other assignments
not in class but in your office during certain hours
of a nonclass day.
• Have students schedule meetings with you to
get their grades on their papers or written
assignments. You can return their marked papers
or assignments in class for them to review before
meeting with you, but hold the grades hostage.
(This strategy works better during the term than
after it ends.)
• If you divide your class into small groups or assign
group projects, you might have each group sched-
ule at least one appointment with you to give a
progress report.
When students arrive, especially the first time,
try to make them feel welcome and at ease. After all,
they’re on your turf, and it takes courage for them to
be there. You might spend the first minute or two
finding out how they are, how the course is going
for them, and how they are experiencing college in
general. In this day and age, however, too warm an
approach can be misunderstood. If you are meeting
in your office, close the door for privacy but leave it
slightly ajar. Also maintain a respectable seating dis-
tance from the student.
Should an emergency or illness prevent you
from making your office hours, leave a note or ask
your department staff to leave a note, apologizing for
your unavoidable absence.
MAKING THE TIME PRODUCTIVE
Most students who come to your office hours do so
with a definite purpose in mind, often one that you
have defined in class. So it is worth a little class time,
if not a section in your syllabus, to advise students on
how to prepare for meetings with you. You cannot
be expected to read their minds. For instance, you
might instruct them to come with appropriate mate-
rials: their journals or lecture notes, their lab books,
their homework problems, drafts of their papers, or
the readings with troublesome passages marked. You
might even tell them to write out their questions or
points of confusion as clearly as they can. If the issue
is a homework problem, insist that they work it out
as far as they can, even if they know their approach
is faulty. If the issue is a grade, tell them to bring
in a written justification—with citations to the read-
ings, lectures, discussions, labs, or other materials—for
changing their grade. Reserve the right to terminate

92 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
and reschedule a meeting if a student is not ade-
quately prepared. Why waste your time and your stu-
dent’s time? In addition, counsel students that they are
not to use your office hours to get a condensed ver-
sion of the classes they have missed or to get you to
write their papers or do their homework problems for
them. (Chapter Eight offers suggestions on handling
problematic student demands and questions.)
When students do come properly prepared, try
to give them your undivided attention. If you can-
not prevent intrusive phone calls, keep them brief. If
other students are waiting outside your door, work
efficiently without letting their presence distract you.
STUDENT-ACTIVE TUTORING
To maximize the value of your consultation, make it
as student-active as possible. Refer to Chapter Four-
teen on questioning techniques for recommendations
on how to help students work through their con-
fusions as much on their own as possible. Although
some students resent this strategy, you can often be
most helpful by responding to their questions with
other questions that will lead them to answers. After
all, they won’t really learn what you tell them—only
what they themselves realize (Bonwell & Eison,
1991). Usually the single most informative (to you)
and helpful (to them) question that you can pose
to students you are tutoring is why they chose the
answer or problem-solving approach that they did
(especially if it’s an incorrect one), why they came
to the conclusion they did (have them reason it
through), or why they stopped solving the problem,
researching, reasoning, or writing, for example,
where they did. This question should lead both of
you to the key misconception, misunderstanding,
missing step, or error in reasoning. Sometimes
students want to see you to give them a sense of
security. For instance, they have revised their paper
according to your or their peer group’s specifications,
but they lack confidence in their writing. Or they
have done their homework problems but want you to
check them over. Rather than giving just perfunctory
affirmations, you can help them acquire their own
sense of security by having them explain and justify
to you their revisions or problem solutions. If they
can “teach” their rationales, they have earned the
right to feel confident.
Identifying student errors calls for extra gentle-
ness. Students who come to you for extra help
are probably feeling somewhat insecure and self-
conscious. So praise their smallest breakthroughs
generously, and let them know you appreciate their
coming to see you. You want them to feel welcome
to come back.
If a student fails to show up on time for an
appointment, call to remind her and reschedule if
necessary. If she simply forgot, counsel her that your
time is too valuable a commodity to be forgotten.
STUDENTS IN ACADEMIC OR
EMOTIONAL TROUBLE
Dealing with students in serious trouble is beyond
the scope of an instructor’s responsibility. Students
who seem overwhelmed by the material or lack basic
writing, reasoning, and mathematical skills should
be referred to the learning skills or academic assis-
tance center on your campus. As described in the
Appendix, a unit of this type usually offers individual
tutoring and workshops on a range of academic
skills, such as textbook reading, writing, studying,
problem solving, note taking, critical thinking, test
preparation, and general learning.
Emotionally distressed students usually need
professional help. For your own peace of mind, it
is important to remember that you are neither the
cause of nor the solution to their problems, even
if they try to attribute them to a grade in your
course. You can be most helpful by knowing how to
identify such students, approaching them about their
apparent problem in a nonjudgmental and caring
way, referring them to your institution’s psychological
or counseling center (walk them there, if need be),

Making the Most of Office Hours 93
and informing the center about the encounter. Here
are some classic warning signs (Western Kentucky
University Counseling and Testing Center, 2008):
• Angry challenges to your authority
• Physical aggression, either real or threatened
• Uncharacteristically animated or agitated behavior
• Complaints of rejection or persecution
• Distorted perceptions of reality
• Unjustified demands on your time
• A sudden drop in academic performance
• A sudden extended absence from class
• Repeated missed assignments
• Social withdrawal or isolation
• Deteriorations in physical appearance or personal
hygiene
• Visible changes in weight
• Self-injurious behavior (for example, cutting
oneself)
• Apparent drug or alcohol abuse
• Impaired speech or disjointed thoughts
• Dramatic mood swings or erratic behavioral
changes
• Continual lack of energy, sleepiness, listlessness, or
depression
• Expressions (oral or written) of hopelessness,
worthlessness, loneliness, emotional pain, or the
desire to end it all
• Expression of concern by a fellow student
The most immediate proper responses to aggres-
sive behaviors are simple and easy to remember: when
dealing with verbal aggression, make arrangements to
meet with the student later in a private place to al-
low the emotions to defuse (verbal, private). If you
sense the situation may elevate to physical abuse, move
yourself and the student into a public area (physical,
public). In any case, do not ignore the behaviors listed
above if you see them.
It is impossible to anticipate all the different
kinds of help that your students may need. The
Appendix will help you refer them to the right office.

C H A P T E R 10
Course Coordination Between Faculty
and Teaching Assistants
T
he ideal relationship between faculty and
teaching assistants (TAs) is a mutually ben-
eficial exchange. The professor receives an
invaluable staff member in return for supervising a
graduate student’s apprenticeship in college teach-
ing. The TA in turn performs an array of vital
support services, under the professor’s direction,
while preparing for his future career. Through the
TA, the students benefit from the opportunity for
personalized consultation and additional, often more
participatory instruction than is possible in a large
class with a single faculty member. It is an all-around
win-win arrangement.
But often the faculty-TA relationship isn’t as
productive and mutually rewarding as it can be. Few
professors are trained in supervisory techniques, and
TAs may be afraid to reveal their ignorance by asking
too many questions. In addition, the relationship
requires time and effort that one or both parties may
not be willing to give.
Like all other professional relationships, the
successful TA-faculty team thrives on respect, trust,
cooperation, and communication. This chapter
suggests specific ways for both parties to foster these
qualities in their working relationship.
BEFORE THE TERM: COURSE
REVIEW AND ROLE
SPECIFICATIONS
TA assignments should be made as early as possible,
preferably well before the start of the term. Early
assignments allow time for the faculty and TAs to dis-
cuss the course and their mutual responsibilities, as
well as to prepare to meet them. This extra time is
crucial for first-time TAs and for experienced TAs
taking on new assignments. TAs also need the assur-
ance that they will have support and guidance when
the need arises.
If you are faculty, count yourself very fortunate
to have one or more TAs, as only a handful of other
faculty nationwide have them. But realize that they
are university employees as well as graduate students.
It is your professional obligation and duty to supervise
95

96 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
them, which means that you are largely responsible
for their performance (Perlmutter, 2008b). Supervis-
ing means assigning work to them, instructing them
on how to perform the work, monitoring the quality
of their performance, and giving them feedback on
their performance. This feedback may not always be
a pat on the back. It may involve additional instruc-
tion or even disciplining. When necessary, you will
have to be tough, like a boss.
Hold an introductory staff meeting at least a few
days before classes begin. Start this meeting by ex-
plaining the institutional policies and rules related to
their employment, such as those pertaining to sexual
harassment, the privacy of student records, and labo-
ratory safety (Perlmutter, 2008b). Then hand out your
syllabus and present your course objectives, organiza-
tion, and schedule. Review general mechanics, such
as grading policies and grade complaint procedures,
even if TAs will not be conducting sections. Stu-
dents’ opinions of the course are influenced greatly
by the efficiency and proficiency of the instruc-
tional staff.
Next, firmly establish the work roles that you
and your TAs will play. TAs must know what is
expected of them, as well as what they can expect
of their faculty supervisors. To ensure clarity, issue
a written statement of mutual responsibilities, and
make sure everyone understands and agrees.
When allocating course duties, try to divide
tasks fairly, equitably, and efficiently. TA responsi-
bilities may include assisting in course preparation,
preparing or instructing (or both) in laboratories,
leading discussions, conducting help and review
sessions, attending lectures, guest lecturing, taking
roll, assisting in assignment and test preparation,
being available during tests, grading, calculating
grades, and holding office hours. More experienced
TAs, those whom Nyquist and Wulff (1996) call
“colleagues-in-training” and “junior colleagues,”
can take on more important tasks than can “senior
learners,” who just hope to survive their TAship and
get the students to like them. The former can try
their hand at designing activities and assignments,
preparing handouts, constructing tests, writing
rubrics, and taking over the lecture part of the class.
Faculty responsibilities typically involve con-
structing quizzes, tests, and assignments, supervising
TAs doing these tasks, advising TAs on discus-
sion sections or laboratory content and methods,
coaching them in presentation and teaching skills,
providing them with feedback on their teaching
effectiveness, scheduling and directing TA staff
meetings, and ensuring TAs have whatever supplies
they need.
Depending on the size of the class and the num-
ber of TAs involved, you may wish to assign an ex-
perienced TA to act as a head TA in charge of facil-
itating communication among all course TAs. Strong
interpersonal skills are essential here, as the head TA
must maintain a good rapport with both you and
fellow TAs.
Finally, try to give realistic estimates of the ex-
pected time and effort required of the TAs to perform
their job well. While these estimates will vary from
person to person and from week to week, they will
allow TAs to plan their schedules more efficiently. Be
sure you know the number of hours per week that
each TA assignment involves.
DURING THE TERM: REGULAR
MEETINGS AND TEACHING
FEEDBACK
Once you and your TAs reach a clear understanding
on duties and expectations, everyone must first and
foremost maintain open lines of communication. If
a TA cannot approach you or the head TA with a
problem, the situation may very well worsen and sour
the student’s learning experience. You and the head
TA should actively invite TAs to seek your problem-
solving advice.
Of course, communication is a two-way street.
If you are a TA and you fail to seek or follow good
counsel, openly disagree with your supervising faculty
in front of your students, or otherwise are insubordi-
nate, you are likely to get in trouble with the class and
eventually your faculty. Clear, open communication is
everyone’s responsibility and is vital to the success of
the course.

Course Coordination Between Faculty and Teaching Assistants 97
The easiest and most reliable means of main-
taining good communication is the regular, usually
weekly, staff meeting. (A chatroom meeting is a
high-tech alternative to face-to-face.) Scheduling
these meetings is the faculty’s or head TA’s charge.
They are essential to the smooth coordination of
multisection courses, which are so common at the
introductory levels of the laboratory sciences, math-
ematics, English, and the foreign languages. These
meetings should follow a fairly standard agenda of
reviewing current and upcoming material, discussing
TAs’ lesson plans, and assessing students’ learning. Let
us take each major topic in turn.
Agenda Item 1: Course Content
If you are faculty, you must ensure that your TAs have
enough background in the course material to teach
or tutor it. If you don’t require them to attend your
lectures, you might give them copies of your lecture
notes. Some TAs may benefit from supplementary
readings as well. You should also provide your TAs
with leads on the student trouble spots they can an-
ticipate and should address in section and office hours.
Especially in the lab sciences, TAs must be well versed
in the principles, procedures, hazards, and typical pit-
falls of the next laboratory. In addition to your TAs’
reputation with students, safety may be at stake here.
If you are a TA, you are responsible for coming
to these weekly meetings having read the upcoming
readings, including the lab manual section, where ap-
plicable. Raise all your questions; reserve the “dumb”
ones for your fellow TAs if you prefer. You too should
anticipate student stumbling blocks and ask for help
in leading your students over them. Whether your
supervising faculty requires it, do attend all lectures.
Students often complain on their teaching evaluation
forms about TAs who do not. Always rehearse a
lab you’ve never done before, preferably with a
TA who has.
Agenda Item 2: TAs’ Lesson Plans
The second major item is what the TAs should
do with the upcoming material in their discussion
sections, labs, or help sessions. What teaching
techniques and formats will give students the most
productive chance to actively work with and play
with the material? Should the TAs start off with a
quiz or a warm-up writing exercise on the major
points of the reading, the lab procedures, or the last
lecture? If discussion is appropriate, what questions
should the TAs pose, and in what order? Should
they be written on the board, on an overhead
transparency, or in a handout? Or should they be
handed out in advance and serve as a study guide? If
reviewing homework problems is scheduled, should
the TAs have students present their solutions on
the board? Should the TAs have new problems for
the students to solve in small groups? How about
a short simulation, a case study, or role playing to
actively engage students in the material? If a preexam
review session is planned, what review questions
would be helpful? How should the students address
them? By writing practice answers individually,
outlining them in small groups, or playing aca-
demic game like Jeopardy or Millionaire? In any
case, the TAs should not be giving the answers
themselves.
The options are more numerous than the tech-
niques and formats covered in this book, and appro-
priate ones deserve discussion. This way, the weekly
meetings can function as a teaching methods seminar
for the TA staff.
The purpose that supplementary sections and
help sessions should not serve is to introduce new
material. As this book emphasizes throughout, few
students can master material only through passive ac-
tivities like reading and listening, even when sup-
plemented with note taking. Students must also talk
about it, write about it, apply it to problems, use it
in experiments, act it out, see it demonstrated, or
demonstrate it themselves—in essence, do something
with it. The TA’s most important role is to design and
facilitate opportunities for students to work actively
with material already introduced.
In addition to covering teaching techniques and
formats for the coming week, these TA meetings
should review what did and didn’t work last time.
TAs need not repeat one another’s mistakes, and
they can help each other solve their problems.

98 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Occasionally, too, a classroom failure may call for
some damage control, while a genuine success merits
recognition, even imitation.
Agenda Item 3: Student Learning
The final item of business, assessing students’ learn-
ing, has two parts. The first part is openly discussing
how well students are learning the material. This in-
formation may come from homework assignments,
quizzes and tests, classroom participation, classroom
assessment exercises, consultations with students, and
general impressions. By identifying areas of student
weakness, all parties know what to review before pro-
ceeding to new material.
If you’re a TA, you probably have an inside track
on how the students are doing. Generally students talk
more often and more candidly with you than with
faculty. So you have a clearer picture of their involve-
ment and difficulties with the material. You are also
probably better positioned to identify individual stu-
dents who are having academic or emotional trouble.
When such cases arise, advise your supervising faculty.
But for the students’ sake, tell them about the campus
units that can help them (see Chapter Nine and the
Appendix).
The second part of assessing students’ learning
is planning the next stage of assessment and testing.
Whether you are faculty or a TA, have other
members of the course staff review a draft of any
assignment, quiz, test, or grading rubric you have
drafted. It is amazing what another set of eyes can
pick up—not just typos but also double-barreled
multiple-choice items, ambiguous essay questions,
unclear performance descriptions on rubrics, awk-
ward sentence structure, confusing word use, and all
the other verbal land mines that are so hard to avoid.
Sometimes, too, instructors forget to model their test
questions on the homework and in-class exercises to
which they accustomed their students. It is also easy
to overlook important material covered just a few
weeks ago. Assignments, quizzes, tests, and grading
rubrics are important enough to ask others to review.
If you are a supervising faculty member fortu-
nate enough to have all experienced TAs for a partic-
ular course, you may be tempted to shorten or forgo
the weekly staff meetings. But resist the temptation.
Your holding these meetings demonstrates your com-
mitment to teaching excellence and staff morale.
One more faculty responsibility—an essential
facet of supervision—is to observe and give con-
structive feedback to each of your TAs who appears
before a class. The fact that you care enough to do so
reinforces your TAs’ loyalty and morale, along with
the value of teaching in general. It is best to follow
up each observation with a one-on-one consultation
focusing on strategies for professional growth and
improvement. For obvious reasons, do not delegate
this task to a head TA.
EXTENDING MANAGING
TO MENTORING
Beyond supervising TAs, you will no doubt become a
mentor to certain graduate students. The mentoring
relationship is complex enough to deserve discussion.
The role of the mentor is a multifaceted one that
extends beyond the role model (Murray, 1991). For
example, the mentor serves as a source of information
about the profession, and she tutors the protégé (or
mentee) in specific professional skills. During times of
personal turmoil, the mentee seeks advice and a sym-
pathetic ear, casting the mentor in a confidant role.
The mentor also helps the protégé plot a suitable ca-
reer path.
However, the mentoring relationship is a two-
way street. As such, the protégé must accept respon-
sibility for and be willing to advance his own growth
and development. In addition, he must test his abilities
against new challenges and honestly evaluate them in
view of career options. Finally, he must be receptive
to the mentor’s instruction, coaching, and construc-
tive criticism.
The mentoring relationship reaps returns for
the mentor as well. According to some mentors,
it heightens their motivation. While some senior

Course Coordination Between Faculty and Teaching Assistants 99
personnel face burnout, mentors are constantly
reminded of what they first found interesting and
exciting about their profession. They become
more inspired leaders, enhancing overall group and
organizational productivity.
Here are some practical guidelines for both
faculty and graduate students (Blandford, 2000;
Cameron, 1993; Nicholls, 2002; Perlmutter, 2008a):
• Mentors, reasonably pace your training and advis-
ing. Remember that you didn’t learn everything
at once or the first time through.
• Protégés, regard your relationship as a college
teaching tutorial, and budget time for it. If you
feel overwhelmed, let your mentor know.
• Mentors, do not ask or expect your protégés
to provide you with personal services, such
as babysitting, house-sitting, running errands
for you, or driving you around, except in an
emergency.
• Protégés, respect the boundaries of the relation-
ship and both your mentor’s and your own limited
time. Resist asking your mentor to do too much
for you. Focus your meetings on professional busi-
ness, not issues in your personal life.
• Mentors, be aware that your protégés are probably
unfamiliar with various university and department
regulations, office procedures, routine deadlines,
and endless other professional protocols that are
now second nature to you. Do convey this infor-
mation explicitly.
• Protégés, take what your mentor tells you seriously,
even if some of it sounds silly or strange.
• Mentors, give fair, encouraging, and caring feed-
back on your protégés’ job performance on a reg-
ular basis. They may not know when they have
done well and when they haven’t, and they need
to know, for both your and their sakes. Critical re-
marks can evoke a defensive, even fearful reaction.
So couch them in terms of ways to improve and
expectations for future success.
• Protégés, ask for regular feedback, and don’t expect
to hear you’re doing a perfect job. There is always
a lot to learn and plenty of room for improve-
ment. If you find it hard to believe, just trust for
now that your mentor’s constructive criticism has
nothing to do with her not liking you as a person
or not believing in you as a junior professional.
In fact, it’s a compliment: it means she considers
you strong enough to hear the truth and make
improvements. If your mentor’s counsel sounds
inappropriate, ask for clarification, ponder it for
while, and pass judgment later.
• Mentors, cultivate an environment where tem-
porary lapses and setbacks, fears, and failures can
be shared, forgiven, overcome, and filed away as
learning experiences. Give your protégés as many
chances as your course can afford. Whenever
appropriate, counsel them on how to avoid
or conquer the problem. For instance, advise
an anxious protégé to visualize a worst-case
classroom scenario, and together brainstorm ways
to defuse the situation. (Your institution’s teaching
center can help.)
• Protégés, bring your performance fears out in the
open. Your mentor can help you calm your ad-
equacy anxieties, control your stage fright, and
feel capable of handling your worst-case teach-
ing nightmare. Remember that your mentor faced
similar fears at one time. She hasn’t forgotten, and
she wants to help you.
• Mentors, resist the natural temptation to mold your
protégés into your clones. Each must find and ex-
plore his own potential.
• Protégés, try on and borrow elements of your
mentor’s teaching and testing style that fit you,
but also shop around. Great teaching takes many
forms. Developing your own unique excellence is
a creative, long-term process.
• Mentors, expect to feel occasionally that your
time and wisdom are going unappreciated. Your
protégés probably lack the experience to put your
good counsel and training into perspective at

100 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
the moment. Know that they will acquire that
perspective and gratitude over time.
• Protégés, thank your mentor for her time, advice,
instruction, and caring. Credit her when appro-
priate. Don’t forget that while supervising a course
is an assigned task, the more personal attention
your mentor is giving you is purely voluntary and
its own reward.
• Mentors and protégés, review your relationship pe-
riodically. Bear in mind that if it should endure,
it is designed to self-destruct over the long run
as the protégé evolves into a colleague. In the
meantime, expect occasional tensions and imbal-
ances. Mentors can find it hard both to accept and
relinquish their superior role; protégés can vacil-
late between dependency and the desire to break
away. Talking about these stresses informally can
resolve them.
These same principles apply to mentoring re-
lationships between faculty and undergraduates and
between senior faculty and junior colleagues. At any
level, the positive effects of the relationship are mutu-
ally substantial and the material costs minimal.

P A R T 3
CHOOSING AND USING
THE RIGHT TOOLS
FOR TEACHING
AND LEARNING

C H A P T E R 11
Matching Teaching Methods
with Learning Outcomes
Y
our selection of teaching methods is critical
to your students’ learning. Derek Bok (2006)
argues that it is even more important than the
content you select, and he bemoans that faculty dis-
cussions neglect the topic of pedagogy. He points out
the discouraging research finding that the average stu-
dent cannot remember most of the factual content of
a lecture within fifteen minutes after it ends. How-
ever, he notes, lessons learned through more active
teaching methods can leave students changed forever:
In contrast, interests, values, and cognitive skills are all
likely to last longer, as are concepts and knowledge
that students have acquired not by passively reading
or listening to lectures but through their own mental
effort . . . . The residue of knowledge and the habits
of mind students take away from college are likely to
be determined less by which courses they take than
by how they are taught and how well they are taught.
(pp. 48–49)
So let’s turn to the critical issue of how you will
teach your courses. This chapter extends the course
design process in Chapter Two into course devel-
opment: selecting the best teaching methods for en-
abling students to achieve your learning outcomes. If
your course design is your skeleton, your methods are
the muscles on the bones. Fortunately, some of your
fellow faculty have devised and conducted research
on numerous teaching innovations over the past few
decades, so you have plenty of worthy options to
choose from. Both Part Three of this book, which
opens with this chapter, and Part Four focus on a
wide range of well-researched methods that we know
can generate powerful learning experiences, assuming
they are implemented properly and for appropriate
purposes. Chapters Twelve through Twenty-Two lay
out ground rules for setting up and managing them
correctly, and this chapter gives an overview of which
methods to use when, where the “when” depends on
your learning outcomes.
As Figure 11.1 graphically shows, every aspect
of your course should be built on the foundation of
your student learning outcomes. These are your
ends throughout the term. Your teaching methods
103

104 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Figure 11.1 The Model of the Perfect Fit in Course and Curriculum Design
Appropriate Assessment of Students’ Performance on Outcomes
(the measurement of progress to the ends)
Teaching Methods and Learning Experiences to Help Students Achieve Outcomes
(the means to the ends)
Student Learning Outcomes
(the foundation, the ends)
are the means to your ends. They encompass all the
learning experiences you give your students in the
form of assignments and activities (active listening is
an activity), whether in class or as homework. Your
ends should guide your choice of means, right down
to each individual class. The most appropriate means
will afford your students practice in the performances
specified in your learning outcomes—practice speci-
fically in the way you plan to assess student per-
formances for a grade (by multiple-choice items, a
case analysis, a literary analysis, a creative multimedia
project, a concept map, a diagram, a design, solutions
to word problems, a solution to a real-world problem,
and so on). Your assessment instruments in turn
should measure your students’ progress to your ends
as directly as possible. These instruments—quizzes,
test questions, assignments, and any other course
component on which you see student results—should
mirror your outcomes very closely.
If your outcomes go beyond students’ recogniz-
ing and regurgitating correct facts, terms, equations,
and algorithms—and they should go beyond these
knowledge-level cognitive operations—you should be
familiar with multiple means to help your students
achieve your ends. As eminent psychologist Abraham
Maslow once said, “If your only tool is a hammer,
you’re apt to go around treating everything as if it
were a nail.” In the not-so-distant past, faculty knew
and used the lecture almost exclusively, and there was
precious little research to suggest that other methods
were more effective for most purposes. We have since
learned that you can’t craft effective learning experi-
ences just by hammering lectures into students’ heads.
The material doesn’t stick well. But now we have a
toolbox full of options. As an instructor, one of your
most critical tasks is to choose the best tool for the
job—or more accurately, choose among the best tools
for the job, as you can usually identify several means
to reach your ends.
TYPES OF TOOLS
A complete teaching toolbox contains three types of
tools to select from: course formats, major teaching
methods, and teaching “moves.” “Teaching moves”
refers to the ways you explain and elaborate on mate-
rial, the learning strategies you share with your class,
the short in-class activities and exercises you have stu-
dents do (interactive lecture breaks, for example), and
the questions you ask them to contemplate. You may
not think you have control over your formats, but you
may be able to negotiate a change.
Formats
A course format defines the course meetings—
specifically, the setting and expected activities for the
class period. It may be lecture meetings only, lecture

Matching Teaching Methods with Learning Outcomes 105
meetings with discussion sections, lecture meetings
with laboratories, lecture meetings with skill activity
sessions, discussion meetings with some lecture,
discussion meetings with skill activity sessions, skill
activity sessions alone, or seminar. Let us clarify some
terms. In a seminar, as opposed to a discussion
section, students prepare their contributions in
advance, whether research presentations, arguments,
points of view, or interpretations. In a skill activity
section, students have the chance to practice some-
thing, so it may be scheduled in a room other than a
regular classroom, such as a computer lab, a language
lab, a studio, a stage, a music room, or a clinic with
medical equipment or a simulated human body. It
may even take place outside or off-campus, perhaps
in a botanical garden, a forest, a clinic, or a hospital.
We don’t know the direct learning impact of
different formats, but we do know quite a bit about
the effects of closely related variables: the degree of
in-class student activity (or lack thereof; see Chapter
One) and class size. Hoyt and Perera (2000) identified
not the actual impact of formats but the success that
faculty perceive formats having for certain learning
objectives. These objectives were somewhat different
from the outcomes presented in Chapter Two for
course design. In Hoyt and Perera’s study, they ranged
from “substantive knowledge” (of facts, principles
and theories, and applications) to much higher-order
abilities such as general cognitive and academic
skills (communication and critical thinking), life-
long learning skills (research and interest), personal
development (broad liberal knowledge and values
development), and other skills and competencies
(team skills and creativity). Hoyt and Perera found
that faculty consider lecture/discussion, lecture/lab,
and lecture/skill activity pretty ineffective—“average”
at best—in equipping students to meet these ob-
jectives. (Lecture/lab achieved a high average on
factual knowledge, as did lecture/discussion on
values development.) Discussion/lecture did better
on general cognitive and academic skills and personal
development (liberal knowledge). Skill activity
alone earned high ratings on developing students’
communication skills, creative capacities, and liberal
knowledge, but average on the other objectives. The
only formats that faculty saw as highly effective on
almost all of the objectives were discussion/lecture
and seminar. Not surprisingly, both have a great deal
of student activity and small-size classes.
You probably think of formats as assigned to you
with the courses you teach. Introductory courses are
typically lecture based, perhaps with discussion, lab,
or skill activity sections, while freshman seminars are
set up as seminars or discussion sessions. Courses in
the major may be anchored in the lecture, discussion,
skill activity, or seminar format. If you believe that a
different format from the one currently attached to
your course would enhance student learning, make a
case to your department chair. Point out that you have
learning outcomes that your students are unlikely to
achieve because, for all practical purposes, the current
format prohibits the effective teaching methods and
moves. You have nothing to lose by asking, and you
and your students have a great deal to gain.
The next two sections address which teaching
methods and moves are most effective for various
learning outcomes.
Teaching Methods
The tools in this category comprise major methods—
that is, multiweek assignments or in-class activities
that require considerable time. We may schedule one
on a regular or semiregular basis during a course or
devote one or more class periods to it. For instance,
we rarely have just one discussion or one small-group
activity during a term-long course. If we do plan
just one, it probably won’t work very well because
it will violate the students’ expectations. If we choose
to give interactive lectures, we probably give many
of them. If we use the case method to teach, we
probably assign and debrief at least several cases dur-
ing the term. We may have just one simulation, one
substantial problem-based learning assignment, or one
service-learning project, but each of these is likely
to require students to put in hours of class time or
homework.
Before turning to the outcomes each method
may serve, let us review the basic definitions of these
methods. Most of them merit their own chapter or

106 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
at least a section of a chapter in Parts Three, Four, or
Six of this book.
• Lecture: Instructor presenting material and answer-
ing student questions that arise (Chapter Twelve)
• Interactive lecture: Lecture with two- to fifteen-
minute breaks for student activities (such as
answering a multiple-choice objective item,
solving a problem, comparing and filling in lec-
ture notes, debriefing a minicase, doing a think-
pair-share exercise, or a small-group discussion)
every twelve to twenty minutes (Chapter Twelve)
• Recitation: Students answering knowledge and
comprehension questions (Chapter Fourteen)
• Directed discussion: Class discussion that follows
a more or less orderly set of questions that the
instructor has crafted to lead students to certain
realizations or conclusions or to help them meet a
specific learning outcome (Chapters Thirteen and
Fourteen)
• Writing and speaking exercises: Any of many infor-
mal assignments and activities, usually in-class and
ungraded, to help students learn material, clarify
their thinking, or make progress on a formal as-
signment (Chapter Seventeen)
• Classroom assessment techniques: Informal assign-
ments and activities, usually in-class and ungraded,
to inform the instructor how well students are
mastering new material just presented or read; of-
ten overlap with writing and speaking exercises
(Chapter Twenty-Eight)
• Group work/learning: Students doing a learning ac-
tivity or creating a product in small groups of two
to six in or out of class; must be carefully managed
by the instructor (Chapter Sixteen)
• Student-peer feedback: Students giving one another
feedback on a written or an orally presented
product, usually a written draft or practice speech
(Chapter Seventeen)
• Cookbook science labs: Pairs or triads of students
conducting a traditional, often predictable exper-
iment following prescribed, cookbook-like pro-
cedures (Chapter Twenty-Two recommends and
illustrates more effective inquiry-based labs)
• Just-in-time teaching: Instructor adjusts class activi-
ties and lectures to respond to the misconceptions
revealed by students’ electronic responses to con-
ceptual questions; an extension of electronic daily
quizzes to motivate students to do the readings
(Chapters Eighteen and Twenty-Three)
• Case method: Students applying course knowledge
to devise one or more solutions or resolutions to
problems or dilemmas presented in a realistic story
or situation; an individual, small-group, or whole-
class activity (Chapter Nineteen)
• Inquiry-based or inquiry-guided learning: Students
learning or applying material in order to meet
a challenge, such as to answer a question, con-
duct an experiment, or interpret data (Chapter
Eighteen)
• Problem-based learning: Student groups conduct-
ing outside research on student-identified learning
issues (unknowns) to devise one or more solu-
tions or resolutions to fuzzy problems or dilemmas
presented in a realistic story or situation (Chapter
Twenty)
• Project-based learning: Students (as individuals or
in groups) applying course knowledge to produce
something, such as a report (written or oral), pro-
cess or product design, research or program pro-
posal, or computer code; often paired with coop-
erative learning
• Role plays: Students acting out instructor-assigned
roles, improvising the script, in a realistic and
problematic social or interpersonal situation
(Chapter Fifteen)
• Simulations: Students playing out, either face-
to-face or on computer, a hypothetical social
situation that abstracts key elements from reality
(Chapter Fifteen)
• Service-learning with reflection: Students learning
from the experience of performing community
service and systematically reflecting on it (Chapter
Fifteen)
• Fieldwork and clinicals: Students learning how to
conduct research and make sound professional
judgments in real-world situations
The outcomes we will consider should sound
familiar. As you will recall from Chapters One and
Two, the first six on this list come from Bloom (1956)

Matching Teaching Methods with Learning Outcomes 107
and Anderson and Krathwohl (2000), the seventh
from Perry (1968), and the last from Nelson (2000):
• Knowledge/Remembering: To memorize or recog-
nize facts, terms, principles, or algorithms
• Comprehension/Understanding: To translate, restate
in one’s own words
• Application/Applying: To use, apply, make useful
• Analysis/Analyzing: To identify and examine
components, compare and contrast, identify
assumptions, deduce implications
• Synthesis/Creating: To make connections, identify
new relationships, design something new (new to
students)
• Evaluation/Evaluating: To make a judgment, assess
validity, select, and defend
• Cognitive Development: To progress from dualism
to multiplicity to relativism to a tentative commit-
ment to the most worthy perspective available; to
come to understand the nature of knowledge as
inherently uncertain but subject to definite stan-
dards of comparison
• Shift in Mental Models: to replace a faulty under-
standing of a phenomenon with the discipline’s
more valid mental model
Table 11.1 brings these outcomes and the
major methods together in answering the question,
Table 11.1 Teaching Methods Found to Be Effective for Helping Students Achieve Different Learning Outcomes
Outcome Method Knowledge Comprehension Application Analysis Synthesis Evaluation
Cognitive
Development
Shift in
Models
Lecture X
Interactive lecture X X a a a a a
Recitation X X
Directed discussion X a a a a a a
Writing/speaking exercises X X X X X
Classroom assessment
techniques X X X X
Group work or learning X a a a a a
Student-peer feedback X X X
Cookbook science labs X X
Just-in-time teaching X X X
Case method X X X X X
Inquiry based or inquiry
guided Xb X X X X X X X
Problem-based learning Xb X X X X X
Project-based learning Xb X X X X X
Role plays and simulations X X X X X
Service-learning with
reflection X X X X X
Fieldwork/clinicals X X X X X X X
Note: An X indicates this method can help students achieve this learning outcome if the method is properly implemented to serve this
outcome. Poor implementation or implementation for other ends may mitigate against students’ achieving the outcome.
aDepends on the lecture-break tasks, the discussion questions, or the group tasks assigned.
bThe knowledge acquired may be narrowly focused on the problem or project.

108 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
“Which methods for which outcomes?” Two caveats
are in order. First, this table represents the general
findings of a large body of literature on the methods
listed. The references are embedded in the chapters
and chapter sections on each method. Second, the
efficacy of the interactive lecture, directed discussion,
and group work depends entirely on the tasks
you have students do or the questions you have
them discuss. For identifying productive tasks and
questions for your outcomes, see Chapters Twelve
and Fourteen as well as Exhibit 11.1 in the next
section. This table lists short in-class assignments and
activities that help students master each of Bloom’s
cognitive operations.
Teaching Moves
Teaching moves are strategies for clarifying content
and giving students practice in thinking about and
working with it, as reflected in your learning out-
comes. The practice you give them should at least
resemble the ways you plan to assess their learning.
Compared to major methods, these mini-
methods entail much less time and commitment. You
may use a dozen or more of them in a given class
period—one to help students recall the readings, the
next to clarify a knotty point, another to explain
new material, yet another for a lecture break in
which students apply the material, and so on. If one
doesn’t seem to work well, you can immediately try
another. When a teaching move involves the students
in an activity, not only do they get practice, but you
obtain immediate feedback on their misconceptions,
misunderstandings, and mastery. In turn, you can
give them immediate feedback. Thus, many of these
moves serve to assess as well as teach.
Exhibit 11.1 lists effective teaching moves by the
learning outcome they serve. Some of them specify
what you can do or say in class to familiarize your
students with different ways of thinking about and
working with the material. The rest are activities
and exercises for your students to give them practice
and you feedback on their learning. The existing
literature addresses these mini-methods only in terms
of their relationship to Bloom’s cognitive operations
(Goodson, 2005). But these operations do represent
key learning outcomes and easily map onto Anderson
and Krathwohl’s (2000). This list is not exhaustive, but
it is a rich heuristic device that may inspire you to de-
vise additional teaching moves to serve your purposes.
Exhibit 11.1 Effective Teaching Moves for Six Learning Outcomes
(Bloom’s Cognitive Operations)
KNOWLEDGE
For You to Do
• Suggest prior knowledge to which students can link new and future information and knowledge.
• Chunk knowledge into coherent groups, categories, or themes.
• Share devices to improve memory such as mnemonic patterns, maps, charts, comparisons, group-
ings, highlighting of key words or first letters, visual images, and rhymes.
• Point out parts, main ideas, patterns, and relationships within sets of facts or information.
For Students to Do
• Practice recalling and restating information.
• Practice recognizing or identifying information.
• Practice recalling and reproducing information.
• Practice restating concept definitions and principles.

Matching Teaching Methods with Learning Outcomes 109
COMPREHENSION
For You to Do
• Outline new or upcoming material in simple form.
• Concept-map or mind-map new or upcoming material.
• Explain with concrete examples, metaphors, questions, or visual representations.
For Students to Do
• Restate or paraphrase and summarize information or knowledge.
• Describe or explain phenomena or concepts using words different from those used in the initial
teaching.
• Identify the correct meaning of concepts or terms.
• Add details or explanations to basic content.
• Relate new to previously learned content.
• Construct visual representations of main ideas (mind or concept maps, tables, flowcharts, graphs,
diagrams, or pictures).
APPLICATION
For You to Do
• Give multiple examples of a phenomenon that are meaningful to students.
• Define the procedures for use, including the rules, principles, and steps.
• Provide the vocabulary and concepts related to procedures.
• Explain steps as they are applied.
• Define the contexts, problems, situations, or goals for which given procedures are appropriate.
• Explain the reasons that procedures work for different types of situations or goals.
• Ensure students’ readiness by diagnosing and strengthening their command of related concepts,
rules, and decision-making skills.
• Provide broad problem-solving methods and models.
• Begin with simple, highly structured problems; then gradually move to more complex, less structured
ones.
• Use questions to guide student thinking about problem components, goals, and issues.
• Give students guidance in observing and gathering information, asking appropriate questions, and
generating solutions.
For Students to Do
• Generate new examples and nonexamples.
• Paraphrase the procedures, principles, rules, and steps for using or applying the material.
• Practice applying the material to problems or situations to gain speed, consistency, and ease in
following the problem-solving steps.
• Practice choosing the types of problem-solving strategies for different situations.
• Solve simple, structured problems, then complex, unstructured ones.

110 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
• Practice recognizing the correct use of procedures, principles, rules, and steps with routine problems,
then complex ones.
• Demonstrate the correct use of procedures, principles, rules, and steps with routine problems, then
complex ones.
ANALYSIS
For You to Do
• Point out the important and the unimportant features or ideas.
• Point out examples and nonexamples of a concept, highlighting similarities and differences.
• Give a wide range of examples, increasing their complexity over time.
• Emphasize the relationships among concepts.
• Explain different types of thinking strategies, including how to think open-mindedly, responsibly, and
accurately.
• Emphasize persistence when answers are not apparent.
• Ask students questions that require their persistence in discovering and analyzing data or information.
• Encourage students to self-evaluate and reflect on their learning.
• Ask questions that make students explain why they are doing what they are doing.
• Explain and model how to conduct systematic inquiry, detect flaws and fallacies in thinking, and
adjust patterns of thinking.
For Students to Do
• Classify concepts, examples, or phenomena into correct categories.
• Summarize different types of thinking strategies.
• Use types of thinking strategies to analyze and evaluate their own thinking.
• Practice choosing the best type of thinking strategy to use in different real-world situations and
explaining why their choice is superior.
• Detect and identify flaws and fallacies in thinking.
• Identify and explain instances of open- and closed-mindedness.
• Identify and explain instances of responsible versus irresponsible and accurate versus inaccurate
applications of thinking strategies.
• Answer questions that require persistence in discovering and analyzing data or information.
SYNTHESIS
For You to Do
• Promote careful observation, analysis, description, and definition.
• Explain the process and methods of scientific inquiry.
• Explain and provide examples of how to identify a research problem, speculate about causes,
formulate testable hypotheses, and identify and interpret results and consequences.
• Model inquiry and discovery processes.
• Encourage independent thinking, and avoid dead ends and simplistic answers.
• Show students examples of creativity to solve problems.
• Encourage students to take novel approaches to situations and problems.
• Explain phenomena using metaphors and analogies.

Matching Teaching Methods with Learning Outcomes 111
• Give students examples of reframing a problem—turning it upside down or inside out or changing
perceptions about it.
• Explain and encourage brainstorming.
• Pose questions and problems with multiple good answers or solutions.
• Give students opportunities for ungraded creative performance and behavior.
For Students to Do
• Explain their experiences with inquiry activities and the results.
• Resolve a situation or solve a problem that requires speculation, inquiry, and hypothesis formation.
• Resolve a situation or solve a problem requiring a novel approach.
• Design a research study to resolve a conflicting finding.
• Write the limitations section of a research study.
• Write the conclusions section of a research study.
• Develop products or solutions to fit within particular functions and resources.
• Manipulate concrete data to solve challenging thinking situations.
• Practice reframing a problem—turning it upside down or inside out or changing perceptions about it.
• Explain phenomena using metaphors and analogies.
EVALUATION
For You to Do
• Create conflict or perplexity by posing paradoxes, dilemmas, or other situations to challenge students’
concepts, beliefs, ideas, and attitudes.
• Explain how to recognize and generate proof, logic, argument, and criteria for judgments.
• Explain and show students the consequences of choices, actions, or behaviors.
• Provide relevant human or social models that portray the desired choices, actions, or behaviors.
• Explain with examples how factors such as culture, experience, desires, interests, and passions, as
well as systematic thinking, influence choice and interpretations.
For Students to Do
• Evaluate the validity of given information, results, or conclusions.
• Draw inferences from observations, and make predictions from limited information.
• Explain how they form new judgments and how and why their current judgments differ from their
previous ones.
• Identify factors that influence choice and interpretations, such as culture, experience, desires,
interests, and passions, as well as systematic thinking.
• Detect mistakes, false analogies, relevant versus irrelevant issues, contradictions, and faulty
predictions.
• Critique a research study.
• Use research and analysis to devise the best available solutions to problems, and explain why they
are the best.
• Choose among possible behaviors, perspectives, or approaches, and provide justifications for these
choices.
Note: Partially adapted from Goodson (2005) with permission.

112 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE?
As we build our knowledge of the effectiveness of
different teaching formats, methods, and moves for
various learning outcomes, we run out of excuses for
relying on traditional lecture. Bok (2006) accuses the
faculty of avoiding pedagogical debates for their own
self-protection from change:
It is relatively easy to move courses around by
changing curricular requirements. It is quite another
matter to decide what methods of pedagogy should
be altered. Reforms of the latter kind require much
more effort . . . . To avoid such difficulties, faculty have
taken the principle of academic freedom and stretched
it well beyond its original meaning to gain immunity
from interference with how their courses should be
taught . . . . Teaching methods have become the per-
sonal prerogative of the instructor rather than a subject
appropriate for collective deliberation. The result is to
shield from faculty review one of the most important
ingredients in undergraduate education. (p. 49)
Bok’s stinging critique of the faculty may be apt,
but it also opens a Pandora’s box. What if instructors
weren’t completely free to choose their pedagogy?
What if they could choose from only a limited
range of methods and moves that were mandated
for different learning outcomes? This prospect isn’t
absurd. After all, don’t departments, institutions, and
both regional and professional accreditation agencies
already mandate learning outcomes? If they mandate
the ends of instruction, why shouldn’t they man-
date the means to those ends? If you regard such
intervention as outside interference, consider this:
Shouldn’t someone be responsible for ensuring
that students receive the most effective learning
experiences available? If so, should faculty who use
methods outside the approved range be disciplined?
But then what happens to pedagogical innovation
and experimentation? Perhaps we can head off this
quandary of questions and the threat of regulation by
taking responsibility ourselves for choosing the best
teaching strategies.
An instructor’s pedagogy also has an impact
on her student ratings and comments. While most
students do enjoy active learning strategies, some do
not (Amador, Miles, & Peters, 2006; Qualters, 2001;
Thorn, 2003). In fact, a few of the best teaching
methods for helping students acquire high-level
thinking skills can lower student ratings (for example,
problem-based learning). Some students protest that
the methods require too much work, lack sufficient
structure, demand more independence than they can
or want to manage, or cause undue grade anxiety,
since they are being asked to do things they’ve never
done before. Some complain that they have to teach
themselves too much and that their instructor isn’t
doing her job. At the same time, colleges and univer-
sities are striving to serve and retain students. In this
crunch, which should take higher priority: Student
satisfaction or student learning? This is a value matter
that only institutions can resolve for themselves. But
we can help tremendously by explaining why we
choose certain teaching methods and moves over
others. When we refer to the research standing
behind our selections, we reaffirm to our students
our commitment to do the best by them.

C H A P T E R 12
Making the Lecture a Learning Experience
Lecturing is the transfer of information from the notes of the lecturer to the notes of the
student without passing through the minds of either.
—mortimer adler, aristotelian philosopher
L
ecture has gotten a bad rap over the past
few decades. Although it is just as effective
as any other teaching method in conveying
factual knowledge, numerous studies find that it falls
short in promoting deeper-level student learning and
development—specifically, the ability to examine
and possibly change attitudes and values, critical
thinking and problem-solving skills, the transference
of knowledge to new situations, open-minded
exploration of controversial or ambiguous material,
mastery of a performance technique or technical
procedure, improvement in communication skills,
personal and social adjustment, motivation for further
learning, satisfaction with the course, and retention
of knowledge after the course is over (Bligh, 2000;
Bonwell & Eison, 1991; Hake, 1998; Jones-Wilson,
2005; McKeachie, Pintrich, Lin, Smith, & Sharma,
1990). In addition, it encourages a surface (superfi-
cial, nonconceptual) approach to learning (Canfield,
2002). For deep learning and higher-order thinking
outcomes, more student-active methods such as
discussion and inquiry-based learning are more
successful.
There is more bad news for lecture lovers: from
research dating back to the 1920s, lectures have an
infamous reputation for being utterly forgettable.
Their much-replicated “forgetting curve” for the
average student is 62 percent recall of the material
just presented, 45 percent recall three to four days
later, and only 24 percent recall eight weeks later
(Menges, 1988).
Lecture doesn’t have to be the mindless,
quickly forgotten transmission that Mortimer Adler
described. It can be saved—but only if it is used
for the right purposes, is carefully prepared and
eloquently delivered, and is supplemented with
thought-provoking student activities. With lecture,
less is more.
PURPOSE: TO LECTURE
OR NOT TO LECTURE?
As Chapter Eleven advised, student learning out-
comes should guide choice of methods. Already listed
above are outcomes that lecture doesn’t serve well.
113

114 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
According to Table 11.1, straight lecture has proven
effective only in helping students acquire knowledge,
and given its forgetting curve, it hasn’t done a very
good job of that. Still, knowledge is at the heart
of our enterprise. Therefore, for at least segments
of a class period, the lecture may be essential. The
list below sets out occasions when it is probably
the most effective and efficient option (Bligh, 2000;
McKeachie, 2002):
• You want to model a problem-solving approach
or a kind of higher-order thinking before asking
your students to try it themselves.
• You want to provide some quick background
knowledge that is not summarized in print.
• You want to adapt very sophisticated knowledge
to your students’ level and needs in a way that no
other available source does.
• You want to present a particular organization of
the material that clarifies the structure of the read-
ing, the course, or the field.
• You want to add your personal viewpoint on the
material or your own related research.
• You want to update your students with the very
latest material, and it is not yet available from
another source that is targeted to the students’
level.
• You want to pique your students’ curiosity and
motivation to learn if your style is very expressive.
You will note that some of these occasions are
qualified by the lack of other sources. If you can find
the same material online or in print, you may want to
make it a reading assignment. In fact, some faculty
have turned their lectures into homework, posting
print versions, videos, or podcasts of them on the
course website for students to download. Many of
these faculty teach online or hybrid courses, but some
just want to reserve their face-to-face class time for
student activities.
Do not lecture material that simply duplicates
the assigned readings or other course materials.
Repetition and redundancy have their place, but
student-active exercises can duplicate the material at
a higher cognitive level, such as application, analysis,
synthesis, and evaluation. Deleting a redundant
lecture frees plenty of class time for student activities.
Besides, if a lecture primarily repeats the readings, any
rational student will decide either to do the readings
or to attend lecture (see Chapter Twenty-Three)—no
doubt not what you intend.
If you are uncertain of your students’ level of
expertise, preparation, and interest, have them do one
or more classroom assessment exercises (see Chapter
Twenty-Eight) before planning your lectures. Other-
wise you risk going over the students’ heads or boring
them with basics.
PREPARING AN EFFECTIVE
LECTURE
Bligh (2000) lays out several organizational models for
lectures, but they share the common ground summa-
rized here.
Class Outcomes
First, determine your student learning outcomes for
the class period. What precisely do you want your
students to learn that day? How will you express your
outcomes to the class? If a lecture serves only one or
two of the multiple objectives you have for the class,
then it should fill only part of the period.
Overview
Whenever possible, limit one class’s lecture to one
major topic. Some students find it difficult to pick
up a lecture from one period to the next, and global
thinkers need to see the big picture before any of
the details and examples will make sense. Also lay
out a time-content schedule, bearing in mind the
two most common lecturing errors: trying to include
too much material and delivering the material too
fast. While you’re lecturing, you will have to proceed
slowly enough, including pausing after major points,
for students to take notes. So if anything, underbudget
content.

Making the Lecture a Learning Experience 115
To start planning your lecture, you might begin
by subdividing the major topic into ten- to fifteen-
minute chunks. Then plan student-active breaks of
two to fifteen minutes between these chunks. Later
in this chapter, you find a wide variety of short break
activities that you can use, but feel free to devise your
own. Most of them can be (and have been) con-
ducted in large lectures of hundreds of students as well
as smaller classes. So class size need not deter you.
Finally, allow two to five minutes for some kind of
recap activity at the end.
Let us turn to the internal organization of your
lecture. The skeleton for any lecture is the intro-
duction, the body, and the conclusion (McKeachie,
2002).
Introduction
The ideal introduction has three parts, the order of
which is really an aesthetic decision: (1) a statement
that frames the lecture in the context of the course
objectives, (2) a statement reviewing and transitioning
from the material covered in the previous class
period, and (3) an attention grabber for the new
material. Effective attention grabbers include an
intriguing question the lecture will answer, a story or
parable that illustrates the new subject matter of the
day, a demonstration of a nonobvious phenomenon,
a reference to a current event or movie, a case or
a problem that requires the lecture’s information
to solve, or a strong generalization that contradicts
common thought. The idea is to draw in the class
with surprise, familiarity, curiosity, or suspense.
Body
The body is your presentation and explication of new
material. It is within this section that you subdivide
the major topic into minilectures, each of which
should revolve around only one major point. There
is no best logic to follow in organizing a minilecture
except to keep it simple. You can choose from an
array of options: deduction (theory to phenom-
ena/examples); induction (phenomena/examples to
theory); hypothesis testing (theory to hypothesis
to evidence); problem to solution; cause to effect;
concept to application; familiar to unfamiliar; debate
to resolution; a chronology of events (a story or
process)—to name just some common possibilities.
To appeal to different learning styles, try to vary your
organization from one minilecture to another (see
Chapter Twenty-Five).
Organizational Outline
Make whatever organization you select explicit to
students. For instance, tell the class, “I am going to
describe some common manifestations of dysfunc-
tional family behavior, then give you a definition and
general principles that apply to the phenomenon.”
It is best to provide a general outline of the main
points (only) of your lecture on the board, on an over-
head or slide, or in a handout. An outline will ensure
that students are following your logical flow, espe-
cially if you occasionally refer to it to point out your
location in the lecture. It should also highlight new
terms you are introducing. However, keep this outline
skeletal so students still have to take notes. Research
shows that the process of note taking has learning and
retention benefits (see the “Teaching Students to Take
Good Notes” section later in this chapter.)
In addition, try to integrate as many of these
learning aids as you can:
• Visuals. As you plan the material, think about how
you can convey or repackage it visually—in pic-
tures, photographs, slides, graphic metaphors, dia-
grams, graphs, and concept or mind maps (spatial
arrangements of concepts or stages linked by lines
or arrows). Prepare these graphics for presentation
to the class. While such visual aids facilitate al-
most everyone’s learning, they can be critical for
students with a visual learning style (see Chapters
Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six).
• Examples. Think about illustrating abstract con-
cepts and relationships with examples. Ideally
these examples should be striking, vivid, current,
common in everyday life, and related to students’
experiences (past, present, or future). Making
them humorous also helps students remem-
ber them.

116 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
• Restatements. Consider how you can restate each
important point in two or three different ways—in
scholarly terms, lay formal language, and infor-
mal language. Restatements not only demystify
the material, making it more comprehensible, but
they also build students’ vocabulary and encourage
their own paraphrasing of the material.
Conclusion
For learning purposes, the conclusion should be a
two- to five-minute recap of the most important
points in your lecture. It is too important to be rushed
after the bell. You should plan and direct the recap
activity, but the students should do it. The prospect of
having to retrieve the material helps keep all students
on their toes. The recap activity may take the form
of an oral summary presented by one or more
students, a free-recall writing exercise (see Chapter
Seventeen), a classroom assessment technique such
as a one-minute paper (see Chapter Twenty-Eight),
or a quiz.
In fact, we know that giving a quiz, graded or
ungraded, at the end of the class period is a particu-
larly effective means to ensure students retain more
of your lecture content. Recall lecture’s infamous
forgetting curve: 38 percent of the material gone
within minutes, 55 percent in three to four days, and
76 percent in eight weeks. Now recall from Chapter
One that people learn less by reviewing material
and more from being tested or testing themselves
on it, as the latter activities involve greater cognitive
processing and practice retrieving (Dempster, 1996,
1997; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). This is why
giving some kind of test right after a lecture doubles
both factual and conceptual recall after eight weeks
(Menges, 1988).
Your Lecture Notes
Your lecture notes should be easy to read at a glance
and as sketchy as you can handle. After all, you know
the material. So all you need is a map showing your
next conceptual destination. Therefore, consider lay-
ing out the lecture graphically in flowcharts, concept
maps, tree diagrams, Venn diagrams, network models,
and so on, including any visual aids you plan to put on
the board. Some instructors like to color-code their
notes for quick visual reference. If a graphic organi-
zation does not appeal to you, make a sketchy outline
of your lecture. But be sure it’s very sketchy. In any
case, write big and leave a lot of white space.
The habit to avoid is writing out sentences
(except direct quotes). That may tempt you to read
them in class, in which case you will lose spontaneity,
expressiveness, flexibility, eye contact, and, most im-
portant, psychological contact with the class, lulling
students into a passive, inattentive state of mind
(Day, 1980). Confine the words in your notes to key
concepts and phrases, transitions to make explicit
to the class, and directions to yourself (for example,
“board,” “pause,” “slide,” “survey class,” “ask class
question,” “break activity #2—voltage problem”).
DELIVERING AN EFFECTIVE
LECTURE
Actually a lecture can be highly motivational, but its
success depends on the lecturer. An expressive, en-
thusiastic instructor can ignite students’ interest in the
material, and a reserved, boring one can douse it.
The platform skills that convey energy, dy-
namism, and charisma can be isolated—they are listed
in Chapter Seven—and learned. Public speaking
courses and clubs help people develop and practice
eye contact, effective verbal pacing and pausing, vocal
quality and variety, facial expressions, gestures and
movements, lectern and microphone use, visual aid
display, and so on. Those who start out weak in
these skills but work on them diligently can achieve
impressive results within a year.
Some scholars may dismiss such presentation
techniques as mere acting. In fact, some people seem
to have a knack for them, while others acquire them
only with concentration and practice. Acting or
not, like it or not, these public speaking techniques
have a powerful impact on students’ motivation and
learning, as well as on their course and instructor
evaluations (see Chapter Thirty-Two). But this is

Making the Lecture a Learning Experience 117
true only to the extent that an instructor relies on the
lecture format. With the variety of teaching methods
available, no instructor need rely on it much at all.
Therefore, instructors have a choice. Those who
happen to have an expressive, dynamic public person-
ality or are willing to acquire the trappings of one can
afford to use the lecture more in their teaching. (For
the sake of student learning, however, even the most
charismatic instructor should not depend on it exclu-
sively.) Those who do not project such a persona can
avoid lecturing whenever possible and employ more
student-active methods. In brief, you should play to
your natural and acquired strengths. The wide array
of effective teaching methods should put to rest the
notion that good teachers are born and not made.
INCORPORATING STUDENT-
ACTIVE BREAKS: THE
INTERACTIVE LECTURE
Well-chosen student-active breaks—coined “brainy
breaks” by Rick Beam, academic dean and vice
president for academics at Johnston Bible College—
comprise the heart of the interactive lecture, trans-
forming the traditional lecture into a series of
minilectures.
Attention Span Limits
According to studies cited in Bligh (2000), Bonwell
and Eison (1991), and Middendorf and Kalish (1996),
a lecture begins with a five-minute settling-in period
during which students are fairly attentive. This
attentiveness extends another five to ten minutes, and
then students become progressively bored, restless,
and confused. Focus and note taking increasingly
drop—some students effectively fall asleep—until the
last several minutes of the period, when they revive
in anticipation of the end of class. Bligh reconfirmed
this pattern using students’ heart rates as a measure of
arousal. Even medical students display similar patterns
of concentration levels: an increase over about fifteen
minutes, followed by a sharp decrease.
This is unsettling, sobering news for the higher
education community. After all, if highly motivated
learners like medical students demonstrate such a brief
attention span in the lecture setting, what can we ex-
pect of our undergraduates? No doubt enthusiastic,
engaging lecturers can extend that narrow time hori-
zon. But aside from improving our platform skills,
what else can we do when we must lecture?
In a word, pause. One study supports the prac-
tice of pausing at least three times during each lecture
to allow pairs or small groups of students to discuss
and clarify the material (Rowe, 1980). Another
recommends pausing for two minutes every fifteen to
eighteen minutes to permit student pairs to compare
and rework their notes (Ruhl, Hughes, & Schloss,
1987). This latter study was designed experimentally
with a control group receiving a series of traditional
nonstop lectures and a treatment group hearing the
same lectures with periodic pauses. Both groups
took free-recall quizzes during the last three minutes
of each lecture (that is, students individually wrote
down everything they could remember from the
lecture) and the same sixty-five-item multiple-choice
test twelve days after the last lecture. In two different
courses repeated over two semesters, the treatment
group performed much better than the control group
on both the quizzes and the test—better enough to
make a mean difference of up to two letter grades
(17 percentage points), depending on the cut-off
points. Translated into learning terms, sacrificing the
least important 12 percent of your lecture content for
periodic two-minute pauses can increase the learning
of your current C students to that of your current
B students and even A students.
Ideas for Student-Active Breaks
During student-active breaks, students should be in
some way interacting with the material (and often
one another) for brief, controlled periods of time.
Add in the appropriate breaks, and suddenly you
can help your students achieve almost every type of
learning outcomes—those requiring any of Bloom’s

118 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
cognitive operations and those involving cognitive
development.
Ideally the breaks should supply students the
opportunity to practice performing your learning
outcomes or applying the lecture content you just
gave. How well they complete the break task should
furnish you with a diagnosis of their understanding.
After all, you shouldn’t move onto the next chunk of
material unless students comprehend this one.
To keep the breaks brief and controlled, care-
fully time-control them. Inform your students that
they will have exactly X number of minutes to com-
plete the activity you assign them. Strictly enforced,
those limits keep students focused on the task. When
in doubt, allocate a little less time than you think some
of them will need, but feel free to extend the limit a
bit if they are working diligently. To make managing
easier, bring a timer or stopwatch to class. Also cir-
culate around the classroom to let students know you
are listening to them and are willing to answer any
procedural questions.
These breaks work well in any size class. In
larger classes, however, having students work with
their neighbors (in ad hoc pairs or triads) is quicker
and easier than having them get into preorganized
small groups, unless you arrange for group members
to sit together during every class.
Ask students to work and talk as quietly as they
can, but expect the classroom to get noisy anyway.
After their activity time is up, you can bring even the
largest class to silence within seconds by taking this
tip from cooperative learning researchers: set the rule
that you will raise your hand when the time is up. Tell
your students that as soon as they see your hand up,
they should immediately stop talking and raise their
hands. The rest of the class will quickly follow suit.
Below are some commonly used break activi-
ties, along with the number of minutes each typi-
cally takes. (They come from Bonwell & Eison, 1991;
Cross & Angelo, 1993; McKeachie, 2002; and infor-
mal collegial exchanges.) Some of them recommend
randomly calling on individual students or groups to
hold them accountable for participating in the activ-
ity. Let these examples serve as your inspiration to
conceive and experiment with your own innovations:
• Pair and compare. Students pair off with their
neighbor and compare lecture notes, filling in what
they may have missed. This activity makes students re-
view and mentally process your minilecture content.
Time: Two minutes.
• Pair, compare, and ask. Same as pair and com-
pare but with the addition that students jot down
questions on your minilecture content. Students
answer one another’s questions; you then field the
remaining ones. Time: Three minutes, plus one or
two minutes to answer questions.
• Periodic free-recall, with pair-and-compare op-
tion. Students put away their lecture notes and write
down the most important one, two, or three points of
your minilecture, as well as any questions they have.
The first two times you do this, use a slide, over-
head, or the board to give instructions. After that, just
telling them will do. Again, this activity makes stu-
dents review and mentally process your minilecture
content. Students may work individually, but if they
work in pairs or triads, they can answer some of each
other’s questions. Time: Two minutes, plus one or
two minutes to answer students’ questions.
• Reflection/reaction paragraph. Students in-
dividually write out their affective reaction to the
minilecture content (or video or demonstration).
Ask a few volunteers to share. Time: Three to four
minutes.
• Solve a problem. Students solve an equational
or word problem based on your minilecture. (Chapter
Twenty-One describes a problem-solving strategy
you can teach them.) They can work individually or,
better yet, in ad hoc pairs or triads. Randomly call on
a few individuals or groups to sample their answers.
Time: One to three minutes for problem solving,
depending on the problem’s complexity, plus one or
two minutes for surveying responses.
• Multiple-choice item. Put a multiple-choice
item, preferably a conceptual one, related to your
minilecture on the board, a slide, or an overhead,

Making the Lecture a Learning Experience 119
and give four response options. Survey your student
responses (the next section, “Surveying Student Re-
sponses: Hands, Flashcards, and Clickers,” explains
various ways to do this). You can also ask students to
rate their confidence level in their answer. Then give
them a minute to convince their neighbor of their
answer, and resurvey their responses. This activity,
developed by Mazur (1997), makes students apply
and discuss your minilecture content while it’s fresh
in their minds, and it immediately informs you how
well they have understood the material. You can
then clarify misconceptions before proceeding to
new material. Time: Three minutes, plus one to two
minutes to debrief and answer questions.
• Multiple-choice test item. In contrast to
the multiple-choice item task above, this one puts
students in pairs or small groups to compose multiple-
choice items on your minilecture for a test you will
give in the future. As we know, this is no easy task,
so provide your students some training in good
test-item writing. Teach them Bloom’s taxonomy.
Tell them the characteristics of plausible distractors
(see Chapter Twenty-Nine). Show them examples
of well-constructed and poorly constructed items,
then lower-order recall and higher-order thinking
items. Students will be motivated to write test items
you will want to use because they will know the
answers to the ones they submitted. And you will
never have to write multiple-choice items again. Nor
will students ever again blame you for items they
find tricky, ambiguous, or too hard. Of course, you
should reserve the right to tweak their submissions.
Time: One to three minutes for each item they write.
• Listen, recall, and ask; then pair, compare, and
answer. Students only listen to your minilecture—no
note taking allowed. Then they open their notebooks
and write down all the major points they can recall,
as well as any questions they have. Instruct students
to leave generous space between the major points
they write down. Finally, they pair off with their
neighbor and compare lecture notes, filling in what
they may have missed and answering one another’s
questions. Again, this activity makes students review
and mentally process your lecture content. Time:
Three to four minutes for individual note writing
plus two to four minutes for pair fill-ins and question
answering.
• Pair/group graphic. Students develop a con-
cept map, mind map, thinking map, graphic
organizer, picture, diagram, flowchart, or matrix of
your minilecture content in pairs or small groups.
What they are actually doing is integrating and
reassembling their understanding of the content
into a big picture graphic. It is one of the purest
constructivist activities you can have them do, and it
yields powerful learning benefits, which will be de-
tailed in Chapter Twenty-Six. Because these graphics
provide you with deep insight into your students’
interpretation of the material, you may want to
collect and peruse them. You may also want to return
them with some feedback—at the very least, pointing
out any misconceptions and oversimplifications they
reveal. Time: Three to ten minutes in class.
• Quick case study. Students debrief a short
case study (one to four paragraphs) that requires
them to apply your minilecture content to a realistic,
problematic situation. (Chapter Nineteen addresses
the case method, including tips on developing your
own cases.) Display a very brief case on an overhead
or slide; put longer ones in a handout. You may
add specific questions for students to answer, or
teach your class the standard debriefing formula:
What is the problem? What is the remedy? What
is the prevention? Instruct students to jot down
their answers. Students can work individually or,
better yet, in ad hoc pairs or small groups. Time:
Three to five minutes, depending on the case length
and complexity, plus five to ten minutes for class
exchange and discussion.
• Pair/group and discuss. Students pair off with
their neighbor or get into small groups to discuss an
open-ended question that asks them to apply, analyze,
or evaluate your minilecture content or to synthesize
it with other course material. This question should
have multiple possible correct answers. (Refer to
Chapter Fourteen for helpful questioning schema
and question framing techniques.) Have students
outline their answers in writing. This activity makes

120 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
students examine and extend, as well as process, your
minilecture content and serves as an effective prelude
to a general class discussion. Time: Three to ten min-
utes, depending on the question’s complexity, plus
five to ten minutes for class exchange and discussion.
• Pair/group and review. Same as above but
with an essay question designed for preexam review.
Randomly select student pairs or groups to present
their answers to the class. Then mock-grade them
based on your assessment criteria (explain these be-
fore the exercise). You can also have the rest of the
class mock-grade these answers to help students learn
how to assess their work. Time: Three to ten minutes,
depending on the question’s complexity, plus five to
fifteen minutes for pair/group presentations.
Here are several other break activities that ap-
ply to a wide range of content areas. Johnston and
Cooper (1997) developed them under the apt name,
“quick-thinks.” Each takes one or two minutes, plus
one to four minutes to survey responses:
• Correct the error. Using immediate minilec-
ture content, students correct an error in a statement,
equation, or visual that you have intentionally made.
The error may be an illogical or inaccurate statement,
premise, inference, prediction, or implication.
• Complete a sentence starter. Students ac-
curately complete a sentence stem related to your
minilecture content. The completed statement may
be a definition, a category, a cause-and-effect rela-
tionship, an implication, a rationale, or a controversy.
Present students with a sentence starter that requires
reflection and higher-order thinking, not just rote
knowledge, to complete.
• Compare and contrast. Students identify sim-
ilarities or differences between parallel elements in
your minilecture, such as theories, methods, mod-
els, events, problems, solutions, or artistic or literary
works. To comprise a true analysis task, students must
work on elements that have not been compared and
contrasted in your minilectures or the readings.
• Support a statement. Students garner support
for a statement—a conclusion, inference, theory,
opinion, or description—you present. Sources of sup-
port may be your minilecture, the readings, or
evidence they generate on their own.
• Reorder the steps. Students correctly sequence
items that you present to them in mixed order. These
items may be elements of a procedure, process, cycle,
method, plan, strategy, or technique.
• Reach a conclusion. Students logically infer the
implications of facts, concepts, or principles drawing
from data, opinions, events, or solutions. The inferred
conclusions can be probable results, probable causes,
or outcomes.
• Paraphrase the idea. Students put an
idea—a definition, theory, statement, procedure, or
description—into their own words. This task can be
just a check on their comprehension or a little more
when you add the twist of targeting the paraphrase
to a specific audience.
Finally, the least cognitively active break is what
Kodani and Wood (2007) coin the seventh inning
stretch. For a few minutes, they play some popular
music and have their students just get out of their
seats and stretch. Afterward their classes seem more
alert. When Kodani and Wood surveyed their classes,
their students overwhelmingly appreciated this break
and believed it enhanced their learning. But a few
would have preferred it to be content focused.
You will find many other options for student-
active breaks in Chapter Seventeen (writing-to-learn
activities), Chapter Eighteen (learning in groups),
and Chapter Twenty-Eight (classroom assessment
techniques).
Surveying Student Responses: Hands,
Flash Cards, and Clickers
When you develop a lecture break around a
multiple-choice item—or for that matter, a true-
false item—follow up by surveying your students’
responses before and after they discuss their answers
with their neighbors. The fact that students com-
mit to an answer makes them more interested in
finding out what the correct response is, and the
results furnish you with valuable feedback on their
understanding.

Making the Lecture a Learning Experience 121
You can collect those responses in several ways.
First, you can ask for a show of hands for each
response. While very simple, this option has its
weaknesses. In a large class, you can’t know for sure
whether everyone is participating, and since you
don’t have time to count all the hands, you may get
only a vague measure of the distribution of responses.
You have no record of these responses either.
One additional problem is that responses are not
anonymous, so students may mindlessly change their
answers just to follow the crowd.
Second, you can distribute four 8 1/2- by 11-inch
“flash cards” (you can use heavy cover stock) of differ-
ent colors to each student, where each color signifies
an answer—for example, red for a, blue for b, yellow
for c, and green for d. Then have students put up
the color of paper that signifies their response choice.
With this alternative, you can get a somewhat better
idea of your participation rate and response distri-
bution, especially if you have students put the stock
directly in front of their faces. If you see a face, you
can coax the student to make a choice. With students’
faces covered by their choices, the answers become
more anonymous as well. The only problem is that
you have no record of the responses.
Third, you can use clickers, more formally
known as personal or classroom response systems
or voting systems. Students simply push a button
indicating their response, and a receiver connected to
your computer picks up the signals and immediately
tallies all the answers, displaying them in a histogram
on your monitor. You then have the option of
revealing these results to the class. Of course, this
alternative involves more advanced technology,
which means that your institution, your students, or
both have to pay for the clickers and your receiver.
In addition, you have to learn the technology.
However, you can tell exactly who isn’t participating
(and push them to participate) and exactly how the
responses distribute, and you can archive the survey
results. The process is completely anonymous so only
you know how each student is responding. This
also means you can take a confidential survey on
sensitive attitudinal or behavioral topics. If you think
students may be concerned about your knowing their
individual responses, you can turn off your receiver’s
identification function and tell them that you have.
Almost all of the research on the impact of this
lecture break technique—that is, posing a multiple-
choice question and surveying student responses
before and after a short pair discussion—has been
conducted on clickers. Compared to a traditional
lecture, incorporating clicker breaks enhances student
learning substantially, often by an entire letter grade
on tests (Crouch & Mazur, 2001; Deal, 2007; Fagen,
Crouch, & Mazur, 2002; Kaleta & Joosten, 2007;
Mazur Group, 2008; Reay, Li, & Bao, 2008; addi-
tional studies listed at Bruff, 2008). The good news
is that lower-tech survey methods, at least flash cards,
produce learning gains just as impressive as clickers
(Lasry, 2008). The payoff comes from the lecture
break activity itself, not the technology. Therefore,
the vast majority of the learning-relevant research
involving clickers applies to hand raising and flash
cards as well.
The student learning benefits of this lecture
break technique over traditional lecture derive from
its very specific effects. The literature reports that this
technique increases class attendance, broadens class
participation to literally the entire class, multiplies the
chances for both student-to-student and student-to-
faculty interaction, affords students regular practice
in higher-order thinking, teaches them to critically
examine and defend their thinking, improves the
formative assessment of learning, provides instant
feedback to students and the instructor on their
understanding and retention, heightens students’
attention and alertness in class (even early and late in
the day), enhances their engagement in the material,
and develops their metacognition, allowing for
mindful and self-regulated learning (Bergtrom, 2006;
Bruff, 2009; Crouch & Mazur, 2001; Deal, 2007;
Fagen et al., 2002; Kaleta & Joosten, 2007; Mazur
Group, 2008; Radosevich, Salomon, Radosevich, &
Kahn, 2008). You can also use this technique to assess
students’ prior knowledge and launch discussion.
Clickers offer the additional opportunities to do the
following: take attendance instantly, with or without

122 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
posing a question; grade participation, even in a
large class, based on the number of correct responses
to questions; play academic games, such as Mil-
lionaire; and give objective-item quizzes, as long as
considerable cheating isn’t likely.
Of course, these benefits depend on the
questions; they must require higher-order thinking
and problem-solving skills. For example, they may
ask students to choose an example of a principle or
to choose a principle to explain an example. They
may survey an opinion, pose an ethical dilemma,
have students classify a concept, or challenge them to
make a prediction. (Chapter Fourteen on questioning
techniques supplies many more examples.) If clickers
collect the responses anonymously, the questions
can address controversial or personal matters, such
as students’ opinions on hot-button issues or private
experiences that illustrate a theory, principle, or
finding (Bruff, 2007, 2009).
Since this lecture break technique started in
large science classes, the STEM fields (science, tech-
nology, engineering, and mathematics) already have
large online collections of well-tested break questions;
start with Databases of Concept Questions at www
.skylight.science.ubc.ca/cqdatabases. Bruff (2009)
and his website (2008) at www.vanderbilt.edu/cft
/resources/teaching resources/technology/crs biblio
.htm offer other sources of questions for a much
wider array of disciplines.
TEACHING STUDENTS TO TAKE
GOOD NOTES
Many students come to college—and often leave it—
with poor note-taking skills. The average student’s
notes include only 10 percent of the lecture (John-
stone & Su, 1994) and 40 percent of its critical ideas
(first-year students, just 11 percent) (Kiewra, 1985,
2005), and only about a third of students take decent
notes (Johnstone & Su). One reliable way to get your
material into those notes is to write it on the board.
But students also make errors copying material,
particularly diagrams, equations, numbers, and the
contents of slides and transparencies, through which
we often move too quickly. They also tend to
leave out the instructor’s corrections, descriptions
of demonstrations, examples of applications, the
structure of arguments, and technical definitions
(Johnstone & Su).
And some students don’t take notes at all,
especially when they have a hard copy of the lecture’s
presentation slides. But having these slides often gives
them a false sense of security that all the material
they need to know for the test lies in front of them,
and they may think they will remember what they
have heard and read at the same time. We must
realize that most young students did not take notes in
high school. Teachers often provided handouts and
gave easy tests. If students succeeded academically
without taking notes before, they may question why
they should now. So they don’t even know that they
should take notes, let alone how to take good ones.
Selling Students on Note Taking
Before teaching your students how to take good
lecture notes, you have to motivate them to take
them, to sell them on the benefits. Fortunately, you
can make your case from plenty of research (Carrier,
1983; Johnstone & Su, 1994; Kiewra, 1985, 2005;
Potts, 1993; numerous studies cited in Bligh, 2000,
and McKeachie, 1994). Students who take their own
notes and review them later reap numerous cognitive
payoffs over those who just listen. Note taking
fosters attention to and concentration on the lecture,
accurate judgments about the relative importance
of content (from nonverbal cues), understanding of
the development and structure of the knowledge,
far-transfer application of the material, and deeper
cognitive processing. In deeper processing, learners
engage in more thoughtful and active listening.
They are paraphrasing, interpreting, and questioning,
as well as integrating the new material into their
organized bank of prior knowledge. Perhaps most
compelling to students, taking notes better cements
the knowledge in their memories, especially if they

Making the Lecture a Learning Experience 123
review their notes later. This means note takers per-
form better on all types of tests than non–note takers.
Of course, it is just as important that students review
their notes, but you can incorporate lecture breaks
and end-of-class activities to ensure they review
them at least once (see the “Ideas for Student-Active
Breaks” section above).
Kiewra (1985) conducted some intriguing
research on the relative value of students studying
from their own lecture notes versus the instructor’s
lecture notes. On factual tests, students who studied
only the instructor’s notes performed better than
those who studied only their own notes. In fact,
this former group did better even if they did not
attend lectures! However, the highest factual test
scorers were those who studied both the instructor’s
notes and their own notes. When students took
tests requiring higher-order thinking, the instructor’s
lecture notes were of no help to them. It seems, then,
that for higher-order cognitive outcomes, the greater
focus and deeper thought processes that note taking
engages really pays off.
Teaching Note Taking
After selling students on note taking, acquaint
them with some note-taking systems (Bligh, 2000;
Ellis, 2006; Kiewra, 2005). Show them how to
make a formal outline with first-order headings,
second-order headings, and so on. (Points of equal
importance or generality should start at the same
distance from the left margin.) Tell them about the
Cornell system: drawing a line down each page
one-third in from the left, taking lecture notes on the
right two-thirds of the page, and reserving the left
one-third for reviewing activities, such as condensing
the notes and rewriting the most critical content. You
might also teach your students how to reorganize
their notes into concept maps, mind maps, graphic
organizers, matrices, and diagrams so they can take
advantage of the learning and memory benefits of
visual representation (see Chapter Twenty-Six). No
one strategy is equally effective for everyone, so
advise students to try out at least a couple.
In addition, explain to your students that the real
art of taking notes is putting the most knowledge into
the fewest possible words, preferably their own words.
It is not transcription. Students should avoid writing
complete sentences unless the specific wording is
crucial. So tell them to take notes sparingly, dropping
all unnecessary words and recording only the words
and symbols needed to recall the idea they signify
later.
Finally, share with your class some note-taking
pointers, such as these (Bligh, 2000; Ellis, 2006;
Kiewra, 2005):
• Arrive early to class to warm up your mind. Re-
view your notes from the previous class and the
assigned readings. Ask the instructor to clarify
what doesn’t make sense.
• Avoid cramming your notes or writing too small.
Strive for easy readability. Leave a generous left
margin for rewriting important words and abbre-
viated key content later.
• Occasionally glance back over the last few lines
of notes you have taken, and rewrite any illegible
letters, words, or symbols.
• Make key words, important relationships, and
conclusions stand out. Underline, highlight,
box, or circle them, or rewrite them in the left
margin.
• Organize your notes according to the instructor’s
introductory, transitional, and concluding words
and phrases, such as “the following three factors,”
“the most important consideration,” “in addition
to,” “on the other hand,” and “in conclusion.”
These phrases signal the structure of the lecture:
cause and effect, relationships, comparisons and
contrasts, exceptions, examples, shifts in topics,
debates and controversies, and general conclu-
sions.
• Identify the most important points by watching
for certain instructor cues: deliberate repetition,
pauses, a slower speaking pace, a drop in pitch, a
rise in interest or intensity, movement toward the
class, displaying a slide or transparency, and writing
on the board.

124 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
• Pay close attention to the instructor’s body
language, gestures, and facial expressions, as
well as changes in pace, pitch, and intonation.
The instructor’s subtlest actions punctuate and
add meaning to the substance of the lecture.
• Whenever possible, draw a picture, concept
map, or diagram to organize and abbreviate the
relationships in the lecture material. Most people
can recall a visual more easily than a written
description.
• Develop and use your own shorthand, such as
abbreviations and symbols for common or key
words—for instance, btw for between, + for and,
b/c for because, rel for relationship, df or = for
definition, cnd for condition, nec for necessary
or necessitates, hyp for hypothesis, � for change,
T4 for therefore, + for more, − for less, ↑ for
increasing, ↓ for decreasing; → for causes, ←
for is caused by, and two opposing arrows for
conflicts with.
• Take notes quickly and at opportune times. Use
the instructor’s pauses, extended examples, repeti-
tions, and lighter moments to record notes. You
can’t afford to be writing one thing when you
need to be listening closely to another.
• To help speed your note taking, try different pens
until you find an instrument that glides smoothly
and rapidly for you.
• If the instructor tends to speak or to move from
point to point too quickly, politely ask him or her
to slow down. You are probably the most coura-
geous student of many who cannot keep up either.
• If you lose focus and miss part of a lecture, leave
a space and ask a classmate, a teaching assistant, or
the instructor to help you fill in the blank.
• Separate your own comments and reactions from
your lecture notes.
• Review, edit, clarify, and elaborate your notes
within twenty-four hours of the lecture, again
a week later, and again a month later—even if
for just a few minutes. While reviewing, recite,
extract, and rewrite the key concepts and rela-
tionships. With enough review, the knowledge
will become yours forever.
Making Note Taking Easier for Students
We can do a lot to help students take good lecture
notes and have already addressed these strategies in
detail earlier in this chapter. Still, they are worth
highlighting here. For starters, we can organize
our lectures clearly and simply, giving each an
introduction, a body, and a conclusion and making
the organization explicit in class. We can deliver
our content using nonverbal cues (vocal variety,
gestures, movement) to signal the most important
points. We can chunk the content into minilectures,
each making one major point, with student-active
breaks between them. Finally, we can schedule
lecture breaks and end-of-class review activities that
allow students to review, fill in, and revise their
notes, individually or in pairs (Carter & Van Matre,
1975; Kelly & O’Donnell, 1994; O’Donnell &
Dansereau, 1993).
The most effective learning aids we can fur-
nish are skeletal lecture notes that provide just the
main headings and subheadings of our lectures and
appropriately sized blocks of white space below them.
Students need these notes at the beginning of the lec-
ture, so you should post them for downloading on the
course website or distribute them as handouts before
starting class. With an even sketchy lecture outline
in front of them, students tend not to get lost, and
they quickly figure out from the amount of white
space how much note taking to do on their own.
According to research, students not only take better
notes on skeletal outlines but also perform better on
tests, suggesting they learn more (Cornelius & Owen-
DeSchryver, 2008; Hartley & Davies, 1986; Potts,
1993). To make the most of skeletal notes, we can
include the type of material that students often mis-
copy (diagrams, equations, numbers, and the contents
of slides and transparencies) and insert a heading and
white space for them to record what they frequently
leave out: demonstrations, examples of applications,
the structure of arguments, and technical definitions
(Johnstone & Su, 1994). You can also include the di-
rections or the triggers for lecture-break activities as
well as the space to record the discussion, problem
solution, answer, graphic, conclusion, most important

Making the Lecture a Learning Experience 125
points, and so on. To prevent that false sense of se-
curity that printouts of presentation slides give many
students, word-process your skeletal notes.
Whether or not you make skeletal notes for your
classes, you might want to display or hand out your
own lecture notes just once or twice early in the term
to provide students a model of how they should be
taking notes.
MAKING THE LECTURE
EFFECTIVE FOR EVERYONE
To encourage and enable academic success and
lifelong learning, we should incorporate as many
learning skills, such as lecture note taking, as we can
fit into our courses. But for a small subset of students,
note taking can actually interfere with their learning
and recall. Those with relatively low ability, poor
short-term memory, or little prior knowledge of the
subject matter are often unable to assimilate new
material as quickly as a lecture demands (McKeachie,
2002). They are totally dependent on our instruc-
tional aids, such as skeletal notes and student-active
breaks like pair and compare that allow them to draw
on their neighbor’s notes. Try to get these students
special help by referring them to your institution’s
learning skills or academic assistance center. It may
offer workshops or one-on-one tutoring in note
taking.

C H A P T E R 13
Leading Effective Discussions
C
hapter Twelve recommends breaking lectures
up with intermittent activities that allow stu-
dents to work with and assess their under-
standing of the material. In all but very large classes,
one of the easiest and most effective student activi-
ties is a well-directed discussion. In smaller classes and
seminars, this method may further your learning out-
comes and serve as your primary classtime activity.
Certainly a “discussion section” should remain true
to its name and rely heavily on this format.
Let’s define discussion as a productive exchange
of viewpoints, a collective exploration of issues. To
bear fruit and not degenerate into a free-association,
free-for-all bull session, you as the instructor must
chart its course and steer it in the right direction. It
is your responsibility to plan and control the content
and conduct, to keep hot air from blowing it off
course. But it is also your responsibility to go with
the breezes at least occasionally, to keep it flexible
and fluid. Your challenge is to strike that delicate bal-
ance between structure and flow. Finding that balance
helps you broaden participation and keep all hands
on deck.
WHEN TO CHOOSE DISCUSSION
When well planned and managed, discussion can
help your students achieve every type of learn-
ing outcome with the possible exception of
knowledge/remembering, and it isn’t bad at that
either (Bonwell & Eison, 1991; McKeachie, 2002).
In fact, discussion shines in developing the skills,
abilities, and learning attitudes on which lecture
is weak (Bligh, 2000; Bonwell & Eison, 1991;
Dallimore, Hertenstein, & Platt, 2008; Delaney,
1991; Ewens, 2000; Forster, Hounsell, & Thompson,
1995; Gilmore & Schall, 1996; Kustra & Potter,
2008; McKeachie, 2002; Robinson & Schaible, 1993;
Springer, Stanne, & Donovan, 1999):
• Examining and changing attitudes, beliefs, values,
and behaviors
127

128 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
• Exploring unfamiliar ideas open-mindedly
• Deep learning
• Critical thinking
• Problem solving
• Listening actively
• Communicating orally
• Transferring knowledge to new situations
• Retaining the material
• Wanting to learn more about the subject matter
The problem-solving skills that discussion
fosters apply not only to math problems but to all
kinds of solution-oriented tasks, whether they call for
one correct answer, one best answer, or many possible
correct answers. Such tasks include resolving ethical
dilemmas, designing a research project, explaining
deviations from expected results, writing a computer
program, solving a case study, evaluating various
positions on an issue, analyzing a piece of literature,
and developing approaches to tackling real-world
social, political, economic, technological, and en-
vironmental problems. Because discussion models
democracy, it may even promote civic engagement
and good citizenship (Brookfield & Preskill, 1999;
Lempert, Xavier, & DeSouza, 1995; Redfield, 2000).
One final benefit of discussion for you as well as
your class is that across the disciplines, student ratings
of instructors vary positively with the amount of time
and encouragement an instructor gives to discussion
(Cashin, 1988; Cohen, 1981).
Before moving on, we should distinguish dis-
cussion from recitation, which is students answering
knowledge/remembering and comprehension/un-
derstanding questions. By contrast, discussion thrives
on higher-order questions (see Chapter Fourteen).
But recitation occupies a useful place in helping stu-
dents achieve several respectable outcomes: recalling
and restating knowledge, terms, and facts; speaking
the language of the discipline (Leamnson, 1999);
expressing important material in one’s own words,
thereby demonstrating understanding; and practicing
what requires drill and repetition to learn. It also
helps students retrieve the basic knowledge they need
for discussion.
HOW TO SET THE STAGE
FOR DISCUSSION
The biggest challenge facing you is eliciting broad
and active participation. If you can do that, most of
the other problems that go wrong in a discussion—
domination by one or two students, topical tangents,
silent sectors of the room—simply disappear. Just
about all the recommendations in this chapter help
ensure that all of your students will come to a discus-
sion prepared, comfortable, and willing to contribute.
From the First Day
Students need to be primed for discussion, especially
since they spend most of their classroom time pas-
sively listening to an instructor and a few particularly
loquacious classmates. If you plan to make discussion
an integral class activity, even if not a primary one,
inform and prepare your students from the first day
of class. Let them know the primary ground rule:
everyone’s participation is expected and no back-
benchers will be allowed. Announcing the key role
that discussion will play in your course will encourage
students to take the activity seriously. So will telling
them your reasons for using discussion—for instance,
how the research supports its effectiveness in helping
them achieve your learning outcomes. Follow up by
explaining how class discussions will relate to other
parts of the course, such as readings, written assign-
ments, and tests. When you can, build homework,
quizzes, and tests around both the readings and
the discussions about them.
Explain the true nature of discussion—that
it thrives on the expression of different, legitimate
points of view. Disagreement enriches the learning
experience. In fact, college is all about hearing,
“trying on,” and appraising different perspectives.
So students should listen actively and respectfully to
every opinion put on the table, evaluate the evidence
for and against that claim, and be prepared with
evidence to defend their own positions.
Then lead your class in a discussion—if not
about the syllabus (see Chapter Three) then about

Leading Effective Discussions 129
their prior knowledge of, experience with, and in-
terest in the course material. Try to get every student
to say something that day. You might draw students
out by directing questions to them individually, such
as, “Janet, what interested you in this seminar?” or
“Matt, what topics would you like to see addressed
in this course?” Cement their participation by having
them post extensions of or comments on this first
discussion online—to a class blog, wiki, discussion
board, or chatroom.
Here are some other first-day primers to break
down social barriers from the start. If possible,
arrange the seats in a circle so that students can see
one another. (It isn’t easy to talk to the back of a
classmate’s head.) Have social or subject-oriented
icebreakers the first day of class so students get
acquainted (see Chapter Four). They will find it
easier to speak out among “friends.” Give students
index cards to fill out with any information they’d
like to share about their learning styles, hometown,
personal lives, and career aspirations. To induce them
to talk, you might invite them to expand on their
index card information. Finally, start calling students
by name and helping them learn each others’ names
by providing name tags or name tents for in-class use.
Continue to nurture the friendly atmosphere
you establish on the first day by getting into the
habit of casually chatting with students before and
after class. If you have the time, make individual
or small-group appointments with them early in
the term (pass around a sign-up sheet), and include
some noncourse conversation on the agenda. Your
knowledge of your students will help you pitch the
course at the right level as well as develop a solid
rapport with your class quickly. If your students
are comfortable with you as a person and you feel
comfortable with them as well, your discussions will
flow more evenly and honestly.
From the start, establish good eye contact and
physical proximity with all of your students as equally
as possible. A good rule of thumb is to maintain eye
contact with one student or, in a large class, a cluster
of students for at least three seconds. Your very look
makes a student feel included. If your class sits in a
circle or around a table, varying where you sit can
help you equalize your eye contact and physical prox-
imity. If you do not normally sit down during class,
move about the room as much as you can.
Grading on Participation
You may or may not wish to include the quality and
quantity of class participation in your final grading
scheme. But doing so will increase the likelihood of
your students coming to class prepared and participat-
ing (Dallimore, Hertenstein, & Platt, 2006). If you do,
you should make this very clear in your syllabus and
your first-day presentation. Also explain your concep-
tion of adequate quality and quantity. To help articu-
late your standards, put the phrase “class participation
grading rubric” in a search engine and peruse the
examples your colleagues use.
To head off uneven participation, especially the
problem of a couple of dominant students, you can
limit the number of contributions each student can
make each class before everyone has spoken. To keep
track, have students display a colorful sticky note on
the front of their desk for each of their contributions.
You can combine this system with grading, giving
students a participation point for their first two or
three comments but no more points for any subse-
quent ones (Lang, 2008).
Consider the class level and size in deciding the
weight to give participation. First-year students may
feel comfortable with 20 percent in a class of twenty
to twenty-five students but may find it unreasonably
stressful in one of forty-five to fifty. More advanced
students should be able to handle a higher percentage
even in a large class. You might have students vote
on the percentage (give them options) and follow the
majority rule.
Setting Ground Rules for Participation
How do you foresee conducting class discussions?
Students want to know how you will call on them.
You have several options: (1) in some predetermined
order—perhaps alphabetically, by seating, or by index
card order; (2) by raised hands; or (3) cold-calling

130 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
by random selection, such as shuffling and drawing
index cards with students’ names or choosing students
who haven’t spoken recently.
The first method ensures broad participation
and preparation, but it creates a stiff, recitation type
of atmosphere. In addition, it raises the stress of the
student next in line while encouraging others to tune
out. Used alone, the raised-hands method keeps the
class relaxed but does little to motivate preparation.
Most important, participation is bound to be uneven,
with a few verbal individuals monopolizing the floor
and most students playing passive wallflowers. You
may even wind up inadvertently reinforcing social
inequities unless you make special efforts to draw
out and validate your female and minority students.
The third method, cold-calling by random selection,
obviously ensures broad participation and motivates
preparation, but some instructors resist it for fear
it will cause students undue discomfort. Actually
there is no evidence to support this concern, at least
not for advanced students. In addition, cold-calling
combined with graded participation is effective in in-
creasing both the frequency of student contributions
and preparation for discussion (Dallimore et al., 2006).
You may want to vary your methods for call-
ing on students. For example, when the raised-hands
method fails to generate broad enough participation,
you might shift to cold-calling, perhaps targeting stu-
dents who have been silent for a while.
If you use the cold-calling or predetermined or-
der method, a good ground rule to set is the escape
hatch—that is, permitting students to pass on answer-
ing a question. It is demoralizing to the class and
counterproductive to the discussion to badger, belit-
tle, or otherwise put a person on the spot for not
having a comment when you demand it. A student
with nothing to say may simply have nothing new
to contribute. While it’s possible he isn’t prepared, he
may simply agree with other recent remarks, or may
have no questions at the time, or may be having a bad
day and not feel like talking. To cover these instances,
inform your class that you will occasionally accept re-
sponses such as, “I don’t want to talk right now” or
“Will you please call on me later?”
However, you should make it clear that certain
negative behaviors will not be tolerated: purposefully
steering the discussion off-track; trying to degener-
ate it into a comedy act; instigating an inappropriate
debate; personally attacking a fellow student; display-
ing one’s temper; asking wheedling, argumentative, or
loaded questions; or engaging in more general uncivil
classroom behaviors (see Chapter Seven).
A democratic alternative to your setting up ci-
vility ground rules is to lead a class discussion on what
those rules should be (Kustra & Potter, 2008). Ask the
students to recount the qualities of the best discussions
they have participated in. How did their classmates
behave? How did they show mutual respect? Then ask
them about the worst discussions in their educational
experience. How did people treat each other? What
behaviors induced the silence, anger, or fear of oth-
ers? From this point, the class can generate their own
ground rules, and you can supplement as necessary.
One final rule to set yourself is a reassurance:
“The only stupid question is the one you don’t ask.”
Students are downright terrified by the prospect of
looking stupid or foolish to you or their peers. They
appreciate being told that you will welcome all ques-
tions and ensure that they are answered. A similar but
modified rule should apply to all answers as well: you
will welcome all contributions given with good in-
tentions. But this doesn’t mean that you won’t correct
faulty answers or allow other students to correct them.
Bringing Equity to a Diverse Classroom
If your class is especially diverse or the subject matter
of your course encompasses race, ethnicity, and class,
it’s best to bring differences out in the open early.
Brookfield and Preskill (1999) describe several class-
room activities that acknowledge and honor diversity.
In one of them, “Naming Ourselves,” students first
reflect on the cultural, racial, ethnic, or socioeco-
nomic group with which they identify. Then they
each introduce themselves as members of their group,
stating the label they prefer for this group and what
their identification means to them—for instance, how

Leading Effective Discussions 131
it has affected their values, beliefs, language, behav-
ior, and so on. In another, “Expressing Anger and
Grief,” students get into groups and exchange per-
sonal experiences of cruelty set off by racial, ethnic, or
class prejudice. Then the group analyzes the stories for
common and disparate themes, emotions, and effects.
To ensure gender equity, Brookfield and Preskill
(1999) recommend that instructors model and en-
courage female ways of interacting, such as disclosing
personal information, taking risks that could lead to
mistakes, and connecting discussion topics with per-
sonal experiences. They also offer several classroom
exercises and assignments for acclimating students to
both male and female ways of talking. One involves
the students’ making scrapbooks or journals focused
on how gender has affected their lives. Another asks
students to write down five or so demographic iden-
tities or facts about themselves, including gender, and
then explain how each has shaped their point of view.
A diverse classroom can introduce controversy
and discourse that students may not know how to
handle, and you shouldn’t assume that they know
what civil discourse is. So either you or your stu-
dents have to establish ground rules for discussion, to
include forbidding personal attacks. If the topic may
provoke racist or discriminatory remarks, stand poised
to intervene and return to the discussion on the sub-
ject at hand. Regardless of how you feel about the
various positions raised, do not project those emo-
tions to the students who express them. Protect both
the attacked and the attacker. Then have the students
calm down, step back, and think about what has just
happened. You may go from here to turn the situa-
tion into a teachable moment. Have students write a
reflection paper on the incident expressing not only
their feelings but what they learned. Or ask the stu-
dents involved in the incident to restate and explain
their views calmly. Or defer discussing the issue until
later, and do bring it up later, after you have a strat-
egy for handling the conflict (Derek Bok Center for
Teaching and Learning, 2006).
For more ideas on ensuring equity in your
classroom, see the “Inclusive Instruction” section in
Chapter One.
HOW TO MAXIMIZE
PARTICIPATION THROUGH
SKILLFUL DISCUSSION
MANAGEMENT
Let us consider how to keep a productive discussion
going with broad student involvement.
Facilitating Discussion
First and foremost, you are the discussion facilita-
tor. This may seem a trendy term, but it is a fitting
one nonetheless. To “facilitate a discussion” means to
make it easy for students to participate, and the pro-
cess can begin before class. By arriving a little early
and casually chatting with students as they arrive, you
can loosen them up for dialogue. Facilitating also en-
tails starting off the discussion and adding to it when
necessary. But once the discussion takes off, it largely
involves directing traffic (see the section on this topic
below). Still, at all times, you serve as manager-on-
call to control the focus, structure, and tone of the
exchange.
Depending on the circumstances, you may
briefly assume a wide variety of roles: coach, mod-
erator, host, listener, observer, information provider,
presenter, counselor, recorder, monitor, instigator,
navigator, translator, peacemaker, and summarizer.
During particularly animated or contentious ex-
changes, you may even find yourself playing referee.
Congratulate yourself when students start speaking
to each other directly rather than through you. Your
goal is to make yourself superfluous.
Motivating Preparation
You will find dozens of ways to induce your students
to do the readings (see Chapter Twenty-Three), and
the following are among them as applied to discus-
sion specifically. Include the reading assignments on
the topical agenda of the day they are due. Reading-
focused discussions can be enriched by having stu-
dents take notes on the readings, write a reaction to or
a summary of them, draft answers to study questions

132 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
you have prepared, compose their own written ques-
tions on the readings, or make journal entries about
their responses to them. Then allow students to use
these notes, reactions, questions, and answers in the
discussion. They will feel more confident and more
willing to participate with a written point of reference
in front of them. If you want your students to take
notes, compose questions, answer study questions, or
keep journals on the readings, collect these regularly
or periodically to ensure they are keeping up.
Depending on your discipline, you may also be
interested in the following seminar structure, which
you can learn more about and watch in process on-
line (SCCtv, Boyer, & Harnish, 2007). Students pre-
pare for class by marking passages in the readings that
are puzzling, especially important, or related to other
readings or discussion themes. In class, each student
in turn reads one passage aloud and explains why
she selected it while the rest of the class takes notes.
After all the students have shared their passages, each
in turn responds to their classmates’ choices and in-
sights, recounting what they have found most mean-
ingful, interesting, or novel. Some faculty and their
students have found this process highly productive.
Recall that grading on participation and cold-
calling motivate students to prepare for discussion. So
does calling on students in some predetermined order,
but it has weaknesses that cold-calling does not.
Readying the Class
Students come to class with all manner of things on
their mind, and the subject matter of your course may
not rank among them. So before launching into a
discussion, warm up the class to the topic of the day.
You needn’t follow all the recommendations below,
but implementing two or three will make it easier to
launch the discussion.
To help students put the upcoming discussion
into perspective, begin with a brief review of the pre-
vious class period. But draw the highlights out of the
students, posing questions like, “What are the major
points we covered last time?” Let students refer to,
and thus review, their notes.
Then turn the students’ attention to the discus-
sion for the day with a road map—that is, an outline
on the board, a slide, or an overhead of the day’s
agenda, outcomes, topics, or the process through
which you will guide them. (A list of discussion
questions may justify a handout.) In other words,
lay out the territory that the class will travel. Not
only will you look more organized, you will be more
organized, and so will the discussion. In addition, you
will make it easier for students to take notes on the
discussion. It is a technique they find hard to master.
You might also precede the discussion with a
few recitation (knowledge/remembering) questions
on the readings to refresh your students’ memory
and get them all on the same page. Or you might
have them read important text passages aloud (see the
seminar structure described in the previous subsec-
tion). Or ask them about their emotional reactions to
the readings, such as what the content meant to them
or how it made them feel. Another technique that
will engage everyone is a writing prompt—that is,
a reading-relevant question or provocative statement
that students can reflect on and write about for three
to five minutes (Jones, 2008). This prompt may be
your launch pad for the discussion.
Igniting the Exchange
You have your choice of several proven strategies to
stimulate a discussion (Brookfield & Preskill, 1999;
Jones, 2008; McKeachie, 2002). One is to start with
a common experience, which may be a well-known
current event or a classroom experience you have fur-
nished, such as a video, demonstration, or role play.
Another is to have students brainstorm what they al-
ready know about a topic or what outcomes that they
anticipate of a situation or an experiment. A poten-
tially hot ignition switch is to pose a controversial or
probing question. You can set up a student debate
in advance (see Chapter Fifteen) or play devil’s ad-
vocate yourself. As some students can interpret your
representing “the devil” as manipulative, untrustwor-
thy, and occasionally confusing, it is crucial that you
explain what you’re doing beforehand. While you’re
assuming the role, you might even wear a hat or a sign
with “Devil’s Advocate” written prominently on it.
You can always open a discussion by asking
the first in a series of questions you have planned in

Leading Effective Discussions 133
advance. As we rely on this strategy so extensively, and
for good reason, the entire next chapter is devoted to
questioning techniques. Not all questions evoke the
types of thinking that launch discussions. You will
learn about those that do and those that don’t.
Motivating Attention
A good discussion relies on all students staying alert
and listening carefully. To promote their paying
attention, tell students to take notes on the discussion
and tell them how to do so. You might start by
advising them specifically when to take notes,
such as each time a student proffers a new and
worthwhile point. It also helps to refer frequently
to your discussion road map, write the major points
made on the board (another aid for note taking),
and ask students to comment on and react to one
another’s contributions. Of course, if you tell (and
remind) students that they will need the content
of the discussions to complete assignments and
perform well on tests, they are more likely to stay
attentive. If some of the discussion takes place in small
groups, have a policy of randomly selecting a few
groups—and within each group, randomly selecting
the spokesperson—to summarize their progress or
conclusions.
Ending class with a wrap-up activity on a regu-
lar basis can also keep students alert during the whole
period. For example, randomly pick a student to sum-
marize the discussion at the end of class, then in-
vite others to add major points. Or conclude class
with a classroom assessment technique (see Chapter
Twenty-Eight), such as a one-minute paper in which
students write down the most important thing they
learned that day and any remaining questions or still-
confusing point.
Waiting for Responses to
Increase Participation
To eliminate needless delays in students’ responding,
ask only one question at a time. Resist the temptation
to pose another related question if you don’t get an
instant response to the first. Putting multiple questions
on the table confuses students.
Once you pose a well-crafted question, allow
sufficient time for students to respond—five to fifteen
seconds, depending on the difficulty of the challenge.
This rule applies no matter what your method of call-
ing on students. While a few members of the class
may jump at the chance to say anything, even if it is
incorrect, most students need time—more time than
we might expect—to think through and phrase a re-
sponse they are willing to share publicly. After all, they
are struggling with new knowledge and thinking in
a foreign language—the language of the discipline.
So they need time to retrieve and sort through the
knowledge for an intelligent response, then figure out
how to express it. Extending your wait time from the
typical half-second (Stahl, 1994) to just three seconds
can dramatically increase the number of students with
a response (Rowe, 1974).
If the question is particularly difficult, lengthy,
or complex, you might advise students to outline
their answer in writing first. Having a response jotted
down in front of them will boost their confidence
and courage. You may also get higher-quality
answers. This way, too, you can feel free to call on
anyone—in particular, the quieter students.
Watch for nonverbal cues of students’ readiness
to respond, especially changes in facial expression.
Still, refrain from calling on anyone until you see
several raised hands or eager faces. When you have
many possible students from whom to select, you can
spread the attention and participation opportunities
across students who haven’t spoken recently.
Breaking the Class into Small Groups
A time-saving way to guarantee a broad response to
a question, especially in larger classes, is to break the
students into small groups. If you intend to do so only
on occasion or as a brief warm-up to a general discus-
sion, you may simply have students cluster themselves
into informal, ad hoc “buzz groups” based on seat-
ing proximity. If you are setting up long-term formal
groups to collaborate on a sizable project outside class
(see Chapter Sixteen), you may have students get into
these groups. Either way, not only will the groups
generate higher-quality answers than will most indi-
viduals on their own, but they will give the shyer and

134 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
more reserved students a safer venue in which to de-
velop their ideas and points of view.
Encouraging Nonparticipants
I have already mentioned several ways to broaden par-
ticipation: letting students jot down their answer, ex-
tending your wait time, and breaking the class into
groups to develop responses. You can also monitor
participation and actively encourage it where it’s lack-
ing. If one side of the room seems too quiet, make a
point of saying so, and start directing questions ex-
clusively to those in that area. If an individual is not
contributing, use the same tactic, but be extra gen-
tle; you want to avoid putting that person too much
on the spot. Another strategy with a quiet student is
to ask her to read a passage of text, a question, or a
problem aloud. This technique is particularly effective
with a passage from a narrative, a play, a poem, or a
treatise, and you can follow up by asking the student
to interpret or comment on the reading.
Persistent nonparticipation may be a symptom
of a deeper problem that calls for a private approach.
It is a good idea to have the student see you in your
office and tactfully ask why he has been so quiet in
class. Accept any answer as legitimate, and then en-
courage him to become involved. One way to help
a student overcome fear is to give him one or more
discussion questions in advance of the next class and
let him rehearse his answers with you.
Responding to Student Responses
Give approval, verbal or nonverbal, to all student
contributions, but with discretion and discrimination.
Students want to know how correct and complete
their own and their classmates’ answers are, but they
want you to deliver your judgment in a diplomatic,
encouraging way.
Approval can take the form of a nod, an in-
terested or accepting facial expression, your recording
the response on the board, or appropriate verbal feed-
back. Here are some verbal response options you may
wish to use:
• When the answer is correct, praise according to what
it deserves.
• When the answer is correct but only one of several
correct possibilities, ask another student to extend or
add to it. Or frame a question that is an extension
of the answer. Avoid premature closure.
• When the answer is incomplete, follow up with
a question that directs the student to include
more—for example, “How might you mod-
ify your answer if you took into account the
aspect?”
• When the answer is unclear, try to rephrase it; then
ask the student if this is what she means.
• When the answer is seemingly wrong, follow up
with one or more gently delivered Socratic
questions designed to lead the student to discover
his error—for example: “Yes, but if you come to
that conclusion, don’t you also have to assume
?” (See the section on the Socratic
method in Chapter Fourteen.)
• When the answer is incomplete, unclear, or seem-
ingly wrong, invite the student to explain, clarify, or
elaborate on it. Or ask other students to comment
on or evaluate it. Vary your response to faulty
answers so students simply don’t translate a stock
phrase as, “You’re wrong.” Avoid identifying and
correcting errors yourself for as long as possible.
Directing Traffic
As some of the response options suggest, you of-
ten best facilitate by doing and saying very little, act-
ing only as the resource of last resort. You should step
in only if no student supplies the needed clarification,
correction, or knowledge or if the discussion strays
off track. In fact, the successful facilitator’s primary
task is to direct traffic—that is, to signal students to
react to their peers’ contributions. When you do re-
spond yourself, try to do it in the form of a thoughtful
follow-up question. In addition, whenever you can,
refer back to the student’s earlier remarks, using the
contributor’s name.
Your goal is to shift the spotlight from you to
your students every chance you get. In addition to
inviting students to comment on and extend each
other’s answers, ask them to address their comments
to the classmate to whom they are responding by

Leading Effective Discussions 135
looking at that person and addressing her by name.
For the first few weeks, name tags or tents may be
essential. If the class is splitting into camps on an is-
sue, set up a spontaneous debate, allowing students to
change their mind in the course of the exchange. For
a twist, have each side argue in favor of the opposi-
tion. Also bring students center stage when you sense
that you are not effectively explaining a point or an-
swering a question. Ask them to help you out and
offer their version; they speak one another’s language.
What if traffic comes to a screeching halt? If no
one says a word after a generous wait time, you might
break the silence and tension with a touch of humor:
“Helloooooo, is anybody out there?” But you should
definitely find out the reason for the silence. Perhaps
your question was ambiguous, or your students did
not understand the way you phrased it, or they mis-
understood your meaning. For your own benefit, ask
them to identify the bottleneck.
Wrapping Up
Before moving the discussion onto the next topic, be
sure the current one is settled. You might ask if any-
one has something to add or qualify. If no one does,
ask a student to summarize the main points made
during the discussion of the topic. Then move on,
making a logical transition to the next topic.
Watch the clock and reserve a few minutes
at the end of class to wrap up and summarize the
discussion. Some sort of review encourages students
to check their notes and fill in important omissions.
It also keeps them on common ground. See the
“Motivating Attention” section above for several
fruitful ways to end a discussion session.
Discussion appeals most strongly to the auditory
learning style (see Chapter Twenty-Five), and any
one method can get monotonous after a while.
So consider varying your participatory strategies to
better serve other learning styles, as well as to add
spice to life. The many student-active, experiential,
and cooperative-learning techniques described in
Chapters Fifteen and Sixteen offer stimulating
alternatives to the all-class discussion. These include
brainstorming, debate, change-your-mind debate,
the press conference, the symposium, the panel
discussion, role playing, simulations, field and
service work, and a wide variety of small-group
activities.
Of course, engaging questions and sound ques-
tioning techniques can keep the discussion method
lively and challenging for weeks on end. They can
also inform your quizzes and exams so you can better
assess the level of thinking you’re trying to foster. So
let us turn now to crafting questions.

C H A P T E R 14
Questioning Techniques for Discussion
and Assessment
F
raming questions is a key teaching skill and has
been for millennia. Socrates honed it to such
a fine art that an entire method of questioning
is attributed to him. Sound questioning techniques
enhance instruction in several ways:
• Questions launch and carry discussion, one of the
oldest and most commonly used student-active
teaching techniques (see Chapter Thirteen).
• They promote practice in using disciplinary lan-
guage, principles, algorithms, and conventions.
• They stimulate the exploratory, critical thinking,
and insight in which inquiry-based methods, in-
cluding Socratic questioning, are grounded (see
Chapter Eighteen).
• When used for classroom assessment, questions
yield answers that help us gauge what students
are learning and whether to review a topic or
proceed to the next (see Chapter Twenty-Eight).
• Questions are the major means by which we
grade students’ performance; the more closely
our questions reflect our learning outcomes, the
fairer and more useful these grading procedures
are (see Chapter Twenty-Nine).
The college teaching literature offers several
schemas for organizing and categorizing questions,
and the most prominent ones are summarized here.
They fall into two categories: those that guide
students through a more or less orderly process of
inquiry and those that classify questions into more or
less useful types. This chapter couches questioning in
the contexts of discussion, but later chapters return
to using questions for assessment.
QUESTIONING AS A PROCESS
OF INQUIRY
The most engaging discussions are not just a list of
loosely connected questions. Rather, they comprise a
purposeful sequence of questions that leads students
through a process of thinking about a topic more and
more deeply.
Using the Socratic Method
The Socratic method is the most spontaneous ques-
tioning technique. You may begin with one planned
question to open the dialogue on a given topic, but
137

138 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
you frame your succeeding questions according to the
answers the students give. In response to your initial
question, the student takes a position or point of view.
Your next question raises a weakness of or excep-
tion to that position, to which the student responds
with a defense or a qualification of her original posi-
tion. The student may also assume a new position. In
turn, you respond with another question that reveals
a possible weakness of or exception to the defense,
the qualified position, or the new position, and the
student responds as before. This line of inquiry pro-
motes in students rational thinking, persistence, and
pattern recognition across seemingly disparate pro-
cesses and phenomena (Overholser, 1992). With ex-
perience, you should be able to anticipate the blind
alleys and misdirections your students will take on
specific topics and develop a general discussion plan.
This questioning technique is challenging.
Some instructors don’t feel comfortable with such
a spontaneous, unstructured format for an entire
discussion period. Some students don’t either; they
have a hard enough time taking notes on the most
structured discussion. Unless the questions are posed
in a light-hearted tone, students can feel as if they
are getting hammered and take offense. In addition,
questioning one student too long can make the
rest of the class tune out. A good situation for the
Socratic method is when you are facing a number of
students who share the same position. You can then
direct each of your questions to a different student.
Instructors who play devil’s advocate (see Chapter
Thirteen) are usually practicing the Socratic method,
whether they know it or not (Gose, 2009).
Working Backward from
End-of-Class Outcomes
A second strategy, one that has gained the status of
a conventional wisdom, is to work backward from
one’s ultimate learning outcomes for a particular class.
It requires advance planning. First, jot down your ul-
timate outcomes for the class period: the one, two,
or three things you want your students to be able
to do (classify, explain, analyze, assess, and so on) by
the end of class. For each performance, create one or
two key questions that will assess the students’ facility.
Then for each key question, develop another two or
three questions that logically proceed and will prepare
the students to answer the key questions intelligently.
In other words, work backward from the key ques-
tions you want your students to answer well at the
end through the questions that will lead them to that
facility.
When class begins, launch the discussion with
one of the last questions you framed. You can lend
structure to the discussion by displaying all the
questions (key ones last) on the board, a slide, or an
overhead or in a handout, preferably with note-taking
space below each question. Still, unless you have
framed too many questions, you can afford to be
flexible. You can allow the discussion to wander a bit,
then easily redirect it back to your list of questions.
The next section on Bloom’s hierarchy of ques-
tions suggests a logical sequencing scheme for the
working-backward strategy.
Guiding Students up Bloom’s Hierarchy
of Questions
You can view Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy of questions
as just types or as a hierarchical ladder of cognitive
levels for leading your students from knowledge, the
lowest-thinking level, to evaluation, the highest. This
schema was set out in Chapter Two, where we ap-
plied it to developing learning outcomes. The lists of
verbs associated with each cognitive operation are just
as useful here for framing questions, so refer back to
Table 2.1. Also refer to Table 14.1, which furnishes
examples of questions at each cognitive level.
To structure a discussion as a process of inquiry,
you might start off with knowledge (recitation) ques-
tions on the highlights of the previous class or the
reading assignment. A factual recall exercise serves as
a mental warm-up for the students and gives those
who come in unprepared the chance to pick up a
few major points and follow along, if not participate
later. As you can see in Table 14.1, knowledge ques-
tions often ask who, what, where, and when, as well

Questioning Techniques for Discussion and Assessment 139
Table 14.1 Examples of Questions at Each Cognitive Level of Bloom’s Taxonomy/Hierarchy
Cognitive Level Questions
Knowledge •Who did to ?
•What did you notice about ?
•What do you recall about ?
•What does the term mean?
•When did take place? Where did it take place?
•How does the process work? (Describe it.)
Comprehension •In your own words, what does the term mean?
•How would you explain in nontechnical terms?
•Can you show us what you mean?
•What do think the author/researcher is saying?
Application •What would be an example of ?
•How would you solve this problem?
•What approach would you use?
•How would you apply in this situation?
Analysis •How are and alike? How are they different?
•How is related to ?
•What are the different parts of ?
•What type of is this? How would you classify it?
•What evidence does the author/researcher offer?
•How does the author/researcher structure the argument?
•What assumptions are behind the argument?
•What inferences can you draw about ?
Synthesis •What conclusions can you come to about ?
•What generalizations can you make about ?
•How would you design (structure, organize) a ?
•How would you adapt (change) the design (plan) for ?
•How can you resolve the differences (paradox, apparent conflict)?
•What new model could accommodate these disparate findings?
Evaluation •What would you choose, and why?
•What are the relevant data, and why?
•Why do you approve or disapprove?
•Why do you think the conclusions are valid or invalid?
•What is your position (opinion), and how can you justify it?
•How would you rank (rate, prioritize) the ?
•How would you judge (evaluate) ?
as how and why when students have already read or
been told the correct answer. Avoid questions that
call for one- or two-word answers, however; aim for
multisentence responses. But do not spend more than
several minutes on this level. The boredom potential
aside, students will not answer many recitation
questions because they may fear their classmates
seeing them as apple polishers—“bailing you out,”
so to speak. Besides, we have more important critical
thinking skills to develop in our students.
Therefore, rapidly move the discussion up the
hierarchy through comprehension so you can find out
whether your students correctly understand the ma-
terial and can put it in their own words. Draw on

140 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
the questions in Table 14.1. At this juncture, you can
identify and correct any misconceptions they have
about the subject matter that might get in the way
of their deeper learning. If they do comprehend the
material, they should be able to answer application
questions and think of appropriate examples and use
the material to solve problems. If they can do this,
they should be ready to progress to analysis of the ma-
terial: distilling its elements; drawing comparisons and
contrasts; identifying assumptions, evidence, causes,
effects, and implications; and reasoning through ex-
planations and arguments.
Once students have found their way through the
material, they are prepared to step outside its confines
and attempt synthesis. As illustrated in Table 14.1, this
type of question calls for integrating elements of the
material in new and creative ways: drawing new con-
clusions and generalizations; composing or designing
a new model, theory, or approach; or combining
elements from different sources. When students
can synthesize material, they have mastered it well
enough to address evaluation questions. They now
can make informed judgments about its strengths and
shortcomings, its costs and benefits, and its ethical,
aesthetic, or practical merit.
Structured as a hierarchy, Bloom’s taxonomy
helps rein in students from leaping into issues they
aren’t yet prepared to tackle. Often students are
all too eager to jump to judging material without
thoroughly understanding and examining it first. In
addition, if you teach the taxonomy to your students,
they acquire a whole new metacognitive perspective
on thinking processes and levels. If you label the
level of your questions, you maximize your chances
of obtaining the level of answers you are seeking.
Students also quickly learn to classify and better frame
their own questions.
The taxonomy should be used flexibly, how-
ever. Some discussion tasks, such as debriefing a case
(see Chapter Nineteen), may call for an inextricable
combination of application, analysis, synthesis, and
evaluation. Moreover, a comprehension question
in one course may be an analysis task in another.
How any question is classified depends on what the
students have previously received as “knowledge”
from you and the readings you assign.
TYPOLOGIES OF GOOD
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
There is much more to constructing discussion ques-
tions than turning around a couple of words in a
sentence and adding a question mark. Well-crafted
ones take thought and creativity in order to evoke
the same from students. But they all have one fea-
ture in common: they have multiple respectable an-
swers. Therefore, they encourage broad participation
and in-depth treatment. Often, too, multiple-answer
questions spark debate. Welcome the conflict, and let
students argue it out. Before letting the issue rest, ask
for possible resolutions or analyses of the conflict if
they don’t evolve on their own.
To help you frame thought-provoking, open-
ended discussion questions, several scholars have de-
vised typologies of questions.
McKeachie’s Categories
McKeachie (2002) suggests four types of fruitful,
challenging questions, which vaguely overlap with
Bloom’s analysis, synthesis, and evaluation questions:
• Comparative questions ask students to com-
pare and contrast different theories, research studies,
literary works, and so on. Indirectly, they help
students identify the important dimensions for
comparison.
• Evaluative questions extend comparisons to
judgments of the relative validity, effectiveness, or
strength of what is being compared.
• Connective and causal effect questions chal-
lenge students to link facts, concepts, relationships,
authors, theories, and so on that are not explicitly
integrated in assigned materials and might not appear
to be related. These questions are particularly useful in
cross-disciplinary courses. They can also ask students
to draw and reflect on their personal experiences,

Questioning Techniques for Discussion and Assessment 141
connecting these to theories and research findings.
When students realize these links, the material be-
comes more meaningful to them.
• Critical questions invite students to examine
the validity of a particular argument, research claim,
or interpretation. Such questions foster careful, active
reading. If the class has trouble getting started, you can
initiate the discussion by presenting an equally plau-
sible alternative argument. Asking for comments on
what a student has just said is also a critical question.
Used in this content, it fosters good listening skills.
Brookfield and Preskill’s ‘‘Momentum’’
Questions
Brookfield and Preskill (1999) propose seven types of
questions that serve the express purpose of sustain-
ing the momentum of a discussion. These questions
are designed to make students probe into issues more
deeply, reconsider positions in novel and more critical
ways, and stay intellectually stimulated:
• Questions requesting more evidence. As the
name states, such a question asks a student to defend
his position, especially when it comes out of nowhere
or another student challenges it as unsupported. The
instructor should pose the question in a matter-of-fact
way as a simple request for more information—data,
facts, passages from the text—so as not to alienate the
student.
• Clarification questions. This type of question
invites the student to rephrase or elaborate on her
ideas to make them more understandable to the rest
of the class. It may include a request for an example,
an application, or a fuller explanation.
• Cause-and-effect questions. These questions
make students consider the possible causal relationship
between variables or events and, in effect, formulate
hypotheses. Instructors can use them to challenge
a conventional wisdom or introduce the scientific
method.
• Hypothetical questions. These are “what-if”
inquiries that require students to think creatively, to
make up plausible scenarios, to explore how changing
the circumstances or parameters of a situation might
alter the results. They can induce imaginative think-
ing and even send a discussion off on fanciful tangents,
but students still have to use their prior knowledge
and experience to come up with supportable
extrapolations. Hypothetical questions can extend
cause-and-effect questions. If, for example, the class
established the impact of education on income, an
instructor could pose this hypothetical scenario to
help students define the limits of the relationship:
What if everyone in the society got a bachelor’s
degree? Does that mean that everyone would make
the same income?
• Open questions. These questions represent
the best kind of discussion questions: those with
multiple respectable answers. They invite risk taking
and creativity in problem solving and have the
greatest potential for expanding students’ intellectual
and affective horizons. No matter how they are
phrased, they are truly open only if the instructor
welcomes all well-meaning responses and isn’t fishing
for a preferred answer. She can accept the weaker
contributions as opportunities for the students to built
and expand on them and follow up with clarification
questions, requests for more evidence, cause-and-
effect questions, and hypothetical questions.
• Linking or extension questions. A high-quality
discussion depends on students’ actively listening to
each other’s contributions. Linking or extension ques-
tions encourage this by asking students to think about
the relationships between their responses and those
of their classmates. Often students are building on or
bouncing off the previous comments of others, and an
instructor can ask questions that help them see and ac-
knowledge the connections. These questions require
using students’ names. Ideally, they can set off en-
gaging conversations among classmates that don’t go
through the instructor. They can also launch a col-
laborative discussion in which students must refer to
the previous comments of their classmates when mak-
ing their own contributions. The resulting discussion
is a community product of everyone’s ideas cooper-
atively woven together. Not only does this exercise

142 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
give students practice in careful listening and collabo-
rative thinking, but it can also serve as the model of
the kind of community-based discussion an instructor
may want.
• Summary and synthesis questions. To enhance
the learning value of discussion, an instructor should
end with a few wrap-up questions that ask students to
summarize or synthesize the important ideas shared
during the exchange. Students have to review and
reflect on the discussion, identifying and articulating
the intellectual highlights. These questions can take
a variety of forms. They can ask outright for the
one or two most important ideas that emerged or for
some key concept that best encapsulates the exchange.
They can ask what points the discussion clarified,
what issues remain unresolved, or what topics should
be addressed next time to advance the group’s under-
standing.
Gale and Andrews’s ‘‘High-Mileage’’
Types
Gale and Andrews (1989) developed categories of
questions from classroom observations of discussions
and tallied the average number of responses each
type evoked. They called this average the “mileage”
of each type. Using their results, we can ensure our
discussions are lively. Here are the top mileage types,
all of which can be pitched at high cognitive levels:
• Brainstorming questions, found to yield 4.3
student responses per question, invite students to gen-
erate many conceivable ideas on a topic or many pos-
sible solutions to a problem—for example: “What is-
sues does Hamlet question in the play?” “What trends
starting in the 1960s may have had a negative im-
pact on American public education?” “How might
the public be convinced to care about ecological im-
balances?” At the start of a brainstorming session, the
instructor tells the class to withhold judgment and
criticism for the time being and records all the re-
sponses on the board, an overhead, a slide, or a flip
chart. Only after all brains stop storming do the stu-
dents begin editing, refining, combining, eliminating,
grouping, and prioritizing, using criteria they gener-
ate themselves.
• Focal questions elicit an even higher 4.9 re-
sponses per question. They ask students to choose a
viewpoint or position from several possible ones and
support their choice with reasoning and evidence.
Students may develop and defend their own opin-
ions, adopt those of a particular author, or assume a
devil’s advocate stance—for example: “Do you think
that Marx’s theory of capitalism is still relevant in to-
day’s postindustrial societies? Why or why not?” “To
what extent is Ivan Illich a victim of his own de-
cisions or of society?” “Is the society in Brave New
World a utopia, a nightmare of moral degeneration,
something between the two?” A variation on a focal
question is for you to play devil’s advocate on an issue
or to make a contentious, controversial statement and
invite your students to react against it. But as recom-
mended in Chapter Thirteen, be sure to let your class
know exactly what you are doing.
• Playground questions hold the mileage record,
with an average of 5.1 responses per question. They
challenge students to select or develop their own
themes and concepts for exploring, interpreting, and
analyzing a piece of material—for example, “What
do you think the author is saying in this particular
passage?” “What underlying assumptions about
human nature must this theorist have?” “What might
happen if [present a counterfactual]?” When posing
such open-ended questions, however, be aware that
this type of question can veer the discussion into
other topics.
POOR QUESTIONS FOR
DISCUSSION PURPOSES
It is difficult to fully appreciate highly effective dis-
cussion questions without examining the less effective
types as well. Gale and Andrews’s categories and the
classroom research they conducted on discussions
provide valuable insight and information on this
latter kind too (Gale & Andrews, 1989). Some of

Questioning Techniques for Discussion and Assessment 143
these questions have their place, but they tend not
to encourage broad participation or higher-order
thinking.
Questions Good for Recitation
Some types of questions may flop for discussion but
serve the purposes of recitation—that is, knowledge
recall and review—quite well:
• Analytical convergent questions may elicit com-
plex thought, but they have only one correct answer.
So they make students edgy and cut the discussion
short as soon as someone gives the right or com-
plete answer. It makes sense that they evoke only 2.0
answers per question. Typically 1.0 of the attempts
isn’t exactly right or complete. Analytical convergent
questions are best used sparingly as knowledge and
comprehension warm-ups to get students talking.
• Quiz show questions have a short correct
answer, such as a person, a place, a date, or a title.
They elicit only factual recall and serve poorly as
warm-up questions for genuine discussion. Their
average mileage is 1.5 responses per question,
suggesting that the first “contestant” guesses wrong
about half the time. Still many a delightful review
session has imitated a quiz show game format, such
as Jeopardy or Millionaire, using exactly this kind of
question (Kaupins, 2005).
Questions Good for Nothing
Some types of questions serve no purpose well and
can confuse and alienate students. These should be
avoided:
• Fuzzy questions are too vague and unfocused
for students to know how to approach them. They
may be phrased unclearly, such as, “Who else knows
what else doesn’t fall into this category?” Or they
may be too global, like, “What about the breakdown
of the family?” Students resist taking the risk required
to attack such grand questions. Other common
fuzzy questions represent well-meaning attempts to
help: “Does everyone understand this?” and “Any
questions?” You may occasionally get an honest
response, but all too often you find out later that
not everyone understood and quite a few students
must have had questions. It is usually better to
use classroom assessment techniques (see Chapter
Twenty-Nine) to answer such concerns.
• Chameleon and shotgun questions are both a
series of weakly related questions fired off one after
the other in hopes that one will hit with the stu-
dents. Chameleons change their topical focus through
the series until the last one barely resembles the first,
leaving students not knowing which one to try to an-
swer. Shotgun questions may all go off in the same
general direction, but they make the instructor look
like a “bad shot”—either desperate for a response or
confused about the issues. Students become confused
and disoriented in the murk of the inquisition, not
knowing which in the series to dodge and which to
address. The average series yields only 2.3 responses.
• Programmed-answer questions sound like
open-ended questions on the surface, and indeed
they have more than one appropriate answer. But
between the lines, the instructor conveys, perhaps
unconsciously, having only one specific answer in
mind. Students regard this type of question as an
unwelcomed challenge to read the instructor’s mind.
Some even consider it manipulative.
• Put-down and ego-stroking questions are two
sides of the same bad attitude. The former type of
question implies that students ought to know the
answer or shouldn’t have any more questions—for
example, “Now that I have explained this topic
thoroughly, are there any more questions?” The latter
type assumes the superiority of the instructor to the
discouragement of the students. An implicit request
to “rephrase the answer the way I would say it”
douses students’ creativity, self-expression, and often
their motivation to answer at all.
• Dead-end questions are quiz show questions
with a yes or no answer. Students simply place their
bets. But these questions can easily be transformed
into useful types in one of two ways. First, you can
often change them into true-false items, having stu-
dents rephrase false statements to make them true.

144 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Better yet, you can rephrase them by beginning the
sentence with a why or a how. With thought now
required, students are more likely to participate.
TURNING THE TABLES
The person posing the discussion questions need not
always be the instructor. If you model good ques-
tioning techniques and spend a little time teaching
your favorite questioning schema, you can have your
students develop discussion and even test questions as
homework assignments. You can use the best ones in
class and in actual tests and even grade them if you
choose. The quality of these questions also tells you
how diligently your students are doing their reading
(see Chapter Twenty-Three).
The next chapter offers other teaching formats
that put the spotlight and the responsibility for learn-
ing on students.

C H A P T E R 15
Experiential Learning Activities
T
his chapter covers a potpourri of teaching
methods and moves that allow students to
discover and construct knowledge by direct
experience, either simulated or real. These activities
rank even higher than discussion on a continuum of
student engagement, ranging from moderately en-
gaging to extremely so, and the intense emotions they
often evoke cement the experiences into students’
memories. Furthermore, they strongly appeal to the
accommodator, diverger, and kinesthetic learning
styles (Fleming & Mills, 1992; Kolb, 1984; see
Chapter Twenty-Five). Research documents that
experiential learning methods, such as simulations,
games, and role playing, ensure higher student mo-
tivation, more learning at higher cognitive levels,
greater appreciation of the subject matter and its
utility, and longer retention of the material than
does the traditional lecture (Berry, 2008; Bonwell &
Eison, 1991; Hertel & Millis, 2002; Howard, Collins,
& DiCarlo, 2002; Specht & Sandlin, 1991). These
methods also meet a wider range of instructional
goals than do less active ones (see Chapters One,
Two, and especially Eleven). We start here with
the moderately engaging and move to the more
powerful.
STUDENT PRESENTATION
FORMATS
Employers place a high priority on communication
skills, and many started complaining some years ago
that their new college-graduate employees were wan-
ting in these skills. In response, many institutions
initiated communication-across-the-curriculum pro-
grams, emphasizing not only writing but speaking
as well. As a result, oral presentations have become
common course components. Formal oral presen-
tations are not in themselves experiential, except to
the extent that students learn all the preparation,
platform skills, and rehearsal that go into a good pre-
sentation. However, oral communication takes many
forms, and the activities described in this section
give students public speaking opportunities within
145

146 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
experiential learning contexts. As such, they add
reality and pizzazz to student presentations.
In most cases, you assign or your students se-
lect the topic, research area, role, position, or school
of thought that they will represent, but in a few cases
students play themselves. Often they conduct research
and write a paper outside class. However, you can set
up some of these activities spontaneously in a well-
prepared class. Before you turn students loose to in-
vestigate, represent, and question different sides of a
controversy, be sure they understand rhetorical struc-
ture, the basic rules of evidence, and logical fallacies.
Variations on Debate
Every field has topics amenable to a two-sided (at
least) fact-based argument. A debate format need not
be any more complex than statements of the affirma-
tive and the negative, plus rebuttals, each with a strict
time limit. It is best to assign sides to pairs or triads
so students have the chance to consider and discuss
points of view other than their own.
A variation on debate that involves the entire
class is a change-your-mind debate. You designate dif-
ferent sides of the classroom as “for the affirmative”
or “for the negative,” with the middle as “uncer-
tain/undecided/neutral.” Before the debate, students
sit in the area representing their current position and
can change their seating location during the debate as
their opinions sway. After the debate, lead a debriefing
discussion focusing on the opinion changers (“What
changed your mind?”) and the undecided students,
who are likely to provide the most objective analysis
of both the debate and the issue at hand.
A second variant for a whole-class activity is
point-counterpoint (Silberman, 1996). Divide your class
into groups—as many groups as there are positions on
an issue—and tell each group to come up with ar-
guments in favor of its assigned position. Select one
student to launch the debate by presenting one argu-
ment for his group’s stance; then call on each group
in turn to give a different argument or counterargu-
ment. Conclude with a class discussion comparing the
various positions.
Yet another variant is called structured controversy
or academic controversy, in which two pairs in a group
of four students formally debate each other on an is-
sue, then switch sides, and finally synthesize a joint
position (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1991). Done
properly, this activity requires that students conduct
considerable outside research and write a final report.
Expert Individuals or Teams
Designate individual students, pairs, or triads to be
the class experts on a certain topic, geographical area,
body of theory or research, or something else.
Following your reference leads, students do outside
readings and turn in weekly, annotated bibliographies
on their area of expertise. Then you regularly query
the “experts” in class, asking for informational up-
dates or about the relevance of their area to the day’s
discussion.
Dunn (1992) applied this format very effectively
in his World Affairs course, where he paired off stu-
dents as “briefing teams” charged with keeping up
on the current affairs of nine world regions. On some
days he played the role of a political leader depen-
dent on his students’ briefings, especially to lighten
the mood when he felt the need to cajole his class
into working harder.
Panel Discussion
Four or five students briefly present different points of
view on a topic, either their own position or one they
are representing. Panel members can play themselves
or different noted scholars and historical figures—for
example: Freud, Jung, Adler, Skinner, and Rogers
in a psychology course; Benjamin Franklin, Thomas
Jefferson, Aaron Burr, James Madison, and George
Washington in an early American history course.
Then the class addresses thoughtful questions and
challenges, preferably prepared in advance, to the
various panel members.
You can also make the entire class into a panel
by calling a town meeting on a multisided issue or
complex case (Silberman, 1996). After doing some
outside research on the issue or situation, students

Experiential Learning Activities 147
prepare to voice their views within a time limit you
set, following the format that each speaker calls on the
next speaker.
Press Conference
You or a student assumes the focal role, posing as a
noted scholar, a leader in some realm, or a represen-
tative of a particular position or school of thought,
while the rest of the class plays investigative reporters,
each student or small group with an assigned audi-
ence or readership, such as local residents, residents
of another area or country, a special interest group,
a specific company, or some public agency. These
“reporter” students ask probing, challenging ques-
tions of the focal person.
Two planning caveats are in order. First, the focal
role should represent a broad-ranging, controversial
decision or stance. Defining such a role is easy in po-
litical science or history, but in other fields, it requires
more creative thought. In psychology or sociology,
for example, the focal role may be a criminologist
or criminal psychologist whose testimony leads to
the probation of a violent convict. In economics, the
focal role may advocate an uncertain or risky inter-
vention strategy. In the sciences and medical fields, it
may stand for a controversial environmental or public
health position—perhaps on global warming, en-
dangered species preservation, genetically engineered
produce, prescription drug restrictions, human clon-
ing, or the like. Second, in addition to assigning
audiences or readerships to the students playing
reporters, you can require them to research and write
out their questions and challenges in advance. Having
them then write a mock article incorporating the
press conference is an optional follow-up assignment.
You need not confine the activity to one fo-
cal person. You can have a succession of them with
different viewpoints and perspectives.
Symposium
Individual students or teams present their indepen-
dently conducted research papers that express their
own ideas. The rest of the class asks probing questions
and offers constructive criticism, which is especially
useful if students can revise their work. In addition,
for each class period, you may assign one or two
discussants to interrelate and critique the papers. Dis-
cussants should have at least a day or two to review
the symposium products in advance.
ROLE PLAYING
You assign students roles in a true-to-life, problematic
social or interpersonal situation that they act out, im-
provising the script. When one player is not supposed
to know the full story about another player’s inten-
tions, problem, or goals, you should provide written
descriptions for each role. You also must decide what
information to give to the rest of the class. Following
the enactment is a debriefing discussion. It should ad-
dress how the players felt in their role at crucial junc-
tures, what intentions and interests motivated their
actions, what behavioral patterns the rest of the class
observed, and how these behaviors reflected concepts
and principles addressed in the course.
While role playing relies on make-believe sce-
narios in the classroom, students learn experientially
by identifying with the roles they play and observe.
You may also play a role, especially when you want
to model certain behaviors (how to conduct a family
therapy session, negotiate a contract, mediate conflict,
or open a formal meeting, for example).
This technique is used successfully in both the-
rapy and instruction, especially in the humanities,
social sciences, counseling, clinical psychology, and
nursing. In political science or history, students can
take the identity of key leaders or decision makers in
a conflict or the role of collective constituencies that
face an important task—for instance, landed elites,
Tory loyalists, Continental Army soldiers and militia,
tradesmen, yeoman farmers, ministers, and lawyers,
all responsible for drafting their positions for a state
constitutional convention (Frederick, 1991). In
almost any discipline or profession, you can provoke
discussion by having groups of students enact the
violation of an ethical norm. Kraus (2008) had her

148 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
research methods students role-play violations of the
American Sociological Association Code of Ethics,
and they found the activity very valuable.
In structuring an original role play, the only rule
is to incorporate conflict between the roles and some
need for the players to reach a resolution (Halpern
& Associates, 1994). Here are some applications to
inspire your own ideas:
• Professional (doctor, lawyer, or pastor, for exam-
ple) and client disagree over an approach to the
client’s problem.
• Executive promises union negotiator (or up-start
worker) a major promotion for keeping quiet
about an impending plant closing, a behind-the-
scenes corporate takeover, future layoffs, or
planned benefit cuts.
• Worker representatives try to convince executives
not to close an unprofitable plant.
• Human resource executive must make a tough
hiring decision among various male, female, mi-
nority, and nonminority candidates with different
job qualifications and personalities.
• Politician experiences role conflict between parti-
san and administrative roles or between ideological
stance and the need for campaign funds.
• Couple or family argues over money,
(un)employment, discipline of the children,
authority, autonomy, communication, moving,
in-laws, domestic violence, or alcohol or drug
use. This scenario may include a social worker’s,
physician’s, minister’s, law enforcer’s, lawyer’s, or
therapist’s role.
If you teach a foreign language, feel free to make
a role play of any situation your students may en-
counter while traveling. While they may not learn
much through empathy, they will get useful, conver-
sational practice in the target language. If you teach
literature, consider casting students in the roles of the
characters and letting them play out a hypothetical
scene that extends the piece of literature. In other
fields, search out case studies that you can adapt to
role playing.
SIMULATIONS AND GAMES
What simulations and games share is the prospect of
winning something desirable, whether that be money,
power, territory, profits, being correct, getting one’s
way, extra credit, candy, or simply a sense of satisfac-
tion. But the biggest win is in learning. Simulations
and games can bring the course material to life and
emotionally engage an entire class as few other meth-
ods can.
Academic Games
Many academic games are modeled on traditional
games, such as Bingo and Go Fish, and classic tele-
vision game shows, such as Jeopardy, Family Feud,
Wheel of Fortune, Password, and Who Wants to Be a
Millionaire? Recently some faculty have adapted Sur-
vivor to subjects as disparate as physiology (Howard
et al., 2002) and music theory (Berry, 2008). The
questions and answers come from the course material
and can easily capture knowledge, comprehension,
and application levels of thinking, if not higher.
Games provide an effective and painless, even fun,
review format (Kaupins, 2005; Moy, Rodenbaugh,
Collins, & DiCarlo, 2000), and in this context,
students can sometimes submit the questions and
even run the game.
Games can also supply a format for almost every
class period. After opening her music theory classes
with a minilecture, Berry (2008) assigns “tribes”
of students their “challenge” for that day, such
as a timed workbook exercise on the minilecture
topic. The tribe members correct their work and
tally their individual and tribal scores with the goal
to get the highest possible. Personal pride and
peer pressure motivate individual achievement, even
though the tribes don’t vote off the lowest-scoring
member.
Millis (in press) is the definitive contemporary
book on academic games. It gives detailed directions
on when and how to bring a wide variety of games
(not all based on television game or reality shows) into
the classroom.

Experiential Learning Activities 149
Simulations
By abstracting key elements from reality (Mitchell,
1982), simulations allow students to live out the
hypotheses and implications of theories, giving
them intense emotional, cognitive, and behavioral
experiences that they will otherwise never have. This
method developed a strong faculty and student fol-
lowing during the 1970s and the early 1980s around
a growing market of simulations of societies, formal
organizations, corporations, markets, urban areas,
cultures, world politics, and other complex, macro
social realms. These were strictly face-to-face enact-
ments of hypothetical social situations, unmediated
by computers, some requiring many hours and
an array of supporting materials. Many of them
resembled role plays involving the entire class. Some
of the early simulations that have endured are Barnga
and Bafa Bafa, both of which sensitize students to
cultural differences and clashes.
Among these early simulations was a variant
called a frame simulation, which offers the instructor
different scenarios or settings to choose from or to
develop on her own. These still serve an important
instructional purpose, though some have moved onto
interactive computer sites. For example, students
can play the Prisoner’s Dilemma under various
conditions and payoff rules that illustrate different
psychological and sociological principles (Hyman,
1978, 1981). Another frame simulation, structured
like a mock trial, comes with a suite of genuine
cases spanning a host of disciplines: environmental
protection, industrial safety, medical technology,
religious practices, securities markets, affirmative
action, community development, and individual
rights (Karraker, 1993). For criminal cases, Silberman
(1996) invites instructors to create an indictment
around different sides of an issue and to set up a
trial by jury simulation with the full complement
of courtroom roles: judge, prosecuting attorney,
defendant, defense attorney, prosecution and defense
witnesses, jury members, and friends of the court.
In fact, frame simulations can revolve around any
decision-making body: a court, a board of directors,
a review board, a legislature, or an administrative
agency (Hertel & Millis, 2002).
In addition to the hundreds of tried-and-true
face-to-face simulations, computer technology
ushered in an expanded selection of new prod-
ucts available either on the Web or in software
packages. They range from individual tutorial pro-
grams (computer-assisted instruction) to full-blown
multimedia simulations. Animated and interactive
computer technology opened up elaborate simula-
tions for the sciences and engineering. Among these
are hundreds of virtual laboratories allowing students
to conduct experiments and manipulate parameters
in ways that would be too dangerous or too costly in
real life. In hydraulics, for instance, students can solve
complex canalization problems by varying the de-
livery, inflow, outflow, and power of various pumps.
In electrical engineering, they can manipulate the
performance of an electrical network and study over-
loading, breaks, and the like. In the health sciences,
faculty can program SimMan and other medical
software to simulate specific diagnostic situations. To
obtain data for diagnosing the symptoms, students
can even ask questions of the hypothetical patient and
get answers, as well as run hypothetical tests. Biology
and environmental sciences have numerous simula-
tions, including Unnatural Selection, SimIlse, and
SimWorld, all which realistically mix politics into the
controversial decision-making processes. In addition,
many of the original face-to-face simulations in the
social sciences offer computer versions.
The field of business may have the most simula-
tions, and they tend to be marketed under straight-
forward titles such as Airline, Corporation, Supply
Chain, Manager, Marketer, Human Resource Man-
agement, Collective Bargaining Simulated, and En-
trepreneur. BusSim has developed a simulation for just
about every business specialty.
Simulations are not just for young students.
They are mainstays of adult education and job train-
ing. The military runs battle simulations, hospitals
and emergency response agencies hold disaster pre-
paredness simulations, and even high-level university
administration has UNIGAME and Virtual U.

150 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Finding Simulations
Review your learning outcomes and decide what
kind of simulation would truly help your students
achieve them. Then start looking. You can obtain a
simulation in one of three ways: (1) buy one from
a commercial distributor (often a publishing house),
which can cost up to a few hundred dollars; (2) find
one free in a journal (see below) or at a teaching
conference, in which case you may have to make or
buy any needed materials on your own; or (3) design
your own.
If you choose the first option, check the web-
sites of publishers that produce good textbooks or
teaching journals in your field. Of course, ask your
colleagues as well.
If you choose the second option, start with
your own field’s teaching journals and the following
publications:
• Decision Sciences: Journal of Innovative Education
published by the Decision Sciences Institute (eco-
nomics and business disciplines). Available free
online at www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal
/118499600/home.
• The International Simulation and Gaming Research
Yearbook published by the Society for Academic
Gaming and Simulation in Education and Train-
ing as the proceedings of the society’s annual
conference.
• Simages, the online newsletter of the North
American Simulation and Gaming Associa-
tion, which hosts an annual cross-disciplinary
conference.
• Simulation and Gaming: An Interdisciplinary Journal
of Theory, Practice and Research, published by an in-
ternational consortium of professional associations,
including the Association for Business Simulation
and Experiential Learning, which also publishes
the proceedings of its annual conference.
If you choose the third option, to design your
own simulation, follow Hertel and Millis’s (2002) ad-
vice, keeping in mind your learning outcomes, the
number of hours you have available, and the number
of students you want to involve. First, look for the
real-life or realistic scenarios to structure your simula-
tion around. Good sources are case studies, textbooks,
journals, magazines, newspapers, and your personal
experience. Next, develop your characters and the
interests they will pursue, ensuring conflict or com-
petition among your primary roles. Then fill out the
situation with secondary and supporting roles, which
the primary characters may use to further their inter-
ests. Be sure that none of the acting roles know too
much. They have to be challenged and allowed to
make bad decisions, even to fail. Finally, select the
geographical setting, write the necessary documents,
and develop the instructions, action constraints, and
procedural rules (Hertel & Millis).
Running Simulations
A simulation and its debriefing take a good deal of
class time—at least an hour for the very simplest. In
addition, to grab your students’ full attention, you
should assess them on their performance, with an
emphasis on the quality of their strategy, not their or-
atory. To ensure students get maximum mileage out
of the experience, piggyback other assignments onto
it, such as readings, outside research (before or dur-
ing the simulation), an oral presentation, a response
paper, or a position paper. Some of these assignments
can be graded. To help students gain the most from
their experience, require at least some kind of written
reflection.
Here is the conventional wisdom for running
simulations. First and foremost, be prepared. Read
the instructor’s manual or directions at least twice at a
leisurely pace well in advance. Mark what directions
you will give the students at each stage of the simula-
tion. In general, it’s best not to give all the instructions
at the beginning, because too much information will
confuse the students. Rather, parcel them out. List
your preclass setup tasks. Know the sequence of events
and the schedule of distributing artifacts and materi-
als, but don’t hesitate to refer to the manual during
the simulation.
Be aware that most facilitators run simulations
at too slow a pace. The challenge is to keep the

Experiential Learning Activities 151
game moving, even if the tempo puts pressure on the
students. They need a long enough time to realize
the constraints, costs, and benefits of their decision-
making options, but not necessarily long enough
to answer every question that arises, come to a full
consensus, or feel completely comfortable with their
decisions. After all, a simulation must imitate life
as much as possible. (For more detailed advice, see
Hertel & Millis, 2002.)
Debriefing Simulations
The debriefing process is an essential component of a
simulation. It disengages students from the emotional
aspects of the experience and settles them back into
the classroom reality, and it allows them to transform
what they experienced into meaningful learning.
They should be able to identify the disciplinary con-
cepts and principles illustrated in the simulation and
assess their own decision-making abilities. In addition,
a debriefing brings out the disparate perceptions,
feelings, and experiences each player had (Hertel &
Millis, 2002).
So important is the debriefing that you should
prepare the discussion questions in advance. They
should progress through three phases (Hertel &
Millis, 2002). First, ask students to recount their ex-
perience and their feelings about it. A successful
simulation may evoke some pretty strong emotions,
both negative and positive. Second, have them
explain their actions within the context of their
roles, specifically their intentions and motivations
behind their decisions. If different roles had different
information, students can reveal what they knew
and didn’t know, what their goals were, and what
strategy they had for attaining them. Finally, return
students to their true role as learners with questions
that address the connection between their simulated
experiences and the concepts, principles, theories,
and hypotheses they have studied in your course.
Help them translate the concrete into the abstract and
derive generalizations related to the subject matter.
Hertel and Millis provide a series of debriefing
questions suitable for almost any simulation. As
recommended above, assigning a follow-up written
reflection will give students the time and emotional
distance from the experiences to glean additional in-
sights from it.
SERVICE-LEARNING:
THE REAL THING
Service-learning is a method by which students
acquire various skills and knowledge while working
in community service. The current generation of col-
lege students is distinguished by its volunteerism and
service orientation, which may explain this method’s
popularity with younger students. Most faculty also
find it effective in meeting certain course objectives.
According to instructors and “graduates,” service-
learning is almost uniformly a positive, life-changing
experience for students—the kind they never forget.
It imparts new knowledge not just in the abstract but
in a concrete, real-world context. The experience
also stimulates emotions, which strongly enhance
learning and retention (see Chapter One) and help
students progress toward certain affective, social, and
ethical learning outcomes (see Chapter Two), as well
almost every higher-order cognitive outcome (see
Chapter Eleven).
Service-learning is classic learning by doing, and
nothing teaches experientially like direct experience.
If you want students to understand the characters in a
piece of modern literature, let them talk with the hu-
man counterparts. If you want them to comprehend
the dynamics of poverty, let them work with the poor
and the homeless. If you want them to appreciate the
problems and crises of other countries, let them help
the émigrés and refugees. If you want them to under-
stand prisoners, children, or any other group, let them
spend productive time with some of these people.
Let’s examine the accumulated research on the
effects of service-learning (Astin, Vogelgesang, Ikeda,
& Yee, 2000; Eyler & Giles, 1999). The method has
been found to enhance the following:
• Students’ personal development (sense of identity
and efficacy, spiritual and moral growth)

152 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
• Students’ social and interpersonal development
(leadership, communication, ability to work with
others)
• Students’ cultural and racial understanding
• Students’ sense of civic responsibility, citizenship
skills, and societal effectiveness
• Students’ commitment to service in their career
choice and future voluntary activities
• In many studies, students’ academic learning and
abilities on some dimensions: writing skills, ability
to apply knowledge to the real world, complexity
of understanding, problem analysis, critical think-
ing, and cognitive development (no clear effect on
grades, grade point average, or later standardized
test scores)
• Students’ relationships with faculty
• Students’ satisfaction with college and likelihood
of graduation
• Relations between the institution and the com-
munity.
Another national study (Gray, Ondaatje, Fricker,
& Geschwind, 2000; Gray, Ondaatje, & Zakaras,
1999) found more mixed effects. On the positive
side, students in service-learning courses were indeed
more satisfied with the course than were students in
non-service-learning courses. In the same compar-
ison, students perceived that their service-learning
experience slightly enhanced their civic engagement,
their interpersonal skills, and their understanding
of people of different backgrounds from their own.
However, they reported no effect on their academic
skills (writing, analytical, quantitative, or knowledge)
or their professional skills (confidence in their choice
of major and career, expectation of graduation, or
career preparation). In fact, students who opted out
of service-learning felt that they did advance their
academic and professional skills.
How positive the service-learning experience is
depends on several factors. The single most powerful
determinant is a student’s degree of interest in the
subject matter before the experience. Therefore,
service-learning is best reserved for upper-level
courses in a major (Astin et al., 2000). Other known
influences are under the instructor’s control: how
much students can share and discuss their experiences
in class; how much training they have for the ex-
perience; how many hours per week they perform
service; how well tied the experience is to the course
content; and how much written and oral reflection
students are asked to do, especially in tying the ex-
perience back to the course content (Astin et al.,
2000; Gray et al., 1999, 2000; Zlotkowski, 1998).
Implementing Service-Learning
Is service-learning right for your courses? First, exa-
mine your learning outcomes. Service-learning is
worth considering if you have outcomes that are
affective, ethical, or social beyond working effectively
in a group, or if your cognitive outcomes are served
by students’ practicing on an outside clientele. If
either of these is true, try to identify community
needs that truly complement your subject matter. For
example, if you teach children’s literature and want
your students to be able to critique works from a
child’s point of view, then their reading books to chil-
dren makes sense. If you teach public relations, having
your students conduct a PR campaign for a local
nonprofit organization clearly benefits their learn-
ing. If you teach public health or community nursing,
your students can better master the subject matter
if they plan and implement a community health or
health education effort. If you teach political science,
your students can learn how to navigate the politics
at the various levels of government by conducting
partnership projects in your course (Redlawsk, Rice,
& Associates, 2009).
Second, be aware of the ethical questions that
some service-learning experiences raise, even though
requiring them is legal. If the experience involves
working for social change, is it appropriate to require
students to do this, no matter how they feel about the
changes aimed for? Should they have to give service
even if their current politics and ethics don’t warrant
it? Will they be placed in physical danger?
Third, consider your time constraints and com-
mitment. Service-learning requires more planning

Experiential Learning Activities 153
and coordination than most other methods, especially
your first foray into using it. If it fits well in your
course and schedule, begin your preliminary tasks at
least a couple of months before the term begins. (See
Stacey, Rice, & Langer, 1997, a concise and com-
prehensive instructor’s manual.) First, identify one or
more appropriate community agencies. You might
start with schools, medical and mental health facili-
ties, social service agencies, and the local United Way.
Then schedule a face-to-face meeting with the key
contact person to find out about the organization’s
needs and expectations and to explain your own for
your course. Ensure that the agency will orient and
supervise your students. Alternatively, have students
find their own agency and work out the project
details, or ask your campus service-learning or
voluntary-service center, if you have one, to identify
one or more agencies with needs and expectations
that will serve your course outcomes.
Then start making course design decisions. Will
the service-learning be required, optional, or extra
credit? Will you offer an alternative assignment? How
much service-learning will be required? Fewer than
twenty hours reduces its impact (Gray et al., 2000).
What previous course components will be eliminated
to make time for service-learning? How much
will it count toward the final grade? What will be
the requirements of the service-learning experience?
How will you assess and grade it? How will you
link the service to the course content? When will
you have students discuss their experiences? What
writing tasks will you assign for reflection? (Best to
have multiple reflection assignments.) How will you
grade these reflection assignments? This information
will be needed for your syllabus.
Finally, make the necessary logistical arrange-
ments: getting help with liability issues from your
institution’s risk management office (such as release
forms); creating student teams if appropriate (highly
advisable to mitigate any physical danger); helping
students and the agency coordinate schedules; en-
suring students are oriented and supervised at the
agency; arranging for student transportation, even
if just car pools; and devising a system to monitor
students’ hours of service.
Additional Guidance
A number of books offer additional guidance for
instructors and a wealth of ideas for solid service-
learning projects, including exemplars. To stay abreast
of the more innovative and successful projects and
to share your own with colleagues, see the Michigan
Journal of Community Service-Learning and the Journal
of Public Service and Outreach.

C H A P T E R 16
Learning in Groups
E
very class conveys two lessons: one in the
content and another in the teaching method.
Student-active techniques send the message
that with expert guidance, learners can actively
discover, analyze, and use knowledge on their own.
With this participatory empowerment, students come
to understand that they must assume responsibility
for their own learning. One particularly powerful
student-active method, when implemented properly,
is to put students in pairs or small groups to work
and learn together. Our use of it conveys the message
that when people work together with a cooperative
ethos, they can accomplish much more than they can
as individuals working apart—that is, two heads are
better than one, three heads are better than two, and
for some tasks, four or five heads are best.
A GROUP BY ANY OTHER NAME . . .
This teaching method has become popular enough
to take on multiple labels. These days, the most com-
monly used terms are simply group work and group
learning. Most of the research conducted on it in
the 1980s and 1990s relied on the term cooperative
learning (Millis & Cottell, 1998), which was defined
very generally as a structured teaching method where
small student groups work together on a common
task (Cooper, Robinson, & McKinney, 1993).
Collaborative learning emerged in the 1990s as the
label favored in the sciences and engineering.
Following Mazur’s (1997) lead, these disciplines also
use the terms peer instruction and peer tutoring when
referring to pairs of small groups of students who
are explaining their answers to one another. The
literature shows no consensus about the difference,
if any, among all these terms. However, there is
one distinct, highly structured version of group
work known as team learning. It emphasizes mutual,
positive interdependence more than any other
version. Students take team as well as individual tests,
and their individual accountability and grades rest as
much on their team’s performance as on their own
(Michaelsen, 1997–1998).
Since the terms group work and group learning
are so commonly used, they are the choices here.
155

156 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
The terms group and team will be used interchange-
ably, except when referring to team learning.
THE CASE FOR GROUP WORK
Given how widely used group work is today, it is sur-
prising how slow a start it had in higher education.
By 1990, nearly six hundred published studies dating
back ninety years had compared the effectiveness of
cooperative, competitive, and individual approaches
to teaching. Many of these studies found overwhelm-
ing support for the superiority of group work, and
even those that didn’t find support identified no detri-
mental effects to using it (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith,
1991). Yet group learning met with stiff faculty resis-
tance at first, probably because old teaching paradigms
and habits die hard. If we had no trouble learning in-
dividually when we were in college, it’s hard for us
to understand why our students would. This is why
the best students can become the worst teachers. Be-
ing proud survivors of the lecture method, most of
us just can’t anticipate where, how, and why our stu-
dents would have trouble learning our material the
same way we did.
In general, the research on the effects of group
learning has focused on three fundamental
dimensions—achievement/productivity (learning),
positive interpersonal relationships, and psychological
health—and group work yields positive results on all
of them (Johnson et al., 1991; Johnson & Johnson,
1989, 1994; Millis & Cottell, 1998). Astin (1993)
studied the effects of 192 environmental factors on
various educational outcomes of 27,064 students at
309 institutions. According to his results, the top two
influences on academic success and satisfaction are
interaction among students and interaction between
faculty and students, each a key component of
group learning strategies. In fact, both factors rank
significantly higher than curriculum and content
variables. Light (1990, 1992) reported similar results
in the Harvard Assessment Seminars.
Johnson and Johnson (1989) surveyed 193
studies comparing the effects of group versus
traditional techniques on student productivity and
learning. More than half the literature reported
group learning to have the stronger impact, while
only 10 percent found individualistic methods more
powerful. In addition, group learning enhanced
interpersonal attraction in 60 percent of the studies,
while competition did so in only 3 percent. A similar
literature survey a few years later indicated that
group learning is more effective than traditional me-
thods in improving critical thinking, self-esteem,
racial and ethnic relations, and positive social behavior
(Cooper et al., 1993).
The superiority of group learning seems to hold
at all educational levels and across student back-
grounds and extends as students mature into
adulthood (Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 1994). Dis-
advantaged students benefit as well. Frierson (1986)
documented that minority nursing students who
studied cooperatively for their board exams per-
formed significantly better than those who studied
alone. After instituting group-based, out-of-class
enrichment programs for at-risk calculus students
at the University of California, Berkeley, Treisman
(1986) found that black students in the program
received course grades over one letter grade higher
than their nongroup counterparts.
This does not mean that group learning
should supplant the interactive lecture, whole-class
discussion, experiential learning, and other methods.
Variety helps maintain student engagement and
ensures reaching students with all learning styles.
Moreover, the research indicates that cooperative
learning need not be used all the time to have positive
effects on student achievement.
A case can also be made against group learn-
ing. First, students have to acquire and use some skills
and knowledge on their own as individuals. Second,
most younger students have been learning in groups
all through school, so we are not giving them a to-
tally novel experience in college. What is novel is our
expecting them to monitor and sanction each other
without the kind of teacher intervention they are used
to relying on (Jassawalla, Malshe, & Sashittal, 2008). In
fact, some faculty perceive that students have become

Learning in Groups 157
so close over their school years that they hesitate to
evaluate each other’s group contributions and perfor-
mance honestly. Often they cover up for each other,
showing more loyalty to their peers than to us. The
third downside of group learning is its reliance on the
brighter students to teach the slower ones. While you
learn a subject most thoroughly by teaching it, many
talented students learn very effectively on their own
and don’t benefit from the reinforcement of teach-
ing it. Furthermore, the time that the brighter stu-
dents spend tutoring their classmates is time that they
are not getting additional challenges and acquiring
more advanced knowledge and skills. Group learn-
ing clearly benefits average students, but at the cost of
the gifted ones.
Therefore, consider group work a supplemen-
tary technique suitable for various classroom activities
(Millis, 1990). It serves well for many lecture break
activities (see Chapter Twelve) and can jump-start
class discussion (see Chapters Thirteen and Four-
teen). It is also useful for social and subject matter
icebreakers (see Chapter Four), experiential learn-
ing activities (see Chapter Fifteen), case debriefing
(see Chapter Nineteen), problem-based learning (see
Chapter Twenty), mathematical problem-solving
exercises (see Chapter Twenty-One), science labo-
ratories (see Chapter Twenty-Two), some classroom
assessment exercises (see Chapter Twenty-Eight), and
review sessions (see Chapter Thirty).
CHANGING METHODS,
CHANGING ROLES
Group learning casts both students and instructors in
different roles from the ones they usually assume
in traditional lecture-based classrooms (Johnson
et al., 1991; MacGregor, 1990; Millis & Cottell,
1998; Rhem, 1992). Students must move:
• From passive listeners and note takers to active
problem solvers, discoverers, contributors, and
transformers of knowledge
• From low-to-moderate to high expectations of
preparation for class
• From a low-risk, private presence to a high-risk
public presence
• From personal responsibility for attendance to
community expectation and responsibility
• From individualistic competition among peers to
collaboration among group members whose suc-
cess depends on one another
• From formal, impersonal relationships with peers
and instructors to genuine interest in one another’s
learning and overall well-being
• From viewing instructors and texts as sole author-
ities to seeing themselves, their peers, and their
community as important sources of knowledge
Young first-year students in particular can have
a hard time making this adjustment. As group mem-
bers, they may have experienced uneven workloads,
interpersonal conflicts, boredom, exclusion, and even
lower grades in elementary and high school where
group learning may have been mismanaged (MacGre-
gor, 1990).
In spite of their group experience, your students
may know very little about group dynamics, and it
is well worth teaching them some basic principles.
For instance, acquaint them with communication
patterns. Draw a few simple graphics on the board
with circles standing for individuals and arrows des-
ignating the direction of communication. Show your
students one-way and two-way (double-arrow) com-
munication between two individuals, then a group
with leader-directed communication (all one-way),
and a group with balanced communication (arrows
connecting multiple individuals). Finally, have your
students sketch the patterns of some of the group
communication patterns they have experienced and
consider how these patterns affected their participa-
tion. Ask them to share their drawings and partici-
pation experiences with the class or in their groups.
This exercise should sensitize them to the benefits of
balanced communication (Kustra & Potter, 2008).
Students may also be unfamiliar with the typical
stages of team development—forming, storming,

158 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
norming, and performing (Tuckman, 1965). If you
are putting students in long-term, stable groups, they
need to know these stages, especially the fact that
storming is normal and not symptomatic of team
breakdown.
To give your students a crash course in group
dynamics as well as the wisdom and the tools to col-
laborate successfully, refer them to Kennedy and Nil-
son’s (2008) free online book. It is written simply and
is colorfully illustrated for undergraduates.
The instructor’s role changes with group learn-
ing as well. No longer is it focused on sorting, clas-
sifying, and screening out students. Its primary goal
is to develop students’ competencies and talents as “a
guide on the side” instead of “the sage on the stage.”
In other words, the role shifts from expert/authority
figure to facilitator/coach, who unobtrusively cir-
culates, observes, monitors, and answers questions
(Millis, 1990). Group work calls for placing much
of the responsibility for learning squarely on the
students’ shoulders. Of course, relinquishing control
can be difficult at first for an instructor.
THE SETUP AND MANAGEMENT
OF STUDENT GROUPS
Group learning techniques share a number of essen-
tial features that you must build into or provide for
in the way you assemble groups, design tasks, manage
activities, and determine grades (Cooper et al., 1993;
Feichtner & Davis, 1984; Felder & Brent, 2001; John-
son et al., 1991; Johnson & Johnson, 1994; Kagan,
1988; Michaelsen, 1997–1998; Millis, 1990; Millis &
Cottell, 1998). These features are especially critical for
long-term, stable teams.
Positive Interdependence
For a group to function effectively, each member must
feel a sense of personal responsibility for the success
of his or her teammates. In addition, each member’s
success must depend at least in part on the group’s
success. In brief, members must feel they need one
another to complete the task at the desired level of
quality.
To ensure this element, you can do one or more
of the following:
• Assign a group product on which all members
sign off and are given a group grade (you can also
separately grade individual contributions, if you
choose).
• Give group (as well as individual) quizzes and tests
that count toward each member’s individual grade.
• Allocate essential resources or pieces of informa-
tion across group members, requiring them to
share (materials interdependence).
• Assign each member a different part of the total
task (task interdependence).
• Randomly select students to speak for their group.
• Require that all members edit one another’s work
using Word’s Track Changes feature, a wiki, or
Google Docs.
• Assign group members different roles. Com-
mon roles are recorder, spokesperson, resear-
cher, summarizer, checker/corrector, skeptic,
organizer/manager, spy (on the progress of other
groups), observer, writer, timekeeper, conflict
resolver, and runner/liaison to other groups or
the instructor. Less-known ones are coordinator,
driver (of the group’s operating style), finisher
(lends a sense of urgency to the task), implementer
(of group decisions), supporter (harmonizer),
monitor-evaluator, originator (of ideas), and
resource investigator (Belbin, 2004).
Individual Accountability
All members must be held responsible for their own
learning as well as for the learning of other group
members. At the same time, no member should feel
that he or she is giving more (or less) than an equal
share of effort to the group task. In other words, no
freeloaders, social loafers, or hitchhikers are allowed.
You can build in this element in several ways,
some of which overlap with those above:

Learning in Groups 159
• Base final grades predominantly on individual
quizzes, tests, papers, and other assignments.
• Count the team grades only for students who are
passing the individual quizzes, tests, and written
assignments.
• Randomly select students to speak for their group.
• Assign group members different roles (see the last
subsection for possible roles).
• Assign group members primary responsibility for
different parts of the team project, and grade them
on their part (for example, one member develops
the bibliography, another conducts the research,
and another does the write-up).
• Give teams time early in the semester to discuss
and agree on what they will do to sanction non-
contributing members.
• Allow teams to “fire” a noncontributing member
(after a verbal and a written warning).
• Allow an overburdened member to “resign” from
a group of freeloaders and seek membership on
another team.
• Base a significant portion of the final grade on
peer performance evaluations.
This last strategy deserves elaboration. It can
be used only when groups have stable memberships
over several weeks or months. At the end of the
term or the group work unit, have each member
assign each of their teammates a letter grade for
group contributions, or estimate the percentage of
the work they contributed, or allocate a limited
number of points across their teammates. If you
use percentages or points, you may want to forbid
students from giving equal percentages or points
across their teammates. It is essential that students
have criteria on which to grade their peers, such
as attendance, preparation, promptness, leadership,
quality of contributions, quantity of contributions,
and social skills. If you provide these criteria, be sure
to explain them and your peer evaluation policies
and procedures before the group work begins. Better
yet, have the groups develop their own lists of the
criteria that define a good team member. Either way,
the peer portion of the final grade should reflect
the amount and importance of group work in the
course—at least 10 to 20 percent but no more than
60 percent.
How valid and accurate are peer performance
evaluations? Students often give all their teammates
high evaluations. Does this reflect the fact that group
learning motivates students to prepare and perform
more effectively than most other methods, or are
students merely covering up for the poor contribu-
tors? You have to make the determination based on
your own experience at your particular institution.
If your students are merciless in penalizing freeload-
ers, social loafers, slackers, couch potatoes, sandbag-
gers, control freaks, ego trippers, bullies, whiners,
martyrs, and saboteurs, chances are that their positive
performance evaluations are valid and accurate. But if
you have reason to suspect that freeloaders and other
group-pathological types are getting off easy, try this
strategy. Have students write peer performance eval-
uations two, three, or four times during the semester,
and schedule them right after major project sections
are due. This way any anger or frustration toward
errant group members will come out in the heat
of the moment. Another way to counter cover-ups
is to say you will toss out any peer performance
evaluations that give A’s to all teams members.
It seems that times have changed in the way
students treat freeloaders. Early studies found that
group members punished their dysfunctional peers
(Ferris & Hess, 1984; Jalajas & Sutton, 1984; Murrell,
1984). However, giving today’s younger students
the power to sanction social loafing in no way
guarantees they will use it when necessary. Quite
the contrary, they expect you as the instructor
to know about the freeloaders and to administer
justice by giving different individual grades on the
group product, even if you have explained that their
grades will depend solely on quality of the group
product (Jassawalla et al., 2008). These students’
expectations no doubt reflect their many years in
K–12 group work, where teachers handed down the
rules of engagement and intervened when violations
occurred. So they come to college ill prepared and
ill trained for adult-level team dynamics. In other

160 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
words, we have to dispel them of their immature
view of group work and teach them to bear collective
responsibilities (Jassawalla et al., 2008).
One Clemson University faculty member,
W. H. Warmath Jr. (personal communication,
September 19, 2008), successfully instills a more
mature understanding of team dynamics in his
first-year students. He firmly informs them that their
individual project grade will be solely the group
grade, that they will be on their own to resolve their
group malfunctions, and that he will serve only as
a last-resort mediator and only in the presence of
the entire group. However, he gives the teams the
time and the authority to develop their own contract
before they begin their project. In this contract, they
must specify exactly when and where they will hold
weekly, out-of-class meetings, how they will divide
the labor and responsibilities, when sections of the
project will be due, and what the sanctions will be
for absences from meetings and for not completing
assignments on time. Warmath reviews and approves
the contracts (or returns them for revision), and all
group members sign it. Since he instituted team
contracts several years ago, he has counseled only one
group, has had no complaints about group-grading
policy, and has not heard about any freeloader
problems. Oakley, Brent, Felder, and Elhajj (2004)
also recommend having groups develop documents
detailing team policies and expectations.
Appropriate Group Composition,
Size, and Duration
According to the research, groups that are hetero-
geneous in terms of ability, race, gender, and other
characteristics help students develop social skills,
understand and get along with individuals of dif-
fering social backgrounds, and learn the material
better (Heller, Keith, & Anderson, 1992; Heller &
Hollabaugh, 1992). When group composition is di-
verse in ability or content background specifically, the
slower students learn from the brighter ones—often
better than they do from traditional methods because
students seem to speak one another’s language.
The brighter ones can benefit too: by teaching the
material, they learn it all the better, at least if they
didn’t learn it thoroughly on their own. Of course,
slower students can also hold back the gifted.
Depending on your course, it may be more
important that you maximize heterogeneity on a
variable other than ability or content background.
For example, if you want your groups to debate ideas
and critically examine their own, you might want
to find out students’ views the first week of class
(have them do a free-write, for instance) and assign
teams based on varying opinions and value systems.
Expediency may also have to take priority. If you
want teams to meet face-to-face outside class, you
may have to consider students’ schedules in assigning
groups. Finally, be careful to avoid mixing females
with a male majority. Heller and Hollabaugh (1992)
found that males in the majority tend to dominate
and overshadow the females.
The research also indicates that students should
not form their own long-term groups. Such a com-
position only reinforces existing cliques, encourages
discussion of extracurricular topics, and can favorably
bias the members’ peer performance evaluations. But
it does reduce intragroup conflict.
Optimal group size varies with the open-
endedness of the task. Several group activities de-
scribed later in this chapter and in Chapter Twelve
rely on pairs. But most other activities require groups
of three to five to ensure lively, broad participation
and prevent freeloading. A threesome seems to be
optimal for mathematical and scientific problem-
solving tasks that involve alternative means to one
correct answer (Heller & Hollabaugh, 1992). Four
or five is best for tasks with multiple respectable
answers involving brainstorming, interpretation, and
problem solving of a “focal” or “playground” nature
(see Chapter Fourteen). Still, teams of up to seven
members can function effectively and offer the added
benefit of greater diversity (Michaelsen, 1997–1998).
Ideal group duration also depends on the task.
Long-term group assignments facilitate major projects
and ongoing tasks, since duration fosters group loyalty
and refines members’ cooperative skills. But students

Learning in Groups 161
can get acquainted with more classmates if groups
change with each short-term project or every several
weeks. What often happens, however, is that students
develop team loyalties quickly and plead to keep the
same groups throughout the term.
Ad hoc groups or pairs based solely on seating
proximity may be sufficient for occasional problem-
solving and discussion assignments. In large classes
where space is tight and chairs are immobile, you may
feel limited to these groups. But you may be able to
overcome such limitations by assigning seats.
Face-to-Face Interaction
Instructors should allocate some class time to team
meetings, as experience has shown that you cannot al-
ways rely on students to meet and collaborate face-to-
face outside class. If they can find a way, they may just
divide the labor and go their separate ways, defeating
the whole purpose and benefits of group learning.
Of course, virtual interaction over email, chatrooms,
or discussion boards can and sometimes must substi-
tute for face-to-face meetings. If you have students
communicate using your online course management
system, you can keep better track of their virtual than
their face-to-face meetings.
Genuine Learning and Challenge
The group task must make students learn something,
not just do something. It should go beyond what
the students have learned in the course and demand
group synergy and higher-order thinking processes
(application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation) to com-
plete. In addition, it should have either multiple re-
spectable answers or multiple means to the answers
and pose a genuine challenge that requires more than
one student mind to meet within the given time limit.
In brief, it should be a harder task than you’d assign
to students working alone.
This setup rule for group work is too often for-
gotten. Students find doing a routine activity in a
group boring busywork. Such a task also undercuts
much of the learning payoff of group work. Students
learn more not only because they discuss the material
and teach each other but also because they should be
tackling a more challenging task than they otherwise
would. Anything less also sours the brighter students
against working in groups.
Explicit Attention to Collaborative
Social Skills
Working together effectively in long-term, stable
groups requires certain behaviors of all the individuals
involved: attending all meetings, coming prepared to
contribute, listening actively, taking turns in talking,
not interrupting, encouraging others, cooperating,
sharing resources, being open-minded, giving con-
structive feedback, tactfully defending one’s views,
compromising, and showing respect for others.
According to cooperative learning proponents,
these are acquired skills that you must explicitly
foster in as many ways as possible: having the class
brainstorm and agree to the qualities of a good team-
mate; including these skills among your outcomes for
group work; including them in your peer evaluation
criteria; modeling them yourself; praising students
you see practicing them; and, especially, scheduling a
few sessions for students to reflect on and process the
quality of their group interactions. Young students in
particular need occasions for collective reflection and
feedback since so many of them depended on their
teachers to troubleshoot group problems in primary
and secondary school. For them to take responsibility
for their team’s performance, they have to acquire
the courage and communication skills to express
criticism constructively to their peers.
Some instructors shy away from overseeing
group processing sessions, largely because they don’t
know how to run one. But it’s really quite easy. Pro-
cessing best begins with students’ assessing themselves
as teammates, answering questions such as these:
• How many of my group’s meetings did I attend?
• How well prepared was I for each meeting? How
consistently did I complete whatever task I was
assigned to do?
• How well did I listen to others in my group?

162 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
• Did I ever interrupt them or get angry with them?
• When I disagreed with one or more teammates,
did I try to find common ground or otherwise
resolve the conflict? Did I propose or agree to a
compromise?
• How much did I comment productively on my
teammates’ ideas, including giving them praise and
encouragement?
• How well did I play my assigned role?
• How consistently did I share my knowledge and
resources with my group?
Students should present their self-assessments
orally or in writing within their groups. (You can
make this a writing assignment.) Then their team-
mates should provide feedback, couching it in the
same terms as a response to the self-assessment.
Following this procedure, students are more likely to
take the feedback seriously and accept it (Kustra &
Potter, 2008).
Do counsel students that the feedback should
help their teammates, not hurt them. This is not the
time to unload. Rather, they should supply positive as
well as negative evaluations. Furthermore, they should
describe specific behaviors, not judge the person,
and should ask whether he understands the feedback,
recalls the behaviors mentioned, or has questions
(Kustra & Potter, 2008).
After the individual self-assessments and feed-
back, the students should address some questions
within their groups, and a recorder should take notes:
• How well have we included and encouraged all
our members in our discussions?
• How evenly have we shared the work?
• How well have we handled conflict?
• How high-quality has our task performance been?
• How could we accomplish our tasks more effec-
tively?
• How could we function as a group more
smoothly?
The recorder should save these notes and read
them aloud at the next group processing session.
Then the group members can assess how much they
have improved.
Team learning supporters take a different view
from the cooperative learning camp. They maintain
that students intuitively know from their life experi-
ence what defines a good (and bad) team member,
and they do not need time to group-process beyond
writing peer performance evaluations. If students
encounter internal conflicts and inequities, they must
resolve them on their own without instructor
intervention (which may include firing the offending
member). After all, the work world will not be inter-
ested in their interactional problems and preferences,
and one of your jobs is to prepare them to function
effectively as contributing adults.
Which is the wiser position? It depends mostly
on the maturity of your students. Many adult lear-
ners understand adult team dynamics and already
have good interpersonal communication skills, but
traditional-age students rarely do. The better position
also depends on your personality and background.
Some instructors enjoy and do an excellent job of
teaching the soft skills, while others feel more com-
fortable and competent dealing with the hard skills.
MANAGEMENT TIPS
Beyond the essential elements already discussed are
several standard operating procedures that help ensure
student success and make the management of group
activities easier and more predictable for you (Cooper
et al., 1993; Feichtner & Davis, 1984; Johnson et al.,
1991; Millis, 1990).
First and foremost, start small. Begin by trying
out a small-scale, pretested technique (like those in the
next section) in the class where you feel the most con-
fident. Expect it not to work perfectly—any strategy
can fall short the first time tried—and plan for your
time estimate to be off one way or another. A safe
launching pad is an optional help or review session.
Second, use group learning only with a
criterion-referenced grading system (see Chapter

Learning in Groups 163
Thirty-One). Grading on a curve (that is, norm-
referenced grading) undercuts the spirit of cooper-
ation and the prospect of group success on which
group learning relies. An absolute grading scale gives
all students an equal chance to achieve.
Third, introduce the activity to your class by ex-
plaining your rationale for using it. Without getting
technical, mention some of the research that docu-
ments its superior effectiveness. Perhaps list the crucial
elements of group learning and your objectives for the
group work. Also reassure your students that they will
not jeopardize their grades or be accused of cheating
by helping each other.
Fourth, give groups a specific, structured task
that requires a written product to show at the end.
The major reasons for group work failure are a lack of
organization and specificity in the assignment and the
students’ confusion over its purpose and expectations.
The written end product may be no more formal
than handwritten notes for the group’s verbal report at
the end of the session. It may be a problem solution, a
list of ideas, or a group test answer sheet. Or it may be
a major team project for which students meet several
times over weeks to complete.
A word of warning is in order, however. Feicht-
ner and Davis (1984) present evidence that large-scale,
formal group assignments are more problematic than
smaller-scale and less formal ones. Specifically, they
caution against assigning more than one major group
presentation and more than three written papers or
reports per term. Otherwise students are more likely
to report having a negative group experience. Group
tests, however, tend to generate positive experiences
(see next section).
Fifth, set and enforce tight time limits and dead-
lines for task completion, even for short tasks that
pairs or groups can complete in a couple of minutes.
It is helpful to bring a timer or stopwatch with you
to all group work sessions. For tasks of five to fifty
minutes, you might give appropriate ten-minute or
two-minute warnings. Larger-scale assignments call
for firm deadlines for the various subtasks (bibliogra-
phy, prospectus, data collection, data analysis, outline,
first draft, and so on). It is best to schedule all final
product deadlines comfortably in advance of the end
of the term. Tight time limits and deadlines help keep
teams on task.
Sixth, ensure the assignment of individual roles
within each group. Many possible roles were listed
above in the section on positive interdependence. At
the very least, each group of three or more needs a
recorder or spokesperson. Role assignments should
rotate at least weekly among the members of stable
groups. You can make the first role assignments ran-
domly, or use the following technique for assigning
roles in ad hoc groups. After breaking students into
groups, tell them to point to one fellow member
on the count of three. Assign the student receiv-
ing the most points the task of appointing the
recorder/spokesperson and any other necessary roles.
The element of surprise adds humor to the moment.
Seventh, set the rule of “three before me.” That
is, you can insist that students take their questions to
each other first and not to you until they have asked
at least three other students, or accept only group, not
individual, questions.
Eighth, set rules to control noise levels and
maintain order. Among the most popular ones are
“no unnecessary talking” and “only one group mem-
ber talking at one time.” Another helpful hint is to
bring the classroom to silence by informing students
that you will signal when time is up by raising your
hand. They should then stop talking and raise their
hands as soon as they see yours up. This technique
enables you to silence a large lecture hall in seconds.
Ninth, to ensure that groups have a genuine
learning experience, conclude each group session
with a means of assessing students’ progress or
mastery of the material. You might ask for a brief
presentation or progress report from each group.
Or you can administer a quick quiz or classroom
assessment exercise (see Chapter Twenty-Nine). If
you choose a quiz, you should set a high standard of
mastery that all group members must meet before
any of them can leave class. Alternatively, you can
select a member from each group at random to take
the quiz for the group.

164 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
TRIED-AND-TRUE GROUP
LEARNING STRATEGIES
If you are interested in trying out or extending group
learning in your courses, consider experimenting
with some of the proven strategies in this section.
While the levels of success and usefulness vary
by discipline and instructor, you can adjust them
or create your own versions to serve your needs.
The following sampler comes from several sources,
including Cooper et al. (1993), Johnson et al. (1991),
Kagan (1988), Michaelsen (1997–1998), Millis
(1990), and Millis and Cottell (1998). Many work
well as a student-active lecture break (see Chapter
Twelve), and some double as a classroom assessment
technique (see Chapter Twenty-Eight). Although
a few may sound adolescent, all have been used
effectively at the postsecondary level:
• Think-pair-share. Give students a question or
problem and ask them to think quietly of an answer
or solution. Have them discuss their responses with
their neighbor, and then share them with the class.
You can also set the requirement that they come to a
consensus or submit one piece of written work as a
pair. Set a time limit of one or two minutes for the
pair exchange. You can extend this format by having
each pair in agreement join another pair in agreement
to come to a consensus together.
• Pairs check. Partners coach each other on
worksheet problems or check their class or reading
notes for completeness and accuracy. This two-
minute activity is similar to the lecture break pair and
compare in Chapter Twelve.
• T.A.P.P.S. (talking aloud paired problem solv-
ing). Pairs of students solve a problem or resolve a case
by taking turns playing different roles—one that talks
through the process of reaching a solution, while the
other listens, asks questions, and provides feedback.
• STAD (student teams-achievement divisions).
After a lecture, video, or demonstration, teams
of three or four receive a worksheet to discuss and
complete. When members feel that they have reached
acceptable solutions, you give a brief oral or written
quiz to the group, a representative, or each individual
member to assess their mastery of the material. In her
music theory class, Berry (2008) integrates STAD
within the academic game Survivor. For the daily
challenges, she distributes workbook exercises for
the “tribes” to complete, then administers individual
quizzes. These quiz scores are totaled for a tribal
score. While tribes don’t vote off weak members,
students perform diligently due to peer pressure, their
personal pride, and their sense of responsibility to
their tribe.
• Jigsaw. Each member of a “base group” is
assigned a mini-topic to research. Students then meet
in “expert groups” with others assigned the same
mini-topic to discuss and refine their understanding.
The base groups re-form, and members teach their
mini-topics to their teammates.
• Structured/academic controversy. Pairs in a
group of four are assigned opposing sides of an issue.
Each pair researches its assigned position, and the
group discusses the issue with the goal of exposing as
much information as possible about the subject. Pairs
can then switch sides and continue the discussion.
• Group investigation. Assign each group or let
each group choose a different topic within a given
subject area. Groups are free to organize their work
and research methods and even to determine the form
of the final product, such as a video, play, slide show,
website, demonstration, presentation, or paper.
• Numbered heads together. Assign a number
to each member of a team of four. Pose a thought
question or problem, and allow a few minutes for dis-
cussion. Call out a number, designating only students
with that number to act as the group spokesperson.
This exercise promotes individual accountability.
• Talking chips. This method guarantees equal
participation in discussion groups. Each group mem-
ber receives the same number of poker chips (or any
other markers, such as index cards, pencils, or pens).
Each time a member wishes to speak, he or she tosses
a chip into the center of the table. Once individ-
uals have used up their chips, they can no longer
speak. The discussion proceeds until all members have

Learning in Groups 165
exhausted their chips. Then they reclaim their chips
and begin another round.
• Send a problem. Each group member writes
a question or problem on a flash card. The group
reaches consensus on the correct answer or solution
and writes it on the back. Each group then passes
its cards to another group, which formulates its own
answers or solutions and checks them against those
written on the back by the sending group. If groups
disagree, the receiving group writes its answer as an
alternative. Stacks of cards continue to rotate from
group to group until they are returned to the original
senders, who then examine and discuss any alternative
answers or solutions given by other groups.
• Group tests. Each student takes a quiz or
test individually and hands it in for a substantial
portion (one-half or two-thirds) of her quiz or test
grade. Then students assemble into groups and take
the same quiz or test again as a team, turning it in
for the remaining portion of their grade. In most
cases, the team scores exceed the individual scores
and raise the students’ grades. As a near-daily activity
in team learning, this technique is called a readiness
assessment test (Michaelsen, 1997–1998). Generally
the quiz or test is objective, but it doesn’t have
to be. Groups tests not only give students’ quick
feedback on their individual thinking and answers,
but they also make the students review, discuss, and
debate the material, processing it at a higher level.
Not surprisingly, this technique improves students’
retention of the course content over individual tests
(Cortright, Collins, Rodenbaugh, & DiCarlo, 2003).
PREPARING STUDENTS FOR LIFE
Younger college students are intent on learning about
the real world they are about to enter, while older
ones want to know how they can function more
effectively in it at a higher level. As instructors, we
need to prepare our students to thrive in this rapidly
changing and increasingly challenging world—to
make them more knowledgeable citizens, consumers,
social participants, appreciators of the arts, and science
watchers and supporters, as well as more successful
professionals and businesspersons. We select our
content with this goal in mind, and we should
similarly select teaching methods to reinforce our
verbal messages and build the kinds of social skills
students will need.
Group collaboration is the way the world works
because well-functioning teams generate more inno-
vative and creative ideas and devise better solutions
to problems than do individuals with a competitive
ethos. In the education we provide students, we need
to transform them into high-functioning team mem-
bers, as both leaders and followers. Therefore, we
must implement group learning with care, teaching
students to assume collective responsibility and share
a collaborative ethos.

C H A P T E R 17
Writing-to-Learn Activities
and Assignments
W
hy have your students do in-class or
homework-related writing exercises—
often called “informal writing”—if you
don’t grade them? The research gives plenty of
reasons. For starters, writing about the material helps
students learn it better and retain it longer—whatever
the subject and whether the exercise involves note
taking, outlining, summarizing, recording focused
thought, composing short answers, or writing
full-fledged essays. Second, writing is so powerful
because it makes students think actively about the
material, and depending on your prompt, you
can make your students think at any cognitive
level you would like. Third, even informal writing
can define audience other than the instructor and
therefore develop students’ sensitivity to the interests,
backgrounds, and vocabularies of different readers. A
fourth reason is for classroom assessment (see Chapter
Twenty-Eight)—that is, to find out quickly, while
you’re still focusing on a particular topic, exactly
what your class is and isn’t learning. This way you
can diagnose and clarify points of confusion before
you give the next exam and move on to other topics
(Angelo & Cross, 1993; Cross & Angelo, 1988). In
fact, the student feedback and questions that writing
exercises provide can plan a good part of your classes
for you. Reading short, informal writing assignments
that do not require grading takes no more time than
any other type of class preparation. Finally, many
writing exercises give students the chance to learn
about themselves—their feelings, values, cognitive
processes, and learning strengths and weaknesses.
Younger students in particular need and appreciate
such opportunities for self-exploration. This chapter
covers a wide variety of writing-to-learn activities
and assignments that have proven instructional value
(Ambron, 1987; Angelo & Cross, 1993; Cross &
Angelo, 1988; Hinkle & Hinkle, 1990; Kalman &
Kalman, 1996; Kirkpatrick & Pittendrigh, 1984;
Langer & Applebee, 1987; Neal, 2008; Newell,
1984; Wright, Herteis, & Abernehy, 2001; Young,
1997; Young & Fulwiler, 1986).
167

168 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
FREEWRITES
Students write about a predetermined topic for a
brief, specified number of minutes (one to three) as
fast as they can think and put words on paper.
The objective is to activate prior knowledge or
to generate ideas by free association, disregarding
grammar, spelling, punctuation, and the like.
Freewrites serve as effective in-class warm-up
exercises. Usually students walk in having forgotten
what they discussed in the previous class meeting, the
week’s reading, and the lab manual instructions. Fre-
quent freewrites on the readings also put students on
notice that they had better keep up with the course.
Here are some possible freewrite topics:
• “Write down all the important points you
remember from last Wednesday’s discussion.”
• “Summarize the most important points from the
readings assigned for today [or from the day’s lec-
ture or class activities].”
• “From what you recall from the lab manual, write
down what is to be done in lab today, any proce-
dures that confuse you, and what the experiment
is expected to create or show.”
• Write three key words on the board from the last
class or reading and ask students to explain their
importance.
• Have students define a concept in their own
words, explain the parts of a complex concept,
give real-life examples of a concept, or compare
concepts from today’s class with those from the
previous class.
• Write a seed sentence on the board—that is, a
major hypothesis, conclusion, or provocative state-
ment related to class or readings—and ask students
to write their reactions.
• Have students apply a principle to their own ex-
perience.
• Have them write the answer to a question that
your last minilecture, your demonstration, a video,
or a class activity answered.
• Have them freewrite answers to test review ques-
tions to prepare for a tightly timed essay test.
Of course, freewrites needn’t be private. Stu-
dents can share them with one another, in which case
the activity is called inkshedding (Hunt, 2004). They
can trade and comment on one another’s freewrites.
Their purpose is not to evaluate the other’s writing
but to understand it. After such an exercise, the class
is ready for discussion.
Freewrites can also be assigned as homework.
In the concept assignment, students read a section or
two of a book, then begin freewriting about what
they just read and what they don’t understand. They
read the next section and freewrite again. At the
end of the assigned chapter or unit, they write three
sentences: one on each of three key concepts they
have identified in the readings. Students usually write
three or more pages of notes and reflection (Kalman
& Kalman, 1996, as applied to physics). The main
benefit of concept assignments is getting the students
not only to do the readings but to really think
about them.
While it is usually best not to grade freewrites,
at least not formally, you might collect them and
check off those that demonstrate evidence of the
student’s having listened to the lecture or discussion,
done the assigned readings, or studied the lab manual
(see Chapter Twenty-Three). You can count free-
writes as part of class participation or as ungraded but
required assignments.
THE ONE-MINUTE PAPER
With books and notebooks closed, students summa-
rize the “most important” or “most useful” points
they learned from the day’s lecture, reading assign-
ment, laboratory, or discussion. Time permitting,
they also write down questions that remain in their
minds. Although this is called a “one-minute paper,”
the exercise usually requires two or three minutes.
Just as freewrites can function as a warm-up,
a one-minute paper can serve as a “cool-down.”
It helps students absorb, digest, and internalize new
material, moving it into long-term memory. It also
makes them think about the material, especially what

Writing-to-Learn Activities and Assignments 169
they didn’t understand, which is precisely what you
need to know before wrapping up a topic.
Because one-minute papers are not graded, they
are usually anonymous. But you should collect and
read at least some of them to find out how well the
students grasped the new material. Their summaries
and questions will tell you what to review and clarify
in the next class.
JOURNALS
Students write down their intellectual and emotional
reactions to the lectures, discussions, readings, labo-
ratories, solutions to homework problems, or other
written assignments. They do this regularly at the end
of each lecture, discussion, or lab or while they are
doing their assignments outside class. Some instruc-
tors require just one weekly journal-writing session,
either in class or as handed-in homework, on any or
all aspects of a course. Students should have a special
notebook solely for their journal.
Journals help students keep up with the course
as well as to read and listen actively. They also make
students think about the material and what they are
learning. It is best, however, to provide students with
guidelines on what their journals should address. Here
are some possible questions:
• What is new to you about this material?
• What did you already know?
• Does any point contradict what you already knew
or believed?
• What patterns of reasoning (or data) does the
speaker/author offer as evidence?
• How convincing do you find the speaker’s/
author’s reasoning or data?
• Is there any line of reasoning that you do not
follow?
• Is this reasoning familiar to you from other
courses?
• What don’t you understand?
• What questions remain in your mind?
You should collect and check off journals
regularly or intermittently, but you need not grade
them. If you do, don’t weigh them very much toward
the final grade. But do write comments in them to
develop a personal dialogue with each student.
ONE-SENTENCE SUMMARIES
As an in-class activity or a short homework assign-
ment, students answer these questions on a specific
topic in one (long) grammatical sentence: Who Did
What to Whom, How, When, Where, and Why
(WDWWHWWW)? The topic may be a historical
event, the plot of a story or novel, or, by substituting
another What for Who/Whom, a chemical reaction,
mechanical process, or biological phenomenon.
This technique makes students distill, simplify,
reorganize, synthesize, and chunk complex material
into smaller, essential units that are easier to manip-
ulate and remember. It is advisable that you do the
exercise first before assigning it and allow students
twice as much time as it takes you. You can collect
and comment on the summaries yourself or have your
students exchange them and write comments on each
other’s.
LEARNING LOGS
After each lecture, reading assignment, or problem
set, students write two lists: one of the major points
they understood and the other of the points they
found unclear. Later, at regular intervals, they review
their learning logs to diagnose their learning strengths
and weaknesses (such as the reasons for repeated
errors) and brainstorm ways to remedy these weak-
nesses. This diagnostic process can be conducted in
class where students can discuss their learning pitfalls
and share study and problem-solving techniques.
Learning logs serve several worthy purposes.
Students isolate and review major points presented
in the course. They also identify what they aren’t
grasping. Finally, and most important for some

170 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
students, they learn about their own learning styles
and ways to enhance their learning. This technique
is especially valuable in cumulative subjects in which
students do similar graded assignments on a frequent,
regular basis.
Do collect and check off learning logs intermit-
tently to ensure students are keeping them up. You
might grade them if they comprise a major course
assignment.
DIALECTICAL NOTES
Students read and take notes on a relatively short, im-
portant, self-contained passage that you select from
course readings. On the left side of their note paper,
they write their reactions to the text as they read it:
where they agree, where they disagree, where they
are unsure, where they are confused, where they have
questions, and so on. At some later time, they review
the passage and their left-side notes and write their
reactions to these notes on the right side of the note
paper.
Students can take dialectical notes in class or as a
fairly short homework assignment. You can assign the
first part (passage reading and reactions) as homework
and do the second part (reactions to reactions) in class.
Leave some time between them, however—anywhere
from an hour of classroom discussion to a few weeks.
Dialectical notes encourage students to read a
text carefully, analyze it critically, and reevaluate their
initial reactions to it. These notes also demonstrate
the nature and value of scholarly dialogue and debate.
In addition, they make superb springboards for dis-
cussion. After students get used to the exercise, you
might consider collecting and grading their notes.
This technique is especially useful in courses
that require close readings of difficult texts, such as
philosophy, history, political science, religious studies,
law, and social theory. It also adapts easily to problem
solving in mathematics, economics, engineering, and
physics. Students work the problem in mathematical
symbols on the left side of the paper and explain in
words what operations they are performing, and why,
on the right side. Later, in small groups, students can
read and discuss each other’s various approaches and
solutions.
DIRECTED PARAPHRASING
In their own words, students summarize the content
of a reading assignment, a lecture, a discussion, or a lab
to a defined audience for a specific purpose. Students
can pretend they are writing, for example, to layper-
sons for the purpose of public education, to public
policy makers for the purpose of social change, or to
practicing scientists for research purposes.
Because students must paraphrase material, they
must work to understand it in depth and internalize
it. Also, since they are writing to a specific audience,
they must consider the informational, persuasive, and
political value of the available knowledge and
data—for example, what facts and arguments are
important or irrelevant to a given audience.
Directed paraphrasing assignments may be ma-
jor or minor, in-class or homework, graded or just
checked off. Students can also present them orally,
and the rest of the class can role-play the audience.
LETTERS, MEMOS, NOTES,
AND ELECTRONIC POSTS
In the letters home exercise, students paraphrase in
informal language what they are learning in a course
in the form of a letter to their parents, a sibling, or a
friend. This technique helps students see the relation-
ship between course material and projects and their
everyday lives. It also gives them the opportunity to
describe the material in their own words, and thus to
distill, internalize, and remember the major points. Its
value as a preexam review exercise is obvious. Letters
should at least be collected and checked off.
As in directed paraphrasing, you can vary the
audience and purpose for letters, memos, and notes.
Students can also write each other or post messages
on the class discussion board or blog about a certain

Writing-to-Learn Activities and Assignments 171
reading, a problem they are working on, a design
project, or any other assignment they may share as
a team or a class. Finally, they can write real or mock
letters on some course-related issue to the editor of
a newspaper or magazine, a political leader, a young
child, or a figure from the past for practice in taking
the audience into consideration in their message and
writing style.
MOCK TESTS
An excellent assignment for getting students to
review and really think about the material before a
test is to have them make up a test over the material.
This exercise can be done in class or as homework,
either individually or in groups. However you assign
it, students should hear and discuss each other’s test
questions. The power of this exercise rests in getting
students to identify what they believe to be the key
concepts and relationships in a body of material. If
they miss the mark, they will find out in class before
the test.
Before giving your students this assignment,
you may want to teach them some questioning tech-
niques, such as Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy of cognitive
operations (see Chapters Two and Fourteen). You
may also find it helpful to specify the test format—so
many multiple-choice items, true-false, short answer
questions, essays, and so forth. With a little practice,
your students may write such good questions that
you can use them in your tests. They are motivated
to write ones you will want to use because they
know the answers to their own questions.
DRAFTS FOR PEER FEEDBACK
Prefinal drafts of written work—essays, lab reports,
proposals, papers, and the like—that will be turned
in later for formal grading fall into a gray category
that we might call “writing-to-learn-to-write-better”
assignments. Just like professionals, students improve
their writing in response to well-informed feedback
on drafts. No doubt you as the instructor can provide
the best-informed critique, but students can benefit
from peer feedback as well, from both getting it and
giving it. Peer feedback not only provides students
with more varied, immediate, and frequent feedback
than any one instructor can give, but also helps stu-
dents develop communication, critical thinking, col-
laboration, and lifelong learning skills (Dochy, Segers,
Van den Bossche, & Gijbels, 2003; Topping, 1998).
However, the validity, reliability, and accuracy of
peer feedback are uneven, some tainted by personal
relationships and traits (such as race) and typically too
lenient, superficial, and unfocused (Mowl & Pain,
1995; Orsmond, Merry, & Reiling, 1996). This
should not be surprising, as students have loyalties to
one another and concerns about criticizing a fellow
student’s work; lack the disciplinary background to
know and apply professional standards, at least in
lower-level courses; and give only as much feedback
as the questions provided absolutely demand. So in
answer to the question, “Is the central idea clear
throughout the paper?” most students will say only
yes or no and will not reference specific passages
unless told to do so.
Instructors can obtain much more valid, neutral,
useful, and detailed student peer feedback by putting
a different kind of item on the feedback forms.
Rather than requiring an evaluation about the ade-
quacy, effectiveness, clarity, or logic of some aspect
of the work, you can ask students to identify features
or parts of the work, as each student sees them, or
give their personal reactions to the work (Nilson,
2002–2003, 2003). For example, instead of forcing
a judgment with, “Does the opening paragraph
lay out a clear thesis statement for the rest of the
paper?” rephrase the question as one requiring simple
identification: “What do you think is the thesis of the
paper? Paraphrase it below.” Rather than asking, “Is
the title of the paper interesting, appropriate, and
sufficiently focused?” solicit instead students’ personal
reaction: “What three adjectives would you use
to describe the title of the paper?” Rather than
requesting an evaluation such as, “How well written
is the paper?” give students this innocuous task:

172 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
“Highlight any passages you had to read more than
once to understand what the writer was saying.”
The revised questions are emotionally neutral
and require only basic rhetorical knowledge to an-
swer, yet they demand close attention to the work
and often references to its particulars. They do not
allow students to give biased, uninformed, or super-
ficial feedback. Rather, the responses they solicit tell
the writer how readers have understood and reacted
to the paper and what they got out of it. If most of the
readers did not identify the intended thesis, the writer
knows she must strengthen and clarify the thesis state-
ment. If she didn’t like the way her readers described
her title, she knows she should change it. If they high-
lighted several passages as hard to read, she knows
she needs to work on rewriting those sections. With
peer feedback, students find a genuine audience—a
role instructors cannot play—and they can come to
care about how and what they communicate (Nilson,
2002–2003, 2003).
MULTIPLE PURPOSES
Writing-to-learn exercises offer unmatched versatil-
ity. Not only do they help students process content,
clarify their thinking, and remember their learning,
but they can also induce students to pay closer atten-
tion in class, do the readings, and think carefully about
the material. In addition, they can give you valuable
insights into your students’ learning. So we will re-
visit these exercises, perhaps under different names, in
later chapters (Twenty-Three and Twenty-Eight) that
focus on some of these multiple purposes.
We are not finished with the topic of student
writing either. Chapter Twenty-Four will help you
teach your students formal modes of writing that con-
form to the rhetorical and stylistic conventions of
your discipline.

P A R T 4
MORE TOOLS
Teaching Real-World
Problem Solving

C H A P T E R 18
Inquiry-Guided Learning
I
nquiry-guided learning also goes by the names
inquiry-based learning, inquiry learning, and guided
inquiry. In addition, it has several definitions in
the literature that are not entirely consistent with each
other. In Chapter Eleven, it was defined very gener-
ally as “students learning or applying material in order
to meet a challenge, such as to answer a question,
conduct an experiment, or interpret data” so as to
accommodate the range of more specific definitions.
DEFINITIONS OF INQUIRY-GUIDED
LEARNING
According to Hudspith and Jenkins (2001), inquiry-
guided learning is “a self-directed, question-driven search
for understanding” (p. 9). More specifically, they ex-
plain it as a process that begins with students explor-
ing a subject for research, then identifying a central
research question, developing a research strategy
guided by anticipated results, and finally answering
the central question with the results. Guiding students
through this entire process might take two terms,
Hudspith and Jenkins openly admit. After all, it
will take months for students to explore a subject
thoroughly enough to come up with decent research
questions and narrow their inquiry to one central
question. In addition, the instructor must develop
and facilitate many training sessions on a list of
essential topics and skills: understanding the inquiry
process itself, developing researchable questions,
anticipating answers, conducting types of research
(library, Internet, interviewing), assessing evidence,
and writing up or presenting the results.
The definition forwarded by Lee, Green,
Odom, Schechter, and Slatta (2004) describes a
similar process that starts with students formulating
good questions and following the scientific method
to answer them. They add that the good questions
are likely to lack a single right answer. But the
authors also have a very open view of inquiry-guided
learning, as they see it happening within the interac-
tive lecture, discussion, group work, and every other
student-active teaching method listed in Table 11.1.
175

176 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
In at least some of these situations, however, students
are likely to be furnished with questions.
Prince and Felder (2007) do not see students de-
veloping questions as a necessary part of the process.
Quite the contrary, inquiry-guided learning involves
giving students a challenge, such as a question, a hy-
pothesis, or simply data to interpret, and they learn
whatever they must to meet that challenge, which
may or may not go beyond the course material. The
inquiry may have a very narrow scope—for instance,
one question that a segment of the lecture raises—or
a very broad one entailing a major term project based
on outside research. Prince and Felder also consider
inquiry-guided learning an umbrella for several ma-
jor methods—the case method, problem-based learn-
ing, discovery learning, project-based learning, and
just-in-time-teaching (JiTT)—all of which they call
inductive teaching. These methods all launch the learn-
ing process with a realistic, problematic situation and
require that students research and assemble facts, data,
and concepts to resolve it.
For purposes here, we will use Prince and
Felder’s definition of inquiry-guided learning and
view the five methods they list as close variations of
it. The first two, the case method and problem-based
learning, merit their own chapters (Nineteen and
Twenty) in this book, as they are complex, well re-
searched, and widely used across the disciplines. The
remaining three—discovery learning, project-based
learning, and JiTT—require less explanation and are
treated within this chapter.
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF
INQUIRY-GUIDED LEARNING
However you define inquiry-guided learning, its
inductive nature makes it a powerful learning
method (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999). It
typically involves acquisition and comprehension of
knowledge, analysis of data, evaluation of evidence,
application of findings to a situation or problem,
and synthesis of one or more resolutions. In short,
it requires that students engage in multiple modes
of higher-order thinking. Some forms of it may
even spur cognitive development by introducing
students to multiple perspectives on a problem
and the uncertainty that arises in choosing among
solutions. Compared to lecture-based instruction,
it does a much better job of fostering students’
academic achievement and improving their critical
thinking, problem-solving, and laboratory skills
(McCreary, Golde, & Koeske, 2006; Oliver-Hoyo
& Allen, 2005; Oliver-Hoyo, Allen, & Anderson,
2004). In addition, engagement in inquiry-guided
activities is related to a student’s perceived gains in
science and technology understanding, intellectual
development, and vocational preparation (Hu, Kuh,
& Li, 2008; Justice et al., 2007; Pascarella & Teren-
zini, 2005). To be fair, however, it has a negative
effect on perceived gains in general education and
personal development, and its positive impacts
fade as we move from high-performance to low-
performance students (Hu et al., 2008).
Like every other teaching method, the benefits
of inquiry-guided learning depend on its imple-
mentation. To be effective, students must have
sufficient guidance and scaffolding through the
inquiry process—that is, explicit directions about
what to do and how to do it, assuming they are
dealing with new material. In fact, an overwhelming
amount of research documents this need, as well as
the failure of minimally guided, problem-centered
instruction, commonly called discovery learning (Aulls,
2002; Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006; Klahr &
Nigam, 2004; Mayer, 2004; Moreno, 2004; National
Survey of Student Engagement, 2007). In other
words, constructivism has its limits. Students are
unlikely to discover the basic principles of science by
following the investigative techniques of professional
researchers. However, the greater the students’
background knowledge in the subject matter, the
less guidance they need (Kirschner et al., 2006; Kyle,
1980). With a solid knowledge base, they can start
thinking more like experts. They are better able to
identify key characteristics of a problem as well as
the procedures and algorithms to solve it, thereby
drawing on “internal guidance” (Kirschner et al.,

Inquiry-Guided Learning 177
2006). Acquiring this knowledge base may require
somewhat more conventional learning strategies.
To make up for a weak or incomplete com-
mand of basic knowledge, the literature endorses two
forms of guidance. The first form is worked examples,
which serve as models of problem-solving schemata
for students. They illustrate the procedures and logic
for approaching and working through problems (Chi,
Glaser, & Rees, 1982). When students can follow
a model, they have enough working memory avail-
able for processing these procedures and the reason-
ing behind them. Without worked examples, they
have to divert much of their working memory to
searching their long-term memory for possible strate-
gies (Kirschner et al., 2006). Numerous studies from
the 1980s and 1990s show that students learn more
when they can study worked examples before tack-
ling comparable problems on their own (Kirschner
et al., 2006).
The second form of guidance is process work-
sheets. These lay out a proven sequence of problem-
solving steps for students to follow, sometimes with
hints and rules of thumbs. With this structure,
students don’t rush headlong into problems without
first identifying the useful information they do and
don’t have, classifying the problem, visualizing it (in
mathematics, the physical sciences, and engineering),
and performing whatever other steps are prescribed
for reasoning through the type of problem. As a
result, students display improved task performance
(Nadolski, Kirschner, & van Merriënboer, 2005).
Chapter Twenty-One recommends teaching students
a stepwise schema for solving mathematical problems.
OBJECTS AND MODES OF INQUIRY
What might students inquire about? Unless you have
the course time to let them explore a new subject
and frame research questions, you will have to supply
the object of their inquiry. The following are cate-
gories of objects that apply to many disciplines, as well
as possible questions to pursue (Hudspith & Jenkins,
2001):
• A phenomenon: Does it exist? If so, to what
magnitude? What are its causes? What are its
effects? Examples: black holes, bone cancer, dual
coding, election fraud, plate tectonics, near-death
experiences, a change in the violent crime rate.
• The absence of an expected phenomenon: What pre-
vents (prevented) it from happening? Examples:
acceptance of evolutionary theory in the curric-
ula of many K–12 school systems, the worldwide
population explosion forecasted in the 1960s, a
certain nation’s economic collapse.
• A perceived relationship: Does it exist? To what
extent? To what extent is it causal or spurious?
Examples: the links between education and
income, religiosity and political affiliation, global
warming and human activity, diet and cancer,
capital punishment and violent crime rates.
• A controversy: What underlies it? Examples: Why
do scientists disagree about the cause of the Great
Extinction? Why do physicians disagree about the
role the mind plays in healing? Why do some peo-
ple believe that tax cuts on dividends and interest
stimulate the economy and others do not?
• A theory: How well grounded is it in fact or
observation? How well does it explain and predict
a phenomenon? How is it related to one or more
other theories? Examples: evolutionary biology,
the “great man” theory of history, the big bang
theory, functionalism/pluralism versus conflict
theory/elitism, the theory that Alzheimer’s disease
is caused by amyloid plaque buildup in the brain.
• A complex concept: What is its meaning? How well
grounded is it in fact or observation? Examples:
addiction, dark matter, genetic marker, construc-
tivism, cultural drift.
• A process: How does it work? Examples: How
does lupus undermine the immune system?
How does economic development lower birth
rates? How does the U.S. Census Bureau deter-
mine what to ask and how to ask it on the census
questionnaire? How do people make decisions
about purchasing a house?

178 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
• A solution to a problem: How can a given problem
be solved? Examples: How can we reduce the in-
cidence of AIDS on the African continent? How
can we determine whether modern Homo sapiens
has any Neanderthal DNA?
• A course of action: How sound or desirable is
it? Examples: producing genetically engineered
foods, setting the legal drinking age at twenty-
one, allowing electronic machine voting without
a paper trail, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, instituting
charter schools to spur improvement in the public
school system, allowing private corporations to
oversee health care, charging illegal immigrant
children in-state college tuition
Another way of getting your mind around
inquiry-guided activities, especially if you teach in
the sciences, engineering, or technical fields, is to
consider various modes of inquiry (Arons, 1993).
Students can tackle tasks such as these:
• Observe phenomena qualitatively and interpret
what they perceive, trying to identify patterns.
• Formulate concepts out of their observations.
• Develop and test models that reflect their obser-
vations and concepts.
• Examine a new piece of equipment, and figure
out how it works and how it can be used.
• Use a new piece of equipment to make measure-
ments, analyze the data, and present the results.
• Distinguish explicitly between what they have ob-
served and what they are inferring in interpreting
the results of observations and experiments.
• Answer probing questions about a given research
study, such as, “How do we know . . . ?” “Why do
we think . . . ?” and “How strong is the evidence
for . . . ?”
• Ask and answer “What will happen if . . . ?” ques-
tions (called hypothetical-deductive reasoning) about
an experiment or other type of research study. If
possible, students can follow up by proposing hy-
potheses and testing them in an experiment that
they themselves design.
All of these modes are as useful for the social
sciences as they are for the physical and biological sci-
ences. Even those involving physical equipment may
apply to psychology, and data-analytical software may
be considered a type of equipment.
Inquiry-guided learning is not only for the sci-
ences, however. Perhaps the most varied examples of
this method’s implementation appear in Lee’s edited
volume (2004), which showcases the teaching schol-
arship of North Carolina State University faculty. In
addition to inquiry-based courses in food science,
microbiology, physics, paper science and engineering,
forestry, and psychology, you can read about such
courses in history, design, music appreciation, French
culture and civilization, and Spanish language. In
history, for example, students do what historians do:
evaluate and analyze primary sources, then develop
logical arguments supporting particular historical
interpretations with evidence from their research
(Slatta, 2004). In Spanish for Engineers, students
research how the Spanish culture influences and
informs technology, in history and today (Kennedy
& Navey-Davis, 2004). In music appreciation, they
investigate the scientific aspects of music (sound,
acoustics, hearing, and recording technology) as well
as the artistic (musical expression, interpretation,
meaning, and value). While the former aspects
allow experimentation and testing, the latter, lacking
universally agreed-on standards, permit students to
develop and defend their own reasoned judgments
(Kramer & Arnold, 2004). Across the disciplines, stu-
dents have the opportunity to learn inductively and
critically think their way to their own conclusions.
VARIATIONS OF INQUIRY-BASED
LEARNING
We already examined discovery learning and had
to conclude from the research that this minimally
guided, highly constructivist version of inquiry works
most effectively for students who already have solid
background knowledge and are prepared to practice

Inquiry-Guided Learning 179
quasi-professional research methods. So let’s turn to
JiTT and project-based learning.
JiTT
As a complement to their reading assignments, stu-
dents receive conceptual questions on these readings,
usually multiple choice, shortly before each class
through the course management system. (Because
this material has not yet been discussed in class,
JiTT is considered inductive.) The instructor then
designs or adjusts his plan for the upcoming class
based on students’ answers. The goal is to address and
challenge students’ misconceptions on the subject
matter before they become further ingrained and
inhibit learning of new material.
The research on this method attests to its
learning effectiveness. Novak, Patterson, Gavrin, and
Christian (1999) credited it with reducing attrition
by 40 percent and raising students’ normalized gains
on the Force Concept Inventory by 35 to 40 percent
in physics courses that were previously lecture based.
A study on a large introductory biology course found
comparable and additional benefits to JiTT: higher
normalized pretest-posttest gains and lower attrition,
plus improved student preparation, study habits, and
class participation (Marrs & Novak, 2004). Research
in general chemistry and organic chemistry courses
also documented higher student achievement and
engagement due to JiTT (Slunt & Giancarlo, 2004).
Some instructors are discouraged from trying
JiTT because they have to prepare conceptual ques-
tions on all the readings. However, these items are
the same type as those used in the interactive lecture,
and some disciplines, especially the sciences, already
have dedicated websites with many conceptual mul-
tiple choice questions for collegial use (see Chapter
Twelve).
Project-Based Learning
This method comprises a major assignment in which
students, often in teams, design or create some-
thing, such as a piece of equipment, a product or
architectural design, a computer code, a multimedia
presentation, an artistic or literary work, a website, or
a research study involving the collection, analysis, and
presentation of real data. Service-learning projects
fall within this category as well. To complete their
project, students may draw solely on course material
or supplement it with outside research.
Compared to more conventional methods,
project-based learning leads to greater improvement
in students’ conceptual understanding, problem-
solving skills, and attitudes about learning, and
their performance on content-focused tests is the
same or better (Mills & Treagust, 2003; Thomas,
2000). However, a major project shifts students’
out-of-class time away from the standard course
content to specialized subject matter, so their
mastery of the fundamentals often suffers (Mills
& Treagust, 2003). In addition, any collaborative
problems students encounter on their teams can have
high-stakes repercussions that can result in profound
dissatisfaction.
Other Techniques
The next two chapters go into much further de-
tail on two more complex and more commonly
used inquiry-guided techniques: the case method and
problem-based learning. In fact, the case method
dates back to the late 1800s, and problem-based
learning is at least a few decades old. Both predate
the coining of the terms inquiry-based learning, inquiry
learning, and guided inquiry and have a great deal of
research documenting their strengths and challenges.

C H A P T E R 19
The Case Method
I
n this complex world full of daunting challenges,
students must learn how to solve problems.
Different disciplines focus on different types of
problems, and different types of problems call for
different teaching methods. Both the case method
and problem-based learning (in the next chapter)
help students learn how to solve open-ended, high-
uncertainty problems that have multiple respectable
solutions—some better than others, however. These
two methods are variants of inquiry-guided learning
and are relevant to any discipline with real-world
application. Chapter Twenty-One suggests ways
to help students reason their way through closed-
ended, quantitative problems, as are common in
mathematics, physics, engineering, economics, and
accounting. Chapter Twenty-Two examines how
you can construct laboratories to teach students the
real process of scientific problem solving.
The case method exposes students to proble-
matic, real-world situations and challenges them to
apply course knowledge to analyze the issues and
formulate workable solutions. It is based on real or
realistic stories that present problems or dilemmas
that are quite well structured but lack an obvious
or clear resolution. Cases are usually printed, but
some are available dramatized on videotape. Those
in Web-based learning objects may add the dramatic
realism of interactivity. If canned cases do not suit
your instructional purposes, you can always write
your own at no cost but your time. Anyone with
a bit of storytelling flair should find case writing
an entertaining activity. To guide you in writing or
selecting cases, this chapter identifies the qualities of
a good case and describes the many types of cases.
THE EFFECTIVENESS
OF THE CASE METHOD
Aside from the fact that students enjoy the case me-
thod, good cases are rich educational tools for a host
of reasons:
• They require students’ active engagement in and
use of the material (Sharkey, Overmann, & Flash,
2007).
181

182 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
• They help make up for students’ lack of real-world
experience.
• They accustom students to solving problems
within uncertain, risk-laden environments, thus
promoting cognitive development from the
dualistic mode of thinking to informed judgments
about the best approaches and solutions to difficult
problems (Fasko, 2003; Levin, 1997; Lundeberg,
Levin, & Harrington, 1999).
• They foster higher-level critical thinking and cog-
nitive skills such as application, analysis, synthesis,
and evaluation, all of which come into play in the
process of thinking through and developing solu-
tions to a case (Dinan, 2002; Gabel, 1999; Habron
& Dann, 2002).
• They raise awareness of the ethical side of deci-
sions (Lundeberg et al., 2002).
• They demand both inductive and deductive
thinking, compensating for higher education’s
focus on the latter.
• They serve as excellent writing assignments, paper
topics, and essay questions, as well as springboards
for discussion, review, and team activities.
• They increase class attendance (Lundeberg & Ya-
dav, 2006a, 2006b).
• They improve both the students’ perceptions of
and confidence in their learning, as well as the fac-
ulty attitudes about teaching (Lundeberg & Yadav,
2006a, 2006b; Sharkey et al., 2007).
• They enhance students’ achievement of their
learning outcomes in their instructors’ eyes
(Lundeberg & Yadav, 2006a, 2006b; Rybarczyk,
Baines, McVey, Thompson, & Wilkins, 2007).
On the student-involvement continuum from
didactic methods (lecture) on the low end to
experiential methods (role plays, simulations, and
service-learning, for example) on the high end, the
case method falls somewhere in the middle, depend-
ing on the case. The more it resembles a simulation,
the more experiential the learning. A case more
closely approximates a simulation when it is written
in the second person (placing the student in the
story’s key role), the present tense (happening now),
and extended stages (see below). But the second
person and the present tense don’t belong in a
case taken from reality. No matter how they are
written, cases only approach the experiential (see
Chapter Fifteen) because students don’t act them
out. However, the last type described in this chapter,
sequential-interactive, begins to blur the distinction.
THE APPROPRIATE
SUBJECT MATTER
The case method accommodates all subjects and
courses that have a context for application or use.
This is why professional schools have adopted it as a
central instructional method. Business and law did
so decades ago; in fact, the Harvard Business School
built a whole curriculum and publishing company
around it. Medicine, nursing, clinical psychology,
educational administration, and pastoral studies
followed. Many engineering specialties have also
discovered cases.
The case method is broadly used in many arts
and science fields as well, to a greater or lesser degree:
music history (Chiaramonte, 1994), philosophy
(ethics), economics (macro, legal aspects), political
science (policy analysis, public administration, consti-
tutional law), sociology (social problems, criminology,
organizations), psychology (clinical, abnormal, orga-
nizational behavior), biology (resource management,
ecology, paleontology), and scientific methods in
general (research study design and implementation
to test a given hypothesis). If you teach any of the
sciences, you can choose from a huge collection of
well-tested cases at this University of Buffalo website:
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/cases/case
.html.
Faculty and teaching assistant development has
also embraced the method. It uses cases portraying
problems that instructors may encounter with classes
and individual students—for example, challenges
to authority, hostile reactions to sensitive material,

The Case Method 183
accusations of discrimination, grading and academic
honesty disputes, and difficulties implementing new
techniques.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD CASE
A good case may be written in the second or third
person and in the present or past tense, and it may be
almost any length. What is important is that it have
the following qualities.
Realism
Real or hypothetical, a case should depict a currently
relevant situation with which students can empathize
or identify. Realism is further enhanced by technical
detail, character development, historical context, and
extension over time or a decision-making process (see
the next section).
Opportunities for Synthesis
Cases should require students to draw on accumulated
knowledge of the subject matter to analyze the prob-
lems and formulate solutions. Without some review
built into the situations, students may forget to apply
the basics in real decision-making situations in their
careers.
Uncertainty
Although some solutions will be better than others, a
case should offer room for multiple solutions and valid
debate. Several solutions may be viable, but you may
have students select just one course of action and jus-
tify their choice. Or you may ask them to rank-order
their solutions. The uncertainty surrounding the so-
lutions may be due to uncertainty in the knowledge
base (a trait of all bodies of knowledge), informa-
tion missing in the case (as is often true in reality),
or the genuine validity of different approaches to the
problem.
Risk
The decisions students make must have some impor-
tance, even if it is only hypothetical—for example,
a character’s employment, health, or life; an organi-
zation’s survival or success; a country’s welfare; the
loss of a legal case; or social justice or public security.
Something valuable must be at stake.
TYPES OF CASES
A good case may range from brief to very long. Bullet
cases make one teaching point in just two or three
sentences. They serve as good small-group discus-
sion topics and short essay questions. Minicases are a
tightly focused paragraph or two; if dramatized in a
minute or two, they are called vignettes. They gener-
ate more discussion and analysis than do bullet cases.
You can easily modify either type by confining the
possible solutions to four or five reasonable options,
much like a multiple-choice question. Then students
must identify and justify their selection of the best
solution (Waterman & Stanley, 2005). On the other
extreme are cases that go on for pages. The hundreds
of management and business administration cases that
the Harvard Business School publishes range from a
couple to over forty pages.
Most cases represent a one-time snapshot of a
situation and occupy students for fifteen to twenty
minutes, a class period or two, or a single homework
assignment. But some cases can extend into a con-
tinuing story or shift directions according to student
decisions.
The former type, a continuous case, tells an
unfolding story in segments over real or condensed
time. As real-life situations usually evolve and
change over time, this structure adds realism. For
instance, some faculty development cases describe
an instructor’s shifting relationship with a class over
a term, with each minichapter presenting different
issues to consider. Some medical and nursing cases
follow the progression of a disease or a pregnancy in
a hypothetical patient.

184 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
The latter type, a sequential-interactive case, leads
students through a process of narrowing down
their solutions or decisions by providing additional
information as the students request it. Like those on
DVD, these cases approach the experiential realism
of a simulation. They cast students in the key
decision-making role throughout, requiring that at
least their minds act it out. Here is an outline of how
you can structure such a case across subject matter,
with the medical or clinical variant in parentheses:
1. Students study a case giving limited information
on the nature or root cause of a problem. First,
they brainstorm all interpretations or causes (diag-
noses) and their solutions (treatment plans). Then
they rank-order the interpretations or causes (di-
agnoses) according to the ease and feasibility for
verifying or eliminating them (ease and safety of
testing).
2. Students request specific additional information,
beginning with what they have ranked as the eas-
iest and most feasible to obtain (easiest and safest
to test), to help them narrow down the possible
interpretations or causes (diagnoses).
3. You provide the information they request in turn.
(You should have additional information in hand
for any likely request.)
4. Students again rank-order the possible interpre-
tations or causes (diagnoses) in light of the new
information and repeat step 2.
5. You repeat step 3.
6. Students select the most likely one or two inter-
pretations or causes (diagnoses) and their solutions
(treatment plans).
Depending on the subject matter and the
problem, you may also want to include the ease and
feasibility of implementing a solution (treatment plan)
as a rank-ordering criterion. After all, if students iden-
tify widespread poverty as the root cause of a problem,
they may not be able to develop a workable, action-
oriented solution. Alternatively, you may wish to
focus attention on the relative importance or like-
lihood of a cause. The case method is extremely
flexible.
DEBRIEFING CASES
For cases to function well as homework assignments,
paper topics, essay exam questions, or discussion
springboards, you must guide students through a
productive debriefing. That is, you have to challenge
them with good questions about the case—questions
that engage them in application, analysis, and syn-
thesis of the material, plus critical evaluation of their
proposed interpretations and solutions. Brainstorm,
focal, and playground questions admirably serve these
purposes (see Chapter Fourteen).
The simplest formula for debriefing a case is
problems-remedies-prevention, that is: “What are
the problems?” “What are the solutions?” and if appli-
cable, “How could these problems have been pre-
vented?” The structure for sequential-interactive
cases given follows this basic formula.
While the problems and solutions are the es-
sential issues, you might ask other questions to direct
students back to the course material to find answers.
Cases that you debrief following a list a questions
are called directed (Waterman & Stanley, 2005). Good
cases often contain other matters and important
details well worth students’ consideration—for
example: possible reasons behind a character’s action
or inaction; reasons that such action or inaction fails
to solve or even worsens a problem; the impact of
the historical context, the organizational culture, or
financial constraints; or how the situation might play
out if one ingredient were different. Providing your
questions in writing will keep the debriefing focused
on the key points.
You can launch a case discussion with the entire
class (see Chapters Thirteen or Fourteen) or have stu-
dents discuss a case in groups (see Chapter Sixteen).
Using groups offers still more options:

The Case Method 185
• All groups can work on the same case with the
proviso that each group reach a consensus on its
answers (otherwise majority rules). This format
works well only with cases that can generate
widely different interpretations.
• All groups can work on the same case, but with
each group addressing different questions.
• After a general class discussion identifying the
problems in the case, half the groups address
solutions and the other half preventions.
• Each group works on a different case and presents
a descriptive summary and debriefing to the rest
of the class.
A POSTSCRIPT FOR PIONEERS
If the case method is rarely, if ever, used in your field
but you can see a place for it in your course, realize
that trying it poses very little risk. It is a tried-and-
true method in many fields, and course evaluations
show that students find it both highly instructive and
enjoyable. The key is in the quality of the case. You
might show drafts of your own creations to colleagues
before using them in class. Remember too that you
can continue to improve your cases over time.

C H A P T E R 20
Problem-Based Learning
B
oth the case method and problem-based
learning (PBL) present students with real-
world, human-situational, open-ended, high-
uncertainty, and risky challenges with multiple
respectable solutions, some being better than others.
However, PBL problems tend to be messier and
fuzzier, and the course material alone cannot provide
viable solutions. So students must do outside research,
which usually makes the problem-solving process a
sizable project best conducted by teams of at least
four (Duch, Groh, & Allen, 2001).
The McMaster University Medical School in
Ontario, Canada, introduced PBL in the late 1960s
to move medical education away from straight lecture
and memorization tests and toward actual practice.
Medical students worked in groups with a precept to
discuss, research, and diagnose hypothetical medical
cases. From the 1970s on, PBL spread to several
dozen North American medical schools (Jonas, Etzel,
& Barzansky, 1989; Kaufmann, 1985; Kaufmann
et al., 1989; Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006). But it
is applicable in all the same subject areas that the case
method is: the social sciences, psychology, history,
philosophy, business, law, educational administration,
medicine, nursing, clinical fields, the biological and
physical sciences, engineering—any discipline or pro-
fession that presents unclear and uncertain challenges.
HOW PBL WORKS
PBL tends to leave students more or less on their
own to research their problem and devise solutions
to it. But they can and should follow this series of
steps (Amador, Miles, & Peters, 2006; Bridges, 1992;
Duch, Allen, & White, 1997–1998; Edens, 2000):
1. Team members review the problem, which is
typically ill structured, and clarify the meaning
of terms they do not understand.
2. They analyze and define the problem. (You may
provide guidance.)
3. They identify and organize the knowledge they
already have to solve the problem. This may also
187

188 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
mean identifying and ignoring extraneous infor-
mation given in the problem.
4. They identify the new knowledge they need
to acquire to solve the problem—the learning
issues.
5. They organize and rank-order the learning issues
and set objectives for outside research. (You may
or may not provide references.)
6. They divide the work among themselves.
7. They conduct the assigned research individually
by agreed-on deadlines.
8. They continue to meet to share research findings
and conduct additional research as needed.
9. They merge their newly acquired and previous
knowledge into what they consider to be the best
possible solution. (This step qualifies PBL as a
constructivist method.)
10. They write up or orally present their solution.
Once the instructor guides students through
the basic procedures, the teams should work as inde-
pendently as possible. Each devises its own internal
organization and decision-making rules for evalu-
ating alternative formulations of and solutions to
the problem. Members integrate course materials
with outside library, Internet, interview, survey,
documentary, or field research. Depending on the
problem, the assessable product may take the form of
a lengthy memo, a report, a budget, a plan of action,
or an oral presentation to the class or a hypothetical
decision-making body.
Experiential Potential of PBL
While PBL usually doesn’t require students to play
roles, that’s not to say that it can’t. Some elaborate
PBL problems allow for an optional experiential di-
mension, which adds an early step: the team mem-
bers decide on the roles they will play in a kind of
open-ended simulation. Students might assume pro-
fessional roles, such as members of a council with
varying political interests to be taken into account. In
the lengthy educational administration problem that
Bridges (1992) developed, students take the role of
personnel selection committee members, with one
acting as project leader, another as facilitator, another
as recorder, and the rest as members. He also incorpo-
rates specific role plays and mini-simulations, such as
conferences, interviews, field observations, in-basket
exercises, and progress presentations.
PBL’s experiential realism is grounded not only
in the problems, activities, and (sometimes) roles, but
also in time factors. A project may be designed to
proceed in real time. In a multistage rollout problem,
the challenge may unfold over time as you supply stu-
dents with pieces of additional information (Duch et
al., 2001). Solving one problem can entail weeks of
research and group meetings in and out of class. In
fact, a substantial problem can absorb most of a term.
But you can find or design problems that take only a
week or two to solve.
Assessment of PBL Projects
Beyond balancing group and individual grading (see
Chapter Sixteen), you must decide in advance the
specific criteria on which you will grade the prod-
uct and set bottom-line standards for various grades
or point ranges. Then you must develop a rubric de-
scribing the product for each level of quality on each
criterion (see Chapter Thirty-One). You must also
convey those criteria and levels to your students be-
fore they begin the project so they will have some
structure within which to direct their efforts. Appro-
priate dimensions may include the clarity of the prob-
lem definition, the breadth of outside sources used,
the feasibility of the solution, the cost-effectiveness of
the solution, the extent to which the solution resolves
all aspects of the problem, and the rationales for the
solution selected.
Because the PBL literature offers little assess-
ment guidance, grading these projects can present
challenges. It can be difficult to give them less
than an A because the teams are supposed to work
independently, so you don’t monitor your students as
carefully as you might with other teaching methods.
Another potential complication stems from the high
degree of student engagement. Grading down a

Problem-Based Learning 189
project can touch emotional nerves unless you can
clearly justify your assessments.
GOOD PBL PROBLEMS AND WHERE
TO FIND THEM
Good PBL problems and good cases have the same
key characteristics: realism, opportunities for students
to synthesize material, uncertainty, and risk—and all
the better if they resemble problems that students will
experience in their careers (Duch et al., 2001). Some
generic workplace problems include managerial mis-
communications, low organizational morale, difficult
policy implementation, negative public relations, and
ethical dilemmas. In addition, a good PBL problem
for your particular course is one that gives students
practice in the abilities that you targeted in your learn-
ing outcomes and directs students to the knowledge
you want them to acquire beyond the course material.
You can also judge the quality of problems us-
ing Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy of cognitive operations
(see Chapter Two). A “poor” problem requires only
knowledge or comprehension, as do typical end-of-
textbook-chapter problems. A “fair” problem adds a
story element but entails no more than application.
A “good” problem demands analysis, synthesis, and
evaluation to solve. It is highly realistic, full of re-
searchable unknowns, and open to more than one
solution (Duch & Allen, 1996). Its description is usu-
ally much longer as well.
Here’s a simple example. Let’s say that the
readings, lectures, and class activities in a biology
course have familiarized students with the structure
and function of DNA, the function of various
enzymes involved in DNA synthesis and replication,
and radio-labeling techniques. The instructor then
gives teams this PBL problem: “A rare blood disorder
has been identified in a particular family in Europe.
[The problem describes the symptoms.] Devise the
least expensive method to determine the disorder’s
cause and to locate the defective gene, and suggest
diagnostic tests for identifying potential victims.”
Solving this problem presumably requires the students
to conduct outside research on topics like blood
DNA, DNA research methods, and genetic testing.
Once the teams complete their task, they explain
their solutions to the class, which then engages in
discussion to evaluate the various methods suggested.
Many PBL problems are available in biology
(Allen & Duch, 1998; Duch & Allen, 1996; Mier-
son, 1998). Duch and Allen (1996) also describe
one for physics. Bridges (1992) proposes ideas for
educational administration problems. Edens (2000)
gives brief summaries of ten problems in biology,
physics, chemistry, business, art history, educational
leadership, medicine, and criminal justice, along
with their sources. Finally, you’ll find some well-
tested problems at two University of Delaware
websites: www.udel.edu/pbl and (after you register)
https://chico.nss.udel.edu/Pbl/index.jsp. Depending
on what knowledge is and isn’t included in your
course materials, you may also be able to use some
of the science cases at the University of Buffalo site:
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/cases/case
.html.
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PBL
Theoretically PBL has very strong credentials. It is
based on the well-tested principle of students learn-
ing by actively doing (see Chapter One), and they
typically get to practice a variety of higher-order and
social skills: recording, scheduling, conducting meet-
ings, discussing, prioritizing, organizing, planning, re-
searching, applying, analyzing, integrating, evaluating,
making decisions, compromising, cooperating, per-
suading, negotiating, and resolving conflict. Beyond
these basics, you decide and determine what your stu-
dents will learn to do and what additional knowledge
they will acquire by their research in your choice or
design of a problem.
According to the research, PBL is especially
effective in developing the following abilities in stu-
dents (Albanese & Mitchell, 1993; Banta, Black,
& Kline, 2000; Bridges, 1992; Dochy, Segers, Van
den Bossche, & Gijbels, 2003; Edens, 2000; Hintz,

190 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
2005; Hung, Bailey, & Johassen, 2003; Lieux, 1996;
Mierson & Parikh, 2000; Prince, 2004; Prince &
Felder, 2006):
• Teamwork
• Project management and leadership
• Oral and often written communication
• Emotional intelligence
• Tolerance for uncertainty
• Critical thinking and analysis
• Conceptual understanding
• High-level strategies for understanding and self-
directed study
• Application (transfer) of content knowledge
• Clinical performance (medical students)
• Application of metacognitive strategies
• Research and information-seeking skills
• Retention of knowledge
• Decision making
• Problem solving (of course), often across disci-
plines
In addition, PBL activates prior knowledge and
imparts new knowledge in the context in which they
will later be used. In this way, it builds in enough
redundancy to ensure the knowledge is well under-
stood and retained. If the problem mirrors situations
that students will encounter in their future occupa-
tions, PBL also develops career realism as well as skills
(Bridges, 1992).
PBL has its weaknesses and its critics. Imple-
menting it is difficult and time-consuming, starting
with finding the right problems to fit your course
or writing your own (guidelines are given at the
end of the chapter). Given such challenges, fully
committed and well-prepared instructors are essential
to PBL’s success, and their shortage may explain the
mixed impact of the method on medical education
(Glew, 2003). In addition, when instructors don’t
provide enough structure and scaffolding, PBL
stumbles into the same pitfalls as discovery learning.
Students with weaker knowledge backgrounds may
require more just-in-time instruction to help them
over problem-solving hurdles (Hmelo-Silver, 2004;
Kirschner et al., 2006; see Chapter Eighteen).
Studies of medical students have uncovered
performance deficits associated with PBL. While
students in a PBL curriculum offer more complex
explanations for their diagnoses, their explanations
are less coherent and more error prone than those
from more traditionally educated students (Patel,
Groen, & Norman, 1993). Moreover, PBL-trained
students order more unnecessary (and costly) patient
tests, spend more hours studying each day, and score
lower on basic science exams (Albanese & Mitchell,
1993). As to whether they perform better in a
clinical setting, the research yields inconsistent results
(Kirschner et al., 2006).
Another unsettled question is whether PBL
courses cover less content. Some medical education
studies report that PBL courses usually cover 20 per-
cent less content than more traditional ones,
and student performance on knowledge-focused
standardized tests suffers accordingly (Albanese &
Mitchell, 1993). But research on undergraduate PBL
courses finds no such content or test performance loss
(Banta et al., 2000; Edens, 2000; Hung et al., 2003).
Even if such a loss does occur, many PBL enthusiasts
may not care because they value application and
research skills over content mastery (Biggs, 2003).
WHAT STUDENTS THINK
Medical students and faculty prefer PBL to long
lectures (Albanese & Mitchell, 1993), but medical
students tend to be mature, motivated, self-regulated
learners. Many undergraduates feel quite differently
about PBL, and their resistance and discomfort
constitute another weakness of the method. While
students report developing skills such as problem
solving, critical thinking, communication, and taking
responsibility, they tend to perceive they are working
harder but learning less, even though test results don’t
confirm this (Banta et al., 2000; Edens, 2000; Lieux,
1996). Many students, especially the highest achievers

Problem-Based Learning 191
and those in their first year, express frustration with
the open-endedness, complexity, and ambiguity of
the problems;, the lack of task structure and guidance;
and the murky standards for performance (Edens,
2000; Lieux, 1996). Such stressful conditions can
breed intragroup conflicts and problems.
This does not mean that PBL courses neces-
sarily get low student ratings and critical comments
(Kingsland, 1996; Mierson, 1998; Woods, 1996).
But instructors new to PBL may not know how
to improvise through unexpected schedule changes
or how to handle the student protests and sticky
situations that can arise. Such novices may indeed
suffer a temporary drop in their ratings (Lieux, 1996).
So before you embark on PBL, evaluate how much
risk you can afford to take.
KUDOS FOR CREATIVITY
When you are looking for PBL problems, start
by reviewing those already published. Finding
one to fit your course can be difficult. A PBL
problem in a colleague’s course may be a case in
yours because your course materials and activities
already address the solutions. Feel free to modify
published problems to your purposes, but don’t
feel constrained to use them at all. Two of the
best things about college-level teaching are the
creativity and autonomy it allows. Just as you can
write your own cases tailored to your course and
student needs, you can compose your own PBL
problems. This may be your best alternative, if not
your only one, as you maintain full control over your
students’ learning issues. These learning issues are
what distinguish a PBL problem from a case and
what push students to practice the highest levels of
thinking.
If you want to compose your own PBL prob-
lem, follow these steps (adapted from D. Johnston in
Biggs, 2003):
1. Identify the concepts, knowledge, and skills re-
quired to propose a good solution.
2. Write out your student learning outcomes for the
PBL project.
3. Find a real problem that fits your learning out-
comes and that your students may encounter in
their careers or civic lives.
4. Write your problem as you would a case: in the
present tense, with specific data and a practitioner
role or multiple roles that students can assume.
5. Consider structuring your problem as an extended
rollout type, letting realism be your guide.
6. Define the deliverable—for example, a decision, a
lengthy memo, a report, a budget, a plan of action,
or a persuasive presentation—and develop a rubric
for assessing student products (see Chapter Thirty-
One).
After testing out and refining your problem
in your course, you can even publish it if you also
write a facilitator’s guide. Include in the guide
the information in the steps above, and add content
background for facilitators and suggested resources for
students.

C H A P T E R 21
Quantitative Reasoning
and Problem Solving
M
athematics is an amazing problem-solving
tool in physics, chemistry, engineering,
computer science, economics, finance,
accounting, and, of course, statistics and mathematics.
One of the most difficult tasks that instructors face
in the quantitatively based fields is teaching students
to be good problem solvers using mathematics.
Quantitative problem solving is quite a different
matter from solving soft, uncertainty-ridden, human-
situational problems like the ones the case method
and problem-based learning address. Mathematically
based problems may have unknowns that require
intelligent estimation, but algorithms are usually
available to make the estimations and solve the
problems themselves. The big question is which
algorithms to use for a given problem. In addition,
although this type of problem may have different
approaches to arriving at a solution, it usually has only
one correct answer or a definable range of correct
answers. Quantitative reasoning, then, has a more
precise process and product than does qualitative
reasoning.
In this chapter, we first consider why students
find quantitative reasoning so difficult and fraught
with pitfalls: their weak conceptual understanding of
problems, their reliance on shallow plug-and-chug
tactics, their poor problem-solving habits, and
the common errors that result from their faulty
approaches. Then we will look at minor and major
changes we can make in our teaching and tutoring
that have proven effective in developing students’
problem solving and reasoning skills.
UNDERSTANDING STUDENTS’
PROBLEMS WITH PROBLEMS
Heller, Keith, and Anderson (1992) identify two types
of students who are struggling with problem solv-
ing in introductory physics. Some students claim to
understand the material but not to be able to work
the problems. They apparently believe that mathe-
matical problem-solving skills are independent of the
physics concepts being taught. Other students say they
193

194 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
can follow the problem examples in the text but find
the test problems too different and difficult. They
seem to view physics as nothing more than a collec-
tion of mathematical solutions. Both kinds of strug-
gles may sound familiar to you.
Novice problem solvers of both types often
make the same mistakes again and again because
they fail to understand the problems conceptually.
When confronted with a problem, they try to find
another similar problem that either they or their
instructor has solved in the past. When they think
they have identified such a problem, they use its
solution as a template for solving the new problem.
Finding a similar solved problem can facilitate solving
another, but only if the likeness rests on one or
more key concepts or principles. Unfortunately,
novices too often choose a template problem based
on only a superficial resemblance to the new problem
(for example, both involve falling objects). Then
in their impatience to find a numerical solution,
they dive into algebraic manipulations. They neither
qualitatively analyze the situation nor systematically
reason through and plan a strategy for solving the
problem. When they arrive at any solution, they are
satisfied and don’t take the time to check it (Heller
et al., 1992; Kalman, 2007).
To the extent your students can get the right
answers to the problems by whatever means, you
might not even notice the shallowness of their
understanding. What you may consider a problem
in your courses is really only an exercise, since
you often give students formulas and specific ways
of finding solutions (Zoller, 1987). This kind of
problem-solving assignment may not help your
students acquire conceptual understanding. Unless
the problems you assign elucidate the underlying
disciplinary principles and the quantitative reasoning
process, your students may merely be going through
the motions, repeating the problem-solving pattern
you showed them.
A study by Nurrenbern and Pickering (1987)
demonstrates the disconnect between problem-
solving facility and concept understanding. They
found that on a chemistry test covering such standard
materials as ideal gas problems and stoichiometry
as well as conceptual understanding, students per-
formed well on the math sections but demonstrated
little comprehension of the physical chemistry behind
the questions. Students picked up on a formula
and employed the plug-and-chug tactic of selecting
the variables necessary to work a solution without
understanding why they chose the variables they did.
In essence, they were using nothing more than an
algorithm, a set of mechanical rules, to compute the
solution.
The plug-and-chug approach can generate
additional problem-solving hurdles as well. Students
perceive only one way to arrive at a solution, even
though there may be several viable alternatives.
They also come to expect problems to be easy; after
all, the instructor breezes through them and the
book examples seem straightforward. Unprepared
for hurdles, they become discouraged by difficult
problems and stop trying. Then students may
mistakenly conclude that only a special few “meant
for” the discipline can easily work through problems
(Brookhart, 1990).
Not only do most students have poor concep-
tual understanding of quantitative problems, but they
also bring ingrained bad habits to the problem-solving
process (Black & Axelson, 1991):
Inaccuracy in Reading
• Failing to concentrate on the meaning of the
problem
• Skipping unfamiliar words
• Losing or forgetting one or more facts or ideas
• Failing to reread a difficult passage
• Starting to work the problem before reading
all of it
Inaccuracy in Thinking
• Placing speed or ease of execution above accuracy,
thus working too rapidly
• Performing a specific operation carelessly
• Interpreting or performing operations inconsis-
tently

Quantitative Reasoning and Problem Solving 195
• Failing to double-check procedures when
uncertain
• Jumping to conclusions
Faulty or Careless Problem Analysis
• Failing to break down complex problems into
easily manipulated components
• Failing to draw on previous experience to clarify
a difficult idea
• Failing to refer to a dictionary or text glossary
when necessary
• Failing to construct diagrams where appropriate
Lack of Perseverance
• Losing confidence and admitting defeat too easily
• Guessing or basing solutions on superficial under-
standing
• Using algorithms mechanically to arrive at solu-
tions without giving thought to conceptual issues
• Failing to carry out a line of reasoning to
completion
• Taking a one-shot approach and giving up if the
singular attempt fails
Many of these bad practices result in the com-
mon errors that Bridgwood (1999) identifies:
• Conceptual errors due to ignorance or carelessness
• Algebraic errors, especially in cancellation and
grouping
• Arithmetic errors due to failure to check
one’s work
Fortunately, the research suggests strategies to
help students acquire conceptual understanding and
overcome their faulty problem-solving approaches
and bad habits.
MODELING EXPERT REASONING
Recall from Chapter Eighteen on inquiry-based
learning that novice learners grappling with new
material need guidance and scaffolding through the
inquiry process—that is, explicit directions about
what to do and how to do it. The research recom-
mends two forms of guidance. One form, worked
examples, provides students with a problem-solving
model (Chi, Glaser, & Rees, 1982). Following a
logical set of procedures frees up enough of the
learners’ working memory to let them process the
reasoning behind the procedures. We know from
numerous studies that students learn more when
they can study worked examples before trying to
solve comparable problems on their own (Kirschner,
Sweller, & Clark, 2006).
So perhaps your first teaching strategy should
be modeling new problem-solving procedures—that
is, you pose a problem to your students and show
them how to work it on the board. However, the
way instructors typically do it fails to capture the true
problem-solving process. When you work a prob-
lem on the board, you are only showing students
what experts do when they run through an exercise.
You are not actually showing them how to attack a
real problem, which involves quantitative reasoning. To
accomplish this goal, you must model the cognitive
processes involved in genuine problem solving and
explicitly describe the steps and flow of your thinking.
Only then can students grasp the techniques to solv-
ing problems and appreciate what these techniques
can do for them (Bodner, 1987).
TEACHING THE STEPS
OF PROBLEM SOLVING
The second form of inquiry guidance that benefits
novice learners is process worksheets—that is, an opti-
mal sequence of problem-solving steps for students
to follow, supplemented by hints and rules of
thumbs when available. This reasoning structure
improves students’ problem-solving performance
by making them carefully examine and recast
problems in conceptual terms, thus preventing them
from rushing headlong into misdirected calcula-
tions (Nadolski, Kirschner, & van Merriënboer,
2005). The literature endorses teaching students a

196 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
tried-and-true method for tackling and solving
problems that is adaptable to any quantitatively
based discipline (Bodner, 1987; Bridgwood, 1999;
Heller et al., 1992; Kalman, 2007; Samples, 1994;
Schoenfeld, 1985). The heart of the approach
is to make students follow a five-step strategy that
requires them to translate the problem systematically
into different representations, each more abstract and
more mathematically detailed than the last:
Step 1: Visualize the problem. Sketch or diagram the
main parts of the problem. Identify the known and
unknown quantities and other constraints. Restate the
question in different terms to make it more under-
standable.
Step 2: Describe in writing the principles and concepts at
work in the problem. Then translate the diagram into
symbolic terms, and symbolically represent the target
variable.
Step 3: Plan a solution. Identify the equations neces-
sary to solve the problem and work backward from
the target variable to see if enough information is
available to arrive at a solution.
Step 4: Execute the plan. Plug in the appropriate
numerical values for the variables, and compute a so-
lution.
Step 5: Check and evaluate your solution. Is the solu-
tion complete? Are the proper units used? Is the sign
correct? Is the magnitude of the answer reasonable?
Bridgwood (1999) surveyed his electrical engi-
neering undergraduates on how helpful they found
his similar problem-solving strategy, and they assessed
most of the steps as valuable and the overall strategy
as well worth using in the future.
Some students may profit from incorporating a
few more steps: reading the problem at least twice,
preferably aloud, before trying to restate it (step 1);
thinking about the relationships among the differ-
ent pieces of information given before describing the
relevant principles and concepts (step 2); if the com-
plexity of the numbers in the problem is getting in
the way, substituting simpler numbers before planning
the solution (step 3); and pausing while computing
(step 4) to review their intuitive understanding of each
concept (Pauk, 2001).
TUTORING STUDENTS OUT
OF BAD HABITS
Helping your students to identify and overcome poor
problem-solving practices and avoid common errors
is best done during office hours on a one-on-one or
small-group basis following this strategy (Black & Ax-
elson, 1991). First, have your students read a problem
aloud and specify what is needed to solve it. Then
let them try solving it on their own, insisting that
they think through the problem out loud. Talking to
themselves makes them slow down and improves ac-
curacy and explicitness. As they attack and proceed
through the problem, pose questions that make them
examine their reasoning:
• What do you know about the problem?
• What are some possible ways to go about
solving it?
• How can you break the problem into smaller
steps?
• How did you go from step 1 to step 2?
• What is your reasoning for this step?
• What are you thinking at this point in the process?
The idea is to help students become aware of
their problem-solving pitfalls and replace them with
more thoughtful metacognitive strategies. So keep
the spotlight on the students. If you must model
problem-solving procedures, do so sparingly and only
to demonstrate the reasoning process, not how to get
the answer to any specific problem.
ROUTINIZING PEER FEEDBACK
In the mid-1990s, one engineering department in the
United Kingdom faced a tough challenge with its
mandatory second-year engineering course. Section
class size doubled over a short period of time, allow-
ing students to get away with coming unprepared and

Quantitative Reasoning and Problem Solving 197
making grading weekly homework unfeasible. As a
result, the average course grade plummeted by 45
percent and the failure rate soared. In response, the
engineering faculty reinstituted homework problems
but with student peers doing the assessing and grad-
ing. Six times during the term, students completed
and submitted required problem sheets, which were
then randomly redistributed to other students, along
with grading directions. During the lecture period,
students graded the problem sheets, adding written
comments. While these homework grades did not
count toward the final grade, not handing in the prob-
lems would lead to failing the course (Gibbs, 1999).
This innovation alone raised the average final
exam grade from 45 to 75 percent and reduced the
failure rate to zero. These stunning results make sense
when you consider the learning ramifications of this
peer feedback structure. Rather than cramming, stu-
dents have to practice solving problems fairly evenly
during the course. They receive prompt feedback on
their homework because by the end of the same class
period, they submit it. By grading their peers’ prob-
lems, they see other, perhaps better, problem-solving
approaches. Coming from their peers, the feedback
they get has greater impact and may motivate them
to try harder and do better. Finally, they practice
evaluation skills, which should help them internalize
quality control standards (Gibbs, 1999).
Peer assessment accommodates large classes
that lack an adequate teaching assistant staff. In the
engineering case, the faculty had to sacrifice the
better part of six lectures, but the grading could be
assigned as homework. While this change would
slow the turnaround time to a day or two, the other
benefits would still accrue.
MAKING PROBLEMS MORE REAL
AND CHALLENGING
Heller and Hollabaugh (1992) devised the idea of
context-rich problems in physics as part of their approach
to promote good problem-solving skills. These prob-
lems are short stories about real objects and realistic
events, more like those that students encounter in the
real world and actually care about. So they incorpo-
rate the motivation to understand the problem, per-
form the calculations, and find a solution. (One such
problem involves planning a skateboard stunt, another
deciding whether to fight a traffic ticket.) These prob-
lems may also have additional characteristics:
• They may not refer specifically to the unknown
variable.
• They may include irrelevant information not
needed to solve the problem.
• They may require students to supply missing in-
formation from common knowledge or educated
guessing.
• They do not specifically mention the reasonable
assumptions that may be necessary to reach a
workable solution.
USING THE POWER OF
GROUP LEARNING
Context-rich problems are designed to be difficult—
too difficult for most students to generate satisfac-
tory answers working on their own. Thus, Heller
and Hollabaugh (1992) recommend cooperative
problem-solving groups to spread the thinking and
reasoning load over several students. Group learning
forces students to discuss the physical principles
behind the problems and possible strategies to reach
a solution. Because students talk out their different
ideas and evaluate alternative approaches, they acquire
individual problem-solving skills in the process.
To identify the most successful group ar-
rangement and structure, Heller and her associates
experimented with different group compositions,
including random, homogeneous, and heteroge-
neous on various variables. Initially they assembled
the groups randomly. Then after the first exam,
they reconstituted the groups based on abilities,
teaming together students of high, medium, and
low abilities, as the cooperative learning literature
advises (see Chapter Sixteen). Generally students
in these heterogeneous ability groups developed
their problem-solving skills as fully as did the

198 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
homogeneous high-ability groups in previous ex-
periments. The optimal group size proved to be
three, with members rotating among the roles of
manager, skeptic, and checker/recorder. Pairs lacked
the critical mass to arrive at more than one or two
strategies and were more easily sidetracked onto a
fruitless path. On the other hand, groups of four
or more gave some members the opportunity to
freeload on other members’ reasoning. In addition,
same-sex groups or groups composed of two females
and one male worked best, avoiding the dominance
posturing of more than one male in a group (Heller
& Hollabaugh, 1992). Chapter Sixteen gives more
information on cooperative learning research results
and setup methods.
Heller et al. (1992) also found that the students
in their experimental program developed higher
problem-solving expertise than those taught in the
regular lecture and discussion section format with
assignments of standard physics problems. They
concluded that problem-solving groups working on
context-rich problems offer a preferable alternative
to the traditional approach (confirming Treisman,
1986). With students relying on each other to resolve
their concerns and questions immediately as they
arise, groups also free you to circulate and help the
students in genuine need.
ACCOMMODATING NEW METHODS
TO TRADITIONAL SETTINGS
To teach quantitative reasoning and problem solv-
ing effectively, you need not completely overhaul
your classroom or tutor every student individually.
Students do learn problem solving by doing, but
they don’t learn it by doing it wrong, and very few
deduce the real process of problem solving on their
own. This is where modeling comes in, as long as
you explicate your conceptual-level reasoning. This
common method of instruction is perfectly
compatible with traditional settings. So is teaching
students the five-step strategy of problem solving
and insisting that they follow and display it in any
homework or in-class problems they hand in. The
interactive lecture (see Chapter Twelve) provides an
excellent forum for giving students practice in ap-
plying the strategy. You can enforce their continuing
use of it by instituting peer assessment of homework
problems.
Tutoring struggling students during your office
hours is traditionally part of the faculty role, but
confronting them with questions instead of answers
teaches them to think through a problem and monitor
their reasoning before moving toward a solution.
If you have the resources to make more substan-
tial course modifications, find or devise concept-rich
problems in your field and turn your class into a “stu-
dio” in which carefully assembled student triads solve
these problems, with you playing the consultant’s role.
Such real-world problems furnish more interesting,
meaningful, and challenging contexts for students to
apply and hone their skills, and the group format
makes the reasoning processes explicit, generates mul-
tiple problem-solving approaches, and weans students
away from the mechanical application of algorithms.
Even if you cannot replicate the learning environment
that Heller and her associates created, you may still be
able to organize group problem solving during dis-
cussion/recitation sections and review/help sessions.
At the very least, move away from the all-too-
standard procedure of letting students passively watch
you mechanically solve problems and effortlessly
model idealized solutions without explaining the
deep reasoning behind what you are doing. Use
some class time to let your students tackle problems
so you can find out how they approach and solve, or
fail to solve, them. Perhaps you can have them display
their solutions on the board or project them from a
tablet PC, then explain their reasoning to the rest of
the class. Students can work individually or in ad hoc
pairs or triads, as long as they are doing the work.

C H A P T E R 22
Problem Solving in the Sciences
W
hile this chapter is written for everyone
who teaches a science at the college
level, it addresses two frequently distinct
audiences: the science faculty and science laboratory
instructors, who are often graduate teaching assis-
tants. Only in small colleges do faculty members
ordinarily design and conduct the labs that support
the lecture part of their course. But dividing the
chapter into two sections, one for faculty and the
other for teaching assistants (TAs), makes little sense.
Even if TAs conduct the lab, it is the faculty who
have the power to redesign the labs and define and
uphold lab safety standards. While the TAs have
little control over the lab agenda and none over the
broader course, most of them will soon occupy a
position of such control and responsibility for their
students’ learning.
The physical and life sciences, along with their
applied progeny such as engineering and the health
sciences, use every inquiry-based, problem-solving
teaching method we have examined: the case
method, problem-based learning, and quantitative
reasoning. Even so, these don’t cover all the types of
problems that the sciences address. These disciplines
have their own unique brand of problems, strategies
for solving them, and ways for teaching those
strategies.
Most real everyday science involves solving
problems in a laboratory, even if the data are collected
and partially analyzed in the field. If lab work is
so central to science, it should also be in science
education. It should imitate the reality of scientific
methodology in the lab—that is, devising hypothesis-
testing strategies and procedures using reasoning and
trial-and-error—on the way to solving the content
problem—that is, meeting the experimental objec-
tives with valid and reliable findings.
Since the early 1990s, a different kind of
problem solving has been moving into the lecture.
The challenges may be case studies, problem-based
learning activities, or realistic quantitative word
problems, like the context-rich variety mentioned in
Chapter Twenty-One. (Recall that these short, real-
world cases may include irrelevant information, may
require students to draw on common knowledge and
make reasonable assumptions, and may not specify
199

200 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
the unknown variable.) They can be substantive
problems, from a conceptual multiple-choice item
used during an interactive lecture break to a lengthier
guided inquiry to reveal content that was previously
delivered in a lecture.
In this chapter, we review both the lecture-
based and the lab-based innovations that are bringing
tremendous excitement and success to the field of
science education, but not before we look at the
failures of traditionally taught science courses, which
are still the norm in North America.
WHERE SCIENCE EDUCATION
FALLS SHORT
Thanks to two classic works, Tobias (1990) and
Seymour and Hewitt (1997), we know quite a bit
about why so many students come to dislike, lose
interest in, and switch out of the sciences, as well as
mathematics and engineering. At the top of the list is
poor teaching, manifested as faculty with a weed-out
mentality about their courses, poor communication
and public speaking skills, attitudes of indifference
or even condescension toward students, little under-
standing of how students learn, and lessons that lack
application and illustration—all exacerbated by too
much material being crammed into too little time
(Seymour & Hewitt). Other influential turn-offs are
the heavy reliance on lecture, the emphasis on factual
memorization in both teaching and assessment, the
predominance of mechanical “how” over more
meaningful “why” explanations, the need for quan-
titative operations, and the focus on technique—all
at the expense of theory, creativity, interconnected
concepts, and discussion (Tobias).
Although science engages in the discovery and
identification of facts, it is not just a mountain of
factoids. Yet undergraduate science education often
gives that impression. The reason probably lies with
science’s predominant teaching method: the lecture.
It is usually the instructor’s technique of choice be-
cause it maximizes the amount of factual information
that can be conveyed. It also feels comfortable and
easy to manage, especially with large classes. The
instructor exercises total control while the students
merely (one hopes) listen. The lecture has its appro-
priate uses, but it is not digestible as a steady diet. In
physics courses that serve it exclusively, students take
away no more than 30 percent of the key concepts,
on average, that they didn’t already know at the
beginning of the course (Hake, 1998). As Chapter
Twelve explains, lecturing much beyond fifteen
minutes pushes students’ ability to process and retain
the material and becomes counterproductive. And
even fifteen minutes of new science seems to overtax
learners’ working memories. A series of in-class
experiments revealed that only 10 percent of the
students could recall a nonobvious fact and illustration
of it just fifteen minutes after the professor shared
them (Wieman, 2007).
In addition, the lecture does a relatively poor job
of teaching students how to do something, such as
writing, speaking, reasoning, thinking critically, for-
mulating a hypothesis, solving a problem, or designing
and conducting an experiment. Since science com-
bines mental and physical activities, the lecture is not
well suited to a lot of it. It is especially ill suited to
strongly kinesthetic learners, who are often attracted
to science and its professional offshoots (for example,
the medical and engineering fields). These learners
benefit most from physically acting out or perform-
ing the lessons and then identifying the concepts and
principles inductively (see Chapter Twenty-Five). In
short, they learn best by working in the lab or the
field or otherwise solving problems.
Finally, while an excellent lecture can be very
motivating, a standard one rarely helps students un-
derstand and appreciate the sense of discovery that
makes science so stimulating and rewarding.
The laboratory that typically accompanies
large lectures also fails to capture the excitement of
getting results from a experiment or making a break-
through on a problem. All too often, labs are treated
like second-class, tacked-on learning experiences
at best—poorly coordinated with the readings and
lectures, hampered by a shortage of functioning
equipment, shunted off on poorly paid graduate

Problem Solving in the Sciences 201
students, and dulled by cookbook procedures leading
to predictable answers that haven’t been of scientific
interest for decades. In this kind of setting, students
are lucky to achieve the comprehension and appli-
cation learning outcomes that even traditional labs
are capable of fostering. Students rightfully come to
regard such labs as tedious, irrelevant tasks to hurry
through, get done, and forget.
HOW TO HELP STUDENTS LEARN
SCIENCE: GENERAL ADVICE
Before we examine the revolutionary develop-
ments in science lectures and labs, let’s introduce
some general principles that should guide science
education.
First and foremost, instructors have to an-
ticipate and address any misconceptions about the
subject matter that students bring into the classroom.
These misconceptions are particularly prevalent
in the sciences because the layperson’s intuitive
understandings of natural phenomena are so often
wrong. As explained in Chapter One, instructors
have to discredit students’ faulty conceptions of
how the world works while making the scientific
explanations more plausible and persuasive and
equally comprehensible (Posner, Strike, Hewson,
& Gertzog, 1982). Only after students adopt the
expert’s paradigm can they learn the discipline at a
deep, meaningful level, filling in the paradigm with
more specific scientific concepts and principles.
Second, students need help filling in the
paradigm—that is, acquiring the discipline’s hier-
archical mental structure of knowledge (Hanson,
2006; Reif & Heller, 1982; Royer, Cisero, & Carlo,
1993; Wieman, 2007). They are not likely to see this
hierarchical organization unless we tell them about
it explicitly. After all, it took us years to develop
it in our own minds because, most likely, no one
told us about it when we were in school. Why not
alleviate our students’ struggle and quicken their
learning by showing them how experts structure
their vast knowledge? By distinguishing the more
general and core concepts and propositions from
the condition-specific and derivative ones, a hier-
archy reduces the need to memorize while making
long-term storage, retrieval, and appropriate appli-
cation of knowledge much easier (Hanson, 2006;
Wieman, 2007).
Third, we need to do whatever we can to reduce
the heavy cognitive load that learning science imposes
on students. Teaching them the hierarchical structure
of the discipline’s knowledge helps accomplish this
purpose, but we can also show them how to recog-
nize patterns across concepts, principles, and problems
and how to chunk knowledge into categories based
on such patterns (Hanson, 2006; Wieman, 2007).
After showing them, we should give them practice in
these mental operations—preferably in small groups
to start. Another way of reducing cognitive load
is to supplement the verbal delivery of knowledge
with visuals—diagrams, figures, flowcharts, concept
maps, and the like—and to have students draw their
own whenever possible (Hanson, 2006; Wieman,
2007). Not only do graphics package information
more efficiently and succinctly than do words, but
by their very nature, they also display an organization
of knowledge. In fact, visuals facilitate learning in
such powerful ways that they merit an entire chapter
(Twenty-Six), so we will leave detailed explanations
for later.
One final principle to facilitate science edu-
cation—in fact, learning in any discipline—is to
encourage metacognition. That is, students need to
acquire the expert’s habit of monitoring their own
thinking, of honestly assessing how deeply they un-
derstand the material (Hanson, 2006; Wieman, 2007).
Some teaching techniques build in the process of self-
monitoring—for example, group problem solving of
context-rich problems, collaborative inquiry-guided
learning, and stepwise problem-solving procedures
that require students to represent the problem visually
and check the answer for plausibility. When working
on a challenging, nonroutine task, group members
often raise questions that serve to assess each other’s
understanding.

202 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
HOW THE LECTURE CAN BE MADE
INTO A MEANINGFUL LEARNING
EXPERIENCE
An enormous amount of research on science educa-
tion all leads to the same conclusion: inquiry-guided,
problem-focused, and collaborative, alternative teach-
ing strategies are more effective that traditional
lecture. That is, students who learn by these newer
approaches leave their science course with better
skills in higher-order thinking, problem solving,
and experimental design (Beichner et al., 2007;
Burrowes, 2003; Cortright, Collins, & DiCarlo,
2005; Freeman et al., 2007; Giuliodori, Lujan, &
DiCarlo, 2006; Hanson, 2006; Hanson & Wolfskill,
2000; Jones-Wilson, 2005; Knight & Wood, 2005;
Lewis & Lewis, 2005; Lord, 1997; McCreary, Golde,-
& Koeske, 2006; Oliver-Hoyo & Allen, 2005; Oliver-
Hoyo, Allen, & Anderson, 2004; Oliver-Hoyo &
Beichner, 2004; Prince & Felder, 2007; Schroeder,
Scott, Tolson, Huang, & Lee, 2007; Wieman, 2007;
Wilke, 2003; Wilke & Straits, 2001) and stronger
conceptual understanding of the content (Crouch &
Mazur, 2001; Hanson, 2006; Jones-Wilson, 2005;
Oliver-Hoyo & Beichner, 2004; Wieman, 2007).
Furthermore, these gains come with no loss in
content coverage (Jones-Wilson, 2005) or students’
content mastery, whether the class is small or large
(Cortright, Collins, & DiCarlo, 2005; Lord, 1997,
1999; Wilke & Straits, 2001).
These alternative strategies vary from relatively
small changes, such as interspersing conceptual
multiple-choice questions throughout the lecture
and having individual students and then groups
choose the right answer (Crouch & Mazur, 2001;
see Chapter Twelve), to complete course redesigns,
such as combining lecture, recitation, and laboratory
into a “studio course” (Laws, 1991). Among the
minor changes, Wieman (2007) uses clickers in
implementing Mazur’s peer instruction. In addition,
case studies and problem-based learning scenarios,
which abound in the sciences, can easily fit into
existing courses as in-class activities or homework
(see Chapters Nineteen and Twenty). Another
moderate change is adding just-in-time-teaching to
lectures, as research finds it reduces attrition, raises
standardized test scores, and improves student prepa-
ration (Marrs & Novak, 2004; Novak, Patterson,
Gavrin, & Christian, 1999; see Chapter Eighteen).
Yet another relatively modest enhancement is to
incorporate experimental demonstrations into the
lectures. These may be online interactive simulations
that double as virtual labs (Wieman, 2007; see the
URLs below for sources) or live experiments (not
requiring data collection) that the instructor conducts
in front of the class using lab equipment or a com-
puter. Students become involved when they not only
watch but also discuss what they have observed and
interpret the results. In the course of the discussion,
the instructor explains the concepts and principles
illustrated and the real-life applications. With the
students having time to discuss the experiment,
this teaching method is called an interactive lecture
demonstration (Sokoloff & Thornton, 1997, 2001).
If you are teaching a lecture course with
recitation sessions, you may be able to make those
sessions inquiry guided, problem focused, and collab-
orative by modeling them on Tutorials in Introductory
Physics (McDermott & Shaffer, 2002). In this format,
student groups answer conceptual questions on a
worksheet while the instructor or TA rotates around
the groups asking them Socratic questions. On
occasion, students work with a few simple laboratory
items, but the activity is usually paper and pencil.
Compared to traditional recitation sessions, the
tutorials increase students’ learning gains by over
50 percent (Reddish, Saul, & Steinberg, 1997). In lieu
of worksheets, you can bring context-rich problems
into these sessions. They can be developed for any sci-
ence or engineering field, and they foster high-level
problem-solving skills (Heller & Hollabaugh, 1992).
The most encompassing transformations in
science education go under the acronyms of POGIL,
which stands for process-oriented guided inquiry
learning, and SCALE-UP, short for student-centered
active learning environment for undergraduate
programs. While the instructor may lecture during

Problem Solving in the Sciences 203
some class meetings or give minilectures at the
beginning of each class meeting, both innovations
entail replacing some lecture periods with hands-on,
small-group activities, such as answering critical
thinking questions, developing concepts, or inquiry-
guided problem solving. Since SCALE-UP places
three students around one or more laptops, these
triads may also engage in computer-based simulations
or hypothesis-testing labs. SCALE-UP instructors
call the activities “tangibles” and “ponderables”
(Beichner et al., 2007). While the students are
working, the instructor and TAs circulate around
the class posing Socratic questions. Near the end
of the class, at least some of the groups make oral
reports, and all turn in written ones or completed
worksheets (Beichner et al., 2007; Hanson, 2006). In
other words, much of the traditional lecture time is
reallocated to small-group tutorials, similar to those
described for introductory physics. But the classes
may be many times the size of a recitation section.
Both POGIL, which started in chemistry
courses, and SCALE-UP, which was introduced in
physics, have proved highly successful in promoting
student learning. Compared to traditional lecturing
and, in one case, interactive lecturing, POGIL
has been found to increase student interest in the
subject matter, raise student ratings of the instructor
and the course, improve learning skills and test
performance, and reduce the D-F-W (drop, fail,
withdraw) rate—all to statistically significant degrees.
In addition, students prefer POGIL to traditional
lecturing and deem the activities challenging and
valuable for their learning (Hanson & Wolfskill, 2000;
Lewis & Lewis, 2005). SCALE-UP has achieved
similar significant results: students display enhanced
conceptual understanding, better problem-solving
skills, higher test scores, and more favorable attitudes
toward the discipline (Beichner et al., 2007; Oliver-
Hoya & Beichner, 2004). Not surprisingly, POGIL
and SCALE-UP have spread to other disciplines. For
the sciences and engineering, plenty of appropriate
inquiry-guide activities are available on the Web.
You may start with the sites listed at the end of the
next section.
Bear in mind that SCALE-UP requires some
serious investments in new facilities. Short of con-
structing new buildings, institutions must tear out
some of their lecture halls and replace them with
large, one-level, “computer-smart” classrooms. These
rooms must be furnished with wireless service and
large round tables, each with nine movable chairs and
electrical outlets. In addition, either the students or
the institution have to purchase laptops—at least one
for each student triad (Beichner et al., 2007). Class
sizes must decrease, as a lecture hall that once held
over two hundred students may accommodate only
ninety in the SCALE-UP format.
HOW THE LAB CAN BE MADE INTO
A MEANINGFUL LEARNING
EXPERIENCE
All the evidence indicates that traditional lab designs
and manuals are outmoded, ineffective, and ripe for
replacement with inquiry-guided labs.
The Beginning of a Lab
Recall that science defectors cite a lack of theory and
conceptual links as reasons for leaving. When the
lab is disembodied from concepts, it lacks meaning
and relevance. So it is critical to place it in the
bigger scientific picture before proceeding into
the actual activities. Given the time constraints of
many lab activities, you may be tempted to forgo
explaining the objectives to be achieved or the
principles to be illustrated and simply launch into the
day’s work with a brief synopsis of the procedures.
While this short-cutting gets students out of the
lab more quickly—which they usually appreciate,
especially in traditional labs—it robs the lab of its
educational value. And it isn’t necessary because you
can introduce the objectives or principles efficiently
while simultaneously preparing students to perform
the day’s tasks.
Begin a lab by asking students to review the
previous week’s material. You might have them do

204 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
a two-minute freewrite to activate their memory
(see Chapter Seventeen). After you ask a couple
of students to read their responses aloud, tie this
particular lab to the course’s progression of topics and
labs, sketching as cohesive a big picture as possible.
Then introduce the day’s objectives or principles,
eliciting the lab manual information, such as the
hypotheses to be tested or questions to be answered,
from the students.
The Design of the Lab Itself
In many science courses across the continent, labora-
tories have been completely revamped to incorporate
these characteristics (Felder & Brent, 2001; Howard
& Miskowski, 2005; Hufford, 1991; Kimmel, 2002;
Laws, 1991; Odom, 2002; Penick & Crow, 1989;
Reddish, 2003; Reddish & Steinberg, 1999; Sokoloff
& Thornton, 1997):
• They reflect the inquiry-guided learning model—
that is, they have students learn or apply material
to meet some kind of a challenge, such as to
answer questions, solve problems, conduct an
experiment, or interpret data. In one way or
another, students conduct real scientific investiga-
tions, identifying and solving problems the way
scientists actually do, only with the instructor’s
guidance. They must develop their own strategy
to test a hypothesis or find answers, along with
the procedures to carry it out. The lab manual
provides neither, and the lab results are not
predictable.
• They focus on developing students’ critical
thinking, decision making, and complex rea-
soning skills, including inductive thinking, by
giving students opportunities to practice them. In
addition to developing an experimental strategy
and procedures, they must devise one or more
explanations for unexpected results and write
them in their lab reports.
• They foster genuine teamwork and collaboration.
Since the labs are novel and challenging, students
mutually need each other, as they would in a
professional setting. In many cases, each lab group
turns in one report and shares a group grade.
(In Kimmel’s labs, students also keep their own
individual lab notebook, which is graded.) In
addition to sharing their discoveries, results, and
conclusions, students may even exchange their lab
reports for peer review (Odom, 2002).
• They feature modern technology, such as indus-
try equipment in current use and updated software
(for example, spreadsheet, databases, statistical, and
mathematical) for analyzing the data and display-
ing the results.
For clarification, here is an example of an actual
inquiry-based lab: a pendulum lab in a sophomore-
level calculus-based physics course (Odom, 2002).
First, students use their laptops to access the lab
manual on the Web. The manual gives a background
lesson in the basic mechanics of a pendulum,
including the equation to describe its period and
the simplified version for small angle approximations
(first-order expression). Students then receive the
two lab objectives or outcomes:
1. Determine the maximum angle for which the pe-
riod of a simple pendulum is valid. In other words,
ascertain the cutoff angle for when the small angle
approximation fails.
2. Use a simple pendulum to determine the value of
g, the acceleration due to the earth’s gravity.
Each lab group is supplied with equipment: a
pendulum stand, clamp, string, and bob (an aluminum
rod with its center of gravity marked); a protractor; a
computer timing device (on the lab Web page); and
meter sticks (located around the classroom). In addi-
tion, groups receive ten “nudge” questions to answer
and a lab report template (on the Web page) with
five problems to solve—all of which lead the students
through the process of meeting the lab objectives.
They receive no other directions (Odom, 2002). This
lab requires about six hours over two weeks. Odom
also got rid of the three-hour-a-week-lab restriction
that constrains most science curricula.

Problem Solving in the Sciences 205
Innovations such as Odom’s are not isolated.
Developed by Sokoloff and Thornton (1997), real-
time physics labs begin with phenomena and lead
students to derive the principles inductively. It relies
on the power of small groups answering challenging
questions and performing nonroutine tasks with the
assistance of a floating instructor or TA. Typically
students receive most or all of the data they need
electronically, along with analysis tools, so they focus
less on collecting data and more on interpreting
them. Workshop physics involves an entire curricu-
lum that eliminates the lecture entirely in favor of six
hours a week of inquiry-guided labs (Laws, 1991).
The results of these experimental programs have
been so positive that the hosting institutions have
adopted them into their regular curriculum. Students
actually discuss and even argue about the best plan
of attack, and they divide the labor on their own.
Compared to students in courses with the traditional
cookbook labs, they hand in higher-quality lab re-
ports, do significantly better on the tests, have higher
final grades, give the course higher evaluations, and
enjoy the labs more (Felder & Brent, 2001; Howard
& Miskowski, 2005; Hufford, 1991; Kimmel, 2002;
Luckie, Maleszewski, Loznak, & Krha, 2004; Odom,
2002; Penick & Crow, 1989). In addition, they make
greater improvements in scientific reasoning (Benford
& Lawson, 2001), as well as other higher-order
thinking skills, such as data analysis and interpretation
(Howard & Miskowski, 2005). They retain the lab
material longer too (Lord & Orkwiszewski, 2006;
Luckie et al., 2004). In Kimmel’s labs, the C students
show the greatest gains in achievement. In addition,
the students’ attitudes in his new labs are better
than those in the old. Specifically, students are more
motivated and more engaged, they perceive they
are learning more in the course and the labs, and
they assess their team functioning more favorably
(Kimmel, 2002).
In the workshop physics curriculum, in par-
ticular, students score significantly greater gains on
the Force Concept Inventory and the Force Motion
Conceptual Evaluation than those in traditional
physics classes and measurably greater than those in
lecture-based classes supplemented by student-active
tutorials (Reddish, 2003; Reddish & Steinberg,
1999; Wittmann, 2001). However, the students’
perceptions of the curriculum’s effectiveness depend
heavily on how well their teams function (Reddish
& Steinberg, 1999).
A rich source of inquiry-guided labs, as well
as POGIL, SCALE-UP, and tutorial activities, is the
Web. You can find numerous learning objects in the
forms of virtual labs, field trips, problem scenarios,
and simulations for all the science and engineering
fields:
Physics: http://phet.colorado.edu (Wieman, 2007)
Chemistry: www.chemcollective.org/find.php
(Prince & Felder, 2007)
Biology: www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/vlabs; http://
highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072437316
/student view0/online labs.html; www.biologylab
sonline.com; http://bio.rutgers.edu; www.phschool
.com/science/biology place/labbench
Zoology: www.abdn.ac.uk/∼clt011/zoology
/virtuallaboratory
Geology: www.sciencecourseware.org/eecindex.php
Geography: www.abdn.ac.uk/∼clt011/geography
/virtualfieldtrip
Engineering: www.jhu.edu/∼virtlab/virtlab.html;
http://virlab.virginia.edu/VL/contents.htm;
http://matdl.org/virtuallabs/index.php/Main Page
Multidisciplinary sites: www.seed.slb.com/science
sectionlanding.aspx?id=26652; www.merlot.org
THE ESSENTIALS OF LAB SAFETY
AND MANAGEMENT
Unless all your labs are primarily virtual or paper-
and-pencil problem solving, safety should be your
first priority. With so little lab experience, undergrad-
uates tend to be careless and unaware of the dangers,
so you must inform them of hazards and safety

206 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
measures. They need explicit instructions on proper
procedures, especially when working under poten-
tially hazardous conditions. For example, if certain
chemicals require special handling or disposal pro-
tocols, you must explain the reason in terms that
students can understand. For visual and kinesthetic
learners, you should demonstrate as well as describe
the proper construction and handling of apparatus.
As the most experienced scientist in the room, you
must also be able to act promptly and effectively
in an emergency. Know the standard procedures
practiced by your department and your field. If you
are unsure of how to proceed in any given situation,
ask a(nother) faculty member, a lab staff member, or
the departmental safety officer.
Preventing Lab Emergencies
The generic guidelines below apply across the sci-
entific disciplines. Your particular field may call for
additional rules:
• Be prepared. Rehearse new or unfamiliar proce-
dures before the lab. Be able to identify pitfalls and
problems. If students sense you don’t know what
you are doing, they will say so on your teaching
evaluations.
• Direct students to keep the lab as clean as possible.
Not only is this good practice for them, but it also
reduces the prep staff’s workload.
• Give students dress codes, and show them how
to use safety equipment such as goggles and face
shields. Then explain the reasons for the rules, and
enforce them. Typical clothing codes include long
pants, tied-back hair, shoes with tops, no exces-
sively loose clothing, and no encumbering jewelry.
• If your lab has a traditional manual with directions
and procedures, you must make your students
read the manual carefully before coming to lab.
The better informed students are, the smoother
and safer the conduct of the lab. Chapter Twenty-
Three offers dozens of ways to induce students
to do the readings when they are due. (You need
to have input into their lab grade.) You may have
to schedule some time at the beginning of lab
for a brief accountability activity, such as a quiz,
writing exercise, or brief recitation period, but
this will take you less time than going over the
directions in the manual.
• Discuss procedures thoroughly. You can be redun-
dant where safety is concerned.
• Be especially aware—and continually remind
students—of any particularly dangerous proce-
dures.
• Demonstrate proper techniques and correct stu-
dents when necessary.
• Encourage student questions.
• Move around the lab. While you can’t be
everywhere at once, be readily available for
consultation.
Responding to Medical Emergencies
If you now or ever will supervise a lab, the chances are
good that you will face a lab emergency during your
career. With some procedural knowledge and prepa-
ration, you should be able to handle most situations.
In the event of a lab accident, rule number one is
to remain calm. Make sure you know the location
of the first-aid kit, fire extinguishers, fire blankets,
emergency showers and eye washes, bleach solutions,
and hazardous waste cleanup kits. Familiarize yourself
with the uses of each so that your emergency response
will be swift and decisive. Learn first-aid principles,
preferably by completing first-aid and CPR certifica-
tion training courses, whether or not your institution
requires it. At the very least, study a first-aid man-
ual such as the one published by the American Red
Cross.
If a student is injured in your lab, stop to assess
the situation, and then take proper action. Small cuts
and scrapes may be inconsequential, requiring noth-
ing more than a bandage. But today due to AIDS, it
is best to treat all injuries involving loss of blood as
hazardous situations. So do not touch a student who
is bleeding unless you are wearing protective gloves.

Problem Solving in the Sciences 207
Isolate the blood spill area, and immediately swab the
surface twice with at least a 10 percent bleach so-
lution. Label biohazardous materials accordingly and
dispose of properly in accordance with your insti-
tution’s standards. Contact the student or employee
health center for more information on AIDS and how
to protect yourself.
Here is a brief quiz presenting several typical lab
emergencies that will help you assess your own and
your lab TAs’ emergency preparedness. How would
you or your TA respond to emergencies like these?
• A student tries to force a glass rod into a rub-
ber stopper. The rod breaks, driving the sharp end
into the palm of his hand.
• A student wearing a loose sweater is working
with a Bunsen burner. As she turns away from
the burner, her sleeve catches fire.
• A student spills 12 M HCl on his hand.
• A student tips over a boiling water bath, scalding
his feet.
• During an experiment, a student goes into respi-
ratory arrest.
• A student is shocked while plugging an electrical
cord into a wall socket.
• A student splashes a large quantity of a corrosive
chemical into her eye.
• A student’s error releases a massive quantity of
bromine gas in the lab.
WHY SCIENCE EDUCATION
IS SO IMPORTANT
We are forever hearing that our nation is falling be-
hind other countries in scientific literacy at all grade
levels and that we are facing a shortage of scientists.
At least so far, international scientists have been filling
in the openings for scientists and science professors in
the United States, but for how long?
If these reasons to improve science education
aren’t pressing enough, then consider the broader
place of science in our country. In a truly enlight-
ened, democratic society, people must be scientifically
literate—not only conversant in but also comfortable
with science. Everyone who teaches in the sciences
and its applied offshoots plays a crucial role in
fostering a society that is well informed enough to
govern itself intelligently. Self-government requires
not only a well-informed populace but also one that
can solve its own problems. Problem solving of every
type—open-ended and closed-ended, qualitative
and quantitative, high-uncertainty and formulaic—is
science’s stock-in-trade. This fact alone makes science
an essential component of higher education. But we
have to ensure that students learn how science really
proceeds—not like a well-ordered textbook but in
a zigzag, trial-and-error, collaborative manner that
demands complex reasoning, strategic thinking, and
inventiveness.

P A R T 5
MAKING LEARNING
EASIER

C H A P T E R 23
Getting Students to Do the Readings
S
ome faculty say that they don’t have the lux-
ury of managing engaging activities in class
because so many of their students don’t do the
readings. These faculty are correct in maintaining that
you cannot run a student-active classroom unless your
students do the assigned readings on time. Their first
exposure to the material must be on their own out-
side class because if they come to class unfamiliar with
the material, they can’t do anything with it. In fact,
many students seem not to crack a book until right
before an exam, by which time many class periods
have been dulled by too many “emergency” lectures
and too little student participation.
Where these faculty may err is in assuming that
just assigning reading should be motivation enough
for the students to do them. This may have been the
case at one time, but not anymore. Estimated from
their performance on pop quizzes, about 80 percent
of the students normally did the readings in 1981,
but only 20 percent of them did in 1997 (Burchfield
& Sappington, 2000). No doubt some faculty also
err in believing that their students will learn just as
effectively from listening to their lectures as from
doing the readings. Unfortunately, not doing the
readings impedes students’ learning of the material
on a deep level (Fernald, 2004).
In this chapter, we dispassionately examine why
students don’t do the readings. Students have their
reasons, right or wrong, for blowing off the assign-
ments, but we often make it easy for them to so. In
fact, we can take measures to encourage them to do
the readings—to make it easier for them to get value
from their readings—while making it more difficult
or costly for them to ignore the readings. In other
words, we can better equip them and induce them
to do the readings. The tools suggested here may not
work on every student, but they will on most. After
all, students have a right to fail themselves.
WHY STUDENTS DON’T DO
THE READINGS
Consider all the reasons that students may habitu-
ally not do the readings—at least not when they are
due. Don’t worry about the student who occasionally
211

212 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
doesn’t do the readings because of some short-term
life interference, and eliminate those who overburden
themselves by trying to combine a full course load
with more than half-time employment.
Poor Reading Abilities, Habits,
and Persistence
Just short of half the high school graduates in the
United States do not have the reading skills that
college-level work requires (Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh,
Whitt, & Associates, 2005). In fact, only 32 percent
of these graduates are college ready by the most
minimal yardstick, which means having completed
the basic college-required courses and having basic
literacy skills (Greene & Forster, 2003)—obviously an
inadequate definition of “college ready.” According
to the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy,
relatively few students achieve reading proficiency by
the end of their higher education—in prose literacy,
only 19 percent of those with a two-year degree and
31 percent of those with four-year degrees, and in
document literacy, only 16 percent and 25 percent,
respectively (Kutner et al., 2007).
Whether as a cause or a result, many students
don’t seem to enjoy reading, at least not for learn-
ing purposes, and do very little of it—much less than
earlier students used to. Only 22 percent of seventeen-
year olds in the United States read daily in 2004—a
drop from 31 percent in 1994—and only half of those
eighteen to twenty-four years old read a book of any
kind in 2002 (Hallet, 2005). In terms of voluntary
reading, those fifteen to twenty-four years old did just
seven minutes of it on weekdays and ten minutes of it
on Saturdays and Sunday in 2006, while they watched
two to two-and-a-half hours of television every day
(National Endowment for the Arts, 2007).
One problem that gets in the way of students’
reading comprehension and speed is their inability
to focus for more than a few minutes (Blue, 2003).
They may not realize that reading is not an eye ac-
tivity but rather a mind activity, and a very engross-
ing one that demands concentrated attention. With
limited reading experience, they lack a sophisticated
vocabulary, which slows their reading speed, impedes
their comprehension, and discourages them from fur-
ther reading (Maleki & Heerman, 1992). So when
faced with a reading assignment, many students feel it
takes too much time or it’s not worth what little they
get out of it.
Higher-Priority Activities
Students may also have more compelling or more
attractive options for their nonclass time. We can
easily understand their obligations to their jobs,
their family, other possibly more important courses,
and community service arrangements. However,
we have to accept the fact they may prioritize
socializing (virtual, phone, or face-to-face), fraternity
and sorority activities, playing sports and games,
watching television, listening to music, surfing the
Web, drinking, sleeping, working out, reading a
novel or magazine, doing more interesting course
work, or engaging in extracurricular activities such as
clubs and hobbies. Some of these activities mix well
(for example, socializing, drinking, and watching
television), making the combination all the more
appealing. When you think about it, our courses
have a lot of stiff competition for their time.
No Perceived Need
Many college students never or rarely did the readings
in middle and high school—and did very well, thank
you (Blue, 2003). In fact, two-thirds of the entering
first-year students in fall 2003 claimed to have spent
less than six hours a week doing homework in their
senior year in high school, and almost half of these
students graduated from high school with an A
average (Higher Education Research Institute, 2004).
Furthermore, 70 percent of all students entering
college in 2003 rated their academic ability above
average or within the top 10 percent of their age
group (Higher Education Research Institute, 2004).
Since people base their expectations of the present
on the past, many students believe that they shouldn’t
have to work any harder in college than they did in
high school, and they see themselves as intelligent

Getting Students to Do the Readings 213
enough to slide thorough their college courses.
Clearly they consider reading tangential to their
learning (Bradley, 2007).
Furthermore, students assess their short-term
need to do the readings on time. If they don’t have
to hand in any homework on the readings, won’t
be quizzed on the material in class, and won’t have
to publicly discuss the material, most of them will
skip the readings (Nathan, 2005). Students also have
fall-back strategies. They think they can skip the
readings because they figure they will pick up the gist
of them during the next class, especially if you
normally lecture. Or their friends will tell them about
the class. Or they will go to you to get lecture notes.
Or they can read your notes on the course website.
Of course, the wisdom of these strategies depends
mostly on the instructor.
No Perceived Payoff
Today students are practical instrumentalists. They
view college as a means to an end—the end being
a high-paying job that can support their consumer
habits. This is particularly true of millennials (see
Chapter One), but the somewhat older Generation
Xers share with them the demand for course
material of immediate relevance and utility. Neither
generation received the quality K–12 education that
taught them to appreciate learning for its own sake,
apply themselves to academic pursuits, or defer their
gratification for a longer-term purpose. Therefore,
they tend to view the assignments, readings, and tests
as barriers in their path on their way to a degree and
college in general as a game about grades. In their
minds, the readings have nothing to do with their
aspirations in life or their definition of success. So
they are not worth the time and effort, and students
seem indifferent to their poor reading skills.
Of course, these young people misperceive
the real world. Reading ability correlates with
income. In 2003, only 13 percent of the below-basic
readers earned $850 a week or more, while almost
60 percent of the proficient readers did (National
Endowment for the Arts, 2007). In other words, poor
readers become poor students who become poorly
paid workers, and good readers become good
students who become better-paid workers.
When you examine all the possible reasons that
students habitually don’t do the reading, they boil
down to three: (1) they don’t want to (due to poor
reading skills or compared to other activities), (2) they
don’t think they have to, and (3) they really don’t
have to—that is, they face no dire consequences if
they don’t.
HOW WE CAN EQUIP AND INDUCE
STUDENTS TO DO THE READINGS
Let’s accept the fact that most students approach
the assigned readings with a somewhat cavalier and
pragmatic attitude, combined with varying degrees
of anxiety and dread. To address this negative posture,
we have to see the issue from their point of view
given their life circumstances. In particular, we have
to avoid projecting our identities and values onto
them. When we were in college, most of us ranked
among the best students, or we wouldn’t have made
it into and through graduate school and into the
academy. We exceeded the average in our reading
abilities and persistence, our enjoyment of the activity,
the importance we attach to it, the learning benefits
we derive from it, our interest in at least some
subjects, and our raw intelligence. At the same time,
we probably weren’t perfect students ourselves. No
doubt we cut some corners, skipped some readings,
spent some nights cramming, and prioritized certain
extracurricular activities over some of our courses.
And we were gifted enough to get away with it.
Here we are years later, happily wedded to
our fields and expert readers in them, selecting the
readings that we value for our novice students. We
may not have noticed that we have internalized a
large disciplinary vocabulary that is a foreign language
to them. We have also learned a variety of cognitive
shortcuts that make our reading easy. For us, a
single term may recall an entire mental structure of
concepts, principles, assumptions, and implications

214 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
that enriches our understanding of the sentence and
foreshadows the next sentence. The unending flow
of meaning allows us to move through the text
quickly with unwavering focus. Even our brightest
students stumble over technical vocabulary and bring
shallow, if any, associations to their academic readings.
And they can’t possibly appreciate their value or our
reasons for selecting them.
Moreover, from our students’ standpoint, some
of us don’t seem very serious about our course read-
ings. We assign them but make little or no effort to
sell the students on them. This might not be so odd if
everyone else weren’t trying to sell them something.
Many of us lecture the readings in class, as if we don’t
expect our students to do them either. In addition,
few of us have incentive or sanction mechanisms to
hold our students accountable for doing the readings
when they are due. A big test is too distant a concern.
So why should they do the readings?
Stop Lecturing the Readings
None of the strategies in this chapter for increasing
reading compliance will work very well if we con-
tinue to lecture the readings. Certainly we should use
class time to extend and update the readings and clar-
ify what we know from experience confuses students.
But otherwise we should be leading in-class activities
on the material, specifically making students practice
it, apply it, examine it, and work with it. These ac-
tivities ensure better learning and retention of the
readings while holding students accountable for do-
ing them. (See the “Holding Students Accountable
for the Readings” section below.) Just imagine what
you and your students could do in class if most of
them came prepared!
Teach Students How to Read
Academic Material
In view of our students’ reading skills, habits, and per-
sistence, we must not assume that they know how to
read and study a textbook, a research article, an essay,
or a piece of literature. They probably do not know
how each genre of assigned reading is organized, what
they should be looking for as they read, how to take
notes, and what they should retain for class. We may
not be interested in teaching reading skills, but if we
don’t help our students learn how to navigate reading
assignments, they will leave our classes having learned
very little, not least of which is how to learn.
Give Students the Grand Tour
Before you give the class a reading assignment from
a textbook or other nonfiction book, spend a little
time leading students through an exploration of the
book’s structure and purpose. Of course, you must
insist that they bring their books to class for this,
which means you must also insist that they buy the
required books, which you have a right to do. Have
them read the title and the Preface or Foreword and
discuss what they think the book is about. Then tell
them to examine the Contents pages, and ask them
how the book is organized, what its major sections
and subsections are, and how they can identify them.
If the work is a point-of-view nonfiction book, have
students look for the author’s thesis, issues, or posi-
tion and how the book develops it. Not only will this
exercise ensure they have the required book, but it
will also get them over the hump of opening it and
will acquaint them enough with it to get more out of
reading it.
Have Students Learn and Use Proven
Reading Methods
The simplest proven reading method, at least for
factual and problem-solving material, is what is
sometimes called active recall or the 3R (read-recite-
review) strategy (McDaniel, Howard, & Einstein,
2009; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). Students read
a section of text, then close the book and recite
aloud as much as they can remember, and finally
reread the section. In other words, they reinforce
their reading with saying and hearing the material
and practice retrieval with self-testing. In terms
of student performance on multiple-choice and
problem-solving tests, this technique works as
effectively as note taking and exceeds just reading

Getting Students to Do the Readings 215
the text multiple times. In addition, it takes less time
than note taking (McDaniel et al., 2009; Roediger &
Karpicke, 2006).
Similar multiple-step reading strategies date
back many decades (for instance, Adler, 1940) and
now proliferate on study-skills sites all over the Web.
One or more of the steps make excellent writing
assignments that students can hand in as proof of
their having done the reading. You can select the
strategies and tips you find the most effective for your
course—some sites recommend different reading
techniques for different subjects—and refer your
students to them. These are several major sites (active
in 2009):
• www.aw-bc.com/etips/usahome/index.html
• www.educationatlas.com/study-skills.html
• www.studygs.net/murder.htm
• www.how-to-study.com/pqr.htm
• www.mindtools.com/rdstratg.html
• www.utexas.edu/student/utlc/learning resources
• www.ucc.vt.edu/stdysk/stdyhlp.html
• www.studygs.net
The strategies tend to overlap. For example,
SQ3R stands for survey-question-read-recall-review,
and PQR3 is short for preview-question-read-recite-
review. Just about all of them advise students to do
the following:
1. Scan the reading to get a sense of what it’s about,
how it’s organized, and where it’s going, noting
the titles, subtitles, graphics, bold and italicized
words, conclusion, and summaries.
2. Review the purpose for reading. (Since few stu-
dents approach their reading with a purpose, we
have to give them one or teach them how to de-
vise their own purpose. See below.)
3. Read with purpose to find what you are looking
for, thinking about what you are reading, and
paraphrasing what you are finding. (Instructors
may incorporate note taking into this step.)
4. Review the main points of the reading. (We may
have to induce students to complete this step by
giving them a structured review assignment. See
below.)
If you think about these steps, you may real-
ize that you’ve been following them for years. For
example, when you pick up a research article, you
don’t usually read it straight through from the first
word to the last. Rather, you read the abstract, thumb
through the pages to glance at the tables and figures,
then scan the conclusion, and perhaps work your way
back to the results or methods. The last thing you may
read is the literature review, which normally comes
right after the abstract. This is the way an expert ap-
proaches a piece of academic reading, which is quite
different from the way one reads a magazine article or
a novel. Our students have not yet learned to make
the distinctions.
Give Students a Purpose for Their Reading
Having a purpose for reading is the hallmark of
the expert reader. When you pick up a schol-
arly article or book, you’re usually looking for
something—something relevant to your research,
a course you teach, or a long-term interest. One
of the reasons that you scan it first is to see if you
have a purpose for reading it. If you find you do,
your scan informs you where to focus. By contrast,
students approach their readings with little or no
purpose, except to get it over with. They may not
have a preexisting interest in the material, and they
probably don’t know what they are supposed to look
for, which is why they complain that they can’t tell
what is and isn’t important. We don’t help them any
by telling them that all the material is important.
We must give our students a purpose for the
readings, things to look for, or a strategy for devising
their own purpose. Possible purposes include seeking
answers to the end-of-chapter questions or, better
yet, our own study questions. In our own questions,
we can direct our students’ attention to what we
deem important in the readings, what we want
them to gain from them. In addition, we can ask stu-
dents to apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate what

216 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
they are reading, inducing them to deep-process the
material, to think practically and critically about it.
For a point-of-view nonfiction reading, such as an
essay or monograph, we can provide students with
several generic thinking questions that ensure solid
comprehension and analysis:
• What is the author’s position or claim?
• What are the main arguments given in support of
this position or claim?
• What evidence or data does the author furnish to
support his or her position or claim?
• Evaluate the author’s case, identifying any ques-
tionable evidence or data, missing information, or
flaws in logic or analysis.
In problem-solving disciplines such as math-
ematics, physics, and engineering, the purpose for
reading may be solving the end-of-chapter problems
you have assigned. Whatever the purpose, advise
students to review the questions or problems before
they read so they will be primed to be on the lookout
for the answers or the solution strategies as they
read.
Alternatively, we can show students how to cre-
ate their own purpose for reading, especially a text-
book: by turning the chapter headings and subhead-
ings into questions for them to answer (Doyle, 2008).
For example, if the heading reads “The Causes of
Type 2 Diabetes,” the question for students to ask
themselves and answer is, “What are the causes of
type 2 diabetes?” When students scan the assigned
reading, they can get a sense of the questions they
will be addressing.
To guarantee that students read with the purpose
we have in mind, we have to make them write out
their answers or solutions and turn them in, either as
daily graded homework or in a journal we collect and
grade occasionally. While some students may not en-
joy reading a text with such care, you can sell them on
the idea by telling them that they will never have to
read the text again. Don’t let the word grade scare you.
In the section below, “Holding Students Accountable
for the Readings,” you will see what the term means
for you in practice.
Teach Students to Watch for Transitions
and Verbal Signals
Without consciously being aware of it, the expert
reader homes in on verbal signposts that make log-
ical connections between ideas. These connections
provide the key to comprehension, as they build the
structure of the knowledge being explained or the ar-
guments being presented. So it is critical that we teach
our students to watch for them and ensure they know
what the terms mean. Transitions or signal words and
phrases fall into several categories (Broderick, 1990;
Langan, 2007):
• Addition words signal that the author is making
multiple points of the same kind. Examples: also,
in addition, another, next, first, second, third, finally,
likewise, moreover, and furthermore.
• Cause-and-effect words indicate that the author is
about to address the results or effects. Examples:
because, since, consequently, therefore, thus, as a result,
so that, and if-then.
• Comparison words point out a likeness between
two ideas. Examples: like, likewise, similarly, eq-
ually, alike, just as, and in the same way.
• Contrast words highlight a change in direction or
a difference between two ideas. Examples: but, yet,
still, however, in contrast, on the contrary, on the other
hand, otherwise, conversely, although, and even though.
• Emphasis words tell the reader to pay close atten-
tion to a particular idea. Examples: most of all,
above all, a primary concern, a significant factor, a ma-
jor event, a principal item, a key feature, a distinctive
quality, a central issue, in particular, and especially
valuable/important/vital/relevant.
• Illustration words signal that the author is giving
one of more examples to clarify a general point.
Examples: for example, for instance, to illustrate,
specifically, like, and such as.
Teach Students to Write Marginalia
and to Highlight or Underline Wisely
If your students already have decent academic reading
skills, they may not need to write out the answers
to study questions to build up their reading skills.

Getting Students to Do the Readings 217
They may be ready for the next level—the level we
have mastered. What do we do when we are studying
new material? We write marginalia and highlight or
underline the most important points. These are ad-
vanced reading techniques because they presume the
reader can sort out and distill the important points in-
dependently. If your students seem halfway prepared
to make such judgments on their own, a few in-class
practice sessions may ensure their readiness.
Marginalia are notations we write in the mar-
gins to summarize the gist of the content or our re-
actions to a passage of text. Often reviewing our
reactions later makes us recall the substance of the
text. We can assign our students the task of writing
summaries or their reactions or both as homework
and can check their compliance by asking them
to read their marginalia in class and by providing
feedback as needed. To teach them to write useful
marginalia, we can impose some rules on what
they can write—perhaps three to five words per
paragraph. The best readers enrich their marginalia
by underlining key words, phrases, and sentences
as well.
Underlining or highlighting is an advanced
reading technique, but unfortunately some of the
poorest readers rely on it. Students typically highlight
or underline too much text, which does little to
improve their recall of the selected material and
actually dulls their recall of unselected material
(Kiewra, 2005). As with marginalia, the value of
underlining or highlighting depends on the soundness
of the reader’s judgment in sifting out the important
material—the key sentences and ideas. To sharpen
our students’ judgment, we can lead them through
scavenger-hunt exercises to find the main idea in
paragraphs. Along the way, we can tell them how
textbooks are typically written: the topic sentence is
usually the first sentence of a paragraph; if not there,
it’s probably the last sentence (Doyle, 2008). Weimer
(2002) teaches her students intelligent highlighting or
underlining in two class periods. She has them mark
their readings as homework, then has a discussion
about what she selected as important, what they
selected, and why. She asks them to explain her
decisions as well as to justify their own. Over time,
they approach a consensus.
To give marginalia, highlighting, and under-
lining greater appeal, you can tell your students that
these activities, done intelligently, will save them the
trouble of having to read the entire text again, as is
true with other close-reading methods. But these
techniques also require students to buy the assigned
books and mark them up, which reduces what little
resale value they have. Still, as expert readers, we
know that the only way to study a book in depth is
to mark it up; it’s part of the learning and learning-
how-to-learn process. We have the right to require
this commitment of our students. If they choose
not to make it, they have the option to drop your
course.
Require Students to Review
Their Readings
Although all the study-skills and reading-skills books
and websites recommend taking this final step, stu-
dents usually don’t do it. So we may have to push
them to do what is best for them by assigning a home-
work exercise that makes them consolidate and in-
tegrate the new knowledge they have gained in the
readings. The simplest review assignment for students
is to write out the main points made in the read-
ings and then put them together into a one- or two-
sentence summary. Another review strategy, one that
requires less writing but more thinking, is to have
students draw a concept map or mind map of the
readings (Peirce, 2006). This assignment directs their
focus to the hierarchical structure of the knowledge.
While the readings no doubt give plenty of hints,
students must construct their understanding of the
organization of the concepts and principles. If it re-
flects valid understanding, the product gives them a
mental structure with which to retain and elaborate
on the knowledge. If your students haven’t mapped
material in other classes, teach them how by mod-
eling the method in class, then having them work
in small groups to map a minilecture or reading in
class a few times, then assigning mapping as individual

218 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
homework. (Chapter Twenty-Six examines a variety
of graphics aids to learning, including mapping.)
A third type of assignment, called reflective writ-
ing, relies on freewriting about the readings, section
by section (see Chapter Seventeen). Championed
by Kalman (2007) for physics courses, this method
works well for the sciences and mathematics. Students
first read a section or two of the assigned chapter
while highlighting, jotting down marginalia, or doing
whatever else helps their comprehension. Then for
roughly two-thirds of a page, they freewrite about the
section—not summarizing it but writing about what
it means and then about what they don’t understand.
By this process, they generate questions to ask in
class. In reflective writing, students are reviewing not
just the material but also their understanding of it.
Kalman grades the freewrites only on completeness,
counting them as 20 percent of the course grade.
He documents that his students not only master the
material better as a result but also come to appreciate
the activity by the middle of the term.
Assign Realistic Reading Loads
We have a tendency to assign too much reading for
our students, given their reading challenges. Less is
more when it comes to reading assignments because
student are more likely to complete shorter ones
that longer ones (Hobson, 2004). According to
one study, when the instructor assigned six different
readings, the vast majority of students in the class
barely glanced at three of them. They were much
more likely to do the readings when only two articles
were assigned. Even so, students rarely completed
all the readings (Bradley, 2007). Still, the evidence
suggests that we should assign as required only the
most essential readings. For guidance, we should
review our learning outcomes and the fit between
the readings and the rest of the course.
We also should take measures to ensure our
readings are aimed at students’ level—that is, at
marginally skilled readers (Hobson, 2004). Even if
we teach them how to read the material, they will
need practice before they become fluent at it. A few
readability indexes are available on the Web. For
example, the Flesch-Kincaid (English) Readability
Test, based on word length and sentence length, is
explained at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-
Kincaid. When you put text into the calculator at
www.standards-schmandards.com/exhibits/rix/index
.php, you obtain both a grade-level score and a
reading ease score.
Sell the Readings
To an extent, we can make some students want to
do the readings simply by promoting them. In the
syllabus, we can emphasize how central the readings
are to the course. We can explain their purpose, rel-
evance, and high value, as well as our reasons for
choosing them over other options. Each day or week,
we can preview and promote the upcoming reading
assignment, describing what questions it will answer
and what value it will hold for their immediate learn-
ing and later lives and careers. We can place it in the
context of the next class, later assignments, upcoming
in-class activities, and the larger course and curricu-
lum. To help get students over the first hump, we can
let them start reading key pieces in class (Bean, 1996;
Hobson, 2004).
Let’s not underestimate the potential impact of
such efforts. Students cite their personal desire to learn
as their single strongest motivator for doing the read-
ings, far above wanting to participate in discussion or
feeling obligated (Bradley, 2007). Chances are we can
influence their desire with a short, persuasive pitch.
Hold Students Accountable
for the Readings
Making the readings more accessible, doable, and
valuable to students may go far. Once students start
doing the readings, they may enjoy the learning
and sense of achievement enough to continue
reading. But these helpful strategies may not go
far enough. You may also have to induce students
to do the readings for extrinsic reasons—that is, to
set up incentives and sanctions related to their own
self-interest.

Getting Students to Do the Readings 219
We know that most students are motivated
by grades, just as people in general are motivated by
material and monetary rewards. We also know that
people are motivated by pride. They don’t want to
look bad in front of others, especially superiors and
peers. These two cost-benefit values suggest ways to
make students accountable for doing the readings. So
whether they want to do them, most students will
decide that they have to do them to attain their goals
and avoid unpleasant consequences.
This chapter reviews four categories of tools
that hold students accountable for the readings:
homework on the readings, quizzes on the readings,
in-class problem-solving or written exercises on the
readings, and oral “performance” on the readings,
either prepared or cold-call (impromptu). Abun-
dant research documents that these methods work
(Barrineau, 2001; Carney, Fry, Gabriele, & Bal-
lard, 2008; Connor-Greene, 2000; Fernald, 2004;
Leeming, 2002; Mazur, 1997; Nathan, 2005; Nilson,
2007b; Ruscio, 2001; Thompson, 2002; Thorne,
2000). In fact, Nathan (2005) claims that students
decide if they will do the readings for a given day
based on whether they have homework based on
the readings to hand in, they will be tested on the
material, or they have to speak publicly on the
material in class. If none of these conditions applies,
Nathan explains, chances are good that most students
will skip the readings.
To make any of these tools work effectively as
accountability mechanisms, follow these guidelines:
• Use these tools or some combination of them on
a regular or near-regular basis on the class days that
readings are due. Your students should expect to
be held accountable for every reading assignment.
Randomly administered (or “chance”) quizzes
also raise reading compliance (Fernald, 2004;
Ruscio, 2002), but not as much as regularly
occurring ones (Carney et al., 2008). Generally
the more frequent the quizzing, the stronger the
inducement to read and the higher the student
learning and achievement (Carney et al., 2008;
Leeming, 2002).
• Grade the products in some way, even if on an
informal scale, such as one to four points, zero or
one point,
√
+/
√
/
√−, √/0, or P/F. You don’t
have to grade on quality or provide feedback as
you would with a formal assignment. Since you’re
looking only for evidence of students’ having
done the readings, you can give full credit to a
good-faith effort—that is, one that addresses the
readings and meets your length or elaboration
requirements. You can assess on these criteria at a
glance. At least with homework, as long as you
require that students hand it in for every reading,
you may get equally good results with grading
only some of the homework some of the time as
you would with grading all of it all of the time
(Carney et al., 2008).
• The grades on the products in total must count
significantly toward the final grade. We know that
5 percent is too little (Sullivan, Middendorf, &
Camp, 2008) and that 20 percent is an effective
incentive (Kalman, 2007).
• Make the readings the only available source of the
knowledge in the readings—that is, don’t lecture
the readings in class or post outlines or summaries
of them on the course website.
Pride becomes a powerful secondary motivator
when the accountability tool is some sort of oral per-
formance or in-class group work for a group grade.
In this latter situation, most students feel a sense of re-
sponsibility to their teammates (see Chapter Sixteen).
SPECIFIC TOOLS FOR HOLDING
STUDENTS ACCOUNTABLE
The tools described here—some obvious, others
not—come from a variety of sources, and certain
forms of homework also teach students how to read
and comprehend the material (see above).
Homework
Some research finds that regular, required homework,
even if it is not always graded, motivates students to
do the readings more regularly and carefully than does

220 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
any schedule of quizzes (Carney et al., 2008). With
some forms of homework, you may want your stu-
dents to submit two copies: one for them to refer to
and take notes on in class and another to turn in to
you for grading. The copy for you may be submitted
electronically before class. You may even make the
written product a requirement for entering class. The
options for homework are almost limitless:
• Notes on or an abstract or summary of the read-
ings (Barrineau, 2001; Kalman, 2007; Kalman &
Kalman, 1996; McKinney, 2001; Peirce, 2006)
• An outline, concept map, or mind map of the
readings (Peirce, 2006)
• One or more questions on the readings, on cards,
or electronically posted (Martin, 2000; McKinney,
2001; Millis & Cottell, 1998). You may ask for
specific types of questions (multiple choice, true-
false, essay, and so on) for possible use in future
tests.
• Answers to study, reading-response, or end-of-
chapter questions (Carney et al., 2008; McKinney,
2001; Peirce, 2006). Questions that make students
reflect on the personal relevance of the material
also enhance their perceptions of their ability
to participate productively in class discussions
(Carney et al., 2008).
• Solutions to problems.
• Writing-to-learn exercises (see Chapter Seven-
teen) such as dialectical notes (Peirce, 2006).
• Any type of outside material that illustrates an im-
portant point in the readings or an application
of them—for example, a magazine or newspaper
article, a printed advertisement, a photograph, a
website, or an object.
Quizzes
Frequent, regular quizzes are proven accountabil-
ity tools (Barrineau, 2001; Carney et al., 2008;
Connor-Greene, 2000; Mazur, 1997; Nathan, 2005;
Nilson, 2007b; Thompson, 2002; Thorne, 2000),
and they induce reading compliance more effectively
than randomly administered (or chance) quizzes
(Carney et al., 2008). These days you can administer
them either in class or online shortly before class.
Either way, accountability quizzes should focus only
on the major points and concepts in the readings,
not details, and the items should be easy for you
to grade quickly—either multiple choice or short
answer. One study found short answer questions
more effective than multiple-choice items in helping
students gauge their own learning (Sullivan et al.,
2008). Remember that you can grade the answers
as simply as acceptable/not acceptable based on the
topic they address and their length.
Just-in-time teaching, an inquiry-based method
described in Chapter Eighteen, is a type of daily quiz.
Students answer conceptual questions, usually multi-
ple choice, online just before each class, giving you
enough time to adjust your plan for the day’s class
to address any comprehension problems students had
with the readings. We know this method raises stu-
dents’ level of preparation for class, participation in
class, engagement, and achievement (Marrs & Novak,
2004; Novak, Patterson, Gavrin, & Christian, 1999)
as long as it appreciably figures into the final grade
(Sullivan et al., 2008).
With in-class quizzes, you can save paper by
dictating the questions or displaying them on a slide
or overhead transparency. You can also have students
make up the questions as homework. Finally, you
can follow the individual quiz with a group quiz and
make the double exercise a real learning experience
(Michaelsen, 1997–1998).
In-Class Written Exercises
or Problem Solving
These exercises may be any of a wide assortment of
writing-to-learn and classroom assessment activities
(see Chapters Seventeen and Twenty-Eight)—for
example, a one-minute paper, a reading response
mini-essay, a summary, or an audience-directed
paraphrase—as long as they focus on the readings.
They can even be graphical: a summary drawing, a
poster, or a concept or mind map of a chapter or
book. With problems, students can solve them or
design new ones for future tests.

Getting Students to Do the Readings 221
To encourage high-quality work, you might let
students use some in-class products as resources for
future tests. One summary exercise that is particu-
larly effective at motivating students to study the read-
ings seriously is a “mind dump.” After answering any
questions on the readings, you allow students five or
ten minutes to write everything they can remember
from the readings. Then you collect these recollec-
tions and return them to their authors at the begin-
ning of tests. While students may have little time to
hunt through them during tests, they will feel less
anxious and no doubt will have better mastery of the
material just for having written about it.
While individual accountability is critical for
reading compliance, some of these exercises are
adaptable to teams. In fact, the more challenging
ones, such as writing high-order multiple-choice
items for future tests, may benefit from the synergy
of multiple minds. You can find many more group
learning activities suitable to most readings in Chapter
Sixteen, such as structured controversy, numbered
heads together, send-a-problem, talking aloud paired
problem solving, and student teams-achievement
divisions (STAD).
You will need to keep individual students and
groups on task and accountable. So after each exercise
or problem, randomly cold-call on several students or
groups to read their answer, explain their solution, or
display their graphic. If the exercise or problem has
one right answer and not everyone comes up with it,
don’t correct those with wrong answers. Let students
with different results debate them. Another account-
ability measure is having students sign and hand in
their exercises or problem solutions. If valid answers
emerged during class, you don’t have to correct or
write feedback to the students. Just check off that they
completed the task.
Oral Performances
These are not lengthy oral presentations based on
major projects. Rather they are daily recitation or
discussion sessions or short impromptu or prepared
presentations on the readings. For example, following
up in-class written exercises or problem solving by
asking some students or groups to explain their results
to the class is an oral performance, and many others
are possible:
• Randomly call on students to present their
homework on the readings (questions, answers to
questions, problem solutions, summaries, reading
responses, outside material, and so on), either
in addition to or instead of handing it in to
you. Over the term, you can probably call on
all your students at least once, and maybe many
times.
• Have students bring in questions on the readings
(for future tests, discussion, clarification) and call
on other students to answer them.
• Hold regular recitation sessions that start with sim-
ple recall questions and move into higher-order
discussion questions. The key is to cold-call on
students in a way that looks or actually is ran-
dom. Shaffer (n.d.), for instance, asks his students
to print their names on three-by-five-inch cards,
which he collects and uses during the semester
to pick students to answer questions. At times he
shuffles the deck. At other times, he stacks the
deck before class. He then grades students’ an-
swers on the fly, marking a plus or minus on their
card. These oral performances count 15 percent
of the course grade and constitute most class pe-
riods. Since he calls on thirty to sixty students in
a typical class, they get plenty of participation op-
portunities.
• Use the Socratic method while leading discussions
on the readings (see Chapter Fourteen).
• Have speaking-intensive experiential activities in
class, such as debates, panels, press conferences,
role plays, and simulations that require the
knowledge in the readings (see Chapter Fifteen).
Though you may not be able to involve all your
students equally, you can induce almost all of
them to prepare because you might call on any of
them to play key roles.

222 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
MANAGING YOUR WORKLOAD
Before you conclude that accountability tools would
generate too heavy a workload for you, consider how
much time the tools actually demand and what other
tasks they can eliminate. Yes, you will have to find
or create short assignments, quiz questions, recitation
and discussion questions, or in-class exercises and ac-
tivities, and you will have to grade them in some
fashion. However:
• You can have your students make up questions and
problems for you, whether for quizzes, tests, or
in-class exercises.
• You can make the grading quick and effortless
(Connor-Greene, 2000; Thompson, 2002). With
homework, short answer or essay daily quizzes,
and in-class exercises and problem solving, you
need only check the work for a good-faith effort,
and you can grade oral performances on the fly
in class.
• You can give fewer major tests and assignments,
saving yourself considerable preparation and grad-
ing time.
• You can require and collect daily homework on
the readings, but you only have to grade some of
it some of the time (Carney et al., 2008).
• You need not prepare lectures.
Finally, consider how much more your students
will learn and how deeply you can take them into the
material if they do the readings on time. Imagine
the class discussions and activities you can lead. In fact,
most accountability tools serve multiple purposes and
can provide a springboard or an entire framework for
a student-active class period. Perhaps they can save
you time.

C H A P T E R 24
Teaching Your Students to Think
and Write in Your Discipline
M
ost of us bemoan the quality of our stu-
dents’ writing. We complain about their
apparent ignorance of mechanics, punc-
tuation, spelling, word use, paragraph organization,
and the rules of sound sentence structure, and we
wonder what they did in their first-year composition
class—unless, of course, we teach first-year compo-
sition. In fact, whatever writing problems students
have tend to get worse as they shift from discipline to
discipline (Richardson, 2008). So your students may
have learned to write decent papers in composition
but produce poorly organized, mechanically marred
lab reports, research papers, and literary analyses.
A major reason that students can’t write well
in a given discipline is that they don’t know how to
think in the discipline. While thinking may not always
be expressed in writing, writing is always an expres-
sion of thinking. In fact, writing instruction specialists
contend that writing is thinking (Bean, 1996; Richard-
son, 2008). Therefore, when you teach your students
to write in your discipline, you are teaching them
how to think critically in your discipline. In other
words, you are teaching them how your discipline
thinks. Only when they can think in the discipline do
they have the extra mental energy to tend to gram-
matical and stylistic conventions (Richardson, 2008).
CROSS-DISCIPLINARY
COMMONALITIES
Not surprisingly, all of the academic disciplines share a
common ground of thought and expression, and the
writing-across-the-curriculum movement defined
that territory. Toulmin, Rieke, and Janik (1984)
offer a particularly useful model of cross-disciplinary
reasoning and writing. First, all scholarship states a
claim of some kind: a hypothesis, a thesis, a solution,
or a resolution. Second, it presents data related
to that claim—that is, some kind of factual evi-
dence that may take the form of numerical results
of an experiment, inferential statistics from a survey,
historical documentation, or quotations from a text.
Third, it makes a warrant—that is, as persuasive an
argument as possible that the data justify the claim
223

224 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
or make this claim superior to competing claims.
Scholars then debate the validity of a given claim
in terms of the applicability and the quality of its
supporting data and the strength of its warrant.
The claim-data-warrant model is simple enough
to teach to undergraduates, and it sensitizes them
to the need to include all three elements in every
piece of formal writing they do. (Student writing
is often missing one or two of them.) It also gives
them an easy-to-use framework for evaluating schol-
arly, rhetorical, and expository writing in general,
including that of their peers.
However, this cross-disciplinary common
ground does not extend very far. The disciplines
diverge on the writing formats they follow; the
language they use; the organization of the claim,
data, and warrant; the forms of data they consider
respectable; and their standards for an acceptable
warrant (Walvoord & McCarthy, 1991). You cannot
improve your students’ writing unless you explain the
format, language, organization, and so on that your
discipline demands and follow up with models, prac-
tice assignments, and plenty of feedback (Madigan &
Brosamer, 1990).
TEACHING CRITICAL THINKING
THROUGH THE DISCIPLINE’S
METACOGNITIVE MODEL
In general, critical thinking means higher-order thin-
king, such as more sophisticated cognitive operations
described by Bloom (1956), Perry (1968), and
Wolcott (2006). But these operations take on more
specific definitions in the disciplines, where critical
thinking follows the typically unspoken conventions
of what constitutes “legitimate” argumentation and
evidence. It is the “disciplinary dialect” that a field
speaks, the “disciplinary scaffolding” on which the
profession constructs knowledge, the “metacognitive
model” on which the discipline operates (Nelson,
2000). Thus, one field’s critical thinking may be an-
other field’s logical fallacy or unjustified conclusion.
This is not a problem in itself. The problem is that
we fail to articulate our discipline’s metacognitive
model to our students (Donald, 2002; Langer, 1992;
Nelson, 2000). Maybe it never crosses our minds.
Maybe we are so wedded to our model that we
forget it isn’t common knowledge or common sense.
Maybe we assume that students will simply pick
it up by osmosis. Some eventually do, of course.
Maybe we did. But not everyone does so easily, not
without performing poorly in course work along the
way. And many students never get it. They major
in another field with a disciplinary dialect that they
somehow do pick up.
Why not explain your field’s metacognitive
model to your students up front, especially in intro-
ductory courses where their concept is the sketchiest
and often the most mistaken? Then you can provide
them practice in critically reasoning within the
model. Writing is the natural context for their prac-
tice because it is the most formal, concrete expression
of a student’s understanding of the discipline. Almost
all of us give graded writing assignments, and they
afford students the best feedback on their efforts to
communicate in the disciplinary dialect.
METACOGNITIVE DIFFERENCES
AMONG DISCIPLINES
By way of introduction to disciplinary differences,
consider the short-answer or essay-question com-
mand that often appears on tests and written
assignments: “compare and contrast.” In the labora-
tory sciences this typically means “to list” as many
similarities and differences as possible. In the social
sciences, it implies “to discuss” as many as possible,
referring to theoretical texts and research findings to
buttress one’s argument. In literature, the command
has yet another translation, which is “to analyze” one
critical similarity and one critical difference at length,
staying close to the texts.
It is little wonder that a literature major in an
introductory biology course can write an elegant es-
say comparing and contrasting plants and animals and
never understand why it barely gets a passing grade.

Teaching Your Students to Think and Write in Your Discipline 225
Similarly, the biology major in a literature course may
be just as puzzled about why his lengthy list of similar-
ities and differences between The Grapes of Wrath and
The Sun Also Rises receives a D. In fact, it is surpris-
ing that as many students figure out these disciplinary
nuances as they do.
Based on interviews with college instructors,
Langer (1992) outlines the major metacognitive
differences among three major disciplinary groups,
especially as these differences pertain to the written
products expected of students. Donald’s (2002)
work, also based on faculty interviews, fills in some
insightful details, especially within the sciences.
Physical and Biological Sciences
and Engineering
Students are supposed to apply hard facts and reliable
data to a problem-solving situation, consider possi-
ble outcomes, hypothesize the most reasonable pre-
diction, perform a tightly controlled experiment to
test the hypothesis, measure the results meticulously,
and come to probable, carefully qualified conclusions
based on the resulting evidence. Student opinion has
little or no place in the process, and students should
establish the validity of the source when citing some-
one else’s published conclusions.
A lab write-up or report has a specific format,
much like a recipe, that students receive instructions
to follow. The task involves selecting the relevant in-
formation from lab notes and placing it in the proper
categories, following a specific format. Students are
expected to include tables, charts, graphs, drawings,
and the like to clarify, simplify, and abbreviate the
presentation. They should carefully construct and la-
bel these visuals. What writing is necessary should be
clean, concise, and impersonal, with relatively short,
noncomplex sentences. Lists don’t even require com-
plete sentences. Usually writing in the passive voice is
recommended.
Within the sciences, physics relies heavily on
deductive logic to obtain a reasonable, plausible an-
swer within expected limits. On the other end of the
continuum, biology students are expected to think
inductively, inferentially, metaphorically, and skepti-
cally about their results. Chemistry falls in between.
In engineering, students are supposed to use proce-
dural knowledge to solve problems and make design
decisions in the absence of complete information
(Donald, 2002).
Social Sciences
Most subfields of psychology follow the scientific
mode, especially those that rely on the experimental
method. However, social scientists rarely have the
chance to conduct experiments and instead must
rely on surveys, demographic data sets, interviews,
and observations, all of which have validity and
reliability weaknesses rooted in the data collector
or the respondents or subjects. For example, survey
and interview respondents are not always accurate or
truthful, and those being observed may not behave
typically. The styles of analysis of such data rest on
questionable assumptions as well. For example, the
statistical analyses of large data sets usually assume
that the variables of interest are normally distributed,
which may or may not be true.
Another difference between the physical and
biological sciences and the social sciences lies in the
number of acceptable worldviews. While the former
adhere to one dominant paradigm, the latter entertain
two or three theoretical perspectives (Kuhn, 1970).
Sociology, for example, has functionalism and conflict
theory, and political science has pluralism and elitism,
with major pieces of research usually grounded in
one or the other. These pairs comprise competing
ideologies with different value-relevant explanations
for the unequal distribution of social resources
and rewards. They also tend to focus on different
questions—in particular, the ones they best answer.
To be fair, however, both theoretical sides share one
orientation: both look more to the social structure
than to individuals to explain human behavior and
phenomenon.
Given that the social sciences rely on flawed data
and analyses and ideologically shaded theories, the
standards for evidence are more relaxed than they are

226 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
in the physical and biological sciences. Researchers
need present only partial, probabilistic explanations,
as long as they structure a strong argument and
anchor it in the literature. Students in turn must
learn to view their own and others’ research results
as probabilistic, tentative, and subject to debate. To
grasp the complex nature of social scientific research
with all its sources of inherent uncertainty, students
must progress through all of Perry’s (1968) stages of
undergraduate development.
History-Based Disciplines
Here the focus is on explaining the relationships
between contradictory developments and conflicting
documentary evidence. Students are expected to
examine concrete historical circumstances and to
develop defensible stands on controversial issues,
drawing on detailed supporting evidence based on
valid documentation. Part of this process entails
viewing the conclusions of others with a critical eye,
distinguishing true from false positions and main
points from subpoints.
In essence, the challenge in writing a paper is
to argue clearly and convincingly a historical inter-
pretation using concrete factual, contextual evidence.
Content is of greater importance than format. As one
history instructor describes the rule of thumb, stu-
dents should “give at least three different types of
reasons relevant to the issues and details to support
those reasons” (Langer, 1992, p. 79).
The fields within this model include art, music,
dance, and literary history, some philosophical studies,
the historical specialties in the social sciences, and, of
course, history. Law is similar in that an argument is
won on the basis of factual evidence and a persuasive
analysis of what the facts suggest (Donald, 2002).
Literature
As in the history-based disciplines, students are
supposed to interpret literature, but in literary criti-
cism, this means something distinctly different. In
the latter, students should interpret the meaning of
a piece of literature—that is, how it allegorically
or metaphorically reflects some aspect of real life.
To infer intelligently what an author may intend,
students should draw on the major themes and motifs
in literature. But personal opinion is an integral
aspect of interpretation; in fact, originality of opinion
is prized. But an opinion must also have validity, and
validity is derived from specific, supporting references
to the text. Therefore, points in the text provide the
data or evidence of literary interpretation.
Students are also expected to analyze and eval-
uate an author’s literary style, often comparing and
contrasting it with those of other authors. They must
incorporate a historical understanding of literary gen-
res and traditions so they know which comparisons
and contrasts are interesting. For example, examining
stylistic differences between Chaucer and Hemingway
might yield an extensive list, but a boring one bela-
boring the obvious. Of much greater interest are the
fewer and more subtle differences between authors
who occupy the same or similar literary worlds.
Like the social sciences, the field of literature
has no agreed-on approach to analysis and criticism.
Rather, the discipline has several competing ones—at
the moment, rational, symbolic interpretive, and
postmodern—that focus on different dimensions of
literature. An English department may have represen-
tatives from all three schools of thought on its faculty,
so students may learn three different approaches
to literary interpretation, never understanding the
sources of these differences and completely confused
about the discipline’s values and standards. Again, it
takes a student at an advanced stage of development
in Perry’s (1968) framework to grasp what a valid
literary analysis or criticism constitutes.
An excellent paper then begins with a novel but
thematic slant on a piece of literature or a credible
analysis of its place within an identifiable school of
thought, both strongly supported by details and quo-
tations from the actual work. Thus, content is critical.
But more than in other fields, so is the writing style
in the paper itself. After all, literature is writing, much
like science is the scientific method. Those attracted
to literature should be extremely literate and literary
themselves.

Teaching Your Students to Think and Write in Your Discipline 227
Along with English, foreign languages, and
comparative literature, the arts and much of philoso-
phy follow a similar model, perhaps with less exacting
standards for students’ writing style.
MAKING STUDENTS BETTER
THINKERS AND WRITERS
The purpose of this summary was not to tell you
what you already know about your field. Rather it
was, first, to heighten your awareness of very different
heuristics that students may bring into your course
from other courses they have taken outside your dis-
cipline. Second, it was to help you determine what
facets of the disciplinary dialect and scaffolding that
you already share with your students and what else
they may benefit from learning. Certainly they need
to know whether your field has competing schools of
thought, and if so, which one you belong to if you ex-
pect your students’ work to reflect it. In addition, the
more they know about your discipline’s conventions
of argumentation and evidence—the more they can
think like a colleague—the better they will perform
in your courses, especially in their formal writing as-
signments.
While you can explain these conventions to
your students, Nelson (1993) suggests a one-hour
in-class exercise that allows students to “discover”
your discipline’s metacognitive model on their own,
inductively. Pass out a brief essay-type question along
with copies of three or four different answers ranging
in grades from A to D/F, but with comments and
grades removed. (Past exams are excellent sources.)
Then break students into small groups and have
them figure out which answers are better and in
what ways. After they develop a list of criteria
(which you should verify in class discussion), assign
another essay for them to write, either in class or as
homework, following these criteria. According to
Nelson, students who have done this exercise report
higher-than-expected grades not only in the course
in which it is administered but in their other courses
as well. For many students, the experience gives them
a whole new gestalt on what disciplines, knowledge,
scholarship, and higher education are all about.
TEACHING STUDENTS TO WRITE
FOR THEIR FUTURES
Except for students who become academics, few of
the writing conventions you teach them will carry
them into their careers. The workplace has its own
metacognitive mode—yet another dialect, another
scaffolding that most of your students will have to
learn sooner or later. You can help them learn it
sooner in your course, where the costs of error are
comparatively low. They need to know that profes-
sionals and managers spend much of their workday
writing, and even most non-college-educated front-
line supervisors spend at least a fourth of their time
at work on writing tasks (Mabrito, 1997). No doubt
your students will greatly appreciate your instructing
them in a skill they will need and use so much.
So if any of your courses can accommodate it, you
may want to give your students some experience
in business/administrative—sometimes called tech-
nical—writing. Such assignments fit in naturally
with simulations, extended cases, problem-based
learning, and some service-learning experiences (see
Chapters Fifteen, Nineteen, and Twenty), and you
can choose among several writing genres: memos
and letters; lengthy proposals for new policies, proce-
dures, projects, products, and services; and progress
reports on projects and transitions. While the briefer
forms make excellent individual tasks, proposals and
projects reports are often collaborative products in
the business/administrative world and thus should be
in a course as well.
This type of writing has distinct features not
shared with scholarly kinds (Anson & Forsberg, 1990;
Plutsky & Wilson, 2001). Let us examine them in
detail.
Specific Audience Pitch
Because a message is always directed to a specific
individual or group, either you or your students must
clearly define the audience for each assignment.

228 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Students may have to research the literacy level,
values, and needs of the audience before they can
target their message to it.
Language and Style
Since the audience is usually a nonspecialist in a
hectic, pragmatic environment, the language must be
nontechnical, accessible, concise, and direct enough
to be skimmed. The preferred words and phrases
are clean, short, essential, and powerful—chosen to
be quickly informative or persuasive. For instance,
students should practice replacing prepositional
phrases with adjectives and adverbs, wordy construc-
tions like “prior to” and “in the event that” with
briefer ones such as “before” and “if,” and sentences
written in the passive voice with those written in the
active voice.
Purpose
With few exceptions, business/administrative com-
munications ask the audience to take some form of
action—for example, giving approval, modifying be-
liefs or values, changing behavior, or parting with
money or other resources. Progress reports may ask
for more time, more funding, or simply continued
faith and support.
Evidence to Justify Purpose
Standard evidence includes observations, repeated
events, interviews, small-scale surveys, and printed
materials, usually nonacademic. Students can ben-
efit from learning how to collect such data and
familiarizing themselves with respected business,
administrative, professional, trade, and industry
sources.
Format
As in journalistic writing, the purpose and main
points appear up front in the introduction. Longer
communications such as proposals contain other
reader-friendly features that chunk the information: a
title page; the Contents page; an executive summary
or abstract (one-page maximum) focusing on the
purpose and the recommendations; short chapters
and sections; abundant headings and subheadings;
lists rather than text when possible; graphics such as
charts, tables, diagrams, and illustrations to minimize
and summarize text; a conclusion listing recommen-
dations; appendixes with nonessential supporting
information; and generous white space throughout.
Accuracy and Timeliness
Finally, business/administrative writing must be error
free, which means checked for factual accuracy and
carefully proofread, as well as submitted on time. If
not, the credibility of the writer suffers or, worse yet,
the proposal is not even read. Students must come to
understand that the real world is much less tolerant
and patient than college courses.
THE MANY WORLDS OF WRITING
No doubt almost all young students enter college with
the mistaken belief that they will learn how to think
and write well for all purposes and for all the possi-
ble nooks and crannies of the world of work where
they could land. Just like dualistic thinking, this be-
lief will die hard in their hearts. But this belief may
not die at all if instructors don’t explicitly teach and
show students the variety of styles and standards of
thinking and writing. Students need to know up front
that what their literature instructor considers good ev-
idence, argument, and writing style does not carry
over completely into their chemistry, political science,
or history courses, and that each cluster of disciplines
follows its own set of rules and standards. And so do
the worlds of private industry and government, where
students are most likely to seek employment. If we
don’t share with them these basic truths, they may
come to think that neither academe nor the world
beyond it has any standards and conventions at all.

C H A P T E R 25
Accommodating Different Learning Styles
P
eople learn, or more precisely prefer to learn,
in different ways. Many favor learning by do-
ing hands-on activities, some by reading and
writing about a topic, others by watching demon-
strations and videos, and still others by listening to a
lecture. All of these preferences key into the different
ways people learn most easily, commonly known as
learning or processing styles.
Should instructors then teach their material in
different ways to cater to these different styles? Maybe
they should prepare students for life in the real world
by not giving them special treatment. Nevertheless,
knowing and being able to take advantage of students’
learning-style strengths also helps instructors prepare
them for the real world. Particularly now, when our
society is concerned with fairness and equality for
those of different genders, races, ethnicities, and abil-
ities, teaching to different learning styles is a major
facet of equity.
Over the past few decades, the idea of learning
styles has spawned a cottage industry. Hall and Mosley
(2005) identified seventy-one different learning-style
instruments, most of which have no academic
currency. But the approaches, frameworks, models,
and typologies of learning styles that do number well
over a dozen. They identify individual differences
in information processing, orientations to learning,
perceived locus of control, types of intelligence,
hemispheric dominance, and personality on Jun-
gian and non-Jungian dimensions (Hall & Mosley,
2005; Sarasin, 1998). One that is widely known
because some K–12 leaders endorsed it is Gard-
ner’s (1993) multiple intelligences, of which there
are eight: verbal linguistic, logical-mathematical,
musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal,
intrapersonal, and naturalist. (You can identify your
intelligences by taking the inventory free of charge
at www.businessballs.com/freematerialsinexcel/free
multiple intelligences test.xls.) However, this chapter
refers to this model only in passing because teaching
to so many intelligences is impractical and because it
has no empirical foundation (Morris, 2008).
Rather, we will focus on three other models that
are easier to apply, more popular in higher education,
229

230 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
and more relevant to college students. Kolb’s model
of the learning cycle and learning styles (1984) is ex-
periential, Fleming and Mills’s VARK model (1992)
is sensory based, and Felder and Silverman’s Index
of Learning Styles (1988) eclectically integrates cog-
nitive, sensory, and experiential elements with one
dimension found in the Jungian-based Myers-Briggs
Type Indicator, intuitive versus sensing.
KOLB’S LEARNING STYLES
MODEL AND EXPERIENTIAL
LEARNING THEORY
Kolb (1984) developed his model to inform training
in private industry and not so much as a piece of
scholarship. It has weak predictive validity—too weak
even to support its training applications—and low
test-retest reliability (research summaries in Felder &
Brent, 2005, and Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006).
But the learning cycle Kolb describes maps well onto
the structure of the brain (Zull, 2002), and it is still
a fixture in the learning styles literature. Because
the model is a business tool, the instrument that
can “type” a person is available only for purchase at
www.haygroup.com/tl/Questionnaires Workbooks/
Kolb Learning Style Inventory.aspx.
Kolb’s Learning Cycle
Kolb portrays the process of meaningful learning as a
series of events that integrates the functions of feeling,
perceiving, thinking, and acting. The learner moves
through a cycle comprising four phases: concrete ex-
perience (CE), reflective observation (RO), abstract
conceptualization (AC), and active experimenta-
tion (AE).
Let us take experiential learners as an illustration.
By directly involving themselves in new experiences,
these learners enter the first phase of the cycle, des-
ignated concrete experience (CE). As they observe
others and reflect on their own and others’ expe-
riences, they proceed to the reflective observation
(RO) phase. Next, they attempt to assimilate their
observations and perceptions into logical theories,
thus moving into the third phase of abstract con-
ceptualization (AC). When they use concepts to
make decisions and solve problems, learners exhibit
the final phase of the learning cycle, that of active
experimentation (AE).
Individual learners enter the cycle at different
points, typically because they prefer the activities as-
sociated with a particular part of the cycle. Thus, the
various phases of the learning cycle form the basis for
categories of learning modes.
The concrete experience mode is characterized by
a reliance more on feeling than on thinking to solve
problems. In this mode, people interpret human
situations in a very personal way and focus on the
tangible here and now. Intuitive, open-minded,
social, and artistic in their information processing,
these learners center on knowledge that demonstrates
the complex and the unique as opposed to systematic,
scientifically derived theories and generalizations.
The reflective observation mode is similarly mar-
ked by intuitive thinking, but as applied to observing
and understanding situations, not solving and manip-
ulating them. Using this mode, a learner is quick to
grasp the meanings and implications of ideas and sit-
uations and can examine situations and phenomena
empathetically from different points of view. Patience,
objectivity, and good judgment flourish in this mode.
Reliance on logical thinking and conceptual
reasoning characterizes the abstract conceptualization
mode. It focuses on theory building, systematic
planning, manipulation of abstract symbols, and
quantitative analysis. This mode can generate person-
ality traits such as precision, discipline, rigor, and an
appreciation for elegant, parsimonious models.
Finally, the active experimentation mode is
directed toward the practical and concrete (like the
CE) and rational thinking (like the AC). But its
orientation is toward results: influencing people’s
opinions, changing situations, and getting things
accomplished—purely pragmatic applications. This
mode fosters strong organizational skills, goal
direction, and considerable tolerance for risk.

Accommodating Different Learning Styles 231
Now visualize a graph with two axes: the x-axis
from active (on left) to reflective (on right) and the
y-axis from abstract (at bottom) to concrete (at top).
This arrangement places the concrete experience
mode at twelve o’clock, the reflective observation
at three o’clock, abstract conceptualization at six
o’clock, and active experimentation at nine o’clock.
Connecting the modes by arrows going clockwise,
you can see Kolb’s theoretical learning cycle.
Derived Learning Styles
Kolb went a step further to define a “learning style”
and a “learning type” in each quadrant:
• Accommodators rely heavily on concrete ex-
perience and active experimentation. They enjoy
engaging in new and challenging experiences, partic-
ularly those requiring hands-on involvement. They
attack problems intuitively with a trial-and-error
methodology and quite effectively teach themselves
through an inquiry-based discovery process. They
tend to gravitate toward action-oriented careers such
as marketing and sales.
• Divergers use concrete experience as well as
reflective observation. They examine situations
from different angles and like to be personally, even
emotionally, involved with their work. They crave
to know why things happen as they do. Their major
motivator is personal meaning, never competition.
They tend to move toward service fields, the arts,
and the social sciences.
• Convergers rely primarily on their skills of
abstract conceptualization and active experimentation
in their learning. They are often characterized as aso-
cial and unemotional, preferring to work with things
rather than people. What grabs their attention is how
things work. They enjoy assignments that require
practical applications, experimentation, and, in the
end, precise, concrete answers. In general, many en-
gineers and computer scientists fall into this category.
• Assimilators combine abstract conceptual-
ization and reflective observation into a style that
excels at organization and synthesis. They specialize
in integrating large quantities of data into a concise,
logical framework, from which they extrapolate
theories and generalizations. These individuals
focus on abstract ideas and concepts rather than
people or practical applications. Many scientists and
academicians are assimilators.
In reality, people’s learning styles may shift from
situation to situation, encompassing an area that spans
two and even three quadrants. So take care not to
categorize yourself or others too rigidly.
Teaching to Kolb’s Types
When designing a course, you may want to build
in a variety of opportunities for students to board
the learning cycle: some lessons that are experiential
and tangible, some reflective and intuitive, some log-
ical and conceptual, and others applied and practical.
The teaching recommendations that follow were de-
veloped by Smith and Kolb (1986) and Harb, Terry,
Hurt, and Williamson (1995).
Accommodators benefit most from these learning
activities:
• Group work
• Discussions and brainstorming sessions
• Projects
• Solving open-ended problems
• Essay tests and assignments
• Inquiry-guided activities
• Making presentations
• Experiential methods such as field trips, role plays,
simulations, the case method, problem-based
learning, and service-learning
Divergers respond best to:
• Discussions of all types—whole class, small group,
and one-on-one
• Group projects
• Essay tests and writing assignments
• Emotionally moving lectures and stories, and in-
teractive lectures
• Experiential methods such as field trips, role plays,
simulations, the case method, problem-based
learning, and service-learning

232 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Convergers are most successful when taught by:
• Demonstrations
• Inquiry-guided laboratories and other activities
• Objective homework problems and exams
• Computer-aided instruction and simulations
• Assignments involving defining and justifying a
model
• Field trips and case studies
Finally, assimilators prefer:
• Logical, factual lectures
• Instructor demonstrations and modeling of
problem-solving methods (live or video)
• Textbook reading assignments
• Independent data gathering and analysis research
or library research
Three of these four types rely heavily on
student-active teaching to learn the material. As-
similators do less only because they read and listen
actively on their own.
FLEMING AND MILLS’S
SENSORY-BASED LEARNING
STYLE TYPOLOGY
Australian scholars Fleming and Mills (1992) ad-
vanced another learning-styles framework that uses
a more descriptive classification nomenclature.
Here, the terminology reflects the preferred physical
sense involved in learning, as reflected in the four
categories of read-write, auditory (“aural”), visual,
and kinesthetic. Using the first letter of each type
(R for “read-write”), Fleming and Mills dubbed
their typology “VARK.” The model presumes that
individuals rely on more than one style. Svinicki
tested it statistically and found it has weak validity but
endorses its use outside of research:
Its strength lies in its educational value for help-
ing people think about their learning in multiple
ways and giving them options they might not have
considered . . . . Everyone who uses the VARK loves
it, and that’s a great thing to be able to say. So it is
obviously striking a chord with almost everyone who
uses it. (Quoted in Fleming & Baume, 2006, p. 6)
You can take the VARK inventory free of
charge at www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=
questionnaire, a section of the extensive VARK
website.
Read/Write
Students with a read/write learning style excel when
asked to read and write about a topic. They rely
heavily on recognizing logical, deductive relation-
ships, such as the classic outline form, and they can
easily find pattern and flow in a well-constructed
lecture or textbook. Their memory structure is more
abstract than that of the other styles. They store
information as organized sets of symbols, such as
outlines, equations, diagrams, and typologies. As you
can imagine, these learners do well in the tradi-
tional educational setting. The reading and lecture
format so common in classrooms is tailor-made
for them, and they need no special instructional
considerations.
Auditory
Students with an auditory learning style perform
well when they are given information in a form they
can hear, such as a discussion, a lecture, a debate, or
another type of verbal presentation. In fact, they learn
best when they can hear themselves express an idea.
Consequently they benefit from most standard teach-
ing methods, especially those that require student
participation. As they process and store information
in chronological relationships, they thrive in fields
that base data and analysis on stories, cases, and
events, such as history, political science, law, business
administration, and literature. Many also have musical
talent. Strong auditory learners can retrieve knowl-
edge in “memory tapes” and are aided by mnemonic
devices.

Accommodating Different Learning Styles 233
Visual
Students who lean more toward visual and kinesthetic
styles often face difficulties in the traditional college
classroom. Unless they also have a digital or auditory
processing style on which to rely, they are often left
behind in lecture-based courses, through no fault of
their own. So additional forms of stimuli may be nec-
essary in order to optimize their learning experience.
Individuals with a primarily visual learning
style rely on their sight to take in information. They
work well with maps and rarely forget a face, a scene,
or a place. Some gravitate to artistic fields where
they can express their flair for design and color.
Consistent with their visual nature, these individuals
organize knowledge in terms of spatial interrelation-
ships among ideas and store it graphically as static or
animated snapshots, flowcharts, pictures, or diagrams.
Some even have photographic memories.
With little additional preparation, you can easily
supplement your teaching presentations with aids for
visual learners. The object is to portray knowledge in
two-dimensional spatial relationships that reflect the
logical, chronological, or mechanical links among
concepts, processes, and events. The less “space”
and more connections between two ideas, the more
closely related the visual learner will comprehend
and remember them.
Among the visuals that this learning style ap-
preciates is the graphic syllabus (see Chapter Three),
as well as illustrations, pictures, diagrams, flowcharts,
graphs, concept and mind maps, graphic models and
organizers, and graphic metaphors. This last type of
graphic is a drawing of an analogical relationship, such
as a sketch of a building to represent a Marxian view
of society, with the basement as the “substructure”
and the floors above as the “superstructure.”
Visual teaching tools are readily available: the
chalkboard, presentation slides, overhead transparen-
cies, and handouts. Some instructional computer
software and videotapes also feature outstanding
graphical depictions of mathematical, physical,
and biological relationships. Using only the least
expensive options, you can diagram the relation-
ships among major points in your lectures and the
readings. You can add visual components like graphs
and histograms to the day’s lesson. You can chart
complex, logical relationships among overlapping
concepts with circle (Venn) diagrams. You can draw
flowcharts of multistage assignments, such as the
essay-writing process, problem-solving strategies, and
laboratory procedures. You can even flow-chart your
student learning outcomes from the beginning to the
end of the term (see Chapter Two). Since students
have such trouble taking notes on class discussions,
you might mind-map the ideas as they emerge—that
is, diagram the discussion with the central theme
as the hub with lines coming off it to the related
arguments and points the students make. Then
draw secondary lines off each argument or point
to the supporting evidence presented (see Chapter
Twenty-Six).
Kinesthetic
Those with this learning style benefit most by doing.
It uses active involvement as the primary learning
mode. Those strong in this style demonstrate superb
eye-hand-mind coordination and natural-born me-
chanical ability. In the recent past, these learners were
often maligned and rarely taught their way except in
shop or home economics courses. While mechanical
skills may seem narrow and unintellectual, kinesthetic
individuals make excellent surgeons, dentists, health
care professionals, musicians, technicians, engineers,
and architects. In processing information, they
easily grasp physical interrelationships and store
knowledge as experiences with both physical and
emotional components.
You can reach strongly kinesthetic students
using the same techniques as you do for strongly
visually oriented students, as both types relate well
to graphic representations of themes and concepts.
But since kinesthetic processors also rely heavily on
inductive reasoning, they especially benefit from mul-
tiple examples and hands-on experiences from which
they can formulate general hypotheses and principles
on their own. Thus, they learn best from experiential
and inductive teaching methods like simulations, role

234 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
plays, field trips, service-learning, inquiry-guided
activities and laboratories, case studies, and problem-
based learning, all of which are explained in earlier
chapters.
Physical models and analogies are also impor-
tant learning tools to these students. For instance, an
English instructor faced a strongly kinesthetic student
with little concept of how to organize the assigned
literature review, even after being given oral instruc-
tions. So the instructor decided to use a mechanical
illustration, which worked. With paper and pencil in
hand, she compared the introduction, which contains
the thesis, to the motor that drives the paper. The
next paragraph contains the points supporting one
view, like a series of pulleys all turning in the same
direction. The direction of the paper then shifts to
the opposing arguments and evidence, much as a me-
chanical system changes direction if the drive belts are
twisted. Finally, in the conclusion, the writer chooses
to endorse one direction (side of the argument) or
the other.
A section of the VARK website, www.vark-
learn.com/english/page.asp?p=helpsheets, lists the
most appealing or easiest ways for each of the four
sensory-based styles to process new knowledge, study
it, and display mastery of it. Refer your students to
this source.
FELDER AND SILVERMAN’S INDEX
OF LEARNING STYLES
While Felder and Silverman (1988) proposed their
learning styles model for engineering students, it
applies to learners across the disciplines. Furthermore,
it is the most scientifically grounded framework of
all the major models. The forty-four-item Index
of Learning Styles (ILS) questionnaire, developed
in 1991 by Felder and Soloman (n.d.-a), has high
to moderate construct validity, internal consis-
tency reliability, test-retest reliability, total item
correlation, and interscale correlation (Felder &
Spurlin, 2005; Litzinger, Lee, Wise, & Felder, 2007;
Zywno, 2003). You can also take it free of charge at
www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html.
Felder and Silverman (1988) conceive of learn-
ing styles as four independent, cognitive continua,
each anchored by pure types. One dimension iden-
tifies how a student prefers to process information
and knowledge: actively through physical activity or
discussion or reflectively through introspection. An-
other pertains to the sensory mode in which a student
prefers to receive information and knowledge: verbally
in written or spoken words or mathematical equations
or visually in pictures, graphics, videos, and demon-
strations. A third continuum considers the type of
information that a student most readily perceives: in-
ternally based intuitive experiences (hunches, insights,
possibilities) or externally based sensory experiences.
The final dimension focuses on how a student ac-
quires understanding: sequentially in incremental steps
or globally in holistic leaps.
These styles are not meant to be rigid categories.
A student may have a strong, moderate, or weak lean-
ing toward one end of a continuum or the other.
Furthermore, she may lean in one direction for some
tasks and in the other direction for other tasks. The
most effective learners and problem solvers tend to
cluster around the middle, functioning well in polar
styles. Those who strongly prefer one style or another
may miss important aspects of learning, such as crucial
details, the big picture, alternative approaches, cogni-
tive shortcuts, or possible applications.
The following section provides detailed expla-
nations of these styles and how to teach to them
from Felder (1993), Felder and Silverman (1988), and
Felder and Soloman (n.d.-b).
Active Versus Reflective
Active learners gain the most out of doing something
with the material—discussing it, explaining it to
others, applying it, trying things out, experimenting
with how things work, or bouncing off ideas.
They like to solve problems, evaluate ideas, and
design and conduct experiments. They learn best
from group work, discussion, problem solving, and

Accommodating Different Learning Styles 235
experiential and inquiry-guided activities. To study
most productively, they should follow up their
reading with study group members who take turns
explaining different parts of the material to each
other. To retain material, they should associate it
with ways it can be applied. To prepare for tests, they
should work in a group organized around guessing
the questions and answering them.
By contrast, reflective learners need some quiet
time to process the material internally. With a lit-
tle thinking time, they can generate good ideas and
theories, make up viable models, define problems ef-
fectively, and propose possible solutions. While group
and experiential activities do not facilitate their learn-
ing, we as instructors need only build in brief pauses
in the middle of lectures or after classroom activities to
allow these learners to process the material. We might
also pose reflection questions such as, “What does this
all mean?” or “What do you think was the point of
this activity?” During recitation and discussion, we
should allow at least several seconds of wait time af-
ter each question. To study most effectively, reflective
learners should work alone and practice summarizing
the material and making up and answering questions
about it.
Verbal Versus Visual
All people learn better when they receive informa-
tion and knowledge in both the verbal and the visual
modes, and the most facile learners can accommo-
date input in either mode. But some learners process
and remember material better if it is presented in one
mode or the other. Visual learners get more out of
flowcharts, diagrams, mind and concepts maps, pic-
tures, diagrams, graphs, time lines, matrices, videos,
animations, and demonstrations, while verbal learn-
ers find it easier to process symbols such as words,
whether spoken and written, and equations.
Higher education is designed by and for verbal
learners, even though they comprise a minority of
the student population. They benefit from listening to
lectures, from writing exercises and assignments, and
from reading books, handouts, PowerPoint outlines,
and chalkboard writing. If they try, they can figure
out how to take decent lecture notes. To prepare for
tests, they should write summaries or outlines in their
own words or join study groups where they can listen
to others explain the material and explain it out loud
themselves.
Visual learners are more on their own to make
sense of the barrage of verbally presented material
they receive. They have to find or create their own
graphic representations of the material. They should
also highlight their books and notes in various colors
representing different topics or themes. But we can
do a great deal in our classes to help them by first
preparing some graphic representations of the mate-
rial ourselves, then coaching our students in prepar-
ing their own. For more specific recommendations,
see the section on the visual learning style in the
VARK framework, as well as Chapter Twenty-Six.
Since most of our students are visual learners, the ef-
forts we make to reach them can raise our overall class
performance.
Intuitive Versus Sensing
Since higher education tends to emphasize concepts
and principles, intuitive learners have an edge up be-
cause they grasp and remember abstractions, relation-
ships, generalizations, and mathematical formulas
quite easily. They tend to work quickly and ef-
ficiently and to be innovative and imaginative in
the way they conceptualize problems and interpret
material. However, they dislike repetition, standard
procedures, detail work, “plug-and-chug” courses,
and the memorization of facts.
Sensing learners work best with whatever in-
formation they receive through their senses from the
outside world. So they are comfortable memorizing
facts, patiently observing phenomena, carefully tend-
ing to details, doing routine assignments, and solv-
ing problems by well-established methods. Like active
learners, they are practical minded and can remem-
ber material better when they can see its connections
to the real world in examples or applications. Often
averse to complexities and surprises, they can have a

236 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
lot of trouble on tests that ask them to do more than
recognize and regurgitate unless they get a lot of prac-
tice performing the higher-order cognitive operations
that are required. As instructors, we need to furnish
that practice for sensing students and to pepper our
lessons with plenty of examples and real-world appli-
cations of concepts and principles. We can also advise
these learners to study by translating the abstract and
general into the concrete and specific, both alone and
in study groups.
Sequential Versus Global
Sequential learners represent the majority of students.
They learn most easily in linear steps, with each
step logically following the one before. They solve
problems the same way, following a logical series of
steps. While most of us organize our courses sequen-
tially, we can put these learners at a disadvantage if
we skip steps or seemingly jump from topic to topic
without making explicit connections between them.
Many textbooks make the same mistake. Sequential
learners study best when they outline the lecture and
the readings using their own organizational scheme.
Since they can miss the relationships among topics
or between new and previously learned knowledge,
their learning can be pretty shallow. So we should
pose study and discussion questions that make them
see these connections. We should also encourage
them to enhance their understanding and retention
of the material by making these links on their own.
While we are struggling to fully grasp new
material, we all experience sudden insights and ges-
talts that make the pieces fall into place. However,
before the flash, sequential learners are usually able to
work with the material at some level—enough to do
the homework and pass the tests. What marks global
learners is their inability to do much of anything
with the material until they have made the grand
leap to complete understanding. In the meantime,
they simply absorb new material as unrelated pieces.
Once they grasp the big picture, they may still have
trouble with the details, but they may be able to
solve complex problems quickly or synthesize ideas
in novel and creative ways, even if they can’t explain
how they have done it. Interestingly, we can help
global learners the same way we can help their
sequential counterparts—by helping them see the
relationships between new material and what they
already know.
Global learners may not know who they are,
and just their realizing their need to grasp a sub-
ject holistically can help them find ways to facilitate
their gestalt. For instance, skimming through a read-
ing assignment before actually reading it (see Chapter
Twenty-Three) provides a valuable content overview.
Frequently relating new to previously learned mate-
rial helps a learner capitalize on prior flashes of un-
derstanding. In addition, global learners should try
immersing themselves in one subject at a time for long
study sessions instead of spending short periods with
each subject every night.
While neither Felder nor his coauthors mention
it, global learners may also profit from some of the
same graphic representations of the material that vi-
sual learners do—that is, flowcharts, diagrams, graphs,
mind and concept maps, matrices, pictures, and ani-
mations. As we will see in Chapter Twenty-Six, such
graphics can convey the big picture more efficiently
and effectively than words ever can.
PARALLELS ACROSS LEARNING
STYLE MODELS
Clearly none of the three model translates neatly
into another. VARK and Felder and Silverman’s ILS
share the visual style, and the former’s Kinesthetic
style resembles the latter’s Active style. Remember,
however, that Felder and Silverman’s model posits
four independent dimensions on which learners
vary, not types of learners. VARK’s Read-Write
style is roughly comparable to Felder and Silverman’s
Verbal combined with the Sequential. Some parallels
can also be drawn between Kolb’s and Felder and
Silverman’s models. The Diverger suggests a blend
of Reflective, Intuitive, and Global learning; the
Assimilator appears to be a mixture of the Reflective,

Accommodating Different Learning Styles 237
Sensing, and Sequential; the Converger combines
the Active and Sensing; and the Accommodator has
features of the Active and Intuitive. In summary, each
learning style model is distinctive in the cognitive,
experiential, or sensory variables it identifies as
relevant to learning. Each has different theoretical
underpinnings, and one cannot collapse into another.
It is not surprising, then, that the models vary in their
scientific currency, the Felder-Silverman framework
carrying the most. For research purposes, it is the
best choice. As heuristic devices to encourage more
effective teaching, all the models have value. Draw
inspiration from the one or two that resonate most
with you.
MULTISENSORY, MULTIMETHOD
TEACHING: MOST EFFECTIVE
FOR ALL
Whatever learning style model you favor, it is
important to remember that the students in your
classes aren’t one type or another. They use multiple
learning strategies and rely on multiple input modes.
In fact, all students learn more and better from
multiple-sense, multiple-method instruction. As
noted in Chapter One, people learn best when
they receive the new material multiple times and in
different ways—that is, through multiple senses and
modes that use different parts of their brain (Kress,
Jewitt, Ogborn, & Charalampos, 2006; Vekiri, 2002).
Teaching to multiple styles and modes can also help
you revitalize lesson plans and classroom presentations
that have become routine through repetition. Adding
visual and kinesthetic components, inquiry-guided
activities, group work, and experiential learning may
take some time and effort, but the change can avert
burnout.
To maximize all of your students’ learning and
your own professional fulfillment, try to use a rich
variety of teaching techniques and learning media in
your courses. In addition, acquaint your students with
the broad range of learning and studying strategies.
Bringing this variety and flexibility into your teaching
is the real value of all the learning style models.

C H A P T E R 26
Using Visuals to Teach
W
e humans have relied on our sight for sur-
vival more than any other sense. Through
most of the ages, we were dependent on it
for hunting, fishing, gathering, making fire and tools,
determining the edible versus the poisonous, identi-
fying and avoiding predators, planting and harvesting,
and reading the sky for the time of day and time
of year. At some point, we used our sight to fash-
ion shelters, clothing, and personal decorations and to
paint animals on walls of our caves. Even if our eyes
could never compete with the eagle’s, we were able
to distinguish colors, shapes, and distances rather well
for a mammal. Besides, we didn’t enjoy the olfactory
or auditory sentience of so many of our four-legged
neighbors. In time, after we refined spoken language
and invented the story, we added a strong oral com-
ponent to our culture. But once we devised writing
and later printing, we relied more on sight for com-
munication. Still, reading and writing aren’t quite as
effortless as spotting a lion. We need the left side
of our cerebrum to interpret the symbols our eyes
are seeing and to translate our thoughts into visual
symbols. Pure visual images, unfettered by text, con-
vey information more directly, efficiently, and quickly.
Visuals, then, can serve our instructional
purposes very effectively. They come in many
forms—flowcharts, diagrams, graphs, tables, matrices,
pictures, drawings, figures, even animations—offering
countless options for depicting course material. They
can be created and displayed on a computer, but
they can be just as powerful when hand-drawn.
We can provide them to help students learn and to
become accustomed to using visuals, so they can go
on to develop graphic representations of their own
understanding of the subject matter.
Chapters Two and Three introduced two visual
teaching tools: the outcomes map for showing your
students’ progression through learning outcomes in
your course and the graphic syllabus for displaying
the topical organization of your course (Nilson,
2007a). Both commonly take the form of a flowchart
or diagram to illustrate the sequencing of outcomes
or topics over time. Like the most powerful visuals
we will examine in this chapter, they provide
239

240 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
students with the big picture of your course and the
internal structure of its major components, either
outcomes or topics. As the next section details, these
visual schemata can give students the scaffolding they
need to better understand and remember the learning
process you have planned for them and your course
content.
WAYS THAT VISUALS ENHANCE
LEARNING
The evidence that graphics of all kinds facilitate
comprehension, transfer, and retention of course
material has generated a large body of research and
several sizable literature reviews (for example, Vekiri,
2002; Winn, 1991). Many of the studies center
around specific visual tools, such as concept maps and
mind maps, and these will be summarized in the next
section on the leading types of graphics. Other re-
search focuses on multimedia learning (Mayer, 2005).
More generally, Marzano (2003) documents that
“nonlinguistic representations” of material, which
include graphics, images, metaphors, and art forms,
have an effect size on learning of 0.75, meaning that
students exposed to them score 0.75 standard devi-
ations higher on tests than students not so exposed.
This effect size is comparable to that of collaborative
learning and reinforcement and feedback—too broad
and powerful to be due to the subset of students
with visual and global learning styles (see Chapter
Twenty-Five). So we must turn to cognitive psy-
chology to explain how visuals work for all learners.
Specifically, we will look at dual-coding theory, the
visual argument theory, and cognitive theory.
Dual-Coding Theory: Redundancy
and Reinforcement
Dual-coding theory addresses how visuals work in
conjunction with text, which is typically a mode
in which students receive material. It posits that
the human mind has two memories, the semantic
and the episodic, corresponding to the verbal and
visual-spatial systems, respectively (Paivio, 1971).
Recent neurological findings that the brain processes
and stores verbal and visual-spatial information in
separate cognitive systems have lent physiological
evidence to this theory (Vekiri, 2002). So when
presented with complementary text or audio and
visuals, learners process it twice, through both
systems, without overloading their working memory
(Moreno & Mayer, 1999). As a result, they retain the
material better and longer and can access and retrieve
more easily than they can when they learn it in just
one mode using just one system (Clark & Paivio,
1991; Kosslyn, 1994; Mayer & Gallini, 1990; Mayer
& Sims, 1994; Paivio, 1971, 1990; Paivio & Csapo,
1973; Paivio, Walsh, & Bons, 1994; Svinicki, 2004;
Tigner, 1999; Vekiri, 2002).
Another way of interpreting dual-coding theory
is with reference to brain hemispheres. As the left side
of the brain processes verbal symbols and the right
side visuals, material presented in both modes activate
both sides of the brain, roughly doubling the number
of neurons firing and synapses forming.
Of course, the learning and comprehension
benefits accrue only if the student receives the verbal
and visual versions together and is able to integrate
them cognitively (Mayer, 2005). In addition, the
visual must clearly and accurately depict the verbal.
The Visual Argument Theory:
Greater Efficiency
According to this theory, visuals work so effectively
because, compared to text, they convey information
more efficiently—that is, visual information requires
less working memory and fewer cognitive transforma-
tions to process and draw inferences from (Larkin &
Simon, 1987; Robinson, Katayama, DuBois, & De-
vaney, 1998; Robinson & Kiewra, 1995; Robinson &
Molina, 2002; Robinson & Schraw, 1994; Robinson
& Skinner, 1996; Waller, 1981; Winn, 1987). In other
words, it is less taxing on the mind to derive meaning
from graphics than from words. In addition, a good
graphic does a much better job than text of (1) induc-
ing learners to attend to the conceptual relationships

Using Visuals to Teach 241
rather than just memorize terms; (2) enabling them to
recognize patterns among concepts; (3) helping them
elaborate their cognitive schemata by inferring new,
complex relationships; and (4) helping them integrate
new knowledge into their existing cognitive struc-
tures (Hyerle, 1996; Robinson et al., 1998; Robinson
& Kiewra, 1995; Robinson & Schraw, 1994; Robin-
son & Skinner, 1996; Winn, 1991).
According to Larkin and Simon (1987), visu-
als offer “perceptual enhancement” by communica-
ting information through both their individual com-
ponents and the spatial organization of those compo-
nents. As a result, they allow learners to process all the
relevant concepts and the relationships among them
simultaneously as a whole. This ability facilitates un-
derstanding because bodies of knowledge are typically
structured as a hierarchy of concepts with relation-
ships among them. So just showing learners a picture
of this organization teaches them a great deal about
the nature of knowledge—for one, that it is not a list
of loosely linked ideas but a tightly structured web
of interrelated categories and principles. In addition,
the mind need not interpret or infer the conceptual
interrelationships because they are transparently dis-
played in the spatial arrangements, the shapes of the
enclosures, the types of lines, the directions of the ar-
rows, the colors, and any other graphic features the
designer may use to distinguish causal links and direc-
tion, strength of relationship, level of generality, and
the like.
Contrast the relatively effortless, holistic learning
that visuals allow with the slower and more compli-
cated process of extracting information from printed
material. Text unfolds components and interrelation-
ships among them linearly, sequentially, one piece
at a time, as though they comprise a list. The mind
must then interpret the pieces and connections and,
to integrate and retain the knowledge, reconstruct
the hierarchical organization, hopefully discerning
the superordinate from the subordinate concepts, the
more general and abstract from the more specific
and concrete, exactly the way the text intended. The
task demands a great deal of working memory and
several cognitive transformations, allowing plenty
of room for misunderstandings, shifts in meaning,
and just plain error. In the meantime, the mind
is too occupied to think very much about the
material it is translating, such as to link it to prior
knowledge, question it, draw inferences from it, trace
its implications, or apply it toward solving a problem.
Going back over the text to find specific information
also takes more time and cognitive energy than does
locating it on a graphic. The reader has to search
through paragraphs, if not pages, or refer to the
Contents page or the index (Larkin & Simon, 1987;
Veriki, 2002).
McMaster University professor Dale Roy (cited
in Gedalof, 1998) demonstrated the superior efficacy
of graphics on a faculty audience, a group highly
skilled in processing text. He asked participants to
prepare a brief oral presentation, which included de-
veloping one text-based and one visual transparency.
After the participants delivered their minilesson, he
had the rest of the audience reconstruct it. Consis-
tently the faculty were able to reproduce almost all
of the visual material but no more than half of the
text-based presentation.
Cognitive Theory: The Big Picture
The “How Structure Increases Learning” section
in Chapter One already addressed the critical
importance of learners’ seeing the organized big
picture of knowledge, which includes recognizing
patterns in how the world works. It is having this
big picture of our field that makes us experts. In
our mind’s eye, this structure resembles a complex
web of patterns that our contemporary and ancestral
colleagues have identified and verbalized. It equips us
with an intricate filing system that enables us to easily
assimilate new information and to store and retrieve
from a vast collection of concepts, facts, data, and
principles (Alexander, 1996; Anderson, 1993; Carey,
1985; Chi, Glaser, & Rees, 1982; Novak, 1977; Reif
& Heller, 1982; Royer, Cisero, & Carlo, 1993). We
developed this schema over many years of intensive
study—probably the hard way without the help of
conceptual maps.

242 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Without such a valid and robust mental struc-
ture, our students are disciplinary novices. They
bring to our courses little background knowledge,
no filing system for new knowledge, and often
faulty models and misconceptions about the subject
matter (Svinicki, 2004). After all, the mind is so
wired to seek patterns that it can make mistakes in its
quest. Students are unfamiliar with the hierarchy of
concepts and principles, cannot discern patterns and
generalizations, and lack the algorithms that facilitate
applying knowledge to solving conceptual problems
(DeJong & Ferguson-Hessler, 1996; Kozma, Russell,
Jones, Marx, & Davis, 1996). As a result, they wander
through a knowledge base picking up pieces of it
on a superficial level, memorizing isolated facts and
terms, and using trial-and-error to solve problems
and answer questions (Glaser, 1991). What they
need to advance beyond novice is an empirically
grounded big picture of the hierarchical structure of
the body of knowledge—one convincing enough to
override their misconceptions, as well as accurate and
comprehensive enough to accommodate new knowl-
edge and multiple conceptual networks (Baume &
Baume, 2008; Posner, Strike, Hewson, & Gertzog,
1982). This is their entrée into expert thinking and
a framework for deep, meaningful learning. In fact,
students can’t really learn and get beyond memoriz-
ing without it. The mind depends on organization;
it acquires and stores new knowledge only if it
perceives its organization and its logical place within
the mental structure of prior knowledge (Anderson,
1984; Baume & Baume, 2008; Bransford, Brown,
& Cocking, 1999; Reif & Heller, 1982; Rhem,
1995; Royer et al., 1993; Svinicki, 2004; Zull, 2002).
While global learners may need this schema up front
more than other learning style types (see Chapter
Twenty-Five), cognitive theory tells us that we are all
global learners as we approach the expert level.
Since the chances are very slim that our students
will independently build such cognitive schemata in a
semester or two of casual study, we would be wise to
furnish them with relevant structures of our discipline,
with valid, ready-made frameworks for filing this con-
tent (Kozma et al., 1996). They need to internalize
this scaffolding—especially at the introductory level,
where they have little prior knowledge of the sub-
ject matter on which to map new knowledge—before
we elaborate it with details, conditions, and qualifica-
tions (Ausubel, 1968; Carlile & Jordan, 2005; Zull,
2002). In addition, we should help students become
aware of any faulty mental models they may harbor
and guide them in reconciling these with more ac-
curate cognitive structures. Specifically, we can give
them practice in reinterpreting their prior observa-
tions and experiences. Otherwise, if all we impart are
masses of content, they will graduate mentally un-
changed and uneducated, with only memory traces
of their college years.
Because mental structures of knowledge are so
crucial to our students’ learning, we need to convey
them in the most transparent and efficient way possi-
ble. We know that the cognitive models of experts like
ourselves look like hierarchical networks of complexly
interrelated concepts and principles. Many types of
visuals are similarly structured to display component
parts in hierarchical or weblike arrangements. There-
fore, well-crafted graphics should do an excellent job
of depicting disciplinary schemata. The next section
examines four types that are suitable to the task.
TYPES OF VISUALS FOR LEARNING
Ausubel (1968) coined the term advance organizer
more than four decades ago to apply to any graphic
that would offer an opening overview of a lesson,
whether a flowchart, diagram, chart, table, matrix,
web, map, figure, or something else. In this section
we focus on the major types of graphics that spatially
display the relationships among ideas and concepts.
Such visuals can serve as an advance organizer,
a constructivist assignment for student groups or
individuals, or a planning and memory aid for man-
aging projects, solving problems, running meetings,
organizing papers and presentations, integrating and
summarizing material, and even writing creative
works (Buzan, 1974; Svinicki, 2004; Wycoff, 1991).
In other words, we can use graphics not only to

Using Visuals to Teach 243
help students acquire and retain knowledge but also
to teach them tools that will facilitate their work in
college and beyond and engage the creativity of the
visual-holistic side of the brain. In addition, having
students draw their own graphics can make excellent
homework assignments—for example, summarizing
their understanding of the readings or reviewing
for tests—as well as challenging group activities
during class and even test questions. The products
can help you diagnose students’ misconceptions and
assess their conceptual, analytical, and synthesis skills
without your having to read essays.
Concept Maps
A concept is a human-defined pattern or common
ground across a category of objects, events, or prop-
erties. For instance, concepts that represent objects
include “force,” “light,” “food,” “population,”
“weather,” “pressure,” and “energy.” Examples of
those describing events are “rain,” “photosynthesis,”
“osmosis,” “conversion,” “fission,” and “marriage.”
Among those designating properties are “taste,”
“density,” “life-giving,” “volume,” and “texture.”
A concept map graphically displays the hierarchical
organization of several (up to twenty or so) concepts
and often examples of them, from the most inclu-
sive/general/broad/abstract concept at the top to the
most exclusive/specific/narrow/concrete concepts
at the bottom. Therefore, it frequently looks like a
network or spider web, typically pyramidal in overall
shape, in which the lines link concepts or ideas to one
another. When Angelo and Cross (1993) suggested
using such maps as a classroom assessment technique
(see Chapter Twenty-Eight), they described them as
“drawings or diagrams showing mental connections
that students make between a major concept . . . and
other concepts they have learned” (p. 197). These
connections may be categorical, causal, or logical
relationships or even comparisons and contrasts.
They may also designate a process or sequence of
events, in which case they may resemble a chain or
flowchart. Because of the many possible links, the
lines between concepts should usually be labeled to
specify the relationship.
You can teach your students how to draw a
concept map by having them follow these steps
(Wandersee, 2002b):
1. Identify key concepts, perhaps twelve to twenty,
from the readings, your last lecture, or another
source.
2. Write each concept on a small index card or
sticky note.
3. Identify the main topic or concept, and place it at
top center. This is called the superordinate concept.
It is either the most inclusive, general, broad, or
abstract or the first stage in a process or sequence.
4. Rank-order or cluster all the remaining ideas,
called subordinate concepts, from the most in-
clusive, general, broad, or abstract, placing these
higher up and closer to the main concept, to
the most exclusive, specific, narrow or concrete,
placing these lower down. In the case of a process
or sequence, order the concepts chronologically.
The object is to structure the concepts and their
interrelations correctly.
5. Arrange the concepts in a linkable hierarchy.
6. Draw the entire hierarchy on a piece of paper with
enclosures around the concepts and linking lines
that are labeled to specify the relationship. The
linked concepts together with the labeled link is
called a proposition. Because the map’s presumed
direction is downward, arrows are not necessary.
7. Check for cross-links (connections going across
the branches), draw in these links as dotted lines,
and label them.
Figure 26.1 shows several examples of very sim-
ple concept maps with just two or three concepts and
one or two links. In a real class, these maps would
be only part of a larger map. Figure 26.2 elaborates
the very simple map in which “population” is the su-
perordinate concept, extending it by seven additional
concepts arranged on three levels. Where a concept
falls in the hierarchy depends on the lesson. In one
map a concept may be superordinate and in another
subordinate. As Figure 26.3 illustrates, “photosynthe-
sis” may be on the lowest (fourth) level in a concept

244 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Figure 26.1 Examples of Very Simple Concept Maps
Weather
such as
Rain
Population
described by
defined as
Density
Rite-of-Passage
e.g.
Marriage
Pressure
Force Volumeper unit
map that starts with “energy,” ranking below “light”
and “life-giving,” but “photosynthesis” can also be a
superordinate concept, in which case “light” may be
subordinate.
Concept maps are quite easy to write instruc-
tions for and to assess, which is why they make good
gradable assignments and tests. The key evaluative di-
mensions are:
1. The number of concepts included, unless you
provide them
2. The number of valid propositions (links between
concepts)
3. The number of valid levels in the hierarchy
4. The number of valid cross-links
5. The number of valid examples
Therefore, you can instruct students to draw a
map with a given number of concepts interrelated
with a given number of links, spanning a given
number of hierarchical levels, with a given number of
cross-links and examples. Novak and Gowin (1984),
who devised the leading scoring model for concept
maps, recommends giving one point for each valid
link, five points for each valid level, ten points for
each valid cross-link, and one point for each valid
example. Quicker still is a computer-based technique
that scores maps by the number of links and the
geometrical distances between concepts (Taricani &
Clariana, 2006).
Many researchers have found that concept
maps facilitate students’ mastery of content and
development of cognitive skills. In fact, concept
maps have proven their value in some of the most
challenging subjects, such as accounting (Leauby
& Brazina, 1998), applied statistics (Schau &
Mattern, 1997), biology (Briscoe & LaMaster, 1991;
Cliburn, 1990; Kinchin, 2000, 2001; Wallace &
Mintzes, 1990), chemistry (Regis & Albertazzi,
1996), conceptual astronomy (Zeilik et al., 1997),
geoscience (Rebich & Gauthier, 2005), marine
ecology (Beaudry & Wilson, 2010), mathematics
Figure 26.2 Concept Map of ‘‘Population’’ with a Total of Nine Concepts
Population
described by
Rates of Increase Rates of Decrease Density
how increased how decreased
defined as
Immigration Number
per sq mile/km
Birth Mortality Emigration

Using Visuals to Teach 245
Figure 26.3 Two Simple Concept Maps Illustrating
How Concepts in One Map Can Change Levels in Another
Map
Energy
one form is
Light
which has this property
which describes
requires requires
Life-Giving
Photosynthesis
Photosynthesis
Light CO2
(Brinkmann, 2003), medicine (Hoffman, Trott, &
Neely, 2002; McGaghie, McCrimmon, Mitchell,
Thompson, & Ravitch, 2000; West, Pomeroy, &
Park, 2000), and nursing (Baugh & Mellott, 1998;
King & Shell, 2002; Schuster, 2000; Wilkes, Cooper,
Lewin, & Batts, 1999), among others. In Zeilik
et al.’s (1997) experimental study, the astronomy
students who developed concept maps scored higher
than the control group on three kinds of conceptual
examinations: one measuring the ability to relate
concepts, another of multiple-choice items designed
to identify faulty models, and a third fill-in-the-blank
concept map. Among the skills that concept maps
are known to enhance are postsecondary reading
comprehension (Katayama, 1997; Mealy & Nist,
1989; Robinson & Kiewra, 1995; Robinson &
Schraw, 1994), writing (Beaudry & Wilson, 2010),
critical thinking (King & Shell, 2002; Nixon-Cobb,
2005; Schuster, 2000; West et al., 2000; Wilkes et al.,
1999), and problem solving (Baugh & Mellot, 1998;
Beissner, 1992; Kalman, 2007; Okebukola, 1992).
Of course, the effectiveness of concept maps,
like every other teaching tool, depends on how
it is used, and instructors have often maximized
their interactive, constructivist potential by having
students develop them along with the instructor
or in peer groups, as well as alone. When students
draw the maps, they are actively constructing their
own knowledge (Kinchin, 2000, 2001), clarifying
and organizing it (Hoffman et al., 2002; McGaghie
et al., 2000), reinforcing their understanding of the
material, and integrating it with prior knowledge
(Plotnick, 2001). In addition, they are making
explicit to both the instructor and themselves any
misconceptions they may have and the progress they
are making in correctly and complexly structuring
the subject material (Romance & Vitale, 1997;
Vojtek & Vojtek, 2000). Concept maps work well for
most knowledge construction tasks because all but
the process variety presume an overall hierarchical
structure of carefully integrated elements (Anderson,
1984; Leichhardt, 1989; Plotnick, 1996; Romance
& Vitale, 1999). As we will see, mind maps presume
the same but have a different look and layout.
Mind Maps
Mind maps are the more colorful and whimsical
cousin of concept maps. The mind-mapping method
was developed by Buzan (1974) for note taking.
Over the years, Ellis (2006) and authors of other
college-success books popularized it as a technique
for organizing course material for study, review, and
paper writing. It follows steps similar to concept
mapping:
1. Write the central concept, topic, or idea in the
center of a large piece of paper, the board, or a
landscape-set screen. This is the primary idea.
2. Identify up to six or seven closely related con-
cepts, topics, or ideas (for example, subordinate
concepts, subtopics, properties, descriptors), and
write each of them on the end of a thick line
(with arrows) radiating from the center. Use key
words only (the briefest and sharpest expression of
the idea). These are the secondary ideas.

246 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
3. For each secondary concept, topic, or idea, iden-
tify up to six or seven closely related subordinate
concepts, subtopics, or ideas (properties, descrip-
tors, examples, or the like), and write each of
them on the end of a thinner line (arrows are op-
tional) radiating from the secondary idea. Again,
use key words. These are the tertiary ideas.
4. Look for cross-relationships, and draw thin lines
between related ideas.
5. Add color, suggestive icons, and appropriate
symbols. Color-code the lines and key words by
secondary-idea branch.
A couple of examples will bring the power of
mind maps to light. Figure 26.4 is a graphic syllabus
of the advanced corporate finance course designed
and taught by Ernest N. Biktimirov, a finance pro-
fessor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario,
Canada. He has used mind maps and other visual tools
extensively in his teaching. His course, the primary
idea, is graphically conveyed with a drawing of a
check. It has three major segments (the secondary
ideas): an overview of financial markets and instru-
ments, symbolized by the struggle between the bear
and the bull; portfolio theory, represented by a brief-
case full of money; and financial instruments, illus-
trated by an investment certificate. These visual repre-
sentations capture the major topics in an eye-catching
way. The chapters addressing these topics are the
tertiary ideas.
Figure 26.5 shows a more elaborate, icon-rich
mind map that Biktimirov created to summarize
course material on futures contracts and make
it memorable for his students. In the center he
represents the primary idea, types of futures contracts,
by an Unidentified Flying Object and a crystal ball
to communicate two ideas: in a futures contract,
a buyer and a seller agree on a price today for a
future transaction; and the prices of futures contracts
Figure 26.4 Mind-Mapped Graphic Syllabus of Advanced Corporate Finance Course
Source: Created by Ernest N. Biktimirov. Reprinted with his permission.
Risk
Management
Working Capital
Management
Capital Structure
and Dividend Policy
Corporate Finance II
Ch. 18 Short-Term Finance
and Planning
Ch. 15 Raising Capital
Ch. 17 Dividends and
Dividend Policy
Ch. 16 Financial Leverage
and Capital Structure Policy
Ch. 19 Cash and Liquidity
Management
Ch. 20 Credit and Inventory
Management
Ch. 21 International
Corporate Finance
Ch. 25 Options and
Corporate Securities

Using Visuals to Teach 247
Figure 26.5 Mind Map of Types of Futures Contracts
Source: Created by Ernest N. Biktimirov. Reprinted with his permission.
Types of
Futures Contracts
Weather
Paris July Cooling
…
NY Jan Heating
Currencies
Financial
Energy
Interest Rates
Stock Indexes
US Rates
Cross Rates
S&P 500
Nasdaq 100
Russell 2000
…
Crude Oil
Natural Gas
Coil
…
Cattle
Hogs
Pork Bellies
Canadian $
British Pound
Japanese Yen
…
Metals
Copper
Gold
Aluminum
…
Lumber
Wood
Food & Fibers
Meats
Commodities
Corn
Coffee
Wheat
…
Individual Stocks
MSFT
…
IBM
US T-bills
…
Euro$
A$/CS
…
BP/JY
on different underlying assets help investors forecast
the futures prices of these assets (E. N. Biktimirov,
personal communication, April 13, 2009). Radiating
from the center are three lines, one for each type of
contract (secondary ideas): commodities, of which
there are five types (tertiary ideas); weather, which
affects cooling to heating needs all over the world
(tertiary ideas); and financial, of which there are
four types (tertiary ideas). The connection between
each idea and its visual representation is transparent
and sometimes amusing—for example, a piggy bank
symbolizing financial types of futures contracts.
This mind map extends out to quaternary ideas
on the commodities branch and quinary ideas on
the financial branch. It would be easy to recast
this graphic as a concept map, but the end product
wouldn’t be nearly as visually evocative without
the icons.
While not as well researched as concept maps,
mind maps have proven to be effective learning tools
in business (Driver, 2001), business statistics (Sirias,
2002), economics (Nettleship, 1992), executive
education (Mento, Martinelli, & Jones, 1999),
finance (Biktimirov & Nilson, 2006), marketing
(Eriksson & Hauer, 2004), and optometry (McClain,
1987). In another study, fifty second- and third-year

248 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
medical students who used mind mapping as a study
aid improved their factual recall of their readings
one week later (Farrand, Hussain, & Hennessy,
2002). Mind maps can be graded the same way as
concept maps.
Although the secondary and tertiary ideas radi-
ate out from the center of a mind map, this graphic
reflects a hierarchy of ideas. But unlike a concept
map, it uses icons, symbols, color, and line thickness
to communicate meaning and does not normally la-
bel the lines. Of course, you and your students can
mix and match features of concept and mind maps to
serve your learning purposes. Similarly, graphic syl-
labi and outcomes maps may also incorporate the
visual cues of mind maps. Such colorful and whim-
sical touches not only add fun to instructional ma-
terials but also contribute to learning and retention.
Specifically, unexpected novelty and humor attract at-
tention and arouse emotions, releasing neurotransmit-
ters from the limbic system that reinforce associated
synaptic connections (Leamnson, 2000; Mangurian,
2005; see Chapter One). Besides, such personal ex-
tras testify to your sense of humor, creativity, open-
ness to new ideas, and comfort with students and
yourself.
Concept Circle Diagrams
The least well known of the graphics we will look
at here, concept circle diagrams illustrate the rela-
tionships among concepts in terms of the distances
and the overlaps among circles and the relative sizes
of the circles. When drawn by the instructor, they
can disentangle complex conceptual interrelationships
for the students and serve as a memorable image.
Of course, students can create their own to clarify
their understanding of conceptual interconnections,
in which case they should also entitle their diagram
and write an accompanying sentence or two to ex-
plain its meaning (Wandersee, 2002a).
Here are some basic guidelines for creating these
diagrams (Wandersee, 2002a):
1. The relative sizes of the circles reflect the relative
importance, quantities, variable values, or level of
generality of the concepts.
2. A smaller circle drawn within a larger one in-
dicates that the latter concept encompasses the
former.
3. Partially overlapping circles mean that one con-
cept includes some but not all instances of the
other concept.
4. Superimposed circles show that the concepts are
equivalent and share all the same instances.
5. Completely separate circles denote unrelated or
independent concepts.
6. Broken circles convey that the conceptual bound-
aries are not well understood.
7. Adding color enhances the diagram, especially
when the colors of overlapping areas accurately
reflect the combination of the circle colors.
8. Detail in a diagram can be shown by projecting
out a new diagram of an enlarged section of the
original diagram (called “telescoping”).
Venn diagrams, which illustrate overlapping
concepts and categories by overlapping circles,
are the most widely used kind of concept circle
diagrams. The simplest example is two partially
overlapping circles. How much they overlap depends
on the content. If you wish to show the relationship
between deviant behavior and illegal behavior, you
might overlap the circles about a quarter of the way
because some deviant behavior is not illegal (for
instance, cross-dressing) and some illegal behavior is
not deviant (for example, exceeding the speed limit
by five or ten miles per hour).
The more complex Venn diagram showcased
in Figure 26.6 demonstrates the full potential of this
type of graphic. It illustrates the complicated rela-
tionships among different classifications of explicit,
first-order, ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Its
creator, Daniel D. Warner, professor of Mathemati-
cal Sciences at Clemson University, designed it for his
sophomore course for engineering and science ma-
jors on differential equations and his calculus course
for life science majors. He gives it to his students along

Using Visuals to Teach 249
Figure 26.6 Concept Circle Diagram (Venn Diagram)
for the Classification of Explicit, First-Order, Ordinary
Differential Equations
Source: Created by Daniel D. Warner. Reprinted with his permis-
sion.
dy
dt
dy
dt
dy
dt
dy
dt
dy
dt
= f (t,y)
= p(t )y + q(t )
Linear
Quadrature
= g(t )
Autonomous
= h( y )
Separable
= g(t ) × h( y )
with the assignment of constructing an example of an
ODE that is exclusive to each portion of the diagram.
(Possible correct answers are in brackets, where a, b,
r, N, and Ta are constants.) As the diagram has eight
portions, the solution involves eight different ODEs
(D. D. Warner, personal communication, April 8 and
16, 2009):
1. General and neither separable nor linear [dy/dt =
a + b cos(t) exp(y)]
2. Separable and neither autonomous nor linear
[dy/dt = a cos(t) sin(y)]
3. Linear and not separable [dy/dt = a – y/(b – t), a
mixing model, or dy/dt = -m g t – b y, like an
object falling with air resistance]
4. Autonomous and not linear [dy/dt = r (1—y/N)
y, logistic growth]
5. Autonomous and linear but not quadrature [dy/dt
= r y, Malthusian growth, or dy/dt = r (Ta – y),
Newton’s law of cooling]
6. Quadrature and not autonomous [dy/dt = r t + a,
variable velocity, constant acceleration]
7. Linear and separable but neither autonomous nor
a quadrature [dy/dt = (t + a) (y – b)]
8. Autonomous and quadrature (a very small set, but
not empty) [dy/dt = r, constant velocity].
Another type of concept circle diagram is the
context map (Hyerle, 1996), which is composed of
two or more concentric circles. The outer circles
represent the contexts, settings, environments, or
frames of reference of the inner circles or the
external influences on the inner circles. For instance,
sociologists sometimes use a context map to show
the different levels of socialization that affect the
individual. If you place individuals in the innermost
circle, their primary groups—immediate and near-
immediate family, close friends and neighbors, and
one’s minister—occupy the closest concentric circle
because these groups have the most direct impact
on the focal person. In the next concentric circle
are secondary groups, with which an individual
may occasionally have direct contact of a more
formal type. These include most relatives, school and
work associates, colleagues, fellow church members,
distant friends, acquaintances, most neighbors, and
people with whom one does business. While their
influence on the individual is weaker, they often
have indirect effects through members of the primary
group. The outermost concentric circle represents
the broader society, which socializes the individual
both directly—through the mass media, political
institutions, law enforcement, and economic markets,
for instance—and indirectly through its impact on
the secondary and primary groups.

250 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Table 26.1 Matrix Comparing and Contrasting Aspects of the Major Wars of the United States in the Twentieth
and Twenty-First Centuries
Duration (Years or
Months)
Causes How Started Positive Effects for
United States
Negative Effects for
United States
World War I
World War II
Korean War
Vietnam War
Desert Storm
Iraq War
Since concept circle diagrams can take on sev-
eral shapes and forms, no scoring formula is available.
However, Wandersee (2002a) suggests several evalua-
tive dimensions to consider when assessing a student
product: (1) its legibility, clarity, and interpretability;
(2) the relevance of the concepts selected to the as-
signment; (3) the validity of the relationships shown
among concepts; (4) the relevance of the title to the
diagram; (5) the accuracy and fit of the written expla-
nation; and (6) the appropriate use of graphic options,
such as color and telescoping.
Matrices
Matrices may be the least constructivist visual of
those considered here, as they are constrained by a
table-like format. Yet they can transform linear text
and notes into much more useful two-dimensional
schemata that invite comparing and contrasting
objects, concepts, or categories by any number of
properties. As text or notes alone are not set up to
engage higher-order thinking, students usually wind
up just memorizing them. Matrices also enhance
storage and retrieval (Atkinson et al., 1999; Derry,
1984). Kiewra (2005) strongly recommends matrices
as learning devices for organizing, analyzing, review-
ing, and remembering material, and he furnishes
examples that display categories of literature, different
schedules of psychological reinforcement, properties
of various biological species, and types of atomic
particles. If used for assessment purposes, matrices are
easy to score on a cell-by-cell basis.
Table 26.1 shows a data retrieval matrix com-
paring and contrasting aspects of the six major wars
in which the United States has fought during the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The matrix asks
students to identify the length of each war, the causes,
the precipitating incidents, and the positive and neg-
ative impacts on the country. The level of thinking
required to complete it depends partially on what the
students can and cannot gather directly from course
materials. For instance, if the materials have provided
the effects of these wars but have not distinguished
the favorable from the unfavorable effects, students
must evaluate the broader, longer-term ramifications
of each war on the country.
THE FUTURE OF VISUALS IN
TEACHING AND LEARNING
Due to the dominance of television, movies, video
games, and the Internet, our culture has been
deemphasizing text to communicate information
in favor of graphics for decades (Fischman, 2001;
Hartman, 2006). The millennial generation has
grown up with the full dose of these visual media,
and as far as we can tell, subsequent generations will
too. This “visual explosion,” as Felten (2008, p. 60)
terms it, has spread from the popular culture into

Using Visuals to Teach 251
the scholarly arena. We can now use high-quality
digital libraries and galleries—historical, scientific,
and artistic—and educational resources, such as
those archived at www.merlot.org, www.brocku
.ca/learningobjects/flash content, www.wisc-online
.com/, www.shodor.org/interactivate, and www4
.uwm.edu/cie/learning objects.cfm?gid=55. Many
of these resources showcase the power of adding
interactivity and animation to the graphics, gener-
ating many of today’s cutting-edge teaching tools in
distance education and computer-assisted instruction:
learning objects, virtual and augmented realities,
and simulations. These may come to dominate the
educational media, elevating visual literacy to an
essential skill for understanding and interpreting
complex sets of information (Avgerinou & Ericson,
1997; Hodgins, 2000). Such innovations represent
just a few of the new high-tech instructional tools,
the topic of the next chapter.
One more benefit of graphics—this one
particularly important in the global village we now
inhabit—is that they communicate across cultures.
Many of the conventions used in visuals—such as spa-
tial proximity among closely related elements and the
use of arrows to indicate direction or movement—
seem to be universal, anchored in the basic hu-
man processes of visual perception (Tversky,
1995, 2001).

C H A P T E R 27
Using Instructional Technology Wisely
T
eaching at its best requires that we consider
every educational tool at our command to give
our students the richest educational experi-
ence possible. After focusing on a wide variety of
face-to-face teaching methods and moves, we now
turn to integrating technology into courses to en-
hance students’ learning. Although hybrid and online
courses share forms of instructional technology, this
chapter does not address distance learning per se. But
there are many available books, articles, and training
programs that do.
As Chapter Twenty-Five points out, students
prefer different learning modalities to varying extents.
Some students learn most easily by listening and dis-
cussing, some by reading and writing, others through
graphic representations, and still others by hands-on
experience. Since the traditional college classroom is
strongly geared to the digital and auditory learning
styles, students who are more visually or kinestheti-
cally oriented are often at a disadvantage. Visual aids
and simulated experiences, ranging from low-tech
chalkboards and flip charts to the most advanced
computer simulations and interactive learning mod-
ules, help these students excel while reinforcing
everyone’s learning.
RELIABLE LOW-TECH TOOLS
FOR THE CLASSROOM
Let’s begin with the lowest-tech, most readily avail-
able visual aids. They have been around for a long
time, and for good reason.
The Ubiquitous Board
You and your students grew up with it. It’s in almost
every classroom in the nation—though no classroom
seems to have enough of them. You might even have
one in your office. It now comes in a few colors and
a modern, glossy white version with marker pens.
In fact, it’s so familiar to all of us in the educational
sector that we rarely consider how to use it most
effectively. All we notice are the times when it’s used
253

254 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
ineffectively, which is when we can’t see or follow
what is written on it.
Just because the board represents an old tech-
nology doesn’t make it an outdated one. It holds at
least two benefits for our students. First, it slows us
down—both our speaking pace and our movement
through the material—giving students a few more
precious moments to follow and absorb what we are
saying and doing. We might not notice it, but we of-
ten speed through the material when we are working
off prepared slides or transparencies. Second, while
writing on the board, most of us do a better job of
modeling our thought processes. We explain them
while they unfold. By contrast, PowerPoint slides are
designed for lists of items, not cognitive processes.
Below are a few guidelines for board use, which
are perhaps intuitive yet all too frequently forgotten
(Bartlett & Thomason, 1983):
• Write neatly, legibly, and large, as much as possible
on a horizontal (versus diagonal) line, and only
on areas visible to all students. If board writing is
not your forte, shift to printing. Be very careful
with your spelling, especially if you hold students
responsible for theirs.
• Use thick chalk in a large classroom, such as “rail-
road crayon.”
• Use different colors of chalk and markers for
complex diagrams and drawings to facilitate
students’ visual understanding of the parts of
a process, stages of development, sections of a
specimen, and so on.
• Write what you can before class to save time and
energy during class.
• Outline material on the board rather than writ-
ing sentences, and use symbols and abbreviations
wherever possible. Not only does this practice save
you time and board space, but it also helps students
increase their note-taking efficiency. In addition,
try to write quickly so you don’t lose students’
attention.
• Use the board as an organizational tool, working
from far left to right and numbering points as you
develop them. Divide different topics with lines or
spaces, but do connect related ideas with lines as
well. Underline new terms when defining them.
During pauses, step back to evaluate your board
work, and correct and clarify points as required.
• Be complete in your presentation, defining criti-
cal new terms, giving all steps in a solution, and
labeling all parts of your diagrams and technical
drawings.
• Practice writing while looking over your shoul-
der toward the class. At least try to avoid spending
much time with your back to the class. During the
moments that you must, don’t bother talking; your
students may not hear you. It is better to pause,
turn around, and explain the material while you
are making eye contact with the class.
• Ask students occasionally whether they can see
your board work. Over an hour, your handwrit-
ing may change, or the glare from the windows
may settle on different spots.
• Coordinate your words and your board work to
reinforce each other. It is best to introduce new
material verbally, then outline it on the board,
then explain what you have outlined. If you have
written out major topics or questions, point to
each one as you shift the discussion to it. Also re-
fer to the board regularly to reinforce important
points.
• Use the board to record discussion contributions.
You can reduce redundancy and help students
learn to take notes on discussion.
• Ask the class before you erase something to make
sure that everyone has been able to copy it. (Ever
hear the horror story of the math professor who
wrote on the board with the right hand and fol-
lowed closely with an eraser in the left?) If some-
one needs an extra moment, you might move on
to a different part of the board, if available, or use
the pause productively to ask or answer questions.
• Bring students to the board to display their an-
swers to problems, discussion questions, and the
like. They will be less shy about coming up if you
begin this routine early in the term and you as-
sign the problems or questions to small groups.

Using Instructional Technology Wisely 255
Students don’t mind publicly presenting a group
solution.
• Avoid wearing very dark clothes on a heavy
chalkboard-work day. Or judiciously try to avoid
leaning against the chalkboard. They may call it
“dustless” chalk, but it isn’t!
The Flip Chart
Heavily used at conferences and in boardrooms, the
flip chart is rarely seen in a classroom. Yet it has great
teaching potential in smaller classes, where it has some
advantages. For one, you can write out much of your
material in advance and in any color marker. Then
you can annotate it and add to it during class. For
another benefit, you can preserve the material, both
what you prepare and what evolves during a class,
from term to term. Finally, rather than erase, you can
tear off pages and tape them wherever you want. It
may be worth the minor investment to buy your own
flip chart or easel and large pad. Some of the same
guidelines for board use apply.
The Overhead and the Document
Projectors
An overhead projector displays on a screen only what
is on a transparency, while a document projector, a
much newer technology, displays whatever is on a
transparency, piece of paper, or anything else that fits
over the plate. For the most part, computers have
replaced these projectors, but they still have their
place. The guidelines for their use are similar to those
for board use. For instance, if you use marker pens
on your transparencies or documents, make sure that
the colors you select are easily discernible, and be
careful to allow students adequate time to assimilate
and take notes on the projected material. These
projectors have additional intricacies and guidelines
for effective use (Head, 1992; Rogers, 1993), which
we will see apply to presentation software slides
as well:
• Use images and graphics freely. These projectors
are perfect for showing concept and mind maps,
symbols, graphs, charts, pictures, tables, matrices,
and diagrams.
• Focus on only one concept in a transparency or
document, and keep the images as simple as pos-
sible. Avoid clutter and multiple images.
• Use key words, not complete sentences, as head-
ings and subheadings to focus students’ attention
on concepts and relationships.
• Keep the information on each transparency or
document to a minimum, not to exceed seven
lines of seven words each. More than this is
difficult for students to process. Furthermore,
the print should be large and clearly legible—at
least three-sixteenths of an inch character height.
Smaller print may be hard to read from the
back of even a small room. For a substantial data
set, you may wish to project just a title and to
distribute handouts with the actual data—the
same for complex graphs, tables, and diagrams.
• Use a pointer, such as a pencil or a laser, rather
than your finger.
• Never stand between the projector and the pro-
jected images. Doing so blocks the image and is
distracting to the class.
Overhead projectors have a few additional rules
for use (Head, 1992; Rogers, 1993):
• Design your transparencies to project horizontally
on the screen rather than vertically if possible. The
horizontal format fits better on the square screen.
In fact, the screen often crops off the lower fourth
of a vertical transparency.
• Consider using overlays for sequential diagrams,
such as when you want to illustrate a process
or when you want to reuse some of your trans-
parencies in other contexts. Mathematics, physics,
and economics present excellent opportunities
for overlaying transparencies. Start with the basic
axes, add the curves, then add symbols and expla-
nations. The biological sciences often use overlays
to show a succession of specimen sections.
• Eliminate glare by using tinted transparencies in-
stead of the standard clear ones. A soft yellow film

256 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
is particularly easy on the eyes. Brighter colors
such as green or red can be interjected for em-
phasis.
• Turn off the projector lamp when not in use, even
if you are still talking. This way students stay fo-
cused on what you are saying instead of the glaring
empty screen.
THE CHOICE OF HIGH-TECH
ALTERNATIVES
High-tech has come to mean “computer based,” and
some of the highest-tech options have grown out of
Web 2.0 (really just extended uses of the “old” Web).
Our younger students simply assume the existence
of personal computers. According to Junco and
Mastrodicasa’s (2007) survey of 7,705 college students
in the United States, 97 percent own a computer, 94
percent own a cell phone, 76 percent use instant mes-
saging and 15 percent of these users are online 24/7,
75 percent are on Facebook, 60 percent own an iPod
or its equivalent, 34 percent get their news mostly
from the Web, 49 percent download music using
peer-to-peer file sharing, 44 percent read blogs, and
28 percent have their own blogs.
Still, the old rule holds true: instructors should
choose a technology for sound pedagogical reasons
(Albright & Graf, 1992; Knapper, 1982), not just
because they think their students think it’s cool.
After all, computers are only a tool—one most
frequently used for communication, business, and
data management—and only one of many tools for
effective instruction. We can become so fascinated
with the bells and whistles that we forget the lower-
tech ways to accomplish the same objective just as
well. Interestingly, the sound pedagogical reasons that
faculty gave for using advanced technology in the
1980s (Lewis & Wall, 1988) still apply:
• A technology may help achieve certain
course goals and facilitate certain instructional tasks
that are impossible to accomplish otherwise. For
instance, a virtual world or learning object may allow
students to experience distant times, places, and
events to which they lack direct access. For another
example, a Web-based simulation may give students
the chance to perform lab experiments and proce-
dures that would be too dangerous or too expensive
to do in reality, such as surgeries, hazardous chemical
procedures, and molecular biology experiments.
• A technology may provide the best available
or the only realistic means for you to demonstrate
a phenomenon. For instance, chemistry and physics
instructors can use a digital simulation or animation
to show an atomic structure or a chemical or phys-
ical force interaction. Such applications are particu-
larly effective when the phenomenon in question is
too large, too small, or too dynamic to convey with
printed media, static diagrams, or hand gestures.
• A technology may allow students to drill
and practice at their own pace. No one instructor can
regularly give every student individual instruction,
although we try to do so when necessary. Computer-
based tutorials can function in our place, without
the time and patience limitations that afflict us mere
mortals.
• A technology may help students acquire
the technological literacy that their future occu-
pations will require. By learning to use a type
of program—spreadsheet, database, information
management, statistical analysis, form development
layout and design, photography, sound, video, pub-
lishing, website development, mathematical, drafting,
engineering, and the like—students overcome their
anxieties as well as their ignorance and broaden their
employment prospects. While the software will prob-
ably advance in a couple of years, it is easier to master
a new version after having used the previous one.
• A technology may enhance your own and
your students’ productivity by reducing the time
spent on routine record keeping and communication.
Grading and attendance records, for example, are
most easily managed on a spreadsheet or on the learn-
ing management system (Blackboard, for example).
Posting announcements, assignments, handouts, and
grades on the learning management system saves class
time. Sometimes you can even word-process your

Using Instructional Technology Wisely 257
comments on written assignments and essay exams,
since students’ papers and responses often display
similar strengths and weaknesses.
• A technology may afford you and your
students unique conveniences. Various forms of
electronic communication facilitate collaboration
with and among your students—for instance, team
and class discussion boards, wikis, blogs, Del.icio.us,
Diingo, and the Track Changes tool on Microsoft
Word. Using one or more of these tools, teams of
students can collaborate, exchange files and Web re-
sources, and edit projects online at any time. Putting
a class journal on a discussion board, wiki, or blog
encourages timely and thoughtful responses. Using
email, you and your students can confer privately
with one another outside class and your office hours.
New technologies give greater latitude in devel-
oping your courses but also demand greater care in
choosing and using the various technologies appro-
priately. While just about everyone has used the easier
or more ubiquitous types of technology, some of the
more advanced kinds require the newest computer
hardware, which may be too expensive for many stu-
dents. Other types have substantial learning curves
that drain precious in-class and out-of-class time from
your content.
Students have their own views on the instruc-
tional value of various technologies. In a Harvard
University (2008) survey, those with experience in
using a tool not surprisingly rated its utility higher.
Students also said they appreciated the conveniences
of online course materials—in particular, syllabi
with links to readings and resources—and recorded
lectures they can replay at any time. In addition,
they liked online discussion forums, blogs to connect
course material with current events, and foreign
video clips on YouTube for learning languages
(Harvard University, 2008). In a national survey
(Young, 2004), however, students found most online
discussion and chat useless, especially when not mod-
erated by the instructor, while course websites and
interactive features like preclass online testing on the
readings registered high praise. Most of the students’
complaints were about the ways faculty fumbled
with and misused technology, especially presentation
software, a topic addressed later in the chapter. An
even larger national survey found that most students
prefer a blend of face time with the instructor and
moderate use of technology (Kiernan, 2005).
Let us now take a look at some of the most
pedagogically relevant high-tech instructional tools.
LEARNING MANAGEMENT
SYSTEMS
Also called “course management systems,” these are
actually packages of instructionally useful software.
Some of their tools are designed to streamline
the instructor’s duties—such as an online syllabus
template, a spell-checker, automatic test grading,
and a grade book linked to a spreadsheet program.
Other features facilitate and expand opportunities
for communication and interaction with and among
students, extending the classroom beyond its walls
and scheduled meeting times.
Among the best-known brands of learning
management systems are Blackboard, Moodle,
Desire2Learn, eTEA, and Sakai. (You can run
product comparisons at www.edutools.info/item list
.jsp?pj=4.) Institutions often purchase one system or
select an open-source system for its entire faculty,
so you probably will not have a choice. However,
these are the online tools that are bundled in a good
product:
• Announcements page
• A course site template with subtemplates for the
syllabus, course calendar, pop-up glossary, and class
roster
• Space for posting course materials (text, graph-
ics, multimedia), such as the syllabus, handouts,
assigned readings, lecture notes, student presenta-
tions, and directions for assignments
• Space for links to library reserve materials
• Drop-box for homework assignments and take-
home tests

258 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
• Online testing (timed, untimed, and multiple-tries
option)
• Automatic grading (of closed-ended items)
• Grade book (Excel compatible)
• Automatic test feedback to students (on closed-
ended items)
• Student survey template
• Student Web page templates
• Spell-checker
• Online help and search
• Email, with a mass mailing option for the
instructor
• Class and team discussion boards with threaded
discussion options
• Live chatrooms
• Blogs
• Wikis
The last five tools are forms of electronic com-
munication that can augment classroom learning and
help develop students’ cognitive skills in important
ways. The fact that the type of communication is
somewhat anonymous and not face-to-face reduces
many students’ self-consciousness and defensiveness,
thereby fostering their involvement and participation.
It can also enhance problem-solving skills and cre-
ativity (Gallupe & Cooper, 1993) and even stimu-
late clearer and deeper thinking. As students have to
write their questions and responses and frame their
messages for clarity and conciseness, the medium en-
courages more careful and critical thought and clearer
writing (Bellman, 1992). But perhaps most obvious,
electronic interaction extends your students’ learning
beyond the classroom, increasing student-active time
on task.
The rest of this section elaborates on certain
tools in learning management systems that deserve
closer examination. We explore blogs and wikis later
in the chapter under “Web 2.0 Tools.”
Space to Post Course Material
For distance learning students, you have to post
all your course materials. But if your course Web
presence is a hybrid enhancement of a live course,
consider the impact of posting materials before you
do so. Of course, students love the one-stop conve-
nience of obtaining all the course materials whenever
and wherever they want (Harvard University, 2008;
Young, 2004). But both you and they may pay a price.
If you post your syllabus and assignments and
modify them during the term, many students may
not notice the changes, not even after alerts on the
announcements page. It is safest to alert students to
the changes in class or on email. Posting homework
assignments, study questions, review sheets, and the
like in advance rarely presents problems, but be care-
ful not to post homework solutions and answers until
after you grade and return the students’ work. Of
course, putting up test questions and answers renders
those items unusable in the future.
What about posting your complete lecture
notes, slide presentations, and class exercises and
activities? If you do, you will not have students
who miss classes coming to you for information
and materials. But unless you make every class more
valuable than the documents you post, your live
attendance and even participation are likely to drop
(Young, 2004).
Many students claim that they benefit from
downloading lecture notes and presentation slides
before class so they can listen more intently and write
fewer of their own notes. Some contend that reading
the notes and slides reinforces hearing them (Clark,
2008). But these arguments have a few holes. How
deeply are students processing a lecture when they
are just following along with prepackaged material? If
they are not taking notes, they are not judging what
is more or less important, translating the material
into their own words, or distilling it down to an ab-
breviated version (see Chapter Twelve). In addition,
reading and hearing words both involve receiving
material verbally, essentially in the same modality,
so this redundancy does little to enhance learning
(Kress, Jewitt, Ogborn, & Charalampos, 2006;
Tulving, 1985; Vekiri, 2002). Not surprisingly, then,
handouts that duplicate the lecture presentation seem
not to increase student learning or improve exam

Using Instructional Technology Wisely 259
performance (Kinchin, 2006; Noppe, Achterberg,
Duquaine, Huebbe, & Williams, 2007).
Therefore, post selectively. If you will lecture,
the best document to post in advance is a skeletal
outline of your lecture. You can create it in a word
processing or a presentation program. Allow plenty
of white space between major topics, and advise
your students to print it out and bring it to class
for note taking. It will enable them to follow your
organization. In fact, skeletal notes are the most
effective learning aid you can furnish to students for
lectures. Because these aids improve note taking,
students perform better on tests, suggesting they
learn more (Cornelius & Owen-DeSchryver, 2008;
Hartley & Davies, 1986; Potts, 1993; see Chapter
Twelve). You should also post complex visuals so stu-
dents don’t have to draw them, as well as equations,
formulas, and the like that invite copying errors.
In brief, feel free to post in advance any materials
that are supplementary to, not redundant with, your
classes.
But then again, consider the exciting possibilities
of making all your lectures outside reading, listening,
or viewing assignments (see the “Podcasts and Vod-
casts” section below). You then liberate hours and
hours of valuable class time for all the discussion, de-
bate, writing-to-learn exercises, group work, simula-
tions, games, and other student-active methods that
you may have wanted to integrate into your course
but never had the time to include.
Online Preclass Quizzes
Easily administered from a learning management
system, regular online quizzes can serve as an
incentive for students to keep up with the readings
(see Chapter Twenty-Three) or as an inquiry-based
diagnostic technique to assess your students’ un-
derstanding and plan class around clearing up their
misconceptions (see Chapter Eighteen). The latter
use is called just-in-time-teaching. Research attests
that this method raises students’ level of preparation
for class, participation, engagement, and achievement
(Bowen, 2006; Marrs & Novak, 2004; Novak,
Patterson, Gavrin, & Christian, 1999), as long as
the quizzes figure substantially into the final grade
(Sullivan, Middendorf, & Camp, 2008). Students
seem to know the positive effects of online quizzes
on their motivation, engagement, and learning, and
they endorse them as a wise use of instructional
technology (Young, 2004).
Class Email
Email is a one-to-one or one-to-many (through
multiple receivers, cc’s, or lists) asynchronous com-
munication system by which a sender accesses a
mainframe system and leaves a message to be read by
one or more receivers at remote locations. One-to-
one email with your students can substitute for live
office hours and after-class exchanges but without
the restrictions of time and place. Your students can
contact you individually and confidentially with their
questions, to which you can reply individually. This
option also saves class time that would otherwise
go to individual student questions, concerns, and
Socratic dialogue. Using the attachment tool, students
can email you homework assignments, papers, and
presentations if you don’t want to use the drop-box.
The mailing list option also saves class time, as you
can send your entire class housekeeping messages, re-
minders, study questions, assignments, tips on doing
the readings, and connections between the course
material and current events—all in one mailing
(Bowen, 2006).
A word of warning: some students, especially
younger ones, keep very late hours and may not real-
ize that you might not. They may email you with
questions, especially right before tests, in the mid-
dle of the night, anticipating a prompt reply. Or they
may expect you to be online evenings, weekends, and
whenever else they are. In your syllabi (see Chapter
Three) you should set explicit limits with your classes
about your online availability.
If you distribute a class list of email addresses,
your students can also communicate with one an-
other, but you will not be able to monitor them unless
they “cc” their course-relevant messages to you.

260 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Discussion Boards
Like email, this form of communication is asyn-
chronous; messages can be sent and retrieved at
any time. In addition, they appear on a permanent
running record. Once posted, messages cannot be
deleted or modified, so you can monitor and, if you
wish, grade your students’ participation. This type of
communication is strictly one-to-many, but “many”
can be a small group if you make team discussion
boards. Since a class may be discussing a number of
topics at any given time during the course, it is best
to have threaded discussions where contributions are
clearly labeled and organized by topic.
If online discussion will comprise a serious,
graded part of your course, you’ll need to develop
some explicit standards and procedures like these:
• Explain to your students the importance of on-
line discussion in their achieving the learning out-
comes of the course (see Chapter Two).
• Decide how the discussion topics or questions will
be generated.
• Establish replies as important contributions
(Knowlton, Knowlton, & Davis, 2000).
• Explain the difference between high-quality and
low-quality contributions, and show examples of
both types.
• Define and insist on proper netiquette.
• Give credit to students who answer other students’
questions before you do (B. E. Weaver, personal
communication, November 15, 2002).
• Even if you set a minimum rate or number of con-
tributions or grade on quantity, also take quality
into account when grading.
• Include peer evaluation of student contributions
in the grading.
• Model appropriate participation; do not dominate
or direct too much (Knowlton et al., 2000).
• Ask questions to encourage clarification, elabora-
tion, and correction (Knowlton et al., 2000).
• Over time shift your role from a participant to a
facilitator who may, for instance, synthesize stu-
dents’ contributions around key points (Knowlton
et al., 2000).
Chatrooms, Conferencing Software,
and MOOs
Synchronous, real-time communication systems like
these are less popular than email and discussion boards
for several reasons:
• They strongly privilege those who think and
type fast.
• They require synchronized schedules of
participation.
• They invite netiquette violations, especially chat-
rooms.
• They encourage free-for-all bull sessions that may
wander off the main topic.
• They allow pairs and triads to splinter off into pri-
vate side conversations.
Still, if somewhat controlled, these tools can play
a critical educational role. Team chatrooms can facili-
tate small-group collaboration, and the instructor can
participate. In addition, with conferencing software,
you and your students can set up topical folders and
share any type of computer file. MOOs (multiple-
user object-oriented environments) add graphical in-
terfaces to text-based chat and even allow video- and
audio-streaming of lectures and class activities. If you
intend to use these tools for discussion, consider ex-
plicitly setting up standards and procedures similar to
those for discussion boards.
LECTURE-RELATED SOFTWARE
While reading this section, keep in mind that a little
lecture goes a long way. In fact, only a little lecture,
a minilecture, serves instructional purposes effectively
(see Chapter Twelve).
Presentation Software
While not interactive, presentation software like
PowerPoint can enhance the visual quality and impact
of lectures and professional presentations. It allows
you to create and project text integrated with images,

Using Instructional Technology Wisely 261
animations, Web resources, and video clips—all in
full color—as well as sound. Even if you intend
to display only text and images, this software gives
you greater flexibility than overhead transparencies
because you can highlight the text or zoom in on the
section of the image you are explaining. In addition,
you can save and post the presentation for students to
download before the live lecture or to review later. If
you want to write or draw on your slides, which can
be particularly helpful when teaching mathematics,
engineering, and the physical sciences, you should
project your presentation onto a Smartboard (an
interactive white board) or from a tablet PC. Using
these technologies, you can save your annotations and
digitally distribute the modified slides to your class.
While presentation software is almost essential
for conveying knowledge at a distance, it is easy to
overuse it in the classroom, especially for text. Such
software is merely a complement to lecture and just
as student-passive as lecture. So you need to interject
student-active breaks within your presentations. You
can sprinkle in occasional questions for reflection, dis-
cussion (whole class or small group), or informal writ-
ing. You can insert short cases or problems to give
students practice in application. Or you can strate-
gically place concept-oriented multiple-choice ques-
tions to assess students’ understanding. Fortunately,
clickers are designed to interface with PowerPoint (see
Chapter Twelve).
Design Guidelines
Presentation software shines when used to show visu-
ally intensive or multimedia material. But when you
do make text slides, keep in mind the same rules that
apply to text in lower-tech instructional aids, like the
overhead and the document projectors (above). Fo-
cus on only one concept per slide, use key words
rather than complete sentences, and keep the infor-
mation on each slide to an absolute minimum. Use
the templates to help you arrange your information
in a logical and pleasing way. Make only your major
points on the slides; don’t just dump your notes on
them. And never read them in class. To students, these
are among the most egregious abuses of the software
(Young, 2004). In addition, presentation software may
require lower classroom lighting than do overhead
transparencies, so it can encourage some students to
fall asleep in class.
One more rule applies: restrain yourself from
getting wildly elaborate with color combinations,
backgrounds, clip art, slide transitions and builds,
and attention-grabbing special effects. In instruction,
the fewer the glitzy distractions and the simpler the
visuals, the better. It is also advisable to keep the
same colors and backgrounds throughout a presenta-
tion. Nevertheless, students appreciate your mixing
in graphics, animations, and Web links and your
displaying some design flair with color, pleasing com-
position, and varying slide layouts. Some students
depend on the slides and their movement to stimulate
their attention (Clark, 2008).
Student Presentations
Presentation software is for your students’ use as well.
It encourages them to incorporate multimedia vital-
ity and richness into their class presentations and offers
you and your students the freedom to view them out-
side class. A slide presentation can be run at any time,
preserved and revised indefinitely, and integrated into
a student’s e-portfolio.
Podcasts and Vodcasts
Some faculty record the audio of their lectures as a
podcast, allowing their students to listen to them on
their computers, cell phones, or MP3 players when-
ever they want. A few even video-record their lec-
tures as a “vodcast” so their students can similarly view
them electronically at their convenience. Both forms
allow playback at any time. Special pod-catching soft-
ware (for example, Camtasia and Echo 360) digitally
records the presentations and publishes them on the
Internet, then delivers them through a feed to the
computers or mobile devices of student subscribers.
The intention of the technology is for students
to review lectures, not for them to skip the live
presentation and just listen to it or watch it whenever.
No doubt, students use podcasts and vodcasts both
ways. These recordings do not capture student

262 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
activities during the class very well and may not
pick them up at all, and faculty have no way of
monitoring whether students outside the classroom
are doing the activities.
Still, this technology has rich potential. Just
as you can post your lecture notes on your course
website and make them a reading assignment, so can
you make your recorded lectures listening or viewing
assignments and free class time for student questions
and activities. Campus events—such as speeches,
debates, radio shows, interviews, ceremonies, and
performances—can also be recorded and syndicated
the same way, permitting you to assign such events
whenever they occur, without concern about your
students’ or your own scheduling conflicts.
WEB RESOURCES
A good reason to have a course website is to incor-
porate links to other relevant sites. The Web contains
a wealth of free resources that you may want your
students to read, view, hear, critique, analyze, play,
or respond to as an assignment or for course-related
research. Because this electronic space is so vast, your
campus library or instructional technology center
may offer Web-search workshops that can save you
hours, even days, of roaming around on a browser.
Good browser search engines can also direct you
to worthy sites. Perhaps most valuable are your
colleagues’ referrals to resources in specialized areas.
You can post your request for recommended sites
on one of your discipline’s teaching-focused listservs.
Also see the discipline-specific sites listed on the
Web page of Clemson University’s Office of Teach-
ing Effectiveness and Innovation at www.clemson
.edu/OTEI/resources/instructional.html.
Many of the educational computer programs
and multimedia presentations that were once sold
on CD-ROMs have moved to the Web. (But don’t
forget to mine the CD-ROM that comes with your
textbook.) They usually feature imaginative, high-
quality graphics—some with sound, animation, or
video—creating a multisensory learning experience
that speaks to all learning styles (Lamb, 1992; also see
Chapter Twenty-Five). Many arrange the material
nonlinearly and interactively, allowing students to
select different learning paths based on the decisions
they make earlier in the presentation. Thus, students
can pursue the topics of greatest interest of them.
With more control over their learning process, they
should feel greater ownership of the material. In
addition, these resources are accessible to students
anytime, anywhere, from any computer terminal
with a browser, and they usually contain links to
more online sources of relevant information.
Teaching and Learning Tools
Among the Web’s resources are an amazing array of
free digital teaching and learning tools. Many of these
fall under the general category of learning objects,
which are self-contained, self-paced, reusable, digital
lessons on specific topics; the best of them are ani-
mated and interactive. Others of those listed here are
simply learning resources:
• Realistic demonstrations, animated or on video
(for example, cellular processes at www.cellsalive
.com for biology, bioengineering, and the health
professions)
• Performances (musical, dramatic, dance, sport)
• Virtual science laboratories for hazardous or costly
procedures and experiments (for example, the
Chemistry Collective at www.chemcollective.org;
see Chapter Twenty-Two for more)
• Case studies
• Simulations (for example, in business, manage-
ment, sociology, urban planning, political science,
environmental studies, biology)
• Setups for experiments student can run on each
other (for example, the Senses Challenge on per-
ception at www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody
/body/interactives/senseschallenge)
• Drills and exercises for remediation, practice, or
review (for example, mathematics, reading, for-
eign languages)
• Teacher resources for K–12 and special education
(presentations, exercises, and other activities)
• “Tests” of greater or lesser validity on learning
styles, temperament and personality, aptitudes,

Using Instructional Technology Wisely 263
career preferences, political ideology, leadership
style, and other human dimensions—many free
• Research-worthy multimedia materials
Collections for Multimedia Research
Let’s look first at the research-worthy multimedia
sites. Here are some extensive, cross-disciplinary
collections that you can safely send your students to,
and all of them have existed for many years:
• Calisphere at www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia
.edu: a huge collection of websites, scholarly ma-
terials, images, electronic books, data, and
statistics
• Open Learning Initiative at www.cmu.edu/oli
/index.shtml: access to publicly available online
courses and course materials in a wide range of
academic fields
• CSERDA Metadata Catalog at www.shodor.org
/refdesk/Catalog: a searchable repository of Web-
based teaching materials for mathematics, com-
puter science, and the sciences
• Internet Archive at www.archive.org/index.php:
a collection of Internet sites and digitized cul-
tural artifacts (images, audio files, animations); also
courses, study guides, assignments, and recorded
lectures under Education
• MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource
for Learning and Online Teaching) at www
.merlot.org: thousands of annotated links to free
learning materials, most peer reviewed, including
entire courses, databases, presentations, and
collections
• National Science Foundation Internet Library at
http://nsdl.org/index.php: rich and technologi-
cally sophisticated instructional materials for the
sciences, mathematics, public health, economics,
and other fields
• Online Books Page at www.digital.library.upenn
.edu/books: access to over thirty-five thousand
free books on the Web
• New York Public Library Digital Collections at
www.nypl.org/digital: a vast collection of cultur-
ally significant images, audio files, videos, books,
and literary works.
• Notre Dame’s OpenCourseWare at http://ocw.nd
.edu: lecture transcripts, syllabi, and other instruc-
tional materials in history and the social sciences
• Smithsonian Institution at www.si.edu: virtual
access to the world’s largest museum (actually
nineteen museums), nine research centers, and
the National Zoo
• World Lecture Hall at http://wlh.webhost.utexas
.edu: access to courses and their materials from
around the world in all disciplines
Learning Objects
Depending on the specific object, learning ob-
jects can serve multiple purposes. They can make
eye-catching demonstrations to spark up your pre-
sentations, whole-class activities, or teacher education
resources. They can also make appealing student
assignments as well as in-class activities in a computer
lab or a laptop classroom (see the next section). Since
they provide lessons, students can learn on their
own and at their own pace by playing or running
them any number of times. Both faculty and students
perceive learning objects to be powerful teaching
and learning tools (Fontana, 1991; Howard-Rose
& Harrigan, 2003; Ip, Morrison, & Currie, 2001;
Moore, 2003–2004), and one study supports that
they are, especially for the students who need the
most help (Biktimirov & Nilson, 2007).
Learning objects are housed in open learning
object repositories, many of which are searchable by
discipline. In some cases, you must join a community.
One of the repositories listed below even provides an-
notated links to additional repositories:
• MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource
for Learning and Online Teaching) at www
.merlot.org: thousands of interactive case studies,
simulations, games, and animations for almost
every discipline
• Brock University at www.brocku.ca/learning
objects/flash content: twenty high-quality simu-
lations, games, animations, and exercises for
English, finance, German, management, mathe-
matics, and psychology

264 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
• Wisconsin Online Resource Center at www
.wisc-online.com: over twenty-three hundred
animations, games, and interactive exercises for
many content areas as well as for cognitive,
communication, and social skills
• Shodor Interactivate at www.shodor.org/inter
activate: interactive lessons and exercises for the
sciences and especially mathematics
• University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Center for
International Education at www4.uwm.edu/cie
/learning objects.cfm?gid=55: learning objects
for global studies and a few more for the social
sciences, plus an annotated listing of dozens of
learning object repositories across the disciplines
‘‘Link Rot’’
One reason to add links to your course Web page
is to avoid violating copyright laws and guidelines
(see Chapter Six). But in relying on links for re-
quired readings and activities, you encounter another
problem, one particularly serious for distance learn-
ing courses: “link rot.” The links may or may not be
there the next time you teach the course, or even later
in the term when your students get to them. In three
graduate-level biochemistry courses at the University
of Nebraska at Lincoln, half of the links disappeared
in less than five years (Kiernan, 2002). The only way
around link rot is to make online copies of the Web
materials and make course links to the copies rather
than the originals. But doing this legally requires the
written permission of the creators of the materials and
may entail a fee (Kiernan, 2002; see Chapter Six).
LAPTOPS IN THE WIRELESS
CLASSROOM
During the past decade or so, several universities, law
schools, and business schools mandated that all their
students have laptop computers and bring them to
class, but very few of these institutions set up training
programs and incentives for faculty to teach student-
actively with laptops. Not surprisingly, most of the
mandates were quickly aborted or went on to yield
poor to mixed results (Bugeja, 2007; Foster, 2008b;
“Georgia System Ends Laptop Program with Debt
and Claims of Success,” 2001; Mangan, 2001; Olsen,
2001, 2002). Eventually the faculty got fed up with
too many students wandering off to renegade sites to
do noncourse-related things during classes.
Using Laptops in Class Productively
The few successful pioneers in laptop pedagogy have
important lessons to share. Lesson 1 is that faculty
need training in how to make good pedagogical class-
room use of laptops and how to manage student use
of them. Just letting students use them to take notes
invites abuse. (Registered disabled students or their
note takers are excepted.) Instructors have to seek out
or develop useful activities for students to do during
class, and as we saw in the previous section, the Web
holds some amazing learning experiences. In addi-
tion, students may benefit by doing some course work
during class because you are nearby to lend help and
they can most easily collaborate. Weaver and Nilson
(2005) suggest these fruitful uses of laptops in class:
• Students work on online simulations, virtual
laboratories, case studies, exercises, or problems,
whether instructor developed, in an instructional
software package, or on the Web (see “Web
Resources” above).
• Students work on individual or team projects
online (for example, websites, presentations, or
e-portfolios).
• Students analyze a digitized performance.
• Students complete one or more self-assessment in-
struments (listed in the “Web Resources” section
above).
• You facilitate a workshop on writing, research
methods, Web page evaluation, Web page devel-
opment, problem solving, or some other skill,
during which students try out the recommended
procedures and get quick feedback from you and
one another.

Using Instructional Technology Wisely 265
• Students conduct Web-based research on a spe-
cific topic, then present and pool their findings.
Documentary, experimental, survey analysis, and
even field research are possible.
• Using a class discussion board, blog, or wiki, stu-
dents discuss a complex question or issue that you
have posted. Students then have a record of the
discussion.
• Students exchange their drafts of assignments to
give and receive peer feedback.
• While students are watching an in-class demon-
stration, a live performance, a video, or a student
presentation, they record and post their obser-
vations, questions, and evaluative feedback. The
learning management system’s survey tool can be
used to make these posts anonymous if preferred.
• You or a student conducts a class survey of opin-
ions, attitudes, beliefs, experiences, or reactions.
The survey may also be a classroom assessment
activity (see Chapter Twenty-Eight), such as an
anonymous ungraded quiz, or it may provide you
with midterm feedback on the course.
• Students take timed online quizzes, assuming
you implement ways to discourage cheating—for
example, making the quizzes low stakes and
proctoring judiciously. Students can get nearly
instantaneous feedback on online objective tests.
• Students can take in-class essay tests with minimal
cheating if they can’t read each other’s monitors.
• You hold class outside the classroom—at field
research or observation sites, in the library, in a
gallery or museum, or even in a local coffee shop
for the atmosphere.
How essential are laptops to the classroom activ-
ities listed above? Certainly laptops enable computer-
driven activities without holding class in a computer
lab, which usually doesn’t allow the instructor and
the students to see each other. It is true that some of
these activities are quite possible with only low-tech
tools. However, laptops enhance the speed and effi-
ciency of these tasks while saving reams of paper and
preparing students for an increasingly laptop-oriented
work world. They also allow you to extend some of
the activities listed above that can capture a student’s
monitor for projection. You can find many more in-
novative and productive ideas for using laptops in class
in a wide range of disciplines in Nilson and Weaver
(2005). Every idea was assessed and found to improve
student learning, engagement, or motivation.
Laptop technology is advancing every year.
Products are getting lighter, faster, and more reliable,
and their battery life is increasing. Furthermore, tablet
PCs have extended their utility. As their pedagogical
use is in its infancy, laptops and tablet PCs invite
more creative experimentation.
Keeping Students on Task
Generally students feel comfortable learning with lap-
tops, but many prefer doing other things with their
laptops in class: surfing the Web, shopping, game
playing, doing email, talking in chatrooms, trading
stocks online, instant messaging with a friend,
blogging, twittering, or even viewing pornography.
No matter what students may believe, research doc-
uments that multitasking is mostly wishful thinking
(Crenshaw, 2008; Loukopoulos, Dismukes, & Barshi,
2009). No one can concentrate on two activities,
neither of which is semiautomatic like driving, at the
same time.
Because part of our job is to attract and maintain
our students’ attention, we need to remove all the
classroom distractions and occasions for incivility that
we can. Here is a list of ways to discourage laptop
abuse (Weaver & Nilson, 2005):
• Institute strict course policies for laptop use and
put them in your syllabus—for instance: “Students
should keep their laptops closed unless they are
doing an online task that I have assigned. Any-
one caught at a renegade site during class will be
marked absent for the day.”
• Tell students that laptop abuse is discourteous and
distracting to their classmates, not to mention dis-
courteous to you.
• Tell them that research shows—and it does—that
laptop abuse lowers grades (Fischman, 2009)—just

266 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
one more piece of evidence that multitasking
is a myth.
• Tell them when to open and close their laptops.
• Whenever possible, have students work on their
laptop assignments in groups of three. No one
wants to watch someone else shop, play, chat,
email, and the like, and three students will seldom
be able to agree on a renegade Internet site.
• Set specific objectives for students to accomplish
in their in-class laptop assignments and hold them
accountable—for example, randomly ask individ-
uals or teams to report their progress to the entire
class.
• Set tight time limits for these assignments.
• Walk around the room and stand in the back to
watch the students’ monitors during these assign-
ments.
• Have students bring their laptops to class only on
certain days, and tell them explicitly not to bring
them the other days.
Experimenting with Mobile Devices
A few universities are making classroom use of cell
phones and BlackBerries, which now have many of
the capabilities of laptops but are much smaller and
lighter. However, they cannot accommodate certain
kinds of software and are not designed for substan-
tial, in-depth writing. Most important, an instructor
cannot even see them, let alone monitor and control
student use, except in a small class. This is why many
faculty require students to turn off and put away these
devices during class. Be aware of these pitfalls if you
want to experiment with them in the classroom.
WEB 2.0 TOOLS
Web 2.0 is simply an extension of the “old” World
Wide Web equipped with new software that facilitates
communication, commentary, file exchange, and
collaboration. Some tools require add-ons (free
downloads for the basic utility) to user computers
and mobile devices.
Blogs
Also called a “weblog,” it is a frequently updated
personal website where the “owner” shares opinions,
passions, happenings, links, and the like, similar to
a journal or a diary. Posts are very easy to make,
and only the blog owner can change them. While
a stripped-down site is free, it lacks the features that
some bloggers may want, such as the abilities to design
the site, invite commentators, and post images, au-
dio files, and videos. The host (for example, Blogger,
Livelogcity, Livejournal, Squarespace, and WordPress)
will also use a free site to display advertising.
Of course, most learning management systems
have built-in blogs for your class as a group and each
student in it, and these typically have all the features
that you and your students are likely to need. Since
they are quasi-public (open to the class and specific
individuals granted permission), many students do
some of their most conscientious writing on blogs
and enjoy adding multimedia to their posts. Individ-
ual blogs are particularly well suited to journaling.
You can also use the class blog like a discussion
board and require that students make a specified
number of posts on whatever topics. However, blogs
do not offer topical threading. Blogs can also be a
source of up-to-date reading material. You and your
students can sign up to receive updates of the blogs of
political and cultural leaders, corporations, nonprofit
organizations, action groups, and social forums.
(They usually offer syndication, which means they
use RSS feed to inform subscribers by email.) If you
are going to use blogs, however, you must integrate
them into other aspects of the course.
Of course, students need an incentive to post
regularly to a class-related blog, just as they do to
post to a discussion board. Although you need to
check that students have made a post, you need not
grade every contribution. You can, for example, have
students write a self-assessment of their posts around
midterm, comparing theirs to the best ones they have
read in the class. This exercise tends to improve the
quality of posts in the second half of the course. Then
at the end of the term, you can ask students to select

Using Instructional Technology Wisely 267
and submit their best three posts for a grade (Lang,
2008).
Higdon and Topaz (2009) adapted blogging to
just-in-time-teaching. They have their students post
to their individual blog their answers to two questions
on the readings—the first about the most difficult
part of the material and the second about the most
interesting part, the material’s connection to prior
knowledge, or its relevance to their intellectual or
career interests. (The first question resembles a stan-
dard classroom assessment technique that we cover
in the next chapter.) Students submit their responses
the night before class and email the link to the blog’s
RSS feed to the instructor, who (for convenience)
aggregates the posts onto a wiki (see below). The
instructor scans and grades the responses, looking
for common difficulties and themes, then adapts the
upcoming class to clear the bottlenecks. According to
Higdon and Topaz, just-in-time blogging enhances
their students’ conceptual understanding, their time
on task out of class, their metacognitive reflection on
the material, and their ability to transfer knowledge
to real-world applications.
Wikis
A wiki is an ever-evolving, collaboratively developed
website that allows users to add, remove, edit, revise,
update, and make comments to the content, usu-
ally including text, images, video, audio files, video,
and links. Its capabilities make it ideal for collabo-
rative writing assignments, research, portfolios, and
other projects, and the format encourages sharing, re-
flection, and continual assessment (Madigan, 2006).
All the versions of and changes to the document are
recorded and attributed, so all users (including the in-
structor) can easily find out who made what change
when and, if expected in the comments, why. Thus,
wikis build in accountability.
Wiki space—free or paid, public or private—is
available from many dozens of hosts, called “wiki
farms,” listed at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiFarms,
but most learning management systems also offer
it, restricted to students and invited guests. You can
allocate wikis across individual students and teams
and to the entire class. You can also allocate read-only
and edit rights to each one, allowing students to read
but not to modify each other’s wikis (Konieczny,
2007). With edit rights to every class wiki, you can
also provide students with formative feedback as their
product develops (Madigan, 2006). Multiple-page
wikis are organized by content. While wikis are user
friendly and intuitive, you can find video tutorials
at sites such as www.youtube.com/watch?v=-
dnL00TdmLY&feature=related, as many students
will need an orientation. In fact, you might create a
class wiki with wiki instructions and ask students to
add tips (Allwardt, 2009).
Scott Moore, professor of business at the Uni-
versity of Michigan, has made extensive course use
of classwide wikis for class notes and test questions
(Moore, 2009). For each class, he assigns one student
the task of taking notes on the class wiki, allowing
other members of the class to make corrections and
additions. He also invites students to make up and
post objective test items (with answers), which others
can then improve or elaborate. Students can check
and study from the items any time they want, and
Moore uses about half of them for actual tests.
While students are motivated to visit Moore’s
class wiki, they may not find some wikis so obviously
useful. Some students back away from discussing dif-
ficult topics or critiquing the work of their peers, so
you may have to require and monitor regular partici-
pation, specify appropriate dimensions for critiquing,
and promote and reward serious discussion and con-
structive criticism (Allwardt, 2009). Like every other
student discussion tool, you have to be involved with
it to make it a success.
Social Bookmarking Tools
Social bookmarking tools help users to accumulate
and organize websites by topic. Therefore, it can
facilitate collaborative research that depends on a
large number of Web-based sources—in other words,
when you or your students outgrow your long lists of
browser favorites. The simplest social bookmarking

268 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
tool is Del.icio.us, which allows users to categorize,
annotate, save, manage, and share sites from a
centralized collection. It is an add-on you download
onto your browser. You can import your “favorites”
into your Del.icio.us collection, and your collection
is available from any computer with Web access. For
the software and text instructions on how to use
it, go to http://delicious.com/help. Instructional
videos are available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=
PIkMS-Co8Vc&feature = related and www.youtube
.com/watch?v=meyiH9E60hY&feature=related%20
percent20Diigo.
Diigo does what Del.icio.us does and more.
Users can highlight material on bookmarked web-
sites, add “sticky notes,” and create groups to pool
resources on specific topics. In addition, they can
easily post their findings to their blog (even set up
automatic daily posting), send multiple annotated and
highlighted pages in one email, and post to social net-
working sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The free
browser add-on is available at http://help.diigo.com
and video instructions at http://help.diigo.com
/home/get-started. YouTube also offers video tuto-
rials at www.youtube.com/watch?v=meyiH9E60hY
&feature=related (also includes Del.icio.us), www
.youtube.com/watch?v=0RvAkTuL02A, and www
.youtube.com/watch?v=kcecBgRd3ig&eurl=http://
blog.diigo.com.
Social Networking Tools
This kind of tool allows you to set up your own
social network, which could comprise the students
in one of your courses or a broader special interest
group. Over 113,000 of these networks exist (as of
spring 2009). For educational purposes, a network
can define a learning community. Like a face-to-face
community, its value depends on the meaningful
participation of all users, which can be hard to
motivate among students without the instructor’s
monitoring and intervening. But compared to some
other social platforms, networks offer some of the
features in Facebook and MySpace that personalize
the virtual interaction, so they overcome some of the
social roadblocks of online learning. Among your
software options are OpenSocial (also called Ning,
which is the name of the company that created it),
OpenID, OAuth, Microformats, and Jobber. Video
tutorials on OpenSource abound, but you might
start with the one at www.youtube.com/watch?v=
lVIYhdaavsw. A tutorial on several programs is at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SYnlH5FXz0&feature
=channel.
Twitter is a microblogging and social network
utility designed to send and receive very short
messages (140 characters long) called “tweets.” It is
too simple to require instructions; all you need do
is sign up for a free account at http://twitter.com.
The video tutorial at www.youtube.com/watch?v=
ddO9idmax0o explains the typical way people use
it: to update what they are doing for the purpose of
staying in touch with others. While its instructional
value is debatable, it does enable you to connect
with your students with bite-size text messages. So
you can use it to make quick announcements (“No
class today due to snow”) and to remind students of
upcoming tests and assignments, reaching those who
rely almost exclusively on text messaging. You can
also incorporate links into your messages, enabling
you to publicize a current event or new development
relevant to your course.
Because Twitter allows discussion to run parallel
to the lecture, a few faculty have experimented with
it as a “back channel” during class. Proponents claim
it engages students and reduces the social distance be-
tween them and the instructor. In addition, students
who wouldn’t speak up in a large class can tweet their
questions, which a teaching assistant can answer im-
mediately or the instructor can do so after class. How-
ever, students can’t pay attention in class while they
are texting, and often the Twitter exchanges roam far
off class topics (Young, 2009; Zax, 2009). No doubt
some students text to nonclass sites.
Virtual Worlds
Because virtual worlds imitate three-dimensional re-
ality, they offer unique opportunities for experiential
learning. The most heavily populated virtual world

Using Instructional Technology Wisely 269
at the moment is Second Life. If your computer
has enough bandwidth to accommodate it, you
can join and explore this world by downloading
the software, registering, and taking an avatar at
http://secondlife.com. A basic membership is free.
You can learn all the technical how-to’s in short
videos accessible at http://secondlife.com/showcase
/tutorials, but bear in mind that depending on your
objectives for use, the learning curve can be steep.
Find out first whether your institution has its own
island. If so, you can “landmark” it as “home” and
use its space for meeting with others.
As with the Web, it is impossible to keep up
with all the new developments and activities in
Second Life, but these are among its applications in
higher education:
• As a virtual classroom for synchronous meetings
in distance learning and hybrid courses. In strictly
online courses, synchronous meetings can be dif-
ficult to arrange.
• As a place for virtual office hours, consultations,
team meetings, and the like.
• As a social laboratory in which students can ob-
serve human behavior and conduct small-scale ex-
periments on economic, social, and psychological
phenomena (Conklin, 2007).
• As a forum for practicing written and oral
communication in a foreign language with native
speakers.
• As a role-playing forum for practicing social and
interpersonal skills (Walker, 2009)
• For simulations and re-creations, such as busi-
nesses, scientific phenomena (such as the cell,
basic genetics, and planets), art galleries, historical
scenes, geographic sites, theatre performances,
and experiments (Conklin, 2007).
For ideas on how to teach in or with Second
Life, go to the free online Journal of Virtual Worlds
Research at http://jvwresearch.org and “101 Uses
for Second Life in the College Classroom” by M. S.
Conklin at www.dokimos.org/secondlife/education.
LOOKING AHEAD
It is almost impossible to forecast the future of
instructionally relevant technology. Every few years
bring new waves of recording and Internet-based
innovations, and this chapter skimmed only the
most popular ones up through 2009. Here are some
safe predictions, however: in one form or another,
the ubiquitous board will stay with us indefinitely.
So will electronically delivered and enhanced in-
struction. But (ironically) the higher-tech tools and
software will likely be obsolete in a few years, having
been superseded by another version, product, or
utility that accomplishes the same purposes in some
better way.
The younger generation may drive the changes.
After all, it didn’t take long for texting and twittering
to replace instant messaging on the cutting edge of
routine communication. Younger instructors and
early adopters will take to the changes naturally,
comfortably, and quickly, but many older faculty, not
being digital natives, will experience future shock.
If they feel pressured to adopt newfangled technolo-
gies, they should review the “sound pedagogical
reasons” for doing so given early in this chapter. If
the new technology meets one or more of those
standards, they should consider embracing it. They
should also feel free to ask others for help and train-
ing. After all, instructional technology is a complex,
specialized field in which expertise and proficiency
require a graduate degree, plus a commitment to
lifelong learning. Few people can pick it up and stay
current on their own. You can (try to) keep abreast
of the latest high-tech improvements and innovations
by following publications like Syllabus, E-Learning,
EDUCAUSE Review, IEEE Computer Graphics
and Applications, Innovations, the Journal of Virtual
Worlds Research, the International Journal of Mobile
Learning, the International Journal of E-Learning, the
Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia,
the Journal of Interactive Learning Research, and the
International Journal of Instructional Technology and
Distance Learning.

P A R T 6
ASSESSING LEARNING
OUTCOMES

C H A P T E R 28
Assessing Student Learning in Progress
N
o doubt you can recall classes when you
would have liked to have known what your
students were learning from your lesson and
whether you should proceed with the next one. Per-
haps you found out what they missed from a test you
gave three weeks later. Obviously it is much more
cost-effective to assess your students’ learning while
in progress, before their shortfalls in understanding
adversely affect their grades and motivation. Such
information can also help you evaluate, and ultimately
enhance, your teaching effectiveness. It can even
direct your students to the areas on which they need
to focus their studying. We call this useful feedback
to both you and your students formative assessment, as
it helps to shape and focus your subsequent teaching
and their subsequent learning. Its goal is always to
help students learn better (Prégent, 1994).
CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT
TECHNIQUES
Classroom assessment techniques (CATs) were
developed precisely to serve these purposes (Angelo,
1991a; Cross & Angelo, 1988). You can use them
regularly or intermittently without violating the
structure and content of your course and quickly
identify trouble spots your class is encountering.
Knowing what your students did not absorb the first
time through the material, you can turn around a
potentially disappointing situation. Perhaps classroom
assessment is not all that much different from the
informal, sometimes unconscious gauges you already
use, such as reading your students’ expressions and
body language and asking and answering questions.
But these are unreliable and rarely encompass the
273

274 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
whole class. CATs formalize and systematize the
process, ensuring that you assess all your students.
Given their purpose, they are especially appropriate
for student-active lecture breaks, but they make
stimulating warm-up activities at the beginning of
class and good wrap-up exercises at the end of class.
All good CATs share these features (Angelo &
Cross, 1993):
• Learner centered. While it is no substitute for appro-
priate teaching methods or graded examinations,
classroom assessment aims to help students learn
better. It can help them improve their study habits
and their listening skills and push them to correct
their mental model of the discipline
• Teacher directed. You have total freedom to de-
cide what will be assessed, how it will be assessed,
how the results will be analyzed, and how they
will affect further actions. Be sure, then, that your
CATs address factors that you are willing and able
to change or improve.
• Mutually beneficial. As students actively participate
in the process of classroom assessment, CATs
reinforce their learning of material. Like the
student-active lecture breaks described in Chapter
Twelve and the writing-to-learn exercises covered
in Chapter Seventeen, good CATs make your
students review, retrieve, apply, analyze, synthe-
size, or evaluate the material in your lectures,
classroom activities, and reading assignments as
well as their prior learning experiences. Further-
more, because classroom assessment underscores
your interest in your students’ progress, it can also
boost student motivation. In turn, you benefit
from the feedback on the effectiveness of your
teaching methods and moves.
• Formative. Unlike summative evaluations such as
graded quizzes, tests, and assignments, CATs are
usually anonymous, ungraded, and geared strictly
toward student learning.
• Context specific. CATs work differently in differ-
ent classes. Since you know your classes best, you
can tailor CATs to their specific personality and
needs, as well as to your discipline, materials, time
constraints, and educational priorities.
• Ongoing. Ideally CATs provide a continual educa-
tional feedback loop, informing you about your
students’ learning, to which you in turn adjust
your teaching, back and forth, until the end of
the term.
• Rooted in good teaching practice. Classroom assess-
ment builds on current teaching practices, making
them more systematic, effective, and flexible. For
example, by using a simple diagnostic pretest, you
can find out how well prepared your students are
to tackle your learning outcomes. You can then
pitch your presentations to their actual level, cov-
ering more or less material than you might have
otherwise.
Angelo and Cross (1993) suggest a three-step
plan for successfully launching classroom assessment.
First, start small. Select one class in which you are
confident things are going well and do a simple,
short, low-effort CAT—for example, the one-minute
paper, the one-sentence summary, directed para-
phrasing, or the muddiest point. Second, give detailed
directions and a rationale. Tell students what you are
doing and why. They will need explicit instruc-
tions and the assurance that their responses will be
anonymous and used solely for mutual improvement.
Allocate a few extra minutes the first time through
any CAT. Finally, respond to the information you gather.
After you have reflected on your students’ responses,
take some time to share them with your class. If
you decide to modify your teaching as a result, tell
your students what you will do differently and why.
Equally important, give them pointers on how they
can improve their learning.
Selecting Appropriate CATs
Different CATs are designed to measure students’
progress in different types of learning. So before
selecting a CAT, consider which type you wish
to assess (Angelo, 1991b). Declarative learning is
“learning what”—that is, learning the facts and

Assessing Student Learning in Progress 275
principles of a given field. In terms of Bloom’s (1956)
taxonomy of cognitive operations (see Chapters
Two and Fourteen), declarative learning focuses on
knowledge and comprehension at the lower-level
end of the scale. Procedural learning is learning how
to do something, from the specific tasks of a given
discipline to universal skills such as writing, critical
thinking, and reasoning. Its emphasis is application.
The third type, conditional learning, is learning
when and where to apply the acquired declarative
knowledge and procedural skills. Too often taught
only implicitly through example and modeling,
it can be better taught explicitly using the case
method, problem-based learning, role playing, sim-
ulations, and service-learning (see Chapters Fifteen,
Nineteen, and Twenty). While conditional learning
clearly entails application, it also involves analysis and
synthesis. Finally, reflective learning is learning why,
which engages students in analysis, synthesis, and
evaluation. It directs their attention to their beliefs,
values, and motives for learning about a particular
topic. Without this reflection, higher education is
little more than job training.
Some Tried and True CATs
Chapter Seventeen introduced several popular CATs
that also serve as writing-to-learn exercises: the one-
minute paper, the one-sentence summary, directed
paraphrasing, dialectical notes, and learning logs. An-
gelo and Cross (1993; also Cross & Angelo, 1988)
describe dozens of other techniques, among which
are the following.
Background Knowledge Probe: Moderate
Instructor Effort and Low Student Effort
This is essentially a diagnostic pretest to administer on
the first day of class or when you begin a new unit of
instruction. It can consist of two or three short answer
or essay questions or fifteen to twenty multiple-choice
items about students’ attitudes and understanding.
This CAT provides information not only on
your students’ prior knowledge but also on their
motivation, beliefs, values, misconceptions about the
subject matter, and, if you use open-ended questions,
their writing skills. The results also tell you what
material to cover and what existing knowledge you
can use to map on new knowledge. Finally, probes
activate students’ prior knowledge, readying them for
additional learning.
Focused Listing: Low Instructor
and Student Effort
You can use this technique to activate students’ prior
knowledge before you teach a topic and to help them
review afterward. Direct students’ attention to a sin-
gle important name, concept, or relationship, and ask
them to list as many related concepts and ideas as they
can. You might limit the exercise to two to three min-
utes or five to ten items. With these constraints, the
results give you a pretty accurate picture of the fea-
tures students identify and recall as salient and not just
those they think you want to hear.
Memory Matrix: Moderate Instructor Effort
and Low Student Effort
Memory matrices stress recall of course material, but
they also require students to organize it in a graphic
framework you provide. Start by drawing a matrix
with content-appropriate row and category headings.
Leave sufficient space for several one-word or phrase
responses in each cell. Distribute copies for your stu-
dents to fill in, with a limit on the number of items
they can write in each cell. This limit keeps students
from stalling in search of the one best answer. Col-
lect and examine the matrices for completeness and
correctness.
Memory matrices show you how your students
organize knowledge and whether they properly as-
sociate principles and concepts. In addition, matrices
help visual learners excel, facilitate students’ retrieval of
large amounts of information, and are easy to evaluate.
Muddiest Point: Low Instructor
and Student Effort
Very simply, ask your students to write down what
they perceived as the muddiest point in a lecture,
an assigned reading, a video, a demonstration, a

276 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
discussion, and so on. Reserve some time at the end
of class to ask and answer questions; then collect the
student responses. You can clarify the muddy points
during the next class.
Perhaps the easiest CAT to implement, you can
use it on the spur of the moment. Struggling students
who are not comfortable asking questions publicly
find it to be a lifeline. In addition, it enables you to see
the material through your students’ eyes, reminding
you of the many different ways they process and store
information. Finally, knowing that they will have to
identify a muddy point induces students to pay closer
attention in class. And when the time comes for the
CAT, they have to review whatever learning experi-
ence they are reflecting on.
Concept Maps: Medium to High Instructor
and Student Effort
Covered in detail in Chapter Twenty-Six, concept
maps are diagrams that spatially show the mental
connections (labeled lines) that students make among
various concepts (written in circles). They help visual
learners get their minds around abstract relationships
and give you a graphic view of your students’ orga-
nization of the knowledge. For instance, you might
ask your students to concept-map the process of
photosynthesis, the structure of the U.S. government,
or the dynamics of racism.
If your students are not accustomed to draw-
ing maps, diagrams, and flowcharts, work through an
example or two with the class. Start by writing a focal
concept on the board, then ask your students to brain-
storm related concepts and terms, beginning with
primary (closest) associations, then secondary and ter-
tiary ones.
Paper or Project Prospectus: Moderate
to High Instructor and Student Effort
A prospectus is a detailed plan for a project or
paper—perhaps even a rough draft—that focuses
students on the topic, the purpose, the issues to
address, the audience, the organization, and the time,
skills, and other resources needed—in fact, whatever
guidelines you provide for the final product. First,
students need to understand these guidelines—that
is, the important facets and likely pitfalls of the
assignment. For the prospectus itself, you might
compose a list of three to seven questions that
students must answer. Of course, advise students not
to begin substantive work on their actual assignment
until they receive feedback on their prospectus from
you and possibly other students. This CAT is a major
assignment in itself, so you may want to make it
required and grade it, but without counting it heavily
toward the final grade.
The prospectus accommodates many different
types of assignments and teaches crucial, transferable
planning and organizational skills. In addition, it gives
students early enough feedback to help them produce
a better product.
Everyday Ethical Dilemmas: Moderate
to High Instructor and Student Effort
For this CAT, you begin by locating or creating a brief
case study that poses an ethical problem related to the
material (see Chapter Nineteen). Then write two or
three questions that force students to take and defend
a position. Let your students turn in their written
responses anonymously, thus giving you an honest
overview of the prevailing class opinions and values.
Students will need some time to reflect and develop
their arguments, so you might assign this CAT as
homework.
This CAT encourages students to try on dif-
ferent values and beliefs, thus helping them develop
moral reasoning skills. It also affords you probing,
personal glimpses into your students’ ethical and
cognitive maturity. With these insights, you can foster
their continuing growth by introducing values and
opinions that they have not yet considered.
Self-Confidence Surveys: Low to Medium
Instructor and Student Effort
As the name implies, this CAT consists of a few
simple questions about your students’ confidence in
their ability to perform course-related tasks. Design
a brief, anonymous survey focusing on specific skills

Assessing Student Learning in Progress 277
and tasks. Find the low-confidence areas in the
results, and give additional instruction and practice
accordingly. Self-confidence surveys help you identify
your students’ areas of anxiety and establish the mini-
mal levels of self-confidence necessary for success in
the course.
Punctuated Lectures: Low Instructor
and Student Effort
After your students listen to your lecture or demon-
stration, stop for a moment and ask them to reflect on
what they were doing during your presentation and
how it helped or hindered their understanding. Have
them anonymously write out and turn in their reflec-
tions. After reading their responses, offer suggestions
on how they can improve their listening and self-
monitoring skills. Through your feedback, this CAT
helps students hone these skills, both of which are
highly transferable. It also better acquaints you with
your students’ processing styles and pitfalls.
Application Cards: Low Instructor
and Student Effort
After a lecture segment, demonstration, or video
on procedure, principle, or theory, have students
write down on a card or piece of paper one or more
real-world applications of the material. As you read
through them, select the best ones from a wide range
of examples to read to the class at the next meeting.
This CAT gives students practice in transferring
knowledge to useful applications.
RSQC2 (Recall, Summarize, Question,
Connect, and Comment): Low to Medium
Instructor and Student Effort
This technique assesses your students’ recall, compre-
hension, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of recent
material. Begin by having students list the most im-
portant points they can remember from the previous
class (or the assigned reading). Second, ask them to
define as many terms as they can in one-sentence
summaries. Third, have them write one or two
questions about each point that still confuses them.
Fourth, ask them to connect each important point
they identified with either other important points or
your learning outcomes for them. Finally, have them
write an evaluative comment about the course, the
class period, or the material (for example, “What I
enjoyed most/least . . . ”; “What I found most/least
useful . . . ”). Each of the five activities requires at
least two minutes. If you can spare the time, let
students compare their responses among themselves.
Of course, feel free to pick and choose the activities
you find most useful.
RSQC2 gives you timely feedback on what
your students consider important material and
what they value about your course. By having them
recall the previous class and make connections,
this CAT also builds bridges between old and new
material.
FORMATIVE FEEDBACK
Formative feedback is the sum of recommendations
we give students for improving their work at an early
stage, with the expectation that they will revise it ac-
cordingly. When you comment on drafts of papers or
projects or you have your students comment on each
other’s drafts, you are providing formative feedback. If
you attach a grade to such drafts, it should be mainly
to motivate student effort during the work’s devel-
opment and should count only for a portion of the
work’s final grade.
This type of feedback benefits both you
and your students in several ways. For them, it
encourages steady writing and work habits, it gives
them criteria on which to improve their work and
their communication skills, and it teaches them the
professional creation process, which always involves
extensive revision. For you, it yields much better
student products, practically eliminates plagiarism,
and changes your role from judge to facilitator.
These suggestions will make formative assess-
ments of papers and projects more productive:
• Strictly enforce deadlines for students to find
topics, gather resources, develop an outline,

278 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
and submit a first draft. Formative assessment
takes time.
• Comment more on major writing issues, such as
content, reasoning, and organization, and less on
style and grammar.
• Make your comments constructive, personalized,
and informal. Give praise where deserved, because
students often do not know what they are doing
right.
• Involve your students in providing useful, valid,
and objective peer feedback by preparing a list of
nonevaluative questions that ask students to iden-
tify features or parts of the work, as each student
sees them, or to give their personal reactions to the
work (Nilson, 2002–2003, 2003). Chapter Seven-
teen furnishes details.
• If you think your students are cognitively and
emotionally mature enough to appraise each
other’s work, teach them to do so by modeling
and explaining the process. Provide your own
detailed comments on the drafts of the first paper,
review your feedback methods with your class,
then oversee their comments on the drafts of the
second paper. After that, students should be able
to provide decent peer feedback on their own.
• Make sure students understand that formative
feedback focuses on major problems in their work
and that making the suggested changes does not
guarantee them an A.
STUDENT PORTFOLIOS
While very different from anonymous, one-time
CATs, student portfolios allow you to assess and
document your students’ progress across written
products without attaching grades. A portfolio is a
collection of samples of a student’s work during the
term, one that you and she may assemble together,
along with her written reflections on the products
or her own intellectual progress through writing
them. It may take the form of a notebook or folder
or a website; if the latter, it is called an electronic
portfolio or e-portfolio. The samples may be the
student’s best work, the widest variety of her
good work, or the history of one or more major
pieces of work—such as notes, outlines, peer and
instructor reviews, and multiple revisions in response
to those reviews (Bernhardt, 1992; Zubizarreta,
2009). You grade only the total portfolio and the
student’s reflections, typically at the end of the course.
Beginning in the 1980s, student portfolios
started to acquire a strong following among English
instructors from primary through postsecondary
levels. Those who use them testify that portfolios en-
courage constructive dialogue between students and
the instructor and motivate students to attempt more
varied and adventuresome writing, take instructor
and peer feedback seriously, and revise their work,
often several times. Instructors in many disciplines,
even mathematics and business, have developed
their own versions of the portfolio, most of which
encourage more creative demonstrations of learning
than do traditional assignments and tests (Belanoff &
Dickson, 1991; Crowley, 1993; Zubizarreta, 2009).
Consider, for example, the imaginative range
of assessment artifacts that a mathematics portfolio
can contain: samples of journal entries; written
explanations for each mathematical step of a complex
problem solution; a mathematics autobiography
focusing on changing attitudes and new insights;
multiple solutions to a challenging problem, each
reflecting a different approach; an elegant proof,
either intuitive or formal depending on the student’s
abilities; student-developed lesson plans for teaching
a particular mathematical concept; student-developed
word problems; student-drawn visual representations
of problems; student-made concrete representations;
and reviews of mathematical books and journal
articles—all in addition to examples of traditional
student output, such as tests, quizzes, and homework
(Crowley, 1993; Stenmark, 1989, 1991).
Portfolios are not without their problems, how-
ever. For example, postponing gradings until the end

Assessing Student Learning in Progress 279
of the course will not necessarily save you grading
time. Quite the contrary. While you may not have
to affix letters or points to students’ work until the
end, you will probably assign more and more varied
writing projects and put more time and effort during
the term into giving formative feedback and hold-
ing student conferences on each project. Without this
detailed, personalized feedback, none of the poten-
tial benefits of portfolios will accrue. In addition, you
will otherwise suffocate at the end of the course un-
der an avalanche of paper or Web pages filled with
only vaguely familiar writing samples. In the terms
used above to describe CATs, portfolios entail very
high effort on both your own and your students’ part
(Bernhardt, 1992; Zubizarreta, 2009).
Another serious problem for many students is
the lack of grading during the term. Often they are
anxious not knowing where they stand and how they
are doing, and some need to know early in the term
to decide whether to stay in the course. Academic
regulations may not even allow such postponement
of grades. At some universities, faculty are required
to disclose midterm grades or to submit deficiency
reports on students earning a C− or lower, and cur-
riculum committees will not approve new courses
unless a substantial part of the final grade is deter-
mined by the middle of the term.
A final challenge with using portfolios pertains
to grading standards. If a portfolio contains only stu-
dents’ best work, how can anyone in the class not
receive a good grade? But the converse problem also
arises: some instructors resist assigning deservedly low
grades to students who have worked so hard during
the term. Even with herculean effort, some students
barely pass a course, and it can be very difficult for an
instructor to break the bad news to them after all the
time spent counseling and conferencing with them.
Therefore, before adopting student portfolios,
consider the following issues about delayed grading:
how your students might respond to it, if your in-
stitution’s academic regulations accommodate it, and
whether you can uphold your quality standards in
spite of it. Then ask yourself if you can make the
time to give your students’ work the detailed, ongo-
ing feedback that is required.
EXTENDING CLASSROOM
ASSESSMENT TO CLASSROOM
RESEARCH AND THE
SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING
AND LEARNING
If you are collecting and examining systematic data
on the teaching effectiveness or student appeal of one
method over another, why not write up and publish
your more interesting results? This type of research
is the backbone of the college teaching field, as well
as the foundation of this book. It has been labeled
“classroom research” and “action research,” but it is
now most commonly called “the scholarship of teach-
ing and learning.” You probably already know how
to conduct this kind of research, especially if you
are in psychology, education, or one of the social
sciences. Research on teaching typically relies on a
quasi-experimental or a survey design, or it describes
and assesses an innovative method or curriculum (Nil-
son, 1992). The proper design may require your
collaborating with colleagues who are teaching the
same or similar courses (Cross, 1992) or your con-
ducting a longitudinal study of classes before and with
the “treatment.”
If you plan to conduct a survey of your students
or use student products for your research, you must
contact your university’s research compliance office at
least a few weeks before you begin and inquire about
having your research plan reviewed by its Institutional
Review Board (IRB). Typically IRBs grant classroom
research an exemption, but you need evidence of its
review. A violation can cost your institution federal
funding.
In addition, you probably have some back-
ground reading to do. Much of the scholarship of
teaching and learning is anchored in learning theory

280 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
or cognitive psychology, and your particular research
topic may have already inspired a body of literature.
You can search for relevant articles—and find
publication outlets—in the hard copy and electronic
journals and newsletters on college teaching. Some
specialize in a given discipline, a few in a specific
teaching method (such as cooperative learning or
instructional technology), but most are general.
Although each journal favors one or two types of
articles, they collectively publish standard research
studies, literature reviews with insightful conclusions,
evaluative descriptions of teaching innovations (how-
to articles), philosophical statements, and analyses of
current educational policies, problems, and trends
(Nilson, 1992). You should skim recent issues of
several journals to find those that publish manuscripts
similar to yours. Look for such periodicals in your
institution’s main library, education library, or teach-
ing center library, and find electronic journals (some
are free) using a Web search engine.
Research on teaching is not new. Decades be-
fore Cross and Angelo (1993) started promoting the
idea, economics and physics ushered in scholarly, sci-
entific inquiry into student learning and achievement,
the most important outcome we can assess. These
fields have been on the forefront ever since, largely
because its members have been able to agree on the
learning outcomes for certain courses and to develop
standardized tests to measure their attainment. Until
other disciplines can reach a similar consensus, their
research predicting to student learning will be limited
to small classroom samples.

C H A P T E R 29
Constructing Summative Assessments
A
summative assessment is a performance evalu-
ation that is intended to establish a recorded,
final judgment about the performer’s com-
petence. By contrast, formative assessment, as we saw
in the previous chapter, is intended to furnish helpful
feedback to the performer. A summative judgment
may take the form of a grade, score, rating, ranking,
or personnel decision. Typically much of the final
grade that we give students is based on summative
assessment instruments called tests or exams, the
shorter version of which are called quizzes, and
writing assignments, which may also use visual or
sound media in addition to writing. This chapter
summarizes the best practices in test construction
and techniques for designing meaningful summative
assessments—first objective test items and then
essay tests and writing assignments. In addition, it
examines the advantages and disadvantages of all
types of test items.
GENERAL TESTING GUIDELINES
Summative assessment is serious business to your
institution and especially to your students. If they are
consistently performing poorly on your tests, you
might find the reasons in this section.
It’s All About Outcomes
As Chapter Two explains, teaching at its best begins
with developing and sequencing assessable student
learning outcomes, then selecting the teaching
formats, methods, and moves that are most effective
for helping students achieve those outcomes. Excel-
lent teaching also entails appropriate assessment—
specifically, constructing instruments that measure, as
directly as possible, the students’ success in achiev-
ing those outcomes. In the end, all three phases
of instruction—outcomes setting, teaching, and
281

282 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
assessing—should be woven into a multifaceted
arrangement of interdependent parts, each reflecting
and reinforcing the others.
Therefore, before you begin writing a quiz or
an exam, think seriously about what you are trying to
accomplish with it. A test can assess just short-term
memory skills or the abilities to comprehend, apply,
analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the material as well
(Bloom, 1956; see Chapters Two and Fourteen). Re-
view your learning outcomes, and identify each one’s
cognitive level. If they focus primarily on knowledge,
comprehension, and application, then so should your
test questions. Unless you have taught your students
and given them practice in thinking at the higher lev-
els, questions pitched at these levels will not measure
your students’ attainment of your outcomes. In other
words, your tests will not be valid (Jacobs & Chase,
1992; Suskie, 2004; Walvoord & Anderson, 1998). In
addition, your students will be doomed to perform
poorly.
Lessons Learned by Experience
The following recommendations represent much of
the conventional wisdom on test construction (Jacobs
& Chase, 1992; Lacey-Casem, 1990; Ory & Ryan,
1993; Suskie, 2004; Walvoord & Anderson, 1998).
• Test early and often. Frequent testing yields
benefits for both you and your students. Early testing
furnishes students with feedback they can use to opti-
mize their course performance. Frequent testing gives
them more opportunities for success, reducing the
penalties for any single poor performance. It also en-
hances the reliability of your overall assessment—that
is, its stability, repeatability, and internal consistency.
Over more test items and occasions, the effects of ran-
dom errors, such as students’ misinterpretations and
distractions, tend to weaken.
One recent experimental study on two sections
of a social statistics course backs up these claims
(Myers & Myers, 2007). Both sections had the same
content, instructor, and textbook, but the control
section had only two midterms and a final and
the experimental section had biweekly exams and the
same final. The students in the experimental section
scored one letter grade (ten percentage points) higher
on their biweekly exams and a grade and a half
(fifteen percentage points) higher on their final than
did the students in the control section. Moreover, the
control section had a withdrawal rate of 11 percent
versus the experimental section, which had no with-
drawals. The course and the instructor evaluations
also differed markedly, with the experimental section
getting much higher ones.
• Compose test questions immediately after you
cover the material in the class. The material and the
cognitive levels at which you taught it are fresh in
your mind. Practiced regularly, this strategy ensures
you a stock of questions to use when quiz and exam
times arrive. Alternatively, you can have your students
develop these questions at the end of class or as home-
work. They will want to compose clean, challenging
ones to increase the odds that theirs will appear on
a future test. After all, they know the answers to the
ones they made up.
• Give detailed, written instructions for all tests.
Remind students about your and your institution’s
policies on academic dishonesty (see Chapter Eight).
Also specify how much time the test is allotted, how
many questions of each type, how many points each
item is worth, where to record answers, whether to
show work, and whether books, notes, or calculators
can be used. Do not assume that your students com-
mitted all this information to memory just because
you announced it in class, in a handout, or some-
where on the learning management system.
• Start the test with some warm-up questions.
Asking a few easy questions at the beginning of an
exam gives students some low-stress practice in re-
trieving the material and builds their confidence.
• Have another instructor evaluate the test for
clarity and content. This is a particularly good idea if
you are somewhat inexperienced at teaching or at the
type of items you are using. You may have written a

Constructing Summative Assessments 283
quiz or exam that seems crystal clear to you, only to
find out later that certain items were double-barreled,
ambiguously phrased, or awkwardly constructed.
Writing good test items is a hard-to-learn craft, and
you need not learn it all by bad experience.
• Proofread the test form for errors. Check for
spelling and grammar mistakes, split items (that is,
items that begin on one page and continue on the
next), inconsistencies and errors in format, missing
or ambiguous instructions, and inadequate space for
constructed responses. It is best to have another set
of eyes—those of a colleague, your teaching assistant,
your supervising professor, or even a friend or family
member—proofread the test form too.
• After the test, conduct an item analysis of
your new objective items. If your completions, true-
false, matching, multiple-choice, and multiple
true-false items are machine- or computer-graded,
check whether the overwhelming majority of your
students missed certain questions. If so, these items
are suspect, so you should examine them carefully
for unclear or ambiguous wording. Check also for
any items that all or almost all the students answered
correctly. These items are also suspect because they
failed to discriminate the more from the less knowl-
edgeable students. They probably were too obvious
or easy to guess right due to unintentional cuing in
the wording. This type of item analysis is the basic
one. To refine your analysis, you have to be able to
identify the best 10 to 15 percent of your students in
the class, in which case you must have either tested
the class previously or accessed all your students’
academic records. Either way, your best students’ item
responses become your point of comparison. If all or
almost of them missed an item, it is probably faulty.
If they answered an item correctly and only a few in
the rest of the class did, it is highly discriminating.
OBJECTIVE TEST ITEMS
In general, summative assessment instruments come
in two types: objective and constructed response, other-
wise known as essay questions or writing assignments
(Ory & Ryan, 1993). The objective varieties—
completion (fill-in-the-blank), true-false, matching,
multiple choice, and multiple true-false, the least
known and used on the list—are typically test
questions. Known for measuring knowledge and
comprehension, most types can also assess higher-
order thinking very efficiently. Since most objective
items can be graded by a scanning machine or a
computer, they make regular assessment in large
classes possible. However, none can measure students’
abilities to create, organize, communicate, define
problems, or conduct research.
Inexperienced instructors may think that objec-
tive questions are easy to construct, but unambiguous
and discriminating ones take time and thought. Pro-
fessional test writers may produce only eight or ten
usable questions a day. However, be wary of test bank
items that come with your textbook. They are rarely,
if ever, composed by professionals, and they tend to
tap only factual knowledge, sometimes of the trivial
variety.
The rest of this section lays out the advantages
and disadvantages of each type of objective item
and furnishes guidelines for constructing them
(Brookhart, 1999; Gronlund & Waugh, 2009; Jacobs
& Chase, 1992; Jacobsen, n.d.; Lacey-Casem, 1990;
Ory & Ryan, 1993; Suskie, 2004). Each type has its
place, and some students do better with some types
of questions than with others. Using a variety of
questions on an exam allows students to feel more
secure with the test format. Remember that you can
teach your students to write good questions before
the test.
Completion (Fill-in-the-Blank)
These items measure only how well students have
memorized facts, terms, and symbols, but some
material is so basic that students have to be able
to reproduce it. This type of item is well suited to
mathematical problems—assuming you do not need
to see how your students arrived at the answer—
because they have only one exact right answer and
students can’t work backward from given options,

284 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
as they can from multiple-choice items. However,
in other fields, the one right answer may have
several acceptable versions. If the correct answer
is John Fitzgerald Kennedy, you might consider
John F. Kennedy, John Kennedy, Jack Kennedy, J. F.
Kennedy, Kennedy, J.F.K., and some of the possible
misspellings of Kennedy acceptable. In such cases,
you cannot computer-score completion items unless
you can anticipate and specify every possible variation
of the correct answer that you will accept as right.
Your alternative is to restrict all fill-ins to one word
and insist on the correct spelling.
Advantages
• Easy to prepare and grade
• Assesses knowledge, recall, and vocabulary well
• Eliminates guessing
• Can test a lot of material in a short time
Disadvantages
• Cannot assess higher levels of cognition
• Highly structured and inflexible; may require an
all-or-nothing response
• Not useful as a diagnostic tool
• May include grammatical clues
• Difficult to construct so that the desired response
is unambiguous
• Difficult to grade if more than one version of the
right answer may be correct
Construction
• Allow thirty seconds to one minute per item.
• Use clear wording to elicit a unique response.
• Avoid grammatical cues. Use a/an and is/are, for
instance, to reduce cluing.
• Omit only significant words from the statement.
• Omit words from the middle or end of a state-
ment, not the beginning.
• Make all fill-in lines the same length.
• Place the response lines in a column to the left or
right to facilitate grading.
• Use familiar language that is similar to what you
and the readings have used to explain the material.
True/False
This type of item encourages guessing because stu-
dents have a fifty-fifty chance of getting an item right.
It also tends to focus on recall of terms and facts,
sometimes trivial ones. You can eliminate both limita-
tions by having students correct false statements. But
then you cannot use a machine or computer to grade
these items; the job will fall to you.
Advantages
• Usually easy to prepare and grade
• Can test a lot of material in a short time
• Can tap higher levels of cognition by having stu-
dents correct the false statements
• Useful as a diagnostic tool if students correct the
false statements
Disadvantages
• High guessing factor for simple true-false
questions
• May be difficult to think of unequivocally true or
false statements
• Encourages instructors to test trivial factual
knowledge
• Often fails to discriminate the more from the less
knowledgeable students because the best students
may see too many nuances, read in multiple mean-
ings, or conceive of exceptions
• May be ambiguous
• May include verbal clues (for example, questions
with usually, seldom, and often are frequently true,
while those with never, always, and every are com-
monly false).
Construction
• Allow thirty seconds to one minute per item.
• Use only statements that are entirely true or en-
tirely false.
• Focus each statement on a single idea or problem.
• Write positive statements. Negative and double-
negative statements are confusing.

Constructing Summative Assessments 285
• Avoid verbal cues to the correct answers (for
example, usually, seldom, often, never, always, and
every).
• Use familiar language that is similar to what you
and the readings have used to explain the material.
• Roughly balance the number of true and false an-
swers.
• Avoid always making true statements long and
false statements short, or vice versa. Students
quickly pick up on these patterns.
• Avoid direct quotes from lectures or readings re-
quiring only rote memorization.
• Add higher-level cognitive challenge and assess-
ment validity by having students rewrite false
statements to make them true.
• Allow students to write a rebuttal to your marking
their answer wrong for a small percentage of the
items.
Matching
One way of looking at matching items is as a set of
multiple-choice items that share the same set of re-
sponses (Suskie, 2004). The key to composing them
is to assemble homogeneous items in the stimulus or
question column with homogeneous items in the re-
sponse or option column, such that every response
is plausible for every stimulus. Common matches in-
clude theories with their originator, people with their
major achievement or work, causes with their effect,
terms with their definitions, foreign words with their
translation, and pieces of equipment, tools, lab ap-
paratus, or organs with their use or function. If you
wish, you can list stimuli with multiple correct re-
sponses; just inform students that some items may
have more than one answer or specify the number
for each stimulus. Check to see whether the testing
tool in your learning management system can grade
multiple-answer matching items.
Matches can also involve visuals, such as
concepts or chemicals with their symbol, pictures of
objects with their name, or labeled parts in a picture
with their function. In fact, if your matching re-
sponses are embedded in one large graphic, such as a
representation of a cell, a part of human anatomy,
an electrical system, or a machine, you can have stu-
dents describe a process by specifying a sequence of
responses (Laird, 2004). Again, find out if your elec-
tronic testing tool accommodates multiple-answer
items.
The examples thus far assess only lower-level
thinking, but you can test higher-order cognitive skills
by having students match causes with likely effects,
concepts with new examples of them, and new hypo-
thetical problems with concepts, tools, or approaches
needed to solve them. Of course, “new” examples or
problems need just be new to your students.
Advantages
• Easy to grade
• Assesses knowledge and recall well and can assess
higher levels of cognition
• Relatively unambiguous
• Can test a lot of material in a short time
Disadvantages
• Difficult to construct a common set of stimuli and
responses
• High guessing factor
• Not useful as a diagnostic tool
Construction
• Allow thirty seconds to one minute per item.
• Keep stimuli and responses short and simple.
• List the possible responses in some logical order,
alphabetical or chronological, to reduce student
search time.
• Add challenge and reduce process-of-elimination
thinking by inserting one or more unmatch-
able responses or one or more responses that
match more than one stimulus. Just be sure
to add this statement to the directions: “Some
responses may be used more than once and others
not at all.”
• To add even more challenge, include a few stim-
uli that require multiple responses or a sequence

286 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
of responses. Inform your students by adding this
or a similar statement to the directions: “Some
items require multiple responses or a sequence of
responses describing a process.”
• Limit the list of stimuli and responses to fifteen or
fewer.
• Keep all stimuli and responses on one page.
• If students write down their response choice, have
them use capital letters to avoid ambiguity.
Multiple Choice
No doubt multiple-choice items are the most popular
type of objective test item in North America. Ed-
ucational Testing Services and publishers’ test banks
rely on them heavily. You would think good ones
would be easy to write, but they aren’t. A solid, clean
multiple-choice question avoids two tricky pitfalls:
diverting a knowledgeable student away from the
correct response and cluing a poorly prepared student
toward the correct response (Suskie, 2004). Faulty
phraseology and construction can do either. Test
bank items that accompany textbooks usually avoid
these flaws, but they do so at the cost of challenging
students and assessing their higher-order thinking.
To meet these higher standards, you have to search
out proven, concept-oriented multiple-choice items
or compose your own. If your area is the sciences,
you should be able to find some high-quality
items in the Databases of Concept Questions at
www.skylight.science.ubc.ca/cqdatabases. Otherwise,
search using “’clicker questions’ + teaching” and
look for your discipline. But don’t be discouraged
from writing your own and teaching your students
how to write good ones.
One way to guarantee that your multiple-
choice questions will assess higher-order thinking is
to compose what are called scenario-based (Instruc-
tional Assessment Resources, University of Texas at
Austin, 2007) or simulation-like (Thalheimer, 2002)
items, or interpretive exercises (Suskie, 2004). These
are a series of multiple-choice items based on a new
(to the students), realistic stimulus—a table, graph,
diagram, flowchart, drawing, photo, map, schematic,
equation, data set, description of an experiment,
statement, quotation, passage, poem, situation, short
case, or the like—that students must interpret intel-
ligently to answer the items correctly. The process
of interpreting and reasoning from the stimulus
normally requires—in addition to knowledge—
comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, or
evaluation. If you prefer, you can look at the types of
thinking involved as interpretation, inference, prob-
lem solving, generalization, and conclusion drawing.
This type of multiple-choice question frequently ap-
pears in professionally written standardized tests, such
as the Scholastic Assessment Test and the Graduate
Record Examination, and licensing exams, such as
the National Council of Licensure Examinations for
registered nurses and practical nurses. Here are two
college-level examples (reprinted with permission
from the Division of Instructional Innovation and
Assessment, University of Texas at Austin, 2007),
the first of which focuses on an experiment and the
second, on a situation or minicase. Correct answers
are marked with an asterisk.
Scenario 1: Statistics
Two researchers were studying the relationship between amount of sleep each night and calories burned
on an exercise bike for 42 men and women. They were interested if people who slept more had more
energy to use during their exercise session. They obtained a correlation of .28, which has a two-tailed
probability of .08. Alpha was .10.

Constructing Summative Assessments 287
1. Which is an example of a properly written research question?
a. Is there a relationship between amount of sleep and energy expended?*
b. Does amount of sleep correlate with energy used?
c. What is the cause of energy expended?
d. What is the value of rho?
2. What is the correct term for the variable amount of sleep?
a. Dependent*
b. Independent
c. Predictor
d. y
3. What is the correct statistical null hypothesis?
a. There is no correlation between sleep and energy expended.
b. Rho equals zero.*
c. R equals zero.
d. Rho equals r.
4. What conclusions should you draw regarding the null hypothesis?
a. Reject*
b. Accept
c. Cannot determine without more information
5. What conclusions should you draw regarding this study?
a. The correlation was significant
b. The correlation was not significant.
c. A small relationship exists.*
d. No relationship exists.
Scenario 2: Biology
One day you meet a student watching a wasp drag a paralyzed grasshopper down a small hole in the
ground. When asked what he is doing, he replies, ‘‘I’m watching that wasp store paralyzed grasshoppers
in her nest to feed her offspring.’’
1. Which of the following is the best description of his reply?
a. He is not a careful observer.
b. He is stating a conclusion only partly derived from his observation.*
c. He is stating a conclusion entirely drawn from his observation.
d. He is making no assumptions.
2. Which of the following additional observations would add the most strength to the student’s reply in
question 1?
a. Observing the wasp digging a similar hole
b. Observing the wasp dragging more grasshoppers into the hole

288 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
c. Digging into the hole and observing wasp eggs on the paralyzed grasshopper*
d. Observing adult wasps emerging from the hole a month later
3. Both of you wait until the wasp leaves the area, then you dig into the hole and observe three
paralyzed grasshoppers, each with a white egg on its side. The student states that this evidence
supports his reply in question 1. Which of the following assumptions is he making?
a. The eggs are grasshopper eggs.
b. The wasp laid the eggs.*
c. The wasp dug the hole.
d. The wasp will return with another grasshopper.
4. You take the white eggs to the biology laboratory. Ten days later, immature wasps hatched from the
eggs. The student states that this evidence supports his reply in question 1. Which of the following
assumptions is he making?
a. The wasp dug the hole.
b. The wasp stung the grasshoppers.
c. The grasshoppers were dead.
d. A paralyzed grasshopper cannot lay an egg.*
Whether you use this type of multiple-choice
item or the standard kind, these are the plusses and
minuses and, if you or your students write them, the
best practices in constructing them:
Advantages
• Easy and quick to grade
• Reduces some of the burden of large classes
• Can assess knowledge, comprehension, applica-
tion, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation and do
so more efficiently than constructed response
questions
• Useful as a diagnostic tool since students’
wrong choices can indicate weaknesses and mis-
conceptions
• Familiar to students
Disadvantages
• Difficult and time-consuming to construct
• Can be ambiguous to students
• Encourages students to find the correct answer by
process of elimination
Construction
• Estimate one to two minutes for students to an-
swer each question.
• Address one problem or concept per question.
• Strive for clarity and conciseness; avoid wordiness.
• Include in the stem any words that may repeat in
the response alternatives.
• Avoid lifting phrases directly from your lecture or
the readings and reducing the thinking required to
simple recall.
• Still, use familiar language that is similar to what
you and the readings have used to explain the ma-
terial.
• Make no, not, never, none, and except stand out by
italicizing, bolding, and underlining them.
• Write the correct response first, then the dis-
tractors.
• One way to develop the distractors is by juggling
the elements of (or the variables in) the correct
response. For example, if you have students inter-
pret a table from which they should conclude that
more industrialized nations have lower birthrates

Constructing Summative Assessments 289
and infant mortality rates than less industrialized
nations, the elements (or variables) are a nation’s
degree of industrialization, birthrate, and infant
mortality rate. You can mix these variables
together in an assortment of ways. You might also
use other variables that students often confuse
with the elements—for instance, population
growth, which some students mistakenly equate
with birthrate.
• Make all responses equally plausible and attractive.
Absurd options only make guessing easier.
• Make all responses grammatically parallel and
about the same length.
• Present the options in some logical order, alpha-
betical or chronological, to reduce the possibility
of cuing students or falling into a pattern.
• Avoid grammatical cues to correct answers.
• Use three to five responses per item—six at the
outside.
• Make sure each item has only one correct or
clearly best response. Questions with multiple
correct answers confuse students (but see the
“Multiple True-False” section next).
• Incorporate graphics where appropriate.
• If you want to use “none of the above” or “all
of the above,” use it liberally, not just when that
answer is correct. These options discriminate the
more from the less knowledgeable students; even
the “all of the above” option makes an item more
challenging to students (Huang, Trevisan, & Stor-
fer, 2007).
Scenario-based or simulation-like multiple-
choice items (or interpretive exercises) have a few
additional construction guidelines:
• Give students prior practice in interpreting the
types of stimuli you put on the test and in
performing the cognitive operations each item
requires.
• Minimize interlocking items—that is, items that
responding to correctly requires having responded
correctly to previous items in the series.
• Longer and more complex stimuli should yield a
longer series of multiple-choice questions.
• If you start looking for good stimuli, you will find
them; they are all around you.
• Be creative with the stimuli and use different
kinds.
Multiple True-False
Perhaps the least used, least known, and yet statis-
tically strongest objective test question is the multi-
ple true-false item. Like a multiple-choice item, it
has a stem and a list of responses, and it may (or
may not) involve interpreting a stimulus. But stu-
dents do not select one right response; they decide
whether each option is true or false in relation to the
stem. Therefore, a multiple true-false item is flexible
enough to accommodate multiple correct answers.
Here is an example with the true and false responses
marked:
When constructing a completion (fill-in-the-blank) test item, it is recommended that you:
T 1. Allow thirty seconds to one minute for students to answer each item.
F 2. Locate the word(s) to fill in at the beginning of the sentence, not in the middle or at the end of it.
F 3. Vary the length of the fill-in lines according to the length of the correct answer.
T 4. Omit only significant words from the sentence to complete.
Note that a single stem, one multiple true-false
item, presented four decision points—two incorrect
distractors and two correct responses. In essence, it
created four separate objective items, and it did so
very efficiently using no more words than for one
item. With ten stems, then, you can easily generate
forty to fifty items, and a test with fifty items is much
more reliable than one with only ten. In summary,

290 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
multiple true-false items are more flexible, more ef-
ficient, and more reliable than multiple-choice and
most other objective test items (Ebel, 1978; Frisby &
Sweeney, 1982).
Multiple true-false items share a great deal with
true-false and multiple-choice questions in terms
of their advantages, disadvantages, and construction
guidelines. However, they have a few of their own:
Advantages
• Superior flexibility, efficiency, and reliability
• Easier and quicker to develop a multiple true-false
test than a multiple-choice test
• Adds challenge and eliminates process-of-
elimination thinking
Disadvantage
• One faulty stem undercuts the value of multiple
items.
Construction
• Take extra care to write clear, concise, unambigu-
ous stems.
• Be sure the distractors are clearly true or false in
relation to the stem.
• Consider allowing students to write a rebuttal to
your marking their answer wrong for a small per-
centage of the items.
Short Answer
Instructors typically use a short-answer question to
test recall, comprehension, or application. Given its
length limitation, it does not allow students to con-
struct or justify a deeply considered response.
Advantages
• Easy to construct
• Can assess recall, comprehension, and application
• Requires a command of vocabulary or problem-
solving skills
• Very useful as a diagnostic tool
• Encourages instructors to give students individual
feedback
Disadvantages
• Time-consuming to grade given the amount of
knowledge usually tested
• Difficult to standardize grading due to variability
across answers
Construction
• Estimate two to five minutes per item.
• Be very specific and concise in identifying the task
that students are to perform. See the advice be-
low for constructing essay questions and writing
assignments.
• Use familiar language that is similar to what you
and the readings have used to explain the material.
• Indicate whether diagrams or illustrations are
required or are acceptable in place of a written
answer.
• Require students to show their work for full credit
on problems.
• Leave an appropriate amount of space for the
answers. Too much space invites students to write
too much.
CONSTRUCTED RESPONSE
INSTRUMENTS: ESSAY QUESTIONS
AND WRITING ASSIGNMENTS
A constructed response instrument is an interroga-
tory statement (a question) or an imperative state-
ment (a task description) that an instructor composes
to assess student achievement of one or more learn-
ing outcomes. The responses are student structured
and written in multiple complete sentences, and each
is uniquely original or at least different from each
other. In addition, the question or task has multiple
respectable answers or responses that only a specialist
in the subject matter can fairly assess. Stalnaker (1951)
proposed this strict definition for essay questions, but
it applies just as well to good writing assignments.
For our purposes here, let’s use the term writing
assignment to cover any assignment with a significant
writing component, even one that incorporates other

Constructing Summative Assessments 291
media. Therefore, the term includes a video produc-
tion if it has a script and a multimedia e-portfolio if it
integrates reflection. If you drop Stalnaker’s require-
ment for multiple complete sentences, even complex
graphics, such as concept maps, mind maps, and con-
cept circle diagrams (see Chapter Twenty-Six), can
qualify as essay questions or writing assignments.
Constructed response instruments, especially es-
say tests, have been misnamed “subjective” (as op-
posed to “objective”). This poorly chosen descriptor
makes a mockery of professional judgment and gives
students the mistaken impression that faculty have no
clear standards for evaluating their written work. We
do have standards, of course, but they often do not
boil down to a dualist right or wrong answer. More-
over, each of us may prioritize different criteria on
given essay questions and assignments. This is why
we should explain our grading criteria and standards
to students at the same time we talk about the test or
the assignment (see Chapter Thirty-One).
By Stalnaker’s (1951) strict definition, an essay
must demand higher-order thinking; it cannot ask
students merely to regurgitate material from class or
the readings, even in their own words. By extrapola-
tion, an application question or task must use prob-
lems, cases, diagrams, graphs, data sets, and the like
that the students have not seen before. Therefore, this
set of questions does not constitute an essay question,
let alone a good writing assignment: “What are the
six major capital budgeting techniques? Define them
(you need not give their formula). Under what two
categories are they normally grouped? Categorize all
six techniques.” Every introductory finance textbook
supplies the answers to these questions. This next set
is less clear: “What is the difference between exper-
imental research and survey research? What do they
have in common?” If the course addressed exper-
imental research and survey research independently
and never drew comparisons or contrasts between the
two methods, then this set indeed qualifies as an essay
question or a suitable writing assignment.
Even with the time-saving grading methods
that Chapter Thirty-One recommends, constructed
responses take more time and effort to grade than do
objective test items. You must interpret your students’
sometimes rambling thoughts, distracting grammar
and spelling, and confusing punctuation, and then
evaluate variable content. So you should be efficient
in your use of essay tests and writing assignments.
You need use them only when the learning outcomes
you are assessing indicate higher-order thinking that
requires construction, as opposed to selection, of an
answer. (Even in this case, you can assign a graphic
like a concept or mind map for some tasks.) If your
outcome allows students either to construct or to
select the answer, then you have your choice of an
essay test question, a writing assignment, or one or
more objective test items. If your outcome calls only
for selection, then you might as well use objective test
items (Reiner, Bothell, Sudweeks, & Wood, 2002).
Essay questions and writing assignments share
most of the same advantages, disadvantages, and con-
struction guidelines, which are listed below. Those
that apply only to essay test questions are marked
with a †.
Advantages
• Quick and relatively easy to construct (but specify
exactly what you want students to do, following
the guidelines in the next section)
• Encourages students to study in a deeper, more
integrated manner†
• Discourages last-minute cramming†
• Can assess all types of higher-order thinking
• Can assess students’ abilities to logically compose
and present an argument
• Can assess their reasoning skills (you get inside
their heads)
• Can assess them authentically—that is, on tasks
that they are likely to do in real-world work
• Can encourage creativity and originality
• Requires students to really know the material
• Gives practice in writing
• Makes cheating more difficult and reduces its
incidence†
• Encourages instructors to give students individual
feedback

292 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
• Varies the type of assessment from objective
tests (yet yields the same student rankings as
do multiple-choice tests, according to Jacobs &
Chase, 1992)†
Disadvantages
• More time-consuming to grade than objective
items (but see Chapter Thirty-One for ways to
cut that time)
• Difficult to standardize grading because of vari-
ability across answers as well as length of answers
(but see Chapter Thirty-One for ways to handle
the variability)
• Cannot test broad content with any one question†
• Penalizes students who read or work slowly, have
poor writing skills, or are nonnative English
speakers
• Can mislead students if they do not understand
the verbs used in the questions or don’t read the
entire question very carefully
• Encourages grading protests if the scoring may
seem subjective, inconsistent, or unjustified (but
see Chapter Thirty-One for ways to nearly elimi-
nate protests)
• Easy to make a question or task too broad for stu-
dents to zero in on the answer
• Allows students to pick up credit for bluffing and
padding
• Produces poor, hasty writing, and students do not
learn to improve it†
Construction
• Specify exactly what you want the students to do,
following the guidelines in the next section.
• Estimate fifteen minutes to one hour per essay
question.†
• Put on the test your estimate of how long an an-
swer should take students, helping them budget
their time wisely.†
• Give the point value for each essay.†
• Give several shorter essay questions rather than
one or two long ones. This strategy covers more
material and spreads the risk for students.
• Consider giving students a choice among several
essay questions. Having options lowers their anxi-
ety and lets them show you the best of what they
have learned.
• If you let students choose among several questions,
limit their choices—for example, to five out of
seven options rather than five out of ten.
Making Essay Questions and Writing
Assignments Specific Enough
Be specific and concise in describing the task you
want students to perform or the answer you expect
to the questions you ask. Identify the key points that
students should address. You might even specify the
cognitive operations and the general content that
students should use in their responses. Rather than
beginning a question with an interrogative pronoun
such as why, how, or what, start with a descriptive
verb (see Chapter Thirty for a list of common test
and assignment verbs and their definitions) and state
exactly how elaborate the answer should be and, to
an extent, how it should be organized (Reiner et al.,
2002)—for instance: “Describe three ways that social
integration could break down in the modern world,
according to Durkheim. Then assess how closely each
one applies to the United States today.”
All you have to do is to decide exactly how you
would like an excellent answer to read. Then you
can transform a vague question like, “What were the
causes of the collapse of the Ming dynasty?” into a
well-defined, multistage task:
Select three key causes of the collapse of the Ming dynasty, and decide which was most important,
which was second in importance, and which was last in importance. Write a paragraph on each cause,
not only describing its impact on the Ming dynasty, but also arguing why you rank-order it as you do.
Explain any interrelationships that exist among the causes.

Constructing Summative Assessments 293
By incorporating the proper procedure to fol-
low, the instructions reinforce students’ understanding
of historical interpretation and analysis while assess-
ing their ability to do it. Similarly, the rudderless task,
“Explain Shakespeare’s view of women as reflected in
his plays,” can be elaborated into a review of basic
literary analysis:
Pick three of Shakespeare’s plays that feature women in major roles, and analyze these characters to
identify four patterns in his views of women. Consider not only what these female characters do and say
but also what other characters do and say to them.
If the content lends itself, it is also an excellent
strategy to situate an essay question or writing assign-
ment in a novel (but not foreign) problem (Reiner
et al., 2002). Problem-focused assessment gives stu-
dents practice in real-world application and for this
reason is authentic. You can take a theoretical task
such as, “Explain how a nurse should handle a per-
son who threatens suicide,” and place it in a realistic
situation:
In the emergency department, a patient tells the nurse that he plans to commit suicide and agrees
to a voluntary admission to the psychiatric unit. What specific issues should the nurse discuss with
the patient when he asks, ‘‘How long do I have to stay there?’’ (Adapted from http://findarticles.com
/p/articles/mi qa3689/is 200408/ai n9444981.)
The last example of an essay question or writ-
ing assignment that needs and gets a makeover asks
students to perform a low-level and vaguely stated
task: “Summarize the most important trends in social
inequality that we have seen in the United States since
the 1960s.” The revision assumes that students can
perform this low-level task and requires that they an-
alyze and synthesize that knowledge in a new way to
address a contemporary real-world paradox:
Recall the trends in social inequality that we have seen in the United States since the 1960s. Also
recall that during this time (1) the relationship between educational and income attainment has been
consistently positive and (2) educational attainment has increased. Then how is it possible that the
distributions of income and wealth have become more polarized over this time period? Resolve
this apparent contradiction, taking into account other major determinants of income, the role of the
occupational structure, and the type of economy in the United States.
With direction, organization, and hints in the
instructions, you can equip your class to perform truly
high-order cognitive operations. But do remember
that you have to give your students plenty of prior
practice in the types of thinking you ask them to do
in graded assessments. If you identify these types of
thinking from the start in your learning outcomes,
you will be able to select and implement the teach-
ing formats, methods, and moves that will create the
learning experiences to give your students the practice
they need.
If you want to use an essay question or give
a writing assignment that students may view as
controversial or value based, do assure them in

294 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
advance that you will assess their work strictly on
the validity of their arguments, the strength of their
evidence, or the quality of their presentation—not
the opinion or viewpoint they express. Be sure to
incorporate whatever grading dimensions you define
in your grading rubric (see Chapter Thirty-One).
Ideas for Good Essay Questions
and Writing Assignments
For a little inspiration, consider how you might adapt
these general ideas for engaging essay questions and
writing assignments to your course material:
• Discuss the relevance of course material to a life
decision.
• Argue against a position you believe in.
• Set the conditions under which a relationship or
concept does and does not apply.
• What if (a specific change occurs, time or
place shifts, or an assumption is violated)? Would a
relationship still hold? How would it be changed?
• Push an idea to its limits, to the point of absurdity.
• Determine whether a problem can or cannot be
solved given available information.
• Separate relevant from irrelevant information to
solve a problem.
• Break a problem into subproblems.
• Explain a specific complex phenomenon to a
twelve year old.
• Design a study to test a relationship.
• Consider why a relationship may be causal or
spurious.
• Suggest reasons that different research studies may
obtain different results.
• Design a study to reconcile different results across
different studies.
• Imagine you are a with the following
problem to solve: . Draw on course
material to structure an approach to the problem
or to propose a solution.
• Design a society, government, private or public
organization, or funding agency to accomplish a
certain purpose.
TESTS AND ASSIGNMENTS:
THE ULTIMATE TEACHING
EVALUATIONS
The time and effort invested in writing a good test or
assignment are not without reward. It is heartening
to see your students perform well on a challenging
task or to receive a compliment on the task from a
student. Both indicate that your test or assignment
was a worthwhile learning experience as well as a fair
evaluation.
But even more important, the tests and assign-
ments you design are the most important instruments
you have for assessing your teaching effectiveness.
For your sake as well as your students’, they should
measure what you set out to teach. Student, peer, and
self-evaluations are other instruments, and student
opinions of your success generally carry the most
weight. But they merely take the place of the only
real teaching evaluation, which is how much students
have learned.
In the best of all possible educational worlds,
each major exam would be tested to ensure high
reliability and validity, and each assignment would
be reviewed and enhanced by your peers. Then
student performance would be used to evaluate
the instructor’s teaching success relative to other
instructors teaching the same course. Of course,
such an ideal could come to pass only if faculty
could agree on standardized learning outcomes, con-
tent, assignments, and testing instruments for each
course—a notion that goes against academic freedom
and autonomy. Still, how well your students perform
on summative assessments is the best data you can use
for your personal self-assessment of your teaching.

C H A P T E R 30
Preparing Students for Tests
R
ecall your undergraduate days. Did you ever
experience anxiety or a sense of dread when
your professors announced an exam? Did you
ever walk into a test feeling pretty well prepared, only
to freeze when you saw the first question? Did you
ever leave an exam thinking that you aced it, only
to be sorely disappointed in your grade? If even one
of these situations rang true, you can probably em-
pathize with some of the emotions your students are
experiencing now.
The first question you usually hear when you
announce an upcoming exam is, “What will be on
the test?” While this is not a valid question, another
common query, “What will the test format be?” is
perfectly valid. We’d like to believe that students will
perform well on any type of test with adequate study.
But different types of exams call for different types
of study strategies, and most students learn based on
how they are tested (Wergin, 1988). Factual mem-
orization for a recall-oriented objective test takes a
different kind of study effort from that for analyses of
problems or situations. It is that latter type of study-
ing that helps students develop critical thinking skills,
and they need experience in the higher cognitive pro-
cesses of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. In fact,
students perform better on the multiple-choice por-
tion of a test if they know there will be an essay
question on it (Drake, 2009). In other words, studying
to use higher-order thinking on a test better prepares
a learner to perform whatever level of cognitive op-
eration is required. Of course, multiple-choice items
can call for much more thought than just recall and
comprehension.
TEST PREPARATION MEASURES
If we accept that tests can be instruments of instruc-
tion as well as evaluation, then preparing students to
perform well on tests is also an excellent teaching
strategy. Here are some easily implemented ways to
help students get ready for exams.
295

296 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Reading and Review Strategies
You begin preparing your students for tests from the
very first day by teaching them proven techniques for
taking notes on your lectures and class activities, pro-
vided in Chapter Twelve, and for reading academic
material effectively, given in Chapter Twenty-Three.
Of course, students should review the relevant
readings and their notes before a test. More than
80 percent of the studies conducted on reviewing
lecture notes find that the activity enhances test
performance (Bligh, 2000). But just reading notes
over, even multiple times, will not help much for
the test. As research cited in Chapter Twenty-Three
indicates, the quickest, most efficient, and most
effective way to study written material, at least for
factual and problem-solving tests, is “active recall”
or the 3R (read-recite-review) strategy (McDaniel,
Howard, & Einstein, 2009; Roediger & Karpicke,
2006). According to this method, students read a
section of their text or notes, then put the material
away, recite aloud as much as they can remember, and
finally reread the section. In addition to reinforcing
their reading by restating and hearing the material,
students practice retrieval with self-testing, which is
exactly the skill they will need during the test.
Study Groups
Several of the chapters in this book point out how
groups facilitate learning. Study groups that meet
regularly outside class are also very helpful (Hufford,
1991; Treisman, 1986). Since member commitment
can make or break them, consider formalizing them
by having students sign up for such groups early in
the term. Then distribute a list of all the groups with
their members’ names and contact information.
Review Sheets
This study aid helps many students prepare for a test,
especially first-year and second-year students who do
not yet know what college-level assessment involves.
You can make a review sheet as simple as a list or
outline of important topics that you have emphasized,
but this alone will not tell students how to study this
content.
Students gain much more from a sample test or
a list of review questions. These questions should mir-
ror your student learning outcomes and represent the
variety of item formats that will appear on the test.
If you plan to use some factual and terminological
multiple-choice questions on the test, then put some
of those items on the review sheet. If you intend to
test analysis and synthesis, develop some questions that
require those same cognitive operations. This method
demands much more of your time and effort because
you do not want to duplicate the sample items on the
real test. But it is highly effective, and you can draw
appropriate items from previous tests.
Perhaps the best option for students is what is
called a “test blueprint” (Questionmark Corporation,
2000; Suskie, 2004), and it can also help you design
a test that assesses your students’ achievement of your
outcomes. So have your syllabus and outcomes map
handy. To make a test blueprint, begin by listing all the
major content areas that your test will address; then
designate their relative importance by the percentage
of the test (or number of points) to be devoted to each
area. Within each content area, write down what
you want students to be able to do or demonstrate,
using action verbs and avoiding internal-states verbs
such as know, understand, realize, and appreciate (see
Chapter Two). These statements should reflect your
student learning outcomes, though perhaps on a more
microlevel than in your syllabus or outcomes map.
Finally, allocate points or items across these outcome
statements according to how central they are in this
part of the course. In other words, instead of just list-
ing concepts for students to “know,” tell them more
specifically that, for instance, they should be able to
recognize the definitions, purposes, and examples of a
list of concepts and be able to reproduce a given list
of principles. Then let these statements serve as the
blueprint for your test questions.

Preparing Students for Tests 297
Review Sessions
About three-quarters of the students say that they
want a pretest review session (Mealy & Host, 1993),
so you may want to schedule one during a class or
outside class, as do many instructors. But it is likely
to work well only if students have already made sig-
nificant progress in their independent or small-group
studying. Therefore, you should make it clear that you
will not be summarizing the past few weeks of lec-
tures and readings or dispensing the answers to the
review questions.
The most productive way to conduct a review
session is to insist that students come prepared to ask
specific questions on the material and answer any re-
view questions on their own. With respect to their
questions, always ask the class for answers before an-
swering them yourself. With respect to the review
questions, have the entire class participate in brain-
storming and refining the answers, and assign different
questions to small groups and have them develop and
orally present their answers. Invite other students to
evaluate the group’s answers, and then offer your own
assessment.
Chapter Twelve describes another version of this
format called pair/group and review, in which stu-
dent pairs or small groups develop answers to review
questions, after which you randomly select a few of
them to present their answers to the class. You then
mock-grade them and explain your assessment crite-
ria or, better yet, have the rest of the class mock-grade
the answers to help students learn how to assess their
own work.
One more variation, this one tailored to an
essay test, is the question shuffle (Millis, 2005).
Students attending the review session must bring in
two essay questions, each on an index card, that they
think would be appropriate for the test. They pair
off, review their four questions, and select the best
two. Then all the pairs circulate for a few moments,
shuffling their two cards among other pairs. From
the two questions they wind up with, the pairs select
one to answer, and each student writes out an answer
within a time period that replicates what the test will
allow for such a question. This activity furnishes a
test-taking rehearsal, which generally reduces anxiety
and enhances performance. The students in each pair
compare and evaluate their different approaches to
the question, giving them practice in critical think-
ing. As time permits, you can repeat the “shuffle.”
You can then collect the questions (and responses)
and use the best ones on the test. Not only does this
review exercise supply you with an already-vetted
test (or discussion) question bank, but it also serves
as a classroom assessment technique (see Chapter
Twenty-Eight), informing you about your students’
understanding of the material to be tested and
possibly giving you the chance before the test to clear
up their misconceptions and help them improve their
essay writing (Millis, 2005).
Help Sessions or Course Clinics
This measure takes the review session one step further
by establishing weekly meetings of one or more hours
during which you or your teaching assistant answers
questions. A regularly scheduled meeting motivates
students to keep up with the course and not wait un-
til the last minute to cram for a test. It also reduces
stress by encouraging students to study without the
impending threat of an exam.
Definitions of Key Test Terms
Students, especially in their first year, often do poorly
on tests because they are not exactly sure what a
question, especially an essay question, is asking them
to do. They do not know what the verb designating
the task means, at least not the way we use the verb.
This sometimes explains why some students fail to
follow directions. So it may be safest to provide them
with written definitions of common test verbs,
along with review questions that give them practice
in the cognitive operations. Therefore, consider shar-
ing the definitions below with your classes (Anderson
& Krathwohl, 2000; Ellis, 2006; Lacey-Casem, 1990;
Moss & Holder, 1988; Reiner, Bothell, Sudweeks, &
Wood, 2002):

298 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
• Analyze: Break something down into parts, such
as a theory into its components, a process into its
stages, or an event into its causes. Analysis involves
characterizing the whole, identifying its parts, and
showing how the parts interrelate.
• Assess/criticize/critique/evaluate: Determine or
judge the degree to which something meets
or fails to meet certain criteria. If not provided
in the question, develop criteria for making
judgments.
• Categorize/classify: Sort into major, general
groups, or types that you name or identify.
• Compare/contrast: Identify the important sim-
ilarities and differences between two or more
elements in order to reveal something significant
about them. Identify similarities if the command
is to compare and differences if it is to contrast.
• Create/devise: Put together, organize, or reorga-
nize elements to make a new approach, product,
process, or solution.
• Defend/justify: Give good reasons to support a
position, and explain how or why something hap-
pened.
• Define/identify: Give the key characteristics by
which a concept, thing, or event can be under-
stood. Place it in a general class; then distinguish
it from other members of that class.
• Describe: Give the characteristics by which an ob-
ject, action, process, person, or concept can be
recognized or visualized.
• Develop: Create, elaborate on, or make more ef-
fective, detailed, or usable.
• Discuss/examine: Debate, argue, and evaluate the
various sides of an issue.
• Explain/justify: Give the basic principles of or
reasons for something; make it intelligible. Expla-
nation may involve relating the unfamiliar to the
more familiar.
• Generate: Think up, devise, or brainstorm good
ideas or alternatives.
• Infer: Logically conclude on the basis of what is
known.
• Interpret/explain: State what you think the author
or speaker of a quotation or statement means,
and why.
• Illustrate: Use a concrete example to explain or
clarify the essential attributes of a problem or con-
cept, or clarify a point using a diagram, chart,
table, or other graphic.
• List/enumerate: Give the essential points one by
one, in a logical order if applicable. It may be help-
ful to number the points.
• Outline/review/state: Organize a description un-
der main points and subordinate points, omitting
minor details and classifying the elements or main
points.
• Predict: Infer from facts, trends, or principles what
will happen in the future.
• Propose: Suggest or present for consideration.
• Prove/validate: Establish that something is true
by citing factual evidence or giving clear, logical
reasons.
• Summarize: Briefly restate the main points.
• Synthesize: Put together elements in a new way
so as to make a novel theory, approach, product,
process, or solution.
• Trace: Describe the course or progress of a phe-
nomenon, trend, or development.
ANXIETY-REDUCTION MEASURES
Moderate anxiety is normal before a major test and
indeed can motivate and energize students. From
their review of the test anxiety literature, Mealy
and Host (1993) identified three types of anxious
students. Those of the first type lack adequate study
skills and are aware of the problem; they are not well
prepared for exams and worry about performing
poorly. The second group comprises students who
have adequate study strategies but become severely
distracted during a test. Other research confirms these
two categories of anxious students (Naveh-Benjamin,
McKeachie, & Lin, 1987). The final type consists
of students who mistakenly believe that they have
adequate study skills but do poorly on exams, then
wonder what the problem could be. They may blame
instructors and “unfair exams” for their falling short
of their high expectations.

Preparing Students for Tests 299
Mealy and Host (1993) also asked students how
an instructor can affect their anxiety before, during,
and after a test. They received four kinds of responses:
1. Seventy-five percent of the students want their in-
structor to conduct some kind of review before
the test and are less anxious after attending one.
They feel more confident if they are sure they
have correct information in their notes.
2. Students become stressed when their instructor
tells them that the test will be hard. They do not
mind a challenging exam, but they want to hear
how they should study, followed by some words
of reassurance.
3. Most students get nervous when their instructor
walks around the room during a test and looks
over their shoulders. While this may keep cheating
in check, it also raises the anxiety of stress-sensitive
students.
4. Many students resent interruptions during a test.
Even if their instructor breaks in just to correct or
clarify an exam item, it throws off their train of
thought.
In summary, taking measures to prepare your
students for tests, such as providing quality review
sheets and review sessions, along with building their
self-confidence and minimizing test interruptions, will
help allay their test anxiety. So will these actions:
• Have your test schedule written in your syllabus,
and stick to it.
• Have in your syllabus a clear grading system and
your policies on missed quizzes and tests.
• Consider dropping your students’ lowest test or
quiz score from your final grade calculations;
anyone can have a bad day or a legitimate reason
for missing a class.
• Test frequently, reducing the relative weight of each
test so that one poor performance will not cost stu-
dents dearly.
• Tailor your tests to the time allotted. If it takes
you so many minutes to complete one of your
tests, figure that it will take your students three
times as long. Not being able to finish a test
discourages students, even if you tell them they are
not expected to finish it.
• Teach students relaxation techniques, such as deep
breathing, counting to ten, and visualizing a suc-
cessful test session (Ellis, 2006; Hebert, 1984).
Occasionally you may have a student for whom
test anxiety is a debilitating problem. Refer this indi-
vidual to your institution’s counseling center, as you
should for other emotional and psychological prob-
lems, or the learning skills and academic assistance
center.
WHAT THE EFFORT IS WORTH
Taking measures to prepare your students for a test is
one way to ensure that they review, synthesize, and
retain the material. Some of these measures can also
help you better plan and organize a test so that it as-
sesses exactly what you want to assess. Whatever else
you can do to reduce your students’ test anxiety al-
lows them to better demonstrate their actual learning
and gives you a more valid assessment of their under-
standing. It is only by seeing their honest achievement
that you can appraise how successful your teaching has
been. In your performance review, you may also want
to use some of your students’ tests to document your
teaching effectiveness, a topic addressed in Chapter
Thirty-Two.

C H A P T E R 31
Grading Summative Assessments
G
rading is a task you may view with dread
and disdain, as the vast majority of your col-
leagues do. But it furnishes essential feedback
to your students on their performance and, to a cer-
tain extent, to you on your teaching effectiveness. Of
course, grades cannot provide the whole picture on
your teaching because assessment standards vary radi-
cally across the academy and some students are unable
or unwilling to learn, no matter what you do.
THE MEANING OF GRADES
Historically, grading is a relatively new phenomenon
in the academy (Hammons & Barnsley, 1992). Yale
University was the first American institution to
assign grades, starting in 1783. To classify student
performance, faculty used Latin descriptors ranging
from the exceptional optime to the dismal pejores. In
1800, Yale adopted a numerical scale of 0 to 4, thus
initiating the grade point average. Later the College of
William and Mary adopted a similar scheme. In 1850,
the University of Michigan introduced a pass/fail
system that set the passing grade minimum at 50 per-
cent. In 1883, Harvard began using letter grades. This
system soon swept the country, but with tremendous
disagreement on the grade cut-off points. For in-
stance, Mount Holyoke established the failing grade
at 75 percent, while Michigan maintained the 50
percent standard. Interestingly, Harvard set the lowest
failing mark, just 26 percent. Higher education
eventually closed the discrepancies in the scale but
has otherwise made few major changes in this system,
except to add “plus” and “minus” modifiers, and not
at all institutions (Hammons & Barnsley, 1992).
Faculty, students, parents, and businesspeople
do not agree on the meaning of grades (Pollio &
Humphreys, 1988). For instance, when asked how
long the impact of receiving a C versus an A would
last, a full 53 percent of the faculty respondents
expected it would last at least two to five years. So
did a third of the parents and businesspeople. But
only 14 percent of the students surveyed agreed,
and 45 percent anticipated no impact at all. While
301

302 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
many students may not want to believe that grades
are important to their futures, one of your major
responsibilities is to evaluate their achievement and
assign grades accordingly. In addition, you are res-
ponsible for upholding the value of the grading
currency—that is, combating grade inflation. So it is
worth reviewing the level of performance each grade
represents:
• An A signifies an exceptional level of achievement.
The student displays a superb command of the
subject matter and can creatively apply it at many
different levels. A students tend to be committed,
motivated, and cognitively gifted.
• A B indicates a good but not outstanding level
of achievement. B students demonstrate a decent
grasp of the material and the ability to apply at
several but not all levels.
• A C represents a fair level of achievement. The
student shows some mastery of the material and a
narrow application range. This grade may indicate
poor study skills, a lack of motivation or interest,
or low ability. Some C students get by on their
decent test-taking skills.
• A D means that the student has little or no true
understanding of the subject area and may not be
motivated or able to learn it.
• An F denotes a performance below the level of
random chance. The student lacks interest, moti-
vation, or ability.
SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENTS AND
GRADING SYSTEMS
Summative assessment occurs at the end of a learning
process, which may occur after a section of a course
or at the end of the course. It typically follows
one of two basic grading systems (Hammons &
Barnsley, 1992; Ory & Ryan, 1993; Prégent, 1994;
Wergin, 1988): norm-referenced or criterion-
referenced grading.
Norm-Referenced Grading
The first type of summative grading system, com-
monly called grading on a curve, assesses each
student’s performance relative to all other students’
performances. Its relative nature gives it some serious
flaws. First, the more strictly that faculty implement
it, the more it places students in competition with
each other for class ranking. Therefore, you cannot
expect students to work cooperatively together in
graded group work. Second, it statistically assumes
a bell-shaped (“normal”) distribution of student
scores—a phenomenon that doesn’t always occur.
Third, the grades the system yields are unrelated
to any absolute performance standard. So if all
students in a class perform poorly, some inadequate
performances will receive an A anyway. Conversely,
in a high-achieving class, some good performances
will unjustly get a C.
Nevertheless, this system also has its strengths.
The best and worst performances set the parameters
within which other performances are judged, so an
instructor can give a very challenging test without
unduly lowering his students’ grades or an easy one
while still differentiating the quality of student per-
formance. It also ensures any class grade point average
an instructor considers reasonable, so it can combat
grade inflation.
In the past couple of decades, norm-referenced
grading has fallen into disfavor for at least a couple
of reasons. For one, higher education has widely em-
braced group work, and for another, it no longer aims
to screen out the low achievers. The retention rate has
replaced the attrition rate as an institution’s badge of
honor.
Criterion-Referenced Grading
This second type of grading system requires in-
structors to set absolute standards of performance
(grading criteria) in advance, giving all students sole
responsibility for their own grades. Compared to
norm-referenced, criterion-referenced grading better
serves the purpose of assessing how well students

Grading Summative Assessments 303
achieve given learning outcomes. It allows the pos-
sibility that all students will attain A’s or, conversely,
that all students will fail. In addition, it does not
discourage cooperation and collaboration among
students.
To be sure, criterion-referenced grading has
its drawbacks. In particular, it is difficult to develop
meaningful, valid standards for assigning grades based
on absolute knowledge acquisition (Ory & Ryan,
1993). Instructors who are unfamiliar with their
student population may have no idea how scores
will distribute on any given test or assignment. (As
the nightmare goes, all the scores cluster around
95 percent or all lag below 70.) But with more
experience, instructors learn how to design and grade
tests and assignments to differentiate performances.
THE QUALITIES OF A SOUND
GRADING SYSTEM
A sound grading scheme is accurate, consistent, and
valuable to learning. Larger classes require special
efforts to ensure these qualities, especially consistency.
Following these guidelines should enhance the
soundness of your grading system (Jacobs & Chase,
1993; Lacey-Casem, 1990; Ory & Ryan, 1993;
Walvoord & Anderson, 1998):
Accuracy
• A final course grade based on many and varied
assignments and tests
• Well-constructed quizzes and tests reflecting your
student learning outcomes (see Chapter Twenty-
Nine)
• Point values on tests that reflect the relative impor-
tance of the concepts, principles, and relationships
• Clear and unambiguous written instructions for
tests and assignments
• Grading keys and rubrics that, where appropri-
ate, allow the possibility of more than one correct
answer
• Validity across items, which means discarding an
objective test item that practically all the students
missed (see item analysis in Chapter Twenty-Nine)
• Grading standards appropriate for the level of your
students
Consistency
• Clearly written grading keys and rubrics for as-
sessing responses, particularly if multiple graders
are involved
• Consensus among multiple graders, which will
require discussion of problematic answers
• Maintenance of student anonymity to avoid grad-
ing biases
Learning Value
• Sharing studying, writing, problem-solving, and
test-taking techniques with your class
• Providing a grading rubric (defined in the next
section) before an essay test or the due date of a
writing assignment or a detailed grading key when
returning tests
• Going over your rubric with students to ensure
they understand it
• Supplying samples of exemplary work and helping
students understand what makes them excellent,
preferably before the essay test or due date
• For writing assignments, allowing students to
make revisions after providing formative assess-
ments on first drafts
• Commenting as generously as your time al-
lows, including on what the student did right
(Too many negatives are overwhelming and
counterproductive.)
• Making specific comments, not a cryptic “What?”
or “?”
• Identifying a few key areas for improvement, es-
pecially those emphasized in your grading rubric,
and specific remediation methods
• Directing comments to the performance, not the
student
• Reviewing exams when you return them so that
students understand what you wanted and how

304 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
they can improve their performance, with a focus
on frequently made errors
• Referring some students to your institution’s aca-
demic assistance center for special help
GRADING CONSTRUCTED
RESPONSES AND PAPERS
Grading answers to constructed response questions
requires considerable thought and strategy to ensure
accuracy and consistency within reasonable time
frames. You can choose from three popular grading
methods (Ory & Ryan, 1993; Rodgers, 1995;
Stevens & Levi, 2005; Suskie, 2004; Walvoord &
Anderson, 1998): atomistic, holistic, and analytical
grading.
Atomistic Grading
This grading technique follows a key. To develop one,
you first list the components of an ideal response or
paper, then allocate point values among the compo-
nents. As you read a student’s work, you mentally
check off the components on your list or write the
number of points earned next to the component on
the student’s work. You typically give partial credit to
an incomplete or partially correct answer. Then you
total the point values for the grade. This approach
helps inexperienced instructors become accustomed
to the quality range of student work and the grading
process.
This method is content focused and serves well
for grading tests and assignments that require only
knowledge or low-level comprehension and have
one correct response. It can also be used with criteria
that have fairly clear standards of right and wrong:
trueness to specified format, organization, quality of
data or evidence, logic of reasoning, style (sentence
structure, word choice, and tone), and mechanics
(grammar, punctuation, and spelling). You can easily
keep track of four or five dimensions and, if you
wish, give each a different point value or weight—for
example, twenty points for content, fifteen for
organization, ten for style, and five for mechanics,
for a total of fifty points. In terms of allocating points
on such criteria, this method resembles analytical
grading, addressed later in the chapter.
Do explain your general assessment dimensions
and their point values to your class in advance, per-
haps when you give the assignment or conduct a
review for the test. Your students need to know and
understand the criteria on which you will evaluate
their work.
Atomistic grading takes a great deal of time be-
cause it requires attention to minute detail and
because most instructors feel obligated to explain
what is wrong or missing on each student’s work. It
may be more efficient to show students a copy of the
key when returning the test or paper. While atomistic
grading seems highly objective, it still invites grading
protests and “point-mongering,” especially for partial
credit. It often involves hair-splitting the total point
value for a question into fractions for flawed answers.
If an instructor could be totally consistent in hair-
splitting points, students might not try to argue for a
point or two more. But student answers are unique,
and no key can cover every possible imperfection. In
addition, it is difficult to remember precisely how one
graded a similarly but not identically flawed response
twenty or thirty papers ago. Consistency across
multiple graders can also be difficult to maintain.
Perhaps a more serious weakness in atomistic grading
is its rigidity when applied to essays and assignments
that require higher-level thinking and have multiple
respectable answers. The key can quickly become
unruly if you try to lay out standards for grading
every possible acceptable response, and it may not
include all such responses.
Holistic Grading
Over the years, this method has been called global
grading and single impression scoring. As the name
implies, an instructor grades a student-constructed
response on her overall evaluation of its quality. The
technique is relatively quick, efficient, reliable, and
fair when backed by instructor experience, practice,
and familiarity with the student performance range
at the institution. In addition, it easily accommodates

Grading Summative Assessments 305
essays and assignments that demand higher-order
thinking and have multiple respectable responses.
With inductive holistic grading, which is
suitable for small classes, you read quickly through
all the responses or papers, rank each above or
below the ones you have already read, from best to
worst, and then group them for assigning grades.
Finally, you write up descriptions of the quality of
each group and give them to students when you
return their work. To personalize the feedback,
you can add comments to each student’s sheet or
highlight the most applicable parts of the appropriate
description. While the descriptions are customized to
the student products, this schema presents a couple
of problems. Because it relies on the instructor’s
comparative evaluations of students’ responses and
papers, it contains an element of norm-referenced
grading (curving). Moreover, students cannot know
in advance the dimensions on which their instructor
will assess their work.
With deductive holistic, grading, which is one
suitable for any size class, students do know in ad-
vance and in some detail how their work will be
evaluated. At the same time you compose the writing
assignment or essay question, you decide the four or
five dimensions on which you will assess the student
product. Four or five criteria are a reasonable number
to explain to your students and to remember while
you are grading. Furthermore, your students cannot
do their best on more than a handful of dimensions
at one time. We carry around in our heads twenty
or more criteria on which we judge scholarly work,
all of which come out when we read a journal ar-
ticle or book in our discipline. But students cannot
work on so many in one assignment or essay; they
don’t even know what all these criteria are. Besides,
it is unfair to them to critique their novice efforts on
the full array of professional dimensions, even if we
don’t expect high performance. So select just a few as
the most important skills for students to demonstrate
in any given piece of work, and forget the rest. You
can focus on other dimensions in other assignments
and essays.
Your relevant assessment criteria will vary ac-
cording to your discipline, the course level, the nature
of your material, and the task you are assigning. Here
are just some of the many possible options:
• Satisfying the assignment, following directions
(particularly salient for first-year students)
• Recall of facts, figures, definitions, equations, or
text material
• Proper use of technical terminology
• Demonstration of accurate understanding of the
materials and texts
• Proper references to texts and other sources
• Organization, conformity to the required organiz-
ing framework of format
• Precision of measurement, quality of data
• Specification of limits, qualifications to results, and
conclusions
• Clarity of expression or explanations
• Conciseness, parsimony
• Strength or tightness of arguments (internal con-
sistency, evidence, and logic)
• Mechanics (spelling, grammar, and punctuation)
• Writing style, as suitable to the discipline and as-
signment
• Creativity of thought, design, or solution
After choosing the criteria of interest, you then
write out descriptions of what the student product
will look like at the different levels of quality. If you
are assigning letter grades, you will describe the quali-
ties of A, B, C, D, and F work on the dimensions you
selected for the assignment or essay. If you are allocat-
ing points, you will describe the work for each point
or range of points. You might link words to the letter
grades or point ranges, such as exemplary, competent,
developing, and unacceptable. The document you gen-
erate is called a rubric, defined as an assessment and
grading tool that lays out specific expectations for an
essay or assignment (writing, speaking, multimedia,
and so on) and describes each level of performance
quality on selected criteria. In holistic grading, these
descriptions take the form of paragraphs in which
each sentence typically addresses a different dimension
in the rubric.

306 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
An example should clarify. Let’s say our as-
signment is to write a classic five-paragraph essay
arguing in favor of norm-referenced grading or
criterion-referenced grading, drawing on several
readings on the topic. Let’s assume our rubric focuses
on satisfying the assignment (with an emphasis on
following the classic five-paragraph essay format),
demonstrating an accurate understanding of the
readings, backing one’s argument with evidence from
the readings, and mechanics. The holistic rubric
would look like this:
• An A essay strictly follows the classic five-
paragraph essay format, stating the thesis (position)
in the first paragraph, providing evidence in each
of the next three paragraphs, and concluding with
a summary or synthesis. It consistently makes
appropriate and accurate references to the read-
ings. It also provides all the evidence available in
the readings to support its argument. Finally, it
contains no more than two spelling, punctuation,
or grammatical errors.
• A B essay follows the classic five-paragraph essay
format with no more than one minor deviation.
While generally accurate in referring to readings,
it shows a thin, incomplete, or shaky understand-
ing of some readings in a couple of places. It also
misses some parts of the readings that would lend
evidence to the argument. It contains no more
than several spelling, punctuation, or grammatical
errors.
• A C essay breaks significantly from the classic
five-paragraph essay format—perhaps failing
to state a clear position in the first paragraph,
mixing arguments across paragraphs, or closing
with a new argument or information. While it
refers to the readings, it demonstrates a spotty
or superficial understanding of them. It also
misses opportunities to use them for evidence.
It contains quite a few spelling, punctuation, or
grammatical errors, though not enough to make
parts of it incomprehensible.
• A D essay does not follow the classic five-
paragraph essay format—failing either to state a
clear position or to use the rest of the essay to
bring evidence from the readings to support it. It
demonstrates little understanding or knowledge
of the readings. In addition, it draws little relevant
evidence from them. The frequent errors in
spelling, punctuation, and grammar are distracting
or render the essay incomprehensible in places.
• An F essay fails to address the assignment in topic
or format, or the frequent errors in spelling,
punctuation, and grammar render the essay
incomprehensible, or it is not turned in.
Distribute copies of these performance descrip-
tions to your students along with the assignment
directions or review sheet (preferably a test blueprint,
as described in Chapter Thirty), and explain them
with examples. This way students will know to con-
centrate on the dimensions that are most important
to you and will understand the quality of work you
expect. To save paper and increase the odds that they
will study your rubric again, you might ask them to
attach the document to the product they hand in. (Of
course, this does not apply to electronic turn-ins.)
Then you need not hand back another copy with
their work.
When you grade the essays or papers, you
decide which performance description best fits the
work and write that grade on the paper or essay. That
is really all you have to do, and this can reduce your
grading time to a fraction of what atomistic grading
requires. The rubric explains the reasons for the
grade, although you should write personal comments
as well, as time permits.
The literature offers examples of holistic rubrics
written in paragraphs for many types of assignments:
letters (Montgomery, 2002); portfolios (Stevens &
Levi, 2005); oral presentations, class participation, and
journals (Baughin, Brod, & Page, 2002); essay tests
and Web page designs (Brookhart, 1999); and math-
ematical problem solving (Baughin, Brod, & Page,
2002; Benander, Denton, Page, & Skinner, 2000;
Montgomery, 2002). As these models demonstrate,
it is important not to abbreviate the descriptions of
the B, C, and D products because students are likely

Grading Summative Assessments 307
to focus only on the description of their own grade.
However, the description of F work may be briefer
because such serious shortcomings often transcend
the rubric.
This holistic approach shortchanges students
in one way, however: although the rubric provides
an overall rationale for each grade, it does not
furnish much feedback on the specific dimensions.
After all, it is quite possible, using the example
above, that a student’s paper might contain ele-
ments of two, three, or even more performance
levels—for example, following the organizational
format perfectly but demonstrating a poor un-
derstanding and use of the readings throughout
and containing a moderate number of mechanical
errors. In this case, a holistic description is of little
help to you or the student, especially as formative
feedback, and rarely does it incorporate strategies
for improvement. Of course, you can always write
personalized comments on each student’s work and
underline or highlight the salient qualities in the
performance quality descriptions. But then you may
sacrifice much of the efficiency and time-saving
advantages of holistic grading. As a result, many
instructors favor a synthetic approach that combines
some of the specificity of atomistic grading with
the efficiency and professional judgment involved in
the deductive holistic method.
Analytical Grading: The Effective
Synthesis of Atomistic and Holistic
This grading technique follows the procedures of
deductive holistic grading—focusing on four or five
assessment criteria, writing descriptions for each
performance level, and providing students with the
rubric in advance—and shares the advantage of
speed and efficiency. But rather than writing an
overall description of the student product for each
performance level, you write a brief description for
each performance level on each criterion, and you
assess the product not overall but independently on
each criterion. Then you either total or average
the points gained or the letter grades earned across
all the criteria to derive an overall grade. (Because
you are working across dimensions, a point system
may be easier.) This grading method certainly
requires you to write more descriptions than does
the holistic method—as many as the number of
performance levels times the number of criteria—and
you may find yourself writing more extensive or
specific descriptions. However, these furnish your
students more detailed instructions, expectations,
and feedback as well as clearer justification for your
assessment.
While you can write the descriptions in full
sentences and even paragraphs, you can also use more
succinct phrases. You can also display the rubric in
an easy-to-read matrix or table for clarity, listing the
assessment dimensions down the left side of the page
to define rows and the levels of performance, such as
possible numbers of points or letter grades, across the
top to create columns. The cells contain your descrip-
tions of the performance quality on each dimension.
For purposes of illustration, let’s return to that essay
assignment arguing in favor of norm-referenced grad-
ing or criterion-referenced grading and transform
the holistic rubric shown above into an analytical
one (Table 31.1). (Only holistic rubrics with well-
defined, consistent dimensions easily convert into an
analytical version.)
When you use your rubric to grade, first test it
out on three or four pieces of student work. While
you are ethically bound not to make substantive
changes, you may tweak it if needed. As you read a
student product, mark (underline, highlight, check,
star, or circle) the applicable phrases in the descrip-
tions on the student’s copy of the rubric. This grading
method accommodates the wide differences in a
student’s performance across criteria. Then either
calculate the point total or letter grade or eyeball it
from the distribution of your markings, and write
that in a discrete place on the student work. Add your
personalized comments on the work or the rubric
only as your time permits. If you have composed a
good rubric, you should not have much more to say.
Finally, return the work with the student’s copy of
the rubric.

308 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Table 31.1 Analytical Grading Rubric for a Hypothetical Essay Assignment
Grade Criteria A B C D F
Format Follows the classic
five-paragraph
essay format
strictly, stating
the thesis
(position) in the
first paragraph,
providing
evidence in
each of the next
three
paragraphs, and
concluding
with a summary
or synthesis
Follows the classic
five-paragraph
essay format
with no more
than one minor
deviation
Breaks
significantly
from the classic
five-paragraph
essay
format—failing
to state a clear
position in the
first paragraph,
mixing
arguments
across
paragraphs, or
closing with a
new argument
or information
Does not follow
the classic
five-paragraph
essay
format—failing
either to state a
clear position or
to use the rest
of essay to bring
evidence from
the readings to
support it
Fails to address the
assignment in
topic or format,
or frequent
errors in
spelling,
punctuation,
and grammar
render the essay
incomprehensi-
ble, or not
turned in
Command of
readings
Consistently
makes
appropriate and
accurate
references to
the readings
Generally accurate
in referring to
readings, but
shows a thin,
incomplete, or
shaky
understanding
of some
readings in a
couple of places
Refers to the
readings but
demonstrates a
spotty or
superficial
understanding
of them
Demonstrates little
understanding
or knowledge
of the readings
Evidence from
readings
Provides all the
evidence
available in the
readings to
support its
argument
Provides evidence
available in the
readings, but
misses some
parts that would
lend evidence
to the argument
Misses
opportunities to
use the readings
for evidence
Draws little
relevant
evidence from
the readings
Mechanics No more than
two spelling,
punctuation, or
grammatical
errors
No more than
several spelling,
punctuation, or
grammatical
errors
Quite a few
spelling,
punctuation, or
grammatical
errors, though
not enough to
make parts of it
incompre-
hensible
Frequent errors in
spelling,
punctuation,
and grammar
that are
distracting or
render the essay
incomprehensi-
ble in
places

Grading Summative Assessments 309
With a little experience, you will be able to
develop rubrics quickly and at the same time that you
design an assignment or write an essay test question.
For the latter use, you can prepare a generic rubric
that doesn’t give away the question. When students
can work on an assignment or study for a test with
the rubric in front of them, they are less likely to
explain away a poor performance with, “I didn’t
know what he wanted.” You will find more examples
of analytical rubrics in matrix/table form than any
other kind, and models are available for every
grading purpose. Look in the assessment literature
(for example, Baughin et al., 2002; Brookhart, 1999;
Leahy, 2002; Montgomery, 2002; Rodgers, 1995;
Stevens & Levi, 2005; Suskie, 2004; Walvoord &
Anderson, 1998) and on dedicated websites, such
as RubiStar (http://rubistar.4teachers.org), Teach-
nology (www.teach-nology.com/web tools/rubrics),
iRubric (www.rcampus.com/rubricshellc.cfm?mode
=gallery&sms=home&srcgoogle&gclid=CNSCsu3P
mZMCFQv sgodPBO xA), and Tech4Learning
(http://myt4l.com/index.php?v = pl&page ac =view
&type=tools&tool=rubricmaker). All of these sites
feature not just models but also rubric generators,
allowing you to create your own for specific assign-
ments. For many types of assignments, RubiStar, for
instance, offers a drop-down menu of appropriate cri-
teria to choose from. When you select a dimension,
it displays descriptions of four quality levels, which
you can then edit to your needs. While designed
primarily for and by K–12 teachers, most of the
models and generated rubrics apply to college-level
work with little or no modification. The next chapter
contains another example of an analytical rubric, and
this is one you can use to guide you in writing a
statement of your teaching philosophy.
GRADING LAB REPORTS
While this is a specialized kind of grading for a spe-
cialized kind of writing, all guidelines for grading
constructed responses still apply. The questions below
are also important to take into consideration across all
lab reports:
• How well does the student understand the prob-
lem, and how properly does she address it?
• How clearly does she state the hypothesis?
• How does she present the results? Does the pre-
sentation follow the instructions? Are all the results
included?
• How clear are the student’s logic and organization?
• How strong are her analytical skills in the results
and discussion?
• How solid is her grasp of the scientific method?
In lower-level science courses, you can help
your students write better lab reports by pro-
viding them with samples of quality scientific
writing—perhaps model lab reports from other
courses—to familiarize them with the proper format
and content. You can also have them organize
their reports with an outline or flowchart and
practice-write the various sections.
Another excellent way to help your students
produce good reports is to give them the grading
rubric in advance. Rodgers (1995) developed a
detailed analytical rubric, presented in an easy-
to-read matrix, to grade his students’ chemistry
lab reports. His rubric has a daunting twenty-one
assessment dimensions, but they fall within four
more general criteria—focus, appearance, content,
and structure—and have only three levels of point
allocations: 2, 4, and 6.
For example, under “focus,” Rodgers (1995,
p. 21) has nine dimensions:
1. Understanding experimental objectives
2. Abstract describes what was done and major
results
3. Unnecessary statements or observations in the pro-
cedure
4. Depth of introduction
5. Tone
6. Suggestions for improvement, further study in
conclusions
7. Effort to relate the experiment to other known
chemical principles
8. Shows detailed understanding of scientific method
9. Student distinguishes between a theory and
a proof

310 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
This many dimensions seems high, but many of
the cells have only one- or two-word descriptors—for
dimension 1, “very clear,” “demonstrated,” or “un-
sophisticated”; for dimension 7, “clear,” “vague,” or
“none”; for dimension 9, “yes,” “yes,” or “no.” Even
when the descriptor is considerably longer, it is very
easy to simply check, circle, or highlight the most
appropriate option. At the end, the grader totals the
points accumulated across all twenty-one dimensions
by calculating or eyeballing.
Rodgers (1995) recorded how long it took to
grade a lab report using his old atomistic method
versus his new method. He timed both himself and
his trained teaching assistants. The results were quite
startling. His previous grading technique required fif-
teen to twenty minutes per report, while the new
one took only three and a half minutes (for him) to
four minutes (for his teaching assistants) per report. In
other words, atomistic grading took four to five times
longer than analytical. Rodgers was pleased with the
reliability and overall grading results.
HOW TO GRADE MECHANICS
QUICKLY WHILE ENSURING
STUDENTS LEARN THEM
With any grading method involving multiple cri-
teria, be careful to distinguish among your various
evaluative dimensions. For example, try not to let
a poor grammatical construction devalue a good
idea—assuming, of course, you can decipher the
idea despite the construction. Still, because poor
mechanics can hide a good idea, you should con-
sider assessing your students’ spelling, grammar,
punctuation, sentence structure, and word choice
as a separate dimension. Many instructors decide to
avoid grading mechanics, even though they bemoan
their students’ writing—or perhaps because they do.
Those who have tried assessing writing will tell you
that it is a lost cause, that they spent laborious hours
copyediting their students’ work and their students
neither looked carefully at their corrections nor
improved their writing.
Indeed, grading mechanics this way is a lost
cause. Once you return an essay test or written
assignment with a grade on it, students will read the
rubric description associated with their grade and
your written comments but will give scant attention
to your copyediting, even if their poor mechanics
cost them points. Most of our scrawls make little
sense to them. Besides, the work already has a grade,
so what’s the point?
Happily, you can grade mechanics, and do it in a
fraction of the time it takes to copyedit the work, and
ensure that students learn some grammar, spelling,
punctuation, and sentence structure rules along the
way and use what they learn in their subsequent writ-
ing. When you make an assignment, tell students that
you will be grading their mechanics by choosing one
page from their work—but you will not tell them
which page in advance—to note their mechanical er-
rors. You determine how many errors on the page
will affect the grade in what ways and state that in
your rubric—for example, up to five errors merit
twenty points (total possible) for mechanics, five to
ten errors merit fifteen points, ten to fifteen errors
merit ten points, fifteen to twenty errors merit five
points, and more than twenty errors merit no points.
On that page, you will be placing a check mark at the
end of a line for every grammar, spelling, punctua-
tion, and sentence structure error in that line without
identifying what the error is or correcting it.
After returning the graded work to your
students, make the required follow-up assignment of
identifying and correcting all the mechanical errors
(or as many as students can) they have made on that
page to gain back a portion of the points they lost.
They will get credit only for accurate corrections.
Refer them to one or more English language or writ-
ing handbooks. (The Web has a variety of free ones,
including The Writing Handbook at www.lz95.org
/LZHS/wcenter/Handbook , World-English at
www.world-english.org/writing.htm, and the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center’s
Writer’s Handbook at http://writing.wisc.edu
/Handbook.) To motivate students to get the me-
chanics right the first time, give them only partial

Grading Summative Assessments 311
credit for each correction, certainly no more than
half the value of the points they lost. Instruct them to
make their corrections on the actual page of the paper
in a different color ink (or pencil) from black and the
color you used for grading. Give them three to four
days to complete this follow-up assignment. They will
learn their mistakes and how to correct them through
the process of discovery. When you collect these
corrected pages, you need only look at the number
of check marks you made in the margin and the cor-
rections made. Moreover, students will remember the
errors they identified, researched, and corrected and
will not want to repeat the same errors again. If on
the average they learn just a dozen new punctuation,
grammar, and sentence structure rules, that is a dozen
rules they otherwise would not learn at all.
In the next writing assignment, grade on me-
chanics the same way, selecting a different page for
noting mechanical errors. Chances are that you will
see fewer errors than before and, for each student,
different ones from those you marked before. This
time students will learn a few more rules for good
writing. With just a few writing assignments and a
modest amount of your time, your students will radi-
cally improve their writing.
Identify students who are not native English
speakers, and be more lenient in grading their work.
Note only the more important errors rather than
overwhelm them. If advisable, refer them to your
institution’s writing or academic assistance center
for individual help. In fact, refer any student with a
serious writing problem to such a center. Every col-
lege and university has a range of specialized campus
resources that can support you and your students;
they are well worth exploring (see Appendix).
OUTCOME-BASED GRADING
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, a few progressive
faculty experimented with a student-centered
alternative to traditional grading called “contract
grading.” At the beginning of the course, students
individually contracted or committed to complete
specific assignments during the term for a specific
final grade. Aside from the instructor’s logistic chal-
lenge of monitoring a different set of requirements
for each student, the system resulted in too many A’s
being given for subpar work and fell into disrepute.
However, a revised version of contract grading,
one more appropriately called “outcome-based
grading,” that overcomes the pitfalls of the original
has emerged and has been successfully adopted
by faculty across the disciplines (Codde, 1996; K.
Kegley, personal communication, February 17, 2005;
Leff, n.d.; Weimer, 2002). In this new version, the
instructor lays out the terms by which the students
will earn grades, which promotes high standards,
and assigns grades according to how well students
fulfill certain work requirements, as specified in the
syllabus or in assignment directions. In operational
terms, students receive grades based on the number
of assignments and often on the specific assignments
they complete at a satisfactory level by given due
dates. That is, they earn higher grades by jumping
more hurdles, presumably showing evidence of more
learning, or jumping higher hurdles, presumably
showing evidence of more advanced learning, or
jumping both more and higher hurdles. While
students must aim for a specific grade to decide how
much and which work they will complete, they wind
up with the final grade they earn during the term.
What about students who try to jump a hurdle
but for one reason or another fail to solve the prob-
lem, complete the assignment, or satisfy the require-
ments? In this case, they receive no credit for that hur-
dle. Because of the dire consequences of substandard
work, outcome-based grading requires you to define
exactly what jumping a hurdle means. That is, you
must write very specific assignment directions and
an up-or-down, one-level rubric for what acceptable
work entails—perhaps obtaining the correct answer
to a problem (and showing one’s work), answering a
list of questions, completing specific sections, writing
so many words or pages, or satisfying whatever cri-
teria will guide students to meet your expectations.
You might even recommend how many hours stu-
dents should put into a given assignment. Of course,

312 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
you may set the bar as high as you believe that your
students can reach, which can mean raising it—that
is, for example, making what you consider B work in
a traditionally graded course “acceptable,” rather than
C work. If you will grade an assignment on how ad-
vanced the level of learning a student demonstrates,
you must convey exactly what you mean by “more
advanced”—perhaps higher-order cognitive skills in
Bloom’s (1956) hierarchy, or higher-stage thinking in
Perry’s (1968) schema of undergraduate development,
or higher-step skills in Wolcott’s (2006) framework of
critical thinking.
This type of grading may sound rigid and harsh,
but it need not be. When students turn in unaccept-
able work for the first assignment, you can return
it to accustom students to this new grading system.
K. Kegley (personal communication, February 17,
2005) recommends building in flexibility with a token
system. Starting the course with three tokens, each
student can use one to revise and resubmit an
unacceptable assignment, to be absent from class
without penalty, or to obtain a one-day emergency
extension. She also offers rewards for still having
tokens at the end of the term, such as exempting the
final exam or adding points to course grade.
Enhanced with some flexibility, outcome-based
grading offers some advantages over traditional
grading (Codde, 1996; Hiller & Hietapelto, 2001;
K. Kegley, personal communication, February
17, 2005; Leff, n.d.; Warrington, Hietapelto, &
Joyce, 2003; Weimer, 2002). Being menu driven
and learner centered, students have choices about
whether to complete or not to complete at least
some assignments (and tests) or how much effort to
allocate to an assignment. Therefore, they are more
likely to see their grade as their own responsibility,
not as a punitive faculty action or a capricious
whim of the fates. This view should increase their
sense of internal locus of control as well as their
motivation because feelings of volition, choice,
and self-determination motivate people to pursue
a goal (Bandura, 1997; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000).
Furthermore, if the requirements for success are clear
to students, they should feel less anxious about their
grade, more oriented to learning, and freer to take
risks and be creative within the parameters of the
assignment (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). No wonder
most students prefer outcome-based to traditional
grading once they experience it.
RETURNING STUDENTS’ WORK
To protect students’ privacy, return their work in any
order except grading rank, and record points and
grades inside the test or paper—never where they
can be seen. Under the provisions of the Buckley
Amendment (the Family Educational Rights and
Privacy Act), it is illegal to publicly display scores or
grades with any identifying information, including
entire or partial social security numbers.
Grade and return tests and assignments as
promptly as you can; students cannot learn from
your feedback on a piece of work they have long
forgotten. Allow class time for review, questions,
and problem-solving exercises so students can learn
what they did not the first time. It is best not
to proceed to new material until students assure
you that they understand what they did wrong.
Some instructors give a statistical grading summary
showing the distribution of points, the class mean and
median, the standard deviation, and the cut-off lines
for grades (already built into the criterion-referenced
system). No doubt these data increase students’ inter-
est in elementary statistics, but they also encourage
“point mongering” around the cut-off lines.
This brings us to the unpleasant topic of grade
disputes. No matter how carefully you grade, a few
students will be dissatisfied with their scores. The
holistic and analytical grading methods discourage
(but do not prevent) such challenges because, unlike
atomistic grading, they rely heavily on professional
judgment, which is too sophisticated for most
students to debate against. Rule number one is never
to discuss a grade with an emotional student. Rather,
require him to cool off and to submit his case for a
grade change formally in writing (not by email) with
justifications citing specific material in the readings
or your lectures, within a time limit of forty-eight
to seventy-two hours. Students who cannot make a
case in two or three days probably do not have one.

Grading Summative Assessments 313
Alternatively, agree to regrade the entire test or paper,
which means you may find a grading error that does
not work in the student’s favor. Or agree to regrade
the item in question, but should you find no cause
for a point change, you will subtract the number of
points disputed. However you decide to respond to
grade challenges, clearly state your policy in your
syllabus and stick to it.
HELPING STUDENTS USE YOUR
FEEDBACK TO IMPROVE
The purpose of feedback is to help the recipient per-
form some skill better, yet it does not always succeed.
The section on grading mechanics describes a two-
stage assessment procedure that builds in motivation
for students to use your feedback. Unless you follow
up an assignment with another one that makes your
students examine and learn from their errors, you
should not assume that they will use your feedback
to improve their performance next time. So consider
having them write a summary of the feedback con-
tained in your rubric and comments, along with an
explanation of how they will use it to improve their
next assignment or essay test. This strategy has yielded
good results and will make the energy you put into
furnishing feedback worthwhile (Doyle, 2008).
Even with such a follow-up assignment, other
factors can undermine the value and impact of our
feedback (Falkenberg, 1996). For whatever reason, a
student may not be capable of meeting the higher
standards our feedback sets as a goal. If so, all the
feedback in the world will fail. A second possibility
is that a student may not agree with our performance
standards, in which case it falls on us to change her
mind. But can we? For instance, faculty and students
have quite different definitions of cheating and pla-
giarism and the stage at which they become unethical
(see Chapter Eight). Thus far, we have not found suc-
cessful ways to convince students to adopt our values.
Many students also believe that we should grade them
not just on performance but also on effort, and some
maintain they are entitled to an A just for showing up
in class or paying tuition. In this case, we can force our
standards, but have we gained converts? Another area
of disagreement is writing standards. Students who in
our view write poorly may argue that they have al-
ways written this way and have gotten good grades
and been understood by their friends. We can tell
them that the workplace will expect a writing style
closer to our criteria, but will they believe us? They
may also oppose our scientific perspectives on reli-
gious grounds, pitting our material against their years
of socialization. Rather than challenging their beliefs,
we may be able to persuade them to accept and com-
partmentalize science as a separate worldview.
Two other dynamics may explain why our feed-
back fails (Falkenberg, 1996). First, a student may
not correctly perceive our performance standards. For
example, we may counsel a student that he frequently
writes sentence fragments, but if he continues to write
them, he may not yet understand what a sentence
fragment is. We can overcome this barrier by clarify-
ing our standards in different words, providing more
models, or tutoring the student individually. Second,
a student may not correctly evaluate her performance
against our standards, and one of several reasons may
be behind it. If it is because of simple error, all we
need do is to supply additional feedback that gives
new information or an alternative interpretation. But
the block may represent ingrained error—that is, she
has been performing the skill wrong for so long that it
feels right to her. Even so, we can probably reach her
by furnishing more models and tutoring. However, if
the student is too immature to accept criticism or out
of touch with reality, there is really nothing we can do
(Falkenberg, 1996). This may explain the students we
have known who have cut classes, turned in failing
work, and refused our help.
When we can intervene, we should enlist other
students to help us. Often they furnish the additional
clarification, information, interpretation, models, and
even tutoring, especially when they work in small
groups to provide peer feedback on their drafts of as-
signments. We should also refer students to campus
resources such as the writing or the academic assis-
tance center.

314 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
THE REAL MEANING AND LIMITS
OF GRADES
In the best of all possible worlds, we would not give
grades at all. Rather we would furnish our students
with individual feedback on how to improve their
work. So we should keep grades in perspective
and see them for what they are: an institutionally
mandated shorthand used to screen, sanction, moti-
vate, and reward—with mixed results. What grades
cannot do is to inspire students to want to learn. That
admirable task is ours, and our success depends on
our teaching methods and moves, our motivational
strategies, our enthusiasm, our rapport with students,
and other qualities and behaviors that we examine in
the next and final chapter.

C H A P T E R 32
Evaluating and Documenting Teaching
Effectiveness
O
ver the past couple of decades, teaching
effectiveness has come to weigh more heavily
in the faculty review process, including tenure
and promotion decisions, in North American colleges
and universities. With this trend has come an increas-
ing emphasis on student ratings and the development
of additional ways to document teaching success. This
chapter summarizes the major research findings on
the validity and reliability of student ratings, which
almost all institutions use to measure teaching
effectiveness, and suggests ways that you can improve
yours. Then it presents guidelines for writing your
teaching philosophy and documenting your teaching
effectiveness in teaching and course portfolios.
Finally, it reviews two systems for evaluating teaching
effectiveness in formal faculty reviews, both of which
take more than student ratings into account. As
it turns out, evaluating teaching turns out to be
more complex than judging the merits of a faculty
member’s research or service. So let’s begin by
looking at how it is defined and measured.
DEFINING AND MEASURING
TEACHING EFFECTIVENESS
Teaching effectiveness is an instructor’s degree of suc-
cess in facilitating student learning. In general, the
more material and skills students learn, the higher the
cognitive, affective, ethical, social, and psychomotor
levels at which they learn it, and the better they can
communicate what they have learned, the more ef-
fective an instructor’s teaching is. More specifically,
the better the students achieve an instructor’s learning
outcomes and the more students who do so, the more
effective her teaching is.
It is simple enough to propose this formal defi-
nition, but how are we to measure student learning?
While we do this in our tests and assignments, we
rarely use standardized assessment instruments across
different sections and terms of the same course—and
for good reason. First, some faculty would consider
being required to do so as impinging on their aca-
demic freedom and autonomy as we currently define
them. Second, it would tempt instructors to teach to
315

316 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
the test—a good consequence only if the tests validly
assessed all of their student learning outcomes. But
typically these instruments are too objective and fact
heavy to test all the cognitive, affective, ethical, social,
and psychomotor skills that so many courses aim to
help students develop. Third, no single instruments
can capture the complexity of the learning process.
The instructor is only one among many factors that
affect the depth and breadth of student learning in
a given course. Beyond her influence are the stu-
dent’s intelligence, energy level, interest, attitudes to-
ward work, out-of-class commitments, family back-
ground, and previous schooling (Arreola, 2007). A
final reason is that few disciplines have developed stan-
dardized assessment tests of what students should gain
from a given course. Even the notable exceptions,
physics and economics, have such instruments only
for their lowest-level courses
But because institutions eschew standardized
assessments, they cannot directly measure teaching
effectiveness or directly compare the relative ef-
fectiveness of different instructors. Rather, most of
them rely heavily on student ratings and written
comments, which together constitute “students’
evaluations” about the course and the instructor.
Numerical ratings in particular permit quick and
easy analysis and comparison. But how justified are
institutions in using student ratings as a surrogate
for student learning? The next section tackles this
question.
STUDENT EVALUATIONS
Student evaluations directly tap students’ perceptions
and affective reactions to an instructor and a course,
specifically their satisfaction with them. (This variable
may be of greater interest than learning to administra-
tors who are striving for customer satisfaction.) Ob-
viously satisfaction is not the same as learning, even
if they are related. In addition, the forms that collect
these data often have flawed, homespun items with
questionable validity and reliability (Nuhfer, 2003).
So we don’t know how well the research on student
ratings, which has generally used well-tested ques-
tionnaires, applies at many institutions.
Moreover, what relationships do exist between
direct measures of student learning and student ratings
(satisfaction) are grounded largely in research that was
conducted in the 1970s and 1980s (Cashin, 1988;
Cohen, 1981; Feldman, 1989). Since then, the
college student population has markedly changed on
many dimensions: demographics, values, attitudes,
motivations, aspirations, percentage employed, prepa-
ration for college, and reasons for attending college.
Certainly such profound shifts should have an impact
on students’ assessment of the instructors, perhaps
for the more critical. If we could replicate the best
of the many “old” studies with today’s students,
our conclusions on the merits of student evaluations
would stand on much firmer grounds. All this is to
say that extrapolating yesterday’s research findings
to today involves a leap of faith.
How Valid Are Student Ratings?
To assess validity means to find out how well we are
measuring what we intend to measure. Two concerns
are paramount in determining the validity of student
ratings: how effectively they serve as an indicator of
student learning or achievement and what biases may
reduce that effectiveness. The closer the relationship
is between student ratings and learning, and the fewer
and weaker the biases in ratings, the more valid rat-
ings are and the better they serve as proxies for direct
measures of learning.
A vast literature on the evaluation of
teaching—research with which few instructors are
familiar—supports the claim that student ratings (not
necessarily the written comments) are sufficiently
valid to be used in faculty reviews. This assumes, of
course, that an institution is using a statistically solid
rating instrument tested for validity and reliability,
which is frequently not the case (Arreola, 2007;
Nuhfer, 2003). The evidence in favor of student
ratings is found in two meta-analyses conducted by
Cohen (1981) and Feldman (1989). Synthesizing the
results of dozens of rigorous studies, both reported

Evaluating and Documenting Teaching Effectiveness 317
that student achievement on an external exam
(a direct measure of learning) correlates decently
with student ratings of specific facets of teaching
effectiveness (mean r = .57 to .38)—in particular, the
instructor’s ability to explain clearly, his good use of
class time, preparation, course organization, students’
perceived learning gains, instructor’s stimulation of
interest in the subject, and his ability to motivate
students to do their best. Learning and the overall
(also called “global”) ratings of instructor effectiveness
and the course also correlated moderately (r =
.44 and .47, respectively; Cohen, 1981). Instructor
friendliness, personality, rapport, and the like related
more weakly to achievement (r = .31; Cohen, 1981).
Bear in mind that these correlations are moderate at
best and are derived from large data sets. You cannot
use them to predict how much a class has learned
from only the instructor’s student ratings. Therefore,
while over many faculty and classes, higher ratings
result in more learning, or vice versa, student ratings
are a poor stand-in for learning in any one class.
Recent research has uncovered one source
of interference between learning and ratings. A
number of students—and that’s all it takes to af-
fect ratings—object to active learning strategies,
student-centered courses, and an emphasis on critical
thinking, and they accordingly penalize instructors
on the evaluation forms (Edens, 2000; Lieux, 1996;
Rhem, 2006; Thorn, 2003; Weimer, 2002).
Biases affect validity, but some of the variables
that correlate most strongly with ratings, those
characterizing the instructor’s persona, may or may
not be biases. As you may recall, Chapter Seven rec-
ommends projecting a certain instructor persona to
reduce classroom incivilities. The same persona also
seems to enhance ratings, and among its most
potent facets are enthusiasm/expressiveness, warmth,
and self-esteem (Erdle & Murray, 1986; Feldman,
1986). The first two traits positively color even peer
assessments of an instructor’s teaching. Some scholars
argue that enthusiasm constitutes a bias because it
is unrelated to learning as tested by multiple-choice
tests (Williams & Ceci, 1997). However, enthusiasm,
self-confidence, and warmth toward the audience
characterize an engaging lecturer and a competent
professional public speaker (see Chapter Twelve).
Such qualities build trust with the audience and
attract and maintain its attention. In addition, an
instructor’s stimulation of student interest in the
course and subject matter, which often stems from
his enthusiasm and his sensitivity to and concern with
class progress, which often accompanies warmth,
correlates with student learning, though not strongly
(Feldman, 1989, 1998a, 1998b). On balance, then,
instructor enthusiasm/expressiveness, warmth, and
self-esteem are more components of effective
teaching than they are interference.
Let’s examine another reputed bias in student
ratings. Many instructors believe that grading more
leniently raises their ratings, and some respectable re-
search backs up their claim (Greenwald & Gillmore,
1997; Johnson, 2003). The correlation between
grades (actual or expected) and overall student
ratings, while not strong, varies somewhat across
studies (r = .33 in Greenwald & Gillmore, 1997; r =
.10 to .30, according to Feldman, 1998b). Whatever
the size of the relationship, we have no statistically
respectable method to draw a definitive conclusion
about what is apparently causing the increase in
ratings on either the individual or the class level. Is it
grades, or is it one or more variables closely associated
with grades? Clearly grades and learning are linked.
We also know certain precursors to both greater
learning and higher grades, such as students’ prior
interest in the subject matter, motivation to learn, and
academic commitment. In fact, these precursors are
also correlated with student ratings, about as much as
instructor behaviors are. So are higher ratings due to
higher grades, or are they due to greater learning and
its precursors? If it is the latter, then ratings reflect
what they should. In fact, all six of these variables
are sufficiently interrelated that we cannot isolate
the independent effects of one variable on another
(Abrami, Dickens, Perry, & Leventhal, 1980; Cashin,
1995; Howard & Maxwell, 1980, 1982).
Running counter to the grading leniency hy-
pothesis are findings, both decades old and recent,

318 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
that students give higher ratings in more challeng-
ing courses in which they have to work hard (Beyers,
2008; Centra, 1993; Dee, 2007; Marsh & Dunkin,
1992; Martin, Hands, Lancaster, Trytten, & Murphy,
2008; Sixbury & Cashin, 1995). It seems then that
watering down a course and its workload will not
boost student ratings.
What about other biases? Aleamoni (1999),
Cashin (1988, 1995), and Feldman (1986, 1992,
1993/1998b) separate myth from reality in their com-
prehensive literature reviews. First presented are the
variables that have been found not to affect student
ratings in a statistically significant and consistent way.
Instructor Characteristics
1. Gender (also see Centra & Gaubatz, 1999; Feld-
man, 1992, 1993; Nilson & Lysaker, 1996)
2. Age and experience (but d’Apollonia & Abrami,
1997, report that rank, experience, and autonomy
modestly bias ratings upward)
3. Personality (as measured by a personality inven-
tory; this is not “persona”)
4. Research productivity (r = .12, Feldman, 1987)
Student Characteristics
1. Gender
2. Age
3. Level (freshman to senior)
4. Grade point average
5. Personality (as measured by a personality
inventory)
Course and Administrative Variables
1. Class size
2. Time of day the course is taught
3. Time during the term the evaluations are col-
lected
But some genuine biases do exist (Aleamoni,
1999; Cashin, 1988, 1995):
Instructor Characteristics
1. Status has an impact in that regular faculty tend to
get higher ratings than teaching assistants do.
Student Characteristics
1. Prior interest in the subject matter. The higher
the students’ prior interest in the subject matter,
the higher their ratings of the course and the in-
structor.
2. Academic commitment. The more willing stu-
dents are to put noninstructor-induced effort into
their learning—that is, the more motivated they
are to work—the higher their ratings of the course
and the instructor.
3. Reason for taking the course. Holding course and
instructor characteristics constant, students give
higher ratings to courses they take voluntarily
(electives) and lower ratings to those they take to
fulfill a requirement (for instance, general educa-
tion). These higher or lower ratings also extend
to the instructor. However, what is voluntary and
what is not is often in the eye of the beholder.
Given a choice of a hundred courses that satisfy
a general education requirement, does a student
view his selection as elective or required?
Course and Administrative Variables
1. Course level. Higher-level courses, especially
graduate level, tend to receive higher ratings.
2. Discipline. Humanities courses receive higher
ratings than social science courses, which in turn
receive higher ratings than science, technical,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses.
But the research only suggests possible reasons
for these differences. We know that humanities
instructors exhibit a broader range of teaching
behaviors that are positively related to student
ratings (for example, interactivity, rapport with
class, making the material relevant) than do social
and natural science instructors, who focus more
on structuring and pacing the subject matter
(Murray & Renaud, 1996). But other possible
reasons include the greater difficulty of STEM
courses (Johnson, 2003) and the more immediate
and obvious personal relevance of humanities and
social science courses.
3. Student anonymity. Signed ratings are higher than
anonymous ones for obvious reasons.

Evaluating and Documenting Teaching Effectiveness 319
4. Presence of the instructor. The instructor’s pres-
ence while students are filling out the forms biases
ratings upward.
5. Perceived purpose of the evaluation. Students
rate more generously if they believe their ratings
will be used for personnel decisions than if
they believe their ratings are only for instructor
self-improvement.
How Reliable Are Student Ratings?
In assessing reliability, three criteria are very impor-
tant: consistency, stability, and generalizability. The
consistency of student ratings—that is, the agreement
between raters—is quite high, increasing from mod-
erately high to very high with class size. In Cashin
and Perrin’s (1978) study, average item reliability in a
class of ten students was .69, but it increased to .89
in a class of forty. In Sixbury and Cashin’s (1995)
replication, the reliability figures were the same or
higher. Stability, which indicates the concurrence of
ratings over time, is also high. In a longitudinal study
conducted by Marsh and Overall (1979; Overall
& Marsh, 1980), student ratings collected at the
end of a semester were compared against ratings
collected at least one year after graduation. The
average correlation of the ratings was .83, showing a
high level of stability. Finally, generalizability, defined
as the concurrence of ratings for the same instructor
in different teaching situations, is very good. Marsh
(1982) compared the ratings of the same instructor
teaching the same course in different semesters, the
same instructor teaching different courses, different
instructors teaching the same course, and different
instructors teaching different courses. The corre-
lations for the same instructor-same course were
quite high (.71) and much higher than those for the
same course-different instructor (.14). An instructor’s
effectiveness apparently crosses course boundaries
as well, since the same instructor-different course
correlation was .52 versus the much lower different
instructor-different course correlation of .06. More
recent research (Albanese, 1991; Hativa, 1996) has
found higher correlations of .87 to .89 between
an instructor’s student ratings from one year to
the next.
In using student ratings for personnel decisions,
Cashin (1988, 1995) recommends using data from
multiple terms and multiple courses to obtain a more
reliable picture of teaching effectiveness. If an instruc-
tor teaches only one course, then consistent ratings
from two terms may be sufficient. For instructors
with more responsibilities, however, ratings from two
or more courses for every term taught over the past
two or more years provide a better assessment. For
fair and comprehensive instructor reviews, the ratings
of courses with fewer than fifteen students should be
supplemented with other assessment material.
How to Improve Your Student Ratings
Start by reviewing the statistical summaries and
student comments from your previous evaluations.
It is best to do this with your department chair,
a trusted colleague, or a staff member from your
institution’s teaching center. Look for repeated
areas of criticism—pay no attention to isolated
complaints—and try to identify patterns and trends.
Does class size, level, or subject matter seem to make
a difference? Bear in mind the biases in student
ratings and mentally correct for them. Remember
that these questionnaires collect students’ perceptions
and affective reactions, not objective reality. You
might not think you behaved a certain way (for
example, condescending, impatient, disorganized)
that alienated your students, but you apparently did
or said something that gave them that impression.
What could that be?
Then consider the factors related to ratings that
you can and cannot control. For instance, you cannot
change your discipline, the specific subjects you
teach, the required or elective nature of your courses,
or the size of your classes. Nor can you affect your
students’ prior interest in the subject matter, their
academic commitment, or their motivation to take
your course. But you can make changes in the clarity
of your explanations, your use of class time, your
preparation (real and apparent), the organization of

320 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
your course (even if it is just making that organization
more apparent to students with a graphic syllabus
and an outcomes maps), and your public speaking
skills (see Chapter Twelve). You can enhance your
persona by projecting more enthusiasm, energy,
relaxed self-confidence, authority, and in-command
leadership—qualities that will stimulate students’
interest in the material and maintain their respectful
attention (see Chapters Seven and Twelve). You
can also add warmth, empathy, and caring to your
persona by learning students’ names, encouraging
their success, smiling, and exhibiting a few other
simple behaviors, which will motivate students to
do their best (see Chapters Five and Seven). You
can help students see how much they are learning
by having them reflect and write about their newly
acquired or improved skills. You can explain to them
how important their evaluations are to you personally
and to your institution. You can replace some major
tests with daily quizzes (see Chapter Twenty-Three).
This book presents a wealth of teaching methods and
moves that can improve your ratings as well as your
students’ learning. Just give a major innovation two
or more terms to show positive results.
In addition, try to gather student feedback
far enough in advance of the official evaluation
process to fine-tune your courses. You can write up,
administer, and analyze your own midterm student
evaluations, including items similar to those on your
institution’s or department’s official ratings form, as
well as others of concern to you. Alternatively, you
can ask your teaching center to conduct a small-
group instructional diagnosis (class interview) in your
classes. Research shows that soliciting early student
feedback and having an interpretive consultation
with a specialist result in significantly higher student
evaluations at the end of the term (Cohen, 1980).
Students seem to take the opportunity to give
their instructors midterm feedback more seriously
than they do end-of-term teaching evaluations. After
all, they stand to benefit from the former, while
the latter come too late to improve their learning
experience. You can pick and choose among the
changes they request, explaining to them why you
are making some changes and not others. In fact,
you can address many of their concerns not by
changing anything but by providing your reasons for
the teaching and assessment decisions you have made.
Again, this book supplies plenty of research-based
rationales for effective choices.
PEER, ADMINISTRATIVE,
AND SELF-EVALUATIONS
Dozen of studies conducted in the 1970s and early
1980s (for example, Aleamoni, 1982; Bergman, 1980;
Centra, 1975, 1979; Greenwood & Ramagli, 1980)
came to these conclusions about self-evaluations of
teaching and peer and administrative evaluations based
on classroom observations:
• Self-evaluations do not correlate much with any
other type of evaluation.
• Self-evaluation and peer evaluations based on
classroom visits are much more generous than
student ratings.
• Among peer evaluators who visit a classroom for
observational purposes, interrater reliability (that
is, consensus) is low.
• Peer and administrative evaluations based on class-
room visits are so highly correlated as to be almost
redundant.
• All three relate very little to student learning and
only modestly to student ratings.
The literature also consistently argues that none
of these types of evaluations should be used as the
sole teaching evaluation tool, and they should not re-
place student ratings and comments. In fact, peer and
administrative evaluations based on classroom obser-
vations should not be used for promotion and tenure
reviews at all, unless:
• The observers are formally trained in classroom
observation and the use of the evaluation form.
• They meet with the instructor beforehand to dis-
cuss his teaching philosophy, preferred methods,

Evaluating and Documenting Teaching Effectiveness 321
characteristics of the course and students, and
learning outcomes for the course and the specific
class.
• They observe the instructor’s class at least seven or
eight times during the term.
• They schedule the classroom visits with the in-
structor in advance.
Some of these conditions are very difficult for
busy faculty, department chairs, and deans to meet,
but such a professional observation program has been
developed and tested (Millis, 1992).
Of course, feedback from more casual peer
and administrative classroom observations is not
only harmless but potentially useful for formative
purposes. Peers in particular have the expertise to
advise on the course content, book selections, online
resources, possible demonstrations and class activities,
and the technical aspects of instructional design, such
as the syllabus and assignments. However, students are
the more relevant judges of instructional design (the
completeness of the syllabus, the clarity of the course
organization, and the learning effectiveness of assign-
ments and activities), instructional delivery (the use
and organization of class time, communication and
presentation skills, the clarity of explanations, and the
degree of student activity and engagement), and their
perceived learning (the challenge of tests and assign-
ments, perceived achievement of outcomes, and
interest in learning more about the subject matter).
DOCUMENTING YOUR
EFFECTIVENESS
Numerous studies document that student ratings
provide meaningful assessment data that should be
used in faculty reviews, but without exception they
recommend including other teaching-related data as
well (Aleamoni, 1999; Arreola, 2007; Berk, 2005;
Cashin, 1988, 1995; Centra, 1999; McKeachie, 2002;
Nuhfer, 2003; Seldin, 2004). While some depart-
ments and institutions request additional materials,
you should always submit more than your student
ratings; the reviewers will look at whatever you
supply. Besides, current students are in no position
to judge your course content, every facet of your
instructional design and delivery, or the longer-term
impact of your teaching.
Although submitting the documents and mate-
rials described in this section cannot guarantee you a
faculty position, tenure, or promotion, they do make
the academic reward system more responsive to teach-
ing achievements (Seldin, 2004). Their use in whole
or in part is gaining acceptance because they com-
plement the student ratings data and fit easily into
current hiring and review procedures. Perhaps most
important, they motivate faculty and administrators
to talk about teaching, thereby promoting reflection,
innovation, and improvement.
The Teaching Philosophy
This one- to two-page single-spaced statement is of-
ten a required part of an academic job application and
faculty review materials, including a teaching portfo-
lio. It does not document your teaching effectiveness
as much as it proves you have reflected on your teach-
ing and are committed to an effective strategy. There
is no simple formula for writing a teaching philoso-
phy, but certain conventions apply. Following an essay
format with an introduction and conclusion, it is a
personal statement incorporating both cognitive and
affective elements written in the first person. It also
contains all or most of the facets of a philosophy: (1) a
theory of how reality works—in this case, a theory of
teaching and learning; (2) an informed and systematic
rationale for why you do what you do—in this case,
the way you teach; and (3) a system of principles or
values that guides living and action—in this case, that
shapes or drives your teaching. While nontechnical,
the statement must demonstrate an understanding of
how students learn and practical knowledge of at least
a few student-active teaching methods.
Several scholars have proposed lists of ques-
tions that a teaching philosophy should address
(for example, Berke & Kastberg, 1998; Chism,
1997–1998; Johnston, 2003; Schönwetter, Sokal,

322 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
Friesen, & Taylor, 2002). A careful analysis of their
recommendations reveals their near total concurrence
on what you should provide: your theory of how
learning occurs and how teaching can foster it; the
values, goals, or ideals that motivate you to teach;
and the specific teaching methods you use, linking
them to your learning theory or your motivating
values, goals, or ideals, or both. The scholars just
phrase the questions differently, and one trigger may
resonate more with you than others. For example,
Berke and Kastberg ask you to identify the notions
about learning that make you teach the way you
do; Johnston wants you to address the conditions
under which students best learn; and Schönwetter
et al. ask you to define teaching and learning. Berke
and Kastberg elicit your motivations for teaching by
asking why you teach, and, if you are experienced,
why you still teach. They probe for answers among
your desires, beliefs, values, and hopes for what
students will gain from your teaching. Johnston wants
to know what you are trying to accomplish in your
teaching, and how your approaches reflect who you
are. In one way or another, all of these scholars ask
for descriptions of and rationales for your teaching
methods and the learning experiences you create for
students. Indeed, all philosophies describe what one
does in the classroom, even if some focus more on
the theory and others on the motivation to teach.
One global question that Berke and Kastberg pose
could frame an entire teaching philosophy: What is
your conception of a great teacher, and what are you
doing to become one?
Some instructors can identify a key belief that
is central to how they teach. If you can do this, you
can generate a statement of your teaching philosophy
just by answering these questions: What assumptions
about teaching, learning, students, education, and the
like underlie your key belief? What values, principles,
goals, or ideals does it reflect or spring from? What
does it imply for your classroom teaching?
If you are having troubling articulating key
beliefs, a theory of teaching and learning, or your
motivations for teaching, complete one or more of
these free online teaching inventories: the Teaching
Goals Inventory at http://fm.iowa.uiowa.edu/fmi
/xsl/tgi/data entry.xsl?-db=tgi data&-lay=Layout01
&-view; the Grasha-Reichman Teaching Style
Inventory at http://longleaf.net/teachingstyle.html;
and the Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI)
at www.teachingperspectives.com. In addition to
finding out more about your own teaching identity,
you will learn descriptively rich terms for various
teaching aims, styles, and approaches that you can use
in your statement.
If appropriate, two other topics also belong in a
teaching philosophy. First, you should at least men-
tion any research on teaching you have done, even if
you have not published it. If you have published it,
refer your reader to the section of your curriculum
vita where you list it. Second, you should explain, if
possible, any problematic student evaluations you have
received in recent years. As mentioned earlier in this
chapter, some students have been known to penal-
ize instructors who teach student-actively, emphasize
critical thinking, or use student-centered practices. If
your evaluations have suffered for any of these rea-
sons and you have continued to teach the way you
do because you know it is most effective for student
learning, then state this in your philosophy as an illus-
tration of your strong educational principles.
Make your statement inviting. Do not try
to cram in more text by covering all the available
white space. Leave margins of at least one inch
and use eleven- or, preferably, twelve-point type.
Write clearly, simply, and with conviction, and
use transitions generously to shepherd your readers
through the document. Once you have a decent draft
of your statement, appraise it against the teaching
philosophy rubric in Table 32.1, and revise it to meet
the specifications and qualities under “Excellent.”
The Teaching Portfolio
This is a collection of materials that you assemble to
highlight your major teaching strengths and achieve-
ments, comparable to your publications, grants, and
scholarly honors in your research record (Seldin,
2004). It provides a comprehensive, factual base to

Evaluating and Documenting Teaching Effectiveness 323
Table 32.1 Rubric for Assessing and Revising a Statement of Teaching Philosophy
Excellent Needs Some Revision Needs Considerable Revision Needs a Complete
Rewrite
Content;
coverage of
essential
topics
Thoroughly and
thoughtfully presents a
theory of teaching and
learning, teaching values,
goals, and ideals, and
compatible teaching
methods.
Addresses the three
essential topics but
does so too briefly
or superficially.
Fails to address one of the
three essential topics.
Fails to address two of
the three essential
topics.
Balance of
personal and
professional
Well balanced; formal in
tone but maintains the
sense of “I.”
Occasionally too
informal or too
impersonal.
Often lapses into an
inappropriate informality
or loses the sense of “I.”
A personal stream of
consciousness or a
totally impersonal
essay with no sense
of “I.”
Structure and
organization
Essay is coherent with a
clear introduction, a
strong conclusion, and
logical transitions
between paragraphs and
sentences.
Essay is generally
coherent but lacks
either a clear
introduction or a
strong conclusion.
Has some logical
transitions between
paragraphs and
sentences.
Essay lacks a coherent
structure and
organization. Some
paragraphs seem out of
place, unconnected to
the surrounding text.
Lacks either a clear
introduction or clear
conclusion, or
conclusion is very weak.
Has few logical
transitions between
paragraphs and sentences.
Essay is incoherent
and unstructured.
Lacks a clear
introduction, a
clear conclusion,
and logical
transitions between
paragraphs and
sentences.
Writing style
and
mechanics
(grammar,
punctuation,
and spelling)
Writing is clear, concise,
and smooth. It follows
the rules of standard
English. Each sentence is
connected to the ones
before and after. Varied
sentence structure. Very
few, if any, mechanical
errors.
Writing follows the
rules of standard
English with few
errors in sentence
structure and
syntax. Sentences
are usually
connected. Some
minor mechanical
errors.
Writing violates some rules
of standard English and is
sometimes awkward and
difficult to understand.
Some sentences seem
unconnected and out of
place. Frequent
mechanical errors.
Writing often violates
the rules of
standard English
and is generally
awkward and
difficult to
understand.
Sentences are
unconnected.
Monotonous
sentence structure.
Numerous
mechanical errors.
Presentation
and length
Neatly typed, single-spaced,
twelve-point type, not
cramped. Optimal
length: one to one and a
half pages, possibly two
pages if very
experienced.
A bit too long or too
short.
Somewhat too long or too
short.
Sloppy,
double-spaced,
type too small,
cramped, or much
too long or too
short.

324 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
develop self-assessment and improvement efforts
and for peers and administrators to make sound
hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions. The five-
to ten-page statement that you write presents both
basic information about your teaching responsibilities
and your critical, improvement-driven analysis of
the content you selected to put in the appendixes,
such as your teaching contributions, professional
activities, course materials, student ratings, and peer
feedback.
While faculty most often put together a teaching
portfolio for a formal personnel review, your purpose
will influence what you include and how you orga-
nize it. To ensure objectivity in selecting materials,
prepare your portfolio in consultation with a mentor,
a trusted colleague, your department chair, or a teach-
ing center consultant. Your partner can help you focus
on the important questions: What is the purpose of
the portfolio? What information will your audience
find useful? Which areas of your teaching best serve
your purpose? What is the best way to present and an-
alyze the information? What additional information
do you need, and how can you obtain it? For in-
stance, reviewers involved in personnel decisions will
be looking to see that you accurately represent your
teaching responsibilities, that your teaching goals fit
with the department’s and institution’s, that you have
sought peer input, and that your students have left
your courses both satisfied and more knowledgeable.
Approach assembling the teaching portfolio as
a step-by-step process (Seldin, 2004), starting with a
teaching statement. First, summarize your teaching
responsibilities in a few paragraphs, describing the
types of courses you teach, your student learning
outcomes, your approach to course design, your
expectations for student progress, and your assessment
strategies. Then explain and prioritize your criteria
for assessing your teaching effectiveness along with
your reasons for choosing these criteria. They should
coincide with your teaching style and responsibilities
and reflect the purpose of the portfolio. For instance,
if you particularly want to demonstrate your im-
provement, then rank your participation in teaching
workshops and programs high. Finally, make a list
of the materials and data that support your criteria,
such as student assignments, journals, test results,
ratings, and the like, and gather these artifacts for the
appendixes. In your statement, refer readers to these
items as examples or evidence.
Institutions that use teaching portfolios vary
somewhat in the required components and preferred
organization. For example, yours may want you to
integrate your teaching philosophy, five-year teaching
goals, self-evaluation, course updates and improve-
ments, and teaching-related professional activities
into your teaching statement. Or it may recommend
that you accompany each item in the appendixes
with a paragraph of two linking it to your teaching
responsibilities, your criteria for effectiveness, and
other information you provide in your teaching
statement. So check first with your department chair.
If not incorporated into your teaching
statement, these items probably belong in your
appendixes:
• Your teaching philosophy
• Your teaching goals for the next five years
• A brief self-evaluation with your teaching im-
provement strategies and efforts, including the
teaching center services, workshops, and programs
you have taken advantage of
• Descriptions of improvements and updates in your
course assignments, materials, and activities
• A list of your teaching-related professional
activities, such as instructional research (the schol-
arship of teaching and learning), publications,
journal editing and reviewing, conference presen-
tations, and invited teaching workshops (include
abstracts or reprints of your published research
on teaching and summaries of your unpublished
research in the appendixes)
• Syllabi and other important course materials (a
DVD of one of your class periods is optional)
• A list of students you have advised or supervised
in research projects
• Teaching awards, honors, and other types
of recognition, such as teaching committee
appointments

Evaluating and Documenting Teaching Effectiveness 325
• Student ratings and comments from all your
courses
Ask whether your department or institution
would like any of these testimonial-type supporting
materials:
• Statements from peers or administrators who have
observed your teaching
• Statements from peers who have reviewed your
course materials
• Statements from peers on how well you have pre-
pared your students for more advanced courses
• A statement from your chair or supervisor about
your past and projected departmental contri-
butions
• Statements from employers about graduates who
studied a great deal with you
• Statements from service-learning clients on the
impact of your student projects
• Statements from your advisees and research
mentees about how you have influenced them
• Statements and letters, solicited and unsolicited,
from former students about your longer-term
teaching impact
Finally, your reviewers may be interested in
more data from and about your students:
• Student feedback or evaluation summaries that
reflect improvement, perceived learning, or
satisfaction—aside from student ratings and
comments
• Samples of student work on graded assignments
(include samples of varying quality with your
feedback and your reasons for the grades you
assigned)
• Surveys of student knowledge at the beginning
and the end of a course
• Improvements in students’ attitudes about the sub-
ject matter, as documented by final reflection or
personal-growth essays or by attitudinal surveys
you administer at the beginning and the end of
the course
• Students’ opinions of their success in achieving
your learning outcomes (extra student ratings
form item)
• A list of your successful mentees in the discipline
• Information on how you have influenced
students’ postgraduate and career choices
• Students’ scores on standardized tests, especially
the sections of national and licensing exams that
reflect your courses
You can read examples of high-quality teach-
ing portfolios in Seldin (2004) or at www.ilr.cornell
.edu/TAC/toolbox/portfoli/examples.html.
The Course Portfolio
This collection of materials summarizes how you
planned, taught, managed, and currently evaluate
a particular course, so you might assemble one on
every course you regularly teach. Not as widely
used as a teaching portfolio, a course portfolio
contains many of the same materials but organizes
them around a course rather than your teaching
career. It also serves the same purposes of promoting
self-assessment and improvement and encouraging
sounder hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions
with respect to teaching effectiveness (Cerbin, 1994;
Hutchings, 1998).
These are the kinds of documents that belong in
a course portfolio (Cerbin, 1994; Hutchings, 1998):
• Course syllabus, with student learning objectives
and outcomes
• Brief description of course’s content and its place
in the curriculum
• Important handouts
• Annotated list of teaching methods
• Descriptions of assignments, if not in the syllabus
• Laboratory exercises or problem sets
• Descriptions of special class activities, such as
simulations, role plays, case studies, problem-based
learning projects, laptop exercises, service-learning
assignments, guest speakers, and field trips
• Samples of graded student work

326 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
• Assessment instruments: quizzes, tests, and major
classroom assessment techniques
• Results of midterm student feedback
• Summaries of the teaching center services, work-
shops, and programs you took advantage of to
improve this course
• End-of-term student ratings and written
comments
• Feedback from any peer or administrator class-
room observations
• A reflective narrative of several pages
This last element is the most important. The
document should incorporate some of the material
listed above and refer to the rest. You might organize
it around these course topics (Cerbin, 1994, 1995):
• Design. Why did you organize the course the way
you did? How does it reflect your teaching philos-
ophy and serve your student learning outcomes?
How does it help you meet the course’s major
challenges?
• Enactment. What did the students experience dur-
ing the course? What are the reasons behind your
important assignments, class activities, and assess-
ment strategies? (Including a DVD of your major
class activities is optional.)
• Results. What did students learn in the course?
How did they change? What did they not achieve
that you hoped they would?
• Evaluative analysis. What is your overall assessment
of the course and your teaching of it? What will
you change to improve it?
COMPREHENSIVE APPROACHES
TO FACULTY EVALUATION
The traditional way of appraising faculty performance
has weighted research far more heavily than teach-
ing, has relied almost exclusively on student ratings to
assess teaching effectiveness, and has followed idiosyn-
cratic procedures. Some institutions have responded
by adopting one of two comprehensive systems for
evaluating faculty performance, both suitable for pro-
motion and tenure.
Glassick, Huber, and Maeroff (1997) build their
system around six standards for judging all forms of
scholarship—discovery, integration, application, and
teaching:
• Clear and realistic goals, objectives, and purpose
to the work
• Adequate preparation in skills, resources, and
background knowledge
• Appropriate methods properly and flexibly imple-
mented to meet the goals
• Significant results and impact; achievement of
the goals
• Effective presentation; clear and honest commu-
nication to the intended audience
• Reflective critique; evaluation of the results with
plans for improvement. (Reprinted with permis-
sion of John Wiley and Sons, Inc.)
In fact, funding agencies, journal editors and re-
viewers, and faculty review bodies already use these
standards, at least implicitly, in assessing research pro-
posals, manuscripts, and publications. While Glassick
et al. (1997) do not flesh out their system down to
specific indicators and measures, they do suggest how
we can easily apply these same standards in evaluating
teaching:
• To assess goals, peers examine the student learning
outcomes in the syllabi, the teaching philosophy,
and any portfolio statement or narrative.
• To assess preparation, peers examine the currency
and appropriateness of the course content and
readings in the syllabi.
• To assess methods, peers examine the appropri-
ateness of the teaching and assessment methods
chosen (in the syllabi, teaching philosophy, and
teaching or course portfolio).
• To assess results, peers examine student per-
formance on assessment instruments and other
available indicators of learning, as well as student
ratings on items relevant to perceived learning,
challenge, interest, and motivation to learn.

Evaluating and Documenting Teaching Effectiveness 327
• To assess presentation, peers examine student rat-
ings on communication-relevant items.
• To assess reflective critique, peers examine the
teaching philosophy, any portfolio statement or
narrative, and any other self-assessment document.
Arreola’s (2007) system, now used in whole
or part at hundreds of North American institutions,
includes detailed, step-by-step guidelines for imple-
menting it on a comprehensive scale, starting with
these departmental decisions:
Step 1. Determine and list all the faculty activities
worth evaluating at your institution: research, teach-
ing, advising, community service, professional service,
university service, and so on.
Step 2. Weight the importance of each activity in
percentages that add up to 100 percent.
Step 3. Define each activity as a list of components—
that is, observable or documentable products,
performances, and achievements. For example, a
department may agree to define teaching in terms of
content expertise, instructional design skills, instruc-
tional delivery skills, impact on student learning, and
course management.
Step 4. Weight the components of each role, again in
percentages.
Step 5. Determine the best sources of evaluation
information—for example, students, department
peers, outside peers in specialized areas, the
department chair, or someone else.
Step 6. Weight each information source by appropri-
ate worth. (A spreadsheet can do all the arithmetic
required in steps 2, 4, and 6).
Step 7. Determine how to gather the information
from each source, such as by using forms or question-
naires.
Step 8. Select or design the appropriate policies,
procedures, protocols, and forms for your system.
Model forms are readily available in Chism (1999)
and Arreola (2007).
Once the department sets the parameters and
implements the system, each faculty member under
review ends up with a rating, usually between 1.0
and 4.0 or between 1.0 and 5.0, that represents the
collective judgment of that individual’s performance
in each faculty role. These numbers are weighted (as
in step 2) and added to create an overall composite
rating (OCR). The OCR is then compared against
the evaluative standards set by the top-level admin-
istration. Therefore, faculty are not compared against
each other but against an absolute standard. In a 1.0 to
4.0 system where 1.0 denotes “unsatisfactory” and 4.0
means “exemplary” or “exceptional,” 3.0 may desig-
nate the “acceptable” level. This system easily adapts
to any review—tenure, promotions, raises, and post-
tenure.
The key—and the challenge—to instituting any
comprehensive faculty evaluation system is forging a
departmental consensus on appropriate faculty activ-
ities, their relative value, the relative value of their
components, and the relative value of their informa-
tion sources. The decision-making process is all about
values, bringing them out from under the table and
laying them out on the table.
Some academics have complained that such
systems undermine professional and administrative
judgment, but all they really do is eliminate a
review party’s discretion to say one thing and do
another—for example, to claim to value teaching and
service but to decide the fate of faculty careers solely
on the research record. By demanding integrity and
making the review process transparent, such systems
can only benefit those who value, practice, and
document teaching at its best.
COMPLEX BEYOND MEASURE
Evaluating and documenting teaching effectiveness
is genuinely hard. It requires considerable evidence
just to show that you are trying to excel in your
teaching. Even if you administer standardized tests to
demonstrate your students’ learning, you will obtain
limited data because the best of them cannot tap into

328 TEACHING AT ITS BEST
noncognitive outcomes and all possible cognitive
ones. Moreover, the evidence that a teaching phi-
losophy, a teaching portfolio, or a course portfolios
presents is “soft”—not the kind that would stand up
under scientific scrutiny or in a court of law. The
reviewers must arrive at a judgment based on the
preponderance of evidence and the precedents set by
faculty who were recently reviewed at their own and
comparable institutions.
The fact is that teaching represents a
relationship—not a single relationship but one
between the instructor and every student in every
one of her classes over many terms. Superimposed
on these many relationships are those among all of
her students who ever interacted in a class. What
instrument, what assembly of data can possibly
capture this elusive, multilayered, multifaceted
transaction in which one individual tries to induce
other individuals to process new knowledge, acquire
new skills, and change their thinking? The “other
individuals,” the students, each bring their own
unique backgrounds, abilities, aptitudes, attitudes,
interests, and aspirations to the table, and the “one
individual,” which is you, can motivate, persuade,
explain, inspire, and nurture learning only as far as
each student will allow. You can’t bring everyone
with you, but if you strive for teaching excel-
lence, you can bring most students with you—
enough to give your professional life magnificent
meaning.

A P P E N D I X
Instructional Support and Resources
at Your Institution
T
eaching well at the college level starts with
becoming familiar with your institutional en-
vironment. Instructors, especially new ones,
need to realize that they cannot and should not try
to handle all the many challenges of their jobs single-
handedly. Every college and university is a large, mul-
tilayered organization—a few rivaling small cities in
size and complexity—each with its own unique sub-
culture, norms and values, official power structure,
informal power networks, and infrastructure of ser-
vices and support units. Even seasoned faculty in a
new institution feel unsettled as they anticipate unfa-
miliar policies, forms, procedures, expectations, and
types of students.
Most colleges and universities offer a wealth
of instructional support services and resources—the
library and computer services being among the most
obvious. But the instructional help available from
some individuals and units may not be obvious from
their titles or names alone. The people and campus
offices described here are well worth your getting to
know. The referral services they provide can save you
countless hours, and the information they furnish can
prevent costly, however innocent, mistakes.
For Faculty, Students, and Staff
Colleagues, especially senior ones, are perhaps the
most conveniently located and sometimes the most
knowledgeable sources of information on discipline-
specific issues, including how best to teach certain
material, what to expect of students in specific
courses, how to motivate students in a given subject,
how to locate appropriate guest speakers, how to
prepare for tenure and other faculty reviews, how to
obtain special services or funding, and what assistance
to request from department support staff. Colleagues
are also excellent sources of informal feedback on
teaching; most will be happy to serve as a classroom
observer or teaching videotape reviewer. (Also see
the information below on teaching centers.)
Department chairs can offer broader, departmen-
tal perspectives on discipline-specific issues. They are
especially well informed on departmental curriculum
329

330 APPENDIX
matters and can advise on proposals to develop new
courses and revise established ones. They may also
provide the best counsel on standards and procedures
for promotion and tenure. Finally, since they have the
opportunity to study the teaching evaluations of all
the courses and sections in the department, chairs can
help interpret the student ratings and written com-
ments, as well as suggest ways to improve them.
The dean’s office of your college, school, or di-
vision can advise you about promotion and tenure
matters, student characteristics, curriculum issues, and
course design and development from a still broader
perspective. Demographic and academic data about
the student body will prove particularly valuable in
helping you decide on the objectives, design, con-
tent, and techniques for each of your courses. You will
also need information about curriculum policies and
procedures: What general education or breadth re-
quirements do your courses satisfy? What percentage
of students will enroll in a particular course because
they are required to take it? How do you propose
and get approval for a new course? What compo-
nents and assignments must a course have to qualify
for “honors,” “writing,” or any other special desig-
nation? Finally, the dean’s office may be the place to
turn for help with classroom matters—for example,
if the classroom you are assigned doesn’t meet your
class size, ventilation, or technological needs, or if
you need a room reserved for special class activities
and sessions. In large universities, departments may
control a set of classrooms and handle such matters.
The library is not just a place to find books any-
more. Having adapted to the technological age in
record time, libraries have expanded into one-stop
shops for electronic information, as well as print re-
sources, and librarians have evolved into the sentinals
of information literacy.
You don’t have to go to the library for many of
these resources. Just visiting its Web page will give
you easy access to an impressive range of academic
search engines, indexes, and databases, such as Lexis-
Nexis, InfoTrac, OneFile, Ingenta, Web of Science,
and EBSCO Host, which allow you to find scholarly
publications by subject, author, publication type, and
other criteria. These resources can also help your
students broaden their research horizons beyond
Google, and librarians will teach your class how to
use them for the assignments you have in mind.
While libraries still provide traditional services,
the card catalogue, library requests, and interlibrary
loan are usually online. Beyond print and electronic
resources, libraries also maintain a collection of in-
structionally useful videos, CDs, and DVDs.
A teaching, faculty development, or instructional de-
velopment center has become an increasingly common
resource on research- as well as teaching-oriented
campuses. It usually provides instructional consul-
tation and training services to faculty and teaching
assistants, such as classroom videotaping, classroom
observations, class interviews (often in a small-group
format called a small group instructional diagnosis),
midterm student evaluations, advisory consultations,
orientations for new instructors, teaching workshops,
and assistance in classroom research (also called
action research and the scholarship of teaching
and learning). Often these centers also maintain
a library, run lecture series, publish a newsletter
and teaching handbook, consult to departments
and colleges on curricula and assessment, award
minigrants for teaching innovations and travel to
teaching conferences and workshops, and maintain
a Web page with links to online teaching resources.
Some house language testing and training programs
for international teaching assistants.
On a number of campuses, these centers also
offer consultations and training in instructional
technology, such as the most effective pedagogical
applications and the how-to’s of available software
(see Chapter Twenty-Two). Certainly those with
“instructional development” or “technology” in the
title do, and these may housed within larger tech-
nology units. But most campuses have specialized,
stand-alone teaching centers.
A center for academic computing, information tech-
nology, or instructional technology is the most likely unit
to handle the computing needs of faculty, as well as
students and staff, from setting up email accounts to
replacing old terminals. Its major functions are client

Appendix 331
support in both hardware and software and training
workshops in commonly used office, technical, and
instructional software. This support usually includes
buying the software and licenses and installing the
software on request. Almost all campuses have some
brand of course management software, such as Black-
board, which is currently the most popular.
In the past decade, these centers transformed
many traditional classrooms into smart classrooms
equipped with software-rich computer terminals,
LCD projectors, VCRs, CD-ROM and DVD
players, and Ethernet connections. In some cases
these classrooms have laptop stations rather than
computers. Scheduling, maintaining, and updating
these classrooms is a full-time job. Some centers over-
see mandated or voluntary laptop programs, which
may entail training the faculty in their technical and
pedagogical use, training the students, leasing the
laptops or negotiating purchasing deals, and servicing
the laptops, as well as retrofitting classrooms with
wireless connections.
Centers vary in how much instructional design
they do for faculty who are teaching wholly and
partly online. On one extreme, some universities
expect instructors to learn the necessary software
for Web page design, animation, photo and video
digitizing and editing, and so forth in specialized
workshops and on their own. On the other extreme
are the institutions that employ instructional designers
to do all the technical work for the faculty. Most fall
in between.
A women’s center often provides a wider variety
of services than the lecture series, library, and sup-
port groups that you would expect. It is well worth
asking if the one on your campus also sponsors self-
development and health workshops, career planning
forums, book and study groups, and writers’ groups.
No doubt it offers legal and policy information about
sexual harassment as well as emotional support for
those who may have a complaint. However, com-
plaints are probably processed by the equal opportu-
nity unit described below.
Multicultural and racial/ethnic cultural centers may
be a richer instructional resource than one might
expect—and an essential one on today’s highly
diverse campuses. They usually offer symposia and
lectures on cultural topics and coordinate multi-
cultural celebrations and commemorations. Many
of them maintain libraries of print materials and
videos—most valuable if you are teaching multicul-
tural subjects—and a few sponsor art exhibits and
musical performances. Typically they also provide
support services for students of color.
Of particular value to faculty and staff are cul-
tural awareness programs, including diversity training
workshops. These centers can also answer your pri-
vate questions about the minority student population
on your campus and cultural differences among vari-
ous groups. They will help you resolve any concerns
about relating to students of color in the classroom.
An international center typically administers
study-abroad and international internship programs
and sets up new ones to meet the demands of the
rapidly changing world economy. For example, many
universities have recently added programs in China,
Southeast Asia, and India. Often in conjuction with
an area studies center, this kind of unit also equips
the students and faculty traveling abroad with some
basic global competencies, such as information on
the social and cultural differences between Americans
and natives of a host country.
The center also provides acculturation counsel-
ing and support for international students and their
families, as well as legal advice on visas, work permits,
taxes, and others areas. On some campuses, the in-
ternational center is also responsible for English as a
Second Language testing and courses.
An equal opportunity center may go by any num-
ber of titles, but you should look for key words such
as “opportunity development,” “affirmative action,”
“equality,” “equity,” and “civil rights.” Its purpose is
to coordinate state and federally mandated programs
designed to ensure equal opportunities for minorities,
women, individuals with disabilities, and other disad-
vantaged groups. It also serves as a source of infor-
mation for students, faculty, and staff who may have
questions or complaints related to equal opportunity
in education, employment, and campus programs and

332 APPENDIX
activities. If a complaint is judged valid, it will also
advise on grievance procedures.
Sexual harassment falls under the equal opportu-
nity umbrella. Often in collaboration with a women’s
center (see above), an equal opportunity office
disseminates information on the legal definition of
sexual harassment, the institution’s policy regarding it,
specific types of harassment behavior, its prevalence,
its prevention, procedures for filing a complaint or a
grievance, and confidential support and counseling
services.
A disabilities center identifies students with learn-
ing as well as physical disabilities and usually issues
written certification of these disabilities for instruc-
tors. As required by the Americans with Disabilities
Act of 1990, this type of center ensures that people
with disabilities have equal access to public programs
and services. Therefore, it also recommends the spe-
cial accommodations, if any, that instructors should
make for identified students in their teaching and
testing.
Most accommodations are minor (for example,
an isolated test environment or a longer test period),
and the center may provide special facilities for
them, such as proctored testing rooms. In any case,
it will advise the instructor about exactly what
accommodations are needed. For hearing-impaired
classroom students, the instructor may have to stand
or sit where the student can lip-read. For visually
impaired classroom students, you may have to
vocalize or verbally describe any visual materials you
present or distribute to the class. Appropriate testing
may require you to make a large-print copy of the
exam or allow the students use of a reader, scribe, or
computer during the test.
Online learning demands more extensive adap-
tations, but usually the student’s own specialized com-
puter hardware and software will take care of most
access problems. Still, instructors must be mindful to
keep Web pages uncluttered and to provide captions
or transcripts for audio materials and text alternatives
for visual materials.
Just for Students
The centers described may serve your own or your
students’ needs. Let’s consider now the units and in-
dividuals that specialize in serving students. Students
seeking general academic counsel should be referred
to their academic advisers; those requesting informa-
tion or assistance with respect to a specific course
should be sent to the instructor or the department.
At times, however, students need help with other
problems—some that most instructors are ill equipped
to address. These include learning disabilities, math
or test anxiety, severe writing problems, poor study
and test-taking skills, weak academic backgrounds,
emotional difficulties, and career planning questions.
These cases call for a referral to a unit in the next
group.
Almost all campuses have a facility designed
to help students improve their academic skills. It is
often called a learning, learning skills, learning resources,
academic assistance, or academic support center, and its
services typically include individual counseling in
academic skills, individual and small-group tutoring,
workshops in learning strategies (for example, reading
skills, study skills, note taking, test preparation, and
test taking). Some tutoring may be geared to specific
courses or subject matter known to give students
trouble, such as calculus, chemistry, physics, biology,
economics, and foreign languages. This type of
center may also offer English as a Second Language
testing and courses.
A writing or communication program may be
housed in a learning center or comprise its own
stand-alone unit. It is likely to provide individual or
small-group tutoring in the mechanics of grammar
and punctuation, as well as the structure of exam es-
says, short papers, critical papers, and research papers.
It may even schedule formal writing workshops.
Staff are trained not to outline or edit student work,
but rather to show students how to master the stages
of the writing process on their own.
If “communication” is in the title, the unit may
be one of a small but growing number of centers

Appendix 333
that also help students improve their public speaking
and presentation skills. These are usually associated
with an active speaking- or communication-across-
the-curriculum program.
A psychological or counseling center is the place
to refer students who manifest any type of psycho-
logical or emotional disorder. As students usually
show signs of trouble only in more private en-
vironments, Chapter Nine on office hours lists
the behaviors to watch out for. This type of unit
gives free individual counseling for psychological,
emotional, and sometimes academic problems, and
it may coordinate group programs for personal
growth, self-improvement, and self-awareness. If it is
associated with a medical facility or it has a physician
on staff, it may also prescribe drugs.
A career center helps students identify and achieve
their occupational goals. It typically provides assess-
ment tests in skills and interests and resources for ca-
reer exploration, as well as information on intern-
ship opportunities and summer jobs. Workshops on
job search strategies, résumé preparation, communi-
cation and decision-making skills, and job interview
techniques may also be available. Some centers hold
campus job fairs and help graduates obtain jobs.
All of these campus units will welcome your
requests for further information and will point you to
their Web page or mail you their brochures, newslet-
ters, and any other materials they furnish for students.
They are well worth learning about because they are
service centers with a service orientation. They exist
to meet your and your students’ needs—instructional,
professional, or personal. Unless their resources are
already stretched beyond capacity, they actively
pursue and benefit from increasing use. So if they
can make your life as an instructor easier or more
fulfilling, if they can save you class and office hour
time, if they can handle any of the many student
requests and problems that pass through your office
door, by all means take advantage of their invaluable
services.

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INDEX
Note to index: An e following a page number denotes an exhibit on that page; an f following a page number
denotes a figure on that page; a t following a page number denotes a table on that page.
A
Absolute knowing, 8, 9t
Abstract conceptualization (AC) mode, 230,
231
Academic dishonesty, 35, 80
Academic games, 148
Academic integrity: detecting cheating, 85;
determinants of cheating, 84–85; honor
codes, 87–88; prevalence of cheating,
83–84; preventing cheating, 85–87;
student views on cheating, 88
Academic reading skills, 214
Accommodators, 231
Accountability, 18; in group learning,
158–160; for student readings, 218–221
Action research, 279, 330
Active experimentation (AE) mode, 230,
231
Active learning, 5, 52, 202–203, 317
Active recall strategy, 214–215
Active vs. reflective learning, 234–235
Ad hoc group, 161
Addition words, 216
Adjunct instructor: classroom incivility and,
72, 73; student cheating and, 84–85, 86
Adult learner, 8, 13, 162
Advance organizer, 242
Affective learning outcomes, 19, 20e
Aleamoni, L. M., 318
American Sociological Association Code of
Ethics, 148
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 35
Analytical convergent questions, 143
Analytical grading, 307–309, 308t, 312
Anderson, S., 193–194
Anderson and Krathwohl’s hybrid
taxonomy, 21, 22t–23t
Angelo, T. A., 243, 274, 280
Arreola, R. A., 327
Assessment. See Classroom assessment
techniques (CATs); Summative
assessment; Summative assessment,
grading
Assignment aids, on syllabus, 36
Assimilators, 231, 232
Astin, A. W., 156
Attendance/tardiness, 35, 82
Auditory learning, 232
Ausubel, D., 242
B
Bafa Bafa, 149
Ballard, M., 40
Barnga, 149
Baxter Magolda’s levels of knowing:
absolute, 8, 9t; contextual, 8, 9t;
independent, 8, 9t; transitional, 8, 9t
Beam, R., 117
Behaviorist theory, 53
Berke, A., 322
Berry, W., 148, 164
Big bang theory, 6–7
Biggs, J., 13
Biological basis, of learning, 4–5
BlackBerry, 266
Blackboard, 86, 246, 257, 331
Bligh, D. A., 117
Blogs, 266–267
Bloom, B., 224
Bloom’s taxonomy, 21, 138–140; analysis,
110e; application, 109e–110e;
comprehension, 109e; on declarative
learning, 275; discussion questions at
each cognitive level, 139t; evaluation,
111e; knowledge, 108e; outcomes,
examples, 23t; outcomes, teaching
moves for, 108e–111e; performance
verbs for, 22t–23t; questions at each
level, examples, 139t; synthesis,
110e–111e
Bok, D., 103, 112
Bonwell, C. C., 117
Brainy break, 117
Brevity criterion, for multiple copying, 65
Bridges, E. M., 188
Bridgwood, M. A., 195, 196
Brock University, 263
Brookfield, S. D., 130–131
Brookfield and Preskill’s “momentum”
questions, 141–142; cause-and-effect
questions, 141; clarification questions,
141; hypothetical questions, 141; linking
and extension questions, 141–142; open
questions, 141; questions requesting
more evidence, 141; summary and
synthesis questions, 142
367

368 INDEX
Bruff, D., 122
Bullet case, 183
Buzan, T., 245
C
Calisphere, 263
Campus support services, on syllabus,
35–36
Career center, 333
Case method: bullet case, 183; continuous
case, 183; debriefing case, 184–185;
directed case, 184; effectiveness of,
181–182; knowledge synthesis and, 183;
minicase, 106, 183, 286;
problems-remedies-prevention
debriefing formula, 184; qualities of
good case, 183; realism, enhancing, 183;
risk aspect of, 183; sequential-interactive
case, 184; subject matter for, 182–183;
uncertainty aspect of, 183; vignettes, 183
Case method teaching method, 106
Cashin, W. E., 318, 319
Cause-and-effect questions, 141
Cause-and-effect words, 216
CD-ROMs, 262
Cell phones, 266
Chameleon questions, 143
Change-your-mind debate, 146
Chatroom, 260
Cheating, 84–88
Christian, W., 179
Chung, C., 90
Chunking, 8, 108, 115, 118, 124, 169, 201,
228
Circles of , 49
Claim-data-warrant model, 224
Clarification questions, 141
Clarke, M., 87
Class email, 259
Class ranking, 302
Class survey, 48
Classroom assessment techniques (CATs),
49, 106, 273–277; application cards,
277; background knowledge probe, 49,
275; concept map (See Concept map);
context specific, 274; dialectical notes,
170, 220; directed paraphrasing, 170,
274; everyday ethical dilemmas, 276;
features of, 274; focused listing, 49, 275;
formative, 274; formative feedback,
277–278; learner-centered, 274;
learning log, 169–170; memory matrix,
275; muddiest point, 275–276; mutually
beneficial, 274; one-minute paper,
168–169, 274; one-sentence summary,
169; ongoing, 274; paper or project
prospectus, 276; punctuated lecture,
277; research on, 279–280; rooted in
good teaching practice, 274; RSQC2
(recall, summarize, question, connect,
and comment), 277; selecting, 274–275;
self-confidence survey, 49, 276–277;
student portfolio, 278–279;
teacher-directed, 274
Classroom conduct contract, 75
Classroom incivility. See Incivility, classroom
Classroom research, 279
Clickers, 48, 121–122, 202, 261
Cognitive development: Anderson and
Krathwohl’s hybrid taxonomy, 21,
22t–23t; Baxter Magolda’s levels of
knowing, 8–9t; Bloom’s taxonomy (See
Bloom’s taxonomy); Fink’s categories of
learning, 20, 26–27; knowledge
uncertainties and, 10–11; Perry’s theory
of student development, 8, 9t–10; of
undergraduates, 8–10, 9t
Cognitive learning outcomes, 19, 20e
Collaborative learning. See Group learning
Colleague, as information source, 329
Commonsense inventory, 50
Comparative questions, 140
Comparison words, 216
Completion (fill-in-blank) test items,
283–284
Computer smart classroom, 203
Concept circle diagram, 248–250; context
map, 249; scoring, 250; Venn diagram,
248–249f
Concept map, 217–218, 243–245, 276;
changing levels among maps, 244, 245f ;
simple maps, examples, 244f ;
subordinate concept in, 243, 244;
superordinate concept in, 243, 244
Concept writing assignment, 168
Concrete experience (CE) mode, 230, 231
Conditional learning, 275
Conferencing software, 260
CONFU, 68
Conklin, M. S., 269
Connective and causal effect questions,
140–141
Constructed response instrument, 290–294
Context-rich problems, 197
Contextual knowing, 8, 9t
Continuous case, 183
Contract grading, 58
Contrast words, 216
Convergers, 231, 232
Cookbook science lab teaching method,
106
Cooper, J., 120
Cooperative learning, 155, 162
Copyright: broadcast programming, 67;
cable channel programs, 68; course
packets, 66; fair use criteria, 64–65; free
use, 64; in-class performance, 66–67;
legal information on, 63–64;
misconceptions about, 64; multiple
copying, 65; online/electronic materials,
68–69; overview of copyright law, 64;
permissions/licenses, 69; printed text,
65–66; public domain and, 65; public
television, 67–68; short works, 65–66;
single copying, 65; television
programming, 67–68; violations, 69–70;
visual materials, 66
Copyright Clearance Center, 69
Cornell note-taking system, 123
Counseling center, 333
Course coordination, between
faculty/teaching assistant: course
content, 97; course review, 95–96;
mentoring relationship, 98–100; regular
meetings/feedback, 96–98; role
specifications, 96; student learning
assessment, 98; TA lesson plans, 97–98
Course format, 104–105
Course information, for syllabus, 34
Course management system. See Learning
management system
Course packet, and copyright, 66
Course portfolio, 325–326, 328
Course schedule, weekly/class-by-class, on
syllabus, 36
Creative Commons, 66
Criterion-referenced grading, 58
Critical questions, 141
Cross, K. P., 243, 274, 280
CSERDA Metadata Catalog, 263
Curricular requirements satisfied by course,
on syllabus, 36
D
Darwin, C., 6
Databases of Concept Questions, 122, 286
Davis, E. A., 163
Dead-end questions, 143–144
Dean’s office, 330
Debriefing case, 184–185
Decision Sciences: Journal of Innovative
Education, 150
Declarative learning, 274–275
Deductive holistic grading, 305
Del.icio.us, 268
Department chair, 329–330
Derived learning style, 231;
accommodators, 231; assimilators, 231,

Index 369
232; convergers, 231, 232; divergers,
231
Design guidelines: presentation software,
261
Desire2Learn, 257
D-F-W (drop, fail, withdraw) rate, 203
Dialectical notes, 170, 220
Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1988,
68
Diigo, 268
Directed case, 184
Directed discussion teaching method, 106
Directed paraphrasing, 170, 274
Disabilities center, 332
Disclaimer, on syllabus, 36
Discovery learning, 176
Discussion board, 260
Discussion course format: benefits of, 105,
127–128; breaking into small groups,
133–134; cold-calling by random
selection, 130; directing traffic,
134–135; encouraging nonparticipants,
134; equity and, 130–131; facilitating
discussion, 131; from first day, 128–129;
grading on participation, 129; ground
rules for participation, 129–130; igniting
exchange, 132–133; motivating
attention, 133; motivating preparation,
131–132; participation strategies,
131–135; predetermined order, 130;
raised-hands method, 130; readying
class, 132; responding to student
responses, 134; setting stage, 128–131;
waiting for responses, 133
Dishonesty policy, for syllabus, 35
Distance learning, and copyright, 68–69
Divergers, 231
Donald, J., 225
Dualistic thinking, 10, 25
Dunn, J. P., 146
E
Educational Testing Services, 286
Ego-stroking questions, 143
Eison, J. A., 117
Ellis, D., 245–246
Email, class, 259
Emotions, learning through, 5
Emphasis words, 216
Engineering, writing in, 225
E-portfolio, 261, 264, 291
Equal opportunity center, 331–332
ETEA, 257
Ethical learning outcomes, 19, 20e
Ethnic cultural center, 331
Evaluation criteria, for syllabus, 34
Evaluative questions, 140
Examples, using in lecture, 115
Expectancy theory, 54–55
Experiential learning activity, 5; academic
games, 148; change-your-mind debate,
146; expert individual or team, 146;
panel discussion, 146–147;
point-counterpoint, 146; press
conference, 147; role playing, 147–148;
service-learning, 151–153; simulations,
149–151; speaking-intensive, 221;
structured controversy, 146; student
presentation format, 145–147;
symposium, 147; town meeting, 146;
using virtual worlds, 268–269
Experimental demonstrations, in science
lecture, 202
Expert individuals or teams, 146
Extra credit/bonus points, 58
Extrinsic motivator, 51
Eye contact, 78, 129
F
Facebook, 13, 256, 268
Faculty development, using case method,
182
Fair use, 64–65
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act,
13
Feedback and group learning, 162
Feichtner, S. B., 163
Felder, R. M., 176
Feldman, K. A., 234–236, 318
Felder and Silverman’s Index of Learning
Styles (ILS), 234–236; active vs.
reflective, 234–235; intuitive vs. sensing,
235–236; sequential vs. global, 236;
verbal vs. visual, 235
Felten, P., 250–251
Fieldwork and clinicals teaching method,
106
Fill-in-blank test items, 283–284
Fink’s categories of learning, 20, 26–27
First day of class: classroom incivility issues,
75; course information, 46–47;
discussion course format, 128–129;
ending class, 50; exchanging
information, 45–48; first impressions,
45; learning students’ names, 47–48;
own background, telling students about,
46; preparations before, 43–44;
reciprocal interview, 47; social
icebreakers, 48–49; student information
index cards, 46; subject matter
icebreakers, 49–50
Fleming, N. C., 232–234
Fleming and Mills’s sensory-based learning
style typology (VARK), 232–234;
auditory, 232; kinesthetic, 233–234;
read/write, 232; visual, 233
Flesch-Kincaid (English) Readability Test,
218
Flip charts, 255
Focal questions, 142
Force Concept Inventory, 179, 205
Force Motion Conceptual Evaluation, 205
Forgetting curve, 113, 114, 116
Formative assessment, 121, 274. See also
Formative feedback
Formative feedback, 277–278
Foundational outcomes, 24–25
Free use, 64
Freeloaders, and group learning, 159–160
Free-recall, 118
Freewrites, 168, 218
Fuzzy questions, 143
G
Gale and Andrews’s “high-mileage” types,
142; brainstorming questions, 142; focal
questions, 142; playground questions,
142
Games, academic, 148
Gardner, H., 229
Gavrin, A. D., 179
Gender equity, 131
Gender-neutral language, 58
Generation Y, 11
Glassick, C. E., 326
Gogel, H. K., 90
Golding, T. L., 58
Gowin, B. D., 244
Grades: analytical grading, 307–309, 308t,
312; based on participation, 129;
contract grading, 311;
criterion-referenced grading, 58,
302–303; deductive holistic grading,
305; disagreement on meaning of
grades, 301–302; grade change request,
81; level of performance, per grade, 302;
norm-referenced grading, 58;
relationship with teacher evaluations,
317. See also Rubrics; Summative
assessment, grading
Grading leniently hypothesis, 317
Grading scale, for syllabus, 34
Graduate student instructor: classroom
incivility and, 73–74; student cheating
and, 84–85, 86. See also Course
coordination, between faculty/teaching
assistant
Graphic syllabus, 7–8, 37–39, 246f

370 INDEX
Grasha-Reichman Teaching Goals
Inventory, 322
Green, D. B., 175–176
Gresley, J., 88
Group learning: accountability in, 158–160;
ad hoc group, 161;
advantages/disadvantages of, 106,
156–157; collaborative social skills,
161–162; common terms for, 155–156;
composition of group, 160, 198;
duration of group, 160–161;
face-to-face interaction in classroom,
161; features of, 158–162; feedback and,
162; females and, 160; freeloaders,
159–160; grading, 159, 160, 162–163;
group investigation strategy, 164; group
test strategy, 165; instructor role in,
157–158; interdependence of, 158;
Jigsaw strategy, 164; learning challenge
of, 161; learning strategies, 164–165;
numbered heads together strategy, 164,
221; order, maintaining, 163; pairs
check strategy, 164; peer performance
evaluation, 159; progress reports, 163;
quantitative reasoning/problem solving,
197–198; as real-world preparation, 165;
role assignments, individual, 163; in
science education, 202; self-assessments,
161–162; send-a-problem strategy, 165,
221; size of group, 160, 198; STAD
(student teams-achievement divisions)
strategy, 164, 221; structured/academic
controversy strategy, 164, 221; student
role in, 157; talking chips strategy,
164–165; T.A.P.P.S. (talking aloud paired
problem solving) strategy, 164, 221;
team contracts, 160; think-pair-share
strategy, 164; “three before me” rule,
163; time limits/deadlines, 163; tips for
managing, 162–163
Grunert, J., 37
Grunert O’Brien, J., 33
Guided inquiry. See Inquiry-guided
learning
H
Hall, E., 229
Haney, W., 87
Harb, J. N., 231
Heller, P., 160, 193–194, 197, 198
Hertel, J. P., 150
Hewitt, N. M., 200
Higdon, J., 267
Higher-order thinking, 161, 176, 286
History-based discipline, writing in, 226
Hobson, E. H., 52
Holistic grading, 304–307; rubric for,
305–307
Holistic learning, 241
Hollabaugh, M., 160, 197
Homework, 219–220
Honor code, 87–88
Host, T. R., 298–299
Hoyt, D. P., 105
Hsu, L., 90
Huber, M. T., 326
Hudspith, B., 175
Human Bingo, 49
Hupp, J. M., 88
Hurt, P. K., 231
Hypothetical questions, 141
I
Icebreakers, on first day of class: social,
48–49; subject matter, 49–50
Illustration words, 216
Incivility, classroom: argumentative
questions, 80–81; arriving late/leaving
early, 80; asking wheedling questions,
80; assistance for, 82; cheating, 80;
classroom conduct contract, 75; coming
to class unprepared, 80; computer use
for nonclass purpose, 81; cutting classes,
82; defining incivility, 71–72;
demanding grade change, 81; disrespect
in general, 82; dominating discussion,
80; extensions/missing assignments, 82;
increase in, 72–73; loaded questions, 81;
packing up early, 79–80; questions
already answered, 80; responding to,
79–82; student bill of rights, 75; on
syllabus, 35; talking in class, 79. See also
Incivility, classroom, preventing
Incivility, classroom, preventing, 73–79;
appropriate emotions, 78;
authority/approachability balance,
73–74; body skills, 77–78; curbing
lecture time, 78; distracting behavior
reduction, 78; eye contact, 78; female
instructors, 75; modeling correct
behavior, 76–77; rewarding civil
behavior, 76; setting ground rules,
75–76; showing you care, 74–75; visual
aids and props for, 78; voice skills, 77,
78–79
In-class performance, and copyright, 66–67
Inclusive instruction, 13–14
Independent knowing, 8, 9t
Index of Learning Styles, 234–236
Inductive holistic grading, 305
Inkshedding, 168
Inquiry learning. See Inquiry-guided
learning
Inquiry-based lab design, 204–205
Inquiry-guided learning, 106; defining,
175–176; effectiveness of, 176–177;
JiTT, 179; modes of inquiry, 178;
objects of inquiry, 177–178;
project-based learning, 179
Institutional honor code, 88
Institutional Review Board (IRB), 279
Instructional center, 331
Instructional technology. See Technology,
instructional
Interactive lecture, 117–122; attention span
limits, 117; benefits of, 121–122;
student-active break ideas, 117–120;
surveying student responses, 120–121
Interactive lecture teaching method, 106,
198, 202
International center, 331
International Simulation and Gaming Research
Yearbook, The, 150
Internet Archive, 263
Intrinsic motivator, 51
Intuitive vs. sensing learning, 235–236
J
Janik, A., 223
Jenkins, H., 175
Jigsaw, 164
Johnson, D. W., 156
Johnson, R. T., 156
Johnston, K. M., 322
Johnston, S., 120
Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 269
Journaling, 132, 169, 216, 266, 278
Junco, R., 256
Just-in-time blogging, 267
Just-in-time teaching (JiTT), 41, 106, 176,
190, 202, 220, 259
K
Kalish, A., 117
Katsberg, S. S., 322
Keith, R., 193–194
Kennedy, F., 158
Key words, 123, 124, 168, 217, 245, 246,
255, 261, 331
Kiewra, K. A., 123, 250
Kinesthetic learning, 233–234
Knowledge, defining, 6, 25
Kodani, C. H., 120
Kolb, D. A., 231
Kolb’s learning styles model and
experiential learning theory, 230–232;

Index 371
abstract conceptualization (AC) mode,
230, 231; accommodators, 231; active
experimentation (AE) mode, 230, 231;
assimilators, 231, 232; concrete
experience (CE) mode, 230, 231;
convergers, 231, 232; derived learning
styles, 231; divergers, 231; learning
cycle, 230–231; reflective observation
(RO) mode, 230, 231
Krathwohl, D. R. See Anderson and
Krathwohl’s hybrid taxonomy
Kristensen, E., 72
L
Lab reports, grading, 309–310
Laboratory safety policy, for syllabus, 35
Langer, J. A., 225
Laptops in classroom, 264–266
Larkin, J. H., 241
Learner-centered classroom assessment
techniques, 274
Learning goal orientation, 54
Learning log, 169–170
Learning management system, 68, 86,
257–260; chatroom, 260; class email,
259; conferencing software, 260;
discussion board, 260; MOOs, 260;
online preclass quiz, 259; posting course
material, 258–259; test tools, 86
Learning objects, Web, 263–264
Learning outcomes: defining, 18; general
types of, 20e
Learning principles, 4–5
Learning style: abstract conceptualization
(AC) mode, 230, 231; accommodators,
231; active experimentation (AE) mode,
230, 231; active vs. reflective, 234–235;
assimilators, 231, 232; auditory, 232;
concrete experience (CE) mode, 230,
231; convergers, 231, 232; derived
learning styles, 231; divergers, 231;
Felder and Silverman’s Index of
Learning Styles, 234–236; Fleming and
Mills’s sensory-based typology, 232–234;
intuitive vs. sensing, 235–236;
kinesthetic, 233–234; Kolb’s model,
230–232; learning cycle, 230–231;
multisensory/multimethod teaching,
237; parallels across models, 236–237;
read/write, 232; reflective observation
(RO) mode, 230, 231; sequential vs.
global, 236; verbal vs. visual, 235; visual,
233
Learning-centered syllabus, 33, 37
Lecture-based course format, 106;
advantages/disadvantages of, 105,
113–114; body, 115; conclusion, 116;
delivering, 116–117; interactive lecture,
117–122; introduction, 115; lecture
notes, 116; note-taking by students,
122–125; organizational outline,
115–116; outcomes for class period,
114; preparation, 114–116; in science
education, 200
Lecture/lab course format, 105
Lecture-related software,
260–262
Lee, V. S., 175–176, 178
Legal policy, on syllabus, 36–37
Letters home exercise, 170
Lewes, D., 53, 57
Library, 330
Light, R. J., 156
Link rot, 264
Linking and extension questions,
141–142
Lisle, L., 91
Listen, recall, and ask; then pair, compare,
and answer, 119
Literature, writing in, 226–227
M
Maeroff, G. I., 326
Marsh, H. W., 319
Marzano, R. J., 240
Maslow, A., 104
Mastrodicasa, J., 256
Matching test items, 285–286
Matrices, 250t, 275
Mazur, E., 119, 155, 202
McKeachie’s categories, 140–141;
comparative questions, 140; connective
and causal effect questions, 140–141;
critical questions, 141; evaluative
questions, 140
Mealy, D. L., 298–299
Mechanics, grading, 310–311
Mediating outcomes, 24
Medical emergency, in science lab,
206–207
Memory matrix, 275
Memory tapes, 232
Mentoring relationship, faculty/teaching
assistant, 98–100
MERLOT (Multimedia Educational
Resource for Learning and Online
Teaching), 263
Metacognition, 4, 10, 201
Microformats, 268
Middendorf, J., 117
Millennial generation, 11–13
Milliron, V., 87
Millis, B. J., 148
Mills, C., 232–234
Milwaukee Center for International
Education, 264
Mind dump, 221
Mind map, 217–218, 245–248; example of,
246f , 247f ; primary idea in, 245, 246;
secondary idea in, 245–246
Minicase, 106, 183, 286
Minilecture, 115, 118–120, 124, 148, 203,
217–218
Missed/late exams/assignments, for syllabus,
35
Mnemonic device, 232
Mock test, 171
‘‘Momentum” questions, 141–142
MOO (multiple-user object-oriented
environment), 260
Moodle, 257
Moore, S., 267
Mosley, D., 229
Motion Picture Licensing Corporation,
67
Motivating, defining, 51
Motivating students: behaviorist theory on,
53; equity influence on, 58–59;
expectancy of goal achievement, 54–55;
goal orientation, 53–54; present
knowledge about, 52; relative value of
goal, 54; strategies for, 55–58
Motivator: extrinsic, 51, 52; intrinsic, 51,
52
Muddiest point, 274, 275–276
Multicultural and racial/ethnic cultural
center, 331
Multimedia research sites, 263
Multiple choice test items, 286–289
Multiple intelligences, 229
Multiple true-false test items, 289–290
Multiple-choice item task, 118–119
Multiple-choice questions, 202, 286
MySpace, 268
N
National Science Foundation Internet
Library, 263
Nelson, C., 10, 227
NET generation, 11
New York Library Digital Collections, 263
NeXt generation, 11
Nilson, L. B., 38, 50, 74, 75, 79, 158, 171,
172, 219, 220, 239, 247, 263, 264–265,
264–266, 279, 280, 318
Ning, 268
Norm-referenced grading, 58

372 INDEX
Note-taking, by students, 122–125; as
interfering with learning/recall, 125;
learning aids for, 124–125; motivation
for, 122–123; note-taking systems,
123–124
Notre Dame, 263
Novak, G. M., 179, 244
Numbered heads together, 164, 221
Nurrenbern, S., 194
Nyquist, J., 96
O
OAuth, 268
Odom, J., 175–176, 205
Office hours: encouragement tips, 91;
location of, 90; scheduling, 90; student
preparation for, 91–92; student-active
tutoring, 92; students in academic
trouble, 92; students in emotional
trouble, 92–93; supplementing with
course center, 90
One-minute paper, 168–169, 274
One-sentence summary, 169
Online Books Page, 263
Online classes, and cheating, 87
Online course management system, 40
Online “living syllabus,” 39–40
Online preclass quiz, 259
Online/electronic materials, and copyright,
68–69
Open Learning Initiative, 263
Open questions, 141
OpenCourseWare, 263
OpenID, 268
OpenSocial, 268
OpenSource, 268
Oral performances, 221
Outcome, parts of, 19
Outcomes map, 8, 27–28; freshman
seminar example, 28f ; graduate course
example, 29f
Outcomes-centered course design: affective
outcomes, 19, 20e; benefits of, 17–18;
Bloom’s and Anderson and Krathwohl’s,
25–26; cognitive outcomes, 19, 20e, 21;
course content, 28–29; ethical
outcomes, 19, 20e; Fink’s categories of
learning, 20, 26–27; foundational
outcomes, 24–25; framework overview,
25–27; graded assignments/assessments,
29–31; graded assignments/assessments,
rubric for, 30t; in-class activities, 30–31;
mediating outcomes, 24;
outcomes-centered course development,
28–31; Perry’s and Baxter-Magolda’s,
26; psychomotor outcomes, 19, 20e;
reading assignments, 29; sequencing
outcomes, 21, 24–25, 26; social learning
outcomes, 19, 20e; ultimate outcomes,
24; writing outcomes, 18–19
Overall, J. U., 319
Overall composite rating (OCR), 327
Overhead/document projector, 255–256
P
Pair, compare, and ask, 118
Pair and compare, 118
Pair/group and discuss, 119–120
Pair/group and review, 120, 297
Pair/group graphic, 119
Pairs check, 164
Panel discussion, 146–147
Paper/project prospectus, 276
Pattern recognition, 6, 8, 25, 138, 241, 242
Patterson, E. T., 179
Peer feedback, 106, 171–172, 196–197
Peer instruction, 155
Peer performance evaluation, 159
Peer tutoring, 155
Perera, S., 105
Performance goal orientation, 53–54
Performance-avoidance goals, 52
Periodic free-recall, 118
Perrin, B. M., 319
Perrine, R. M., 91
Perry, W. G., 224, 226
Perry’s theory of student development, 8,
9t–10; commitment, 9t–10; duality, 9t;
multiplicity, 9t, 10; relativism, 9t
Pickering, M., 194
Plagiarism, 64; defining, 83; detecting, 85,
87; prevalence of, 83
Playground questions, 142
Plug-and-chug, 194, 235
Podcast, 114, 261–262
POGIL (process-oriented guided inquiry
learning), 202–203, 205
Point-counterpoint, 146
Portfolio: course, 325–326, 328;
e-portfolio, 261, 264, 291; student,
278–279; teaching, 321, 322–325, 326,
328
PowerPoint, 260
PQR3
(preview-question-read-recite-review),
215
Prégent, R., 29
Presentation format, student, 145–147;
change-your-mind debate, 146; expert
individuals or teams, 146; panel
discussion, 146–147;
point-counterpoint, 146; press
conference, 147; structured controversy,
146; symposium, 147; town meeting,
146
Presentation software, 260–261
Preskill, S., 130–131
Press conference, 147
Prince, M., 176
Prior knowledge, 6
Prisoner’s Dilemma, 149
Private Universe, A (Schneps & Sadler), 7
Problem posting, 49–50
Problem-based learning (PBL), 106;
assessment of projects, 188–189; basic
steps in, 187–188; characteristics of
good problems, 189; creativity in, 191;
effectiveness of, 189–190; experiential
potential of PBL, 188; locating good
problems, 189; student view on,
190–191
Problems-remedies-prevention debriefing
formula, 184
Procedural learning, 275
Process worksheet, 177, 195–196
Processing style. See Learning style
Programmed-answer questions, 143
Progressive behaviorist method, 57
Project prospectus, 276
Project-based learning, 106, 179
Psychological center, 333
Psychomotor learning outcomes, 19, 20e
Psychomotor skills, 19
Public domain, and copyright, 65
Punctuated lecture, 277
Put-down questions, 143
Q
Quantitative reasoning and problem solving:
context-rich problems, 197; course
modifications for, 198; faulty/careless
problem analysis, 195; group learning
and, 197–198; inaccuracy in reading,
194; inaccuracy in thinking, 194–195;
lack of perseverance, 195; modeling
problem-solving procedures, 195, 198;
peer feedback as routine, 196–197;
plug-and-chug tactic, 194, 235; process
worksheets for, 195–196; steps in
problem solving, 195–196; student
problem-solving problems, 193–195;
tutoring, 196, 198; worked examples,
195
Question shuffle, 297
Questioning techniques, for
discussion/assessment: analytical
convergent questions, 143; Brookfield
and Preskill’s “momentum” questions,

Index 373
141–142; chameleon questions, 143;
dead-end questions, 143–144;
ego-stroking questions, 143; fuzzy
questions, 143; Gale and Andrews’s
“high-mileage” types, 142; guiding
students up Bloom’s hierarchy, 138–140;
McKeachie’s categories, 140–141; poor
questions, 142–144;
programmed-answer questions, 143;
put-down questions, 143; questioning as
inquiry process, 137–140; questions
good for recitation, 143; quiz show
questions, 143; shotgun questions, 143;
Socratic method, 137–138;
student-developed questions, 144;
typologies of discussion questions,
140–142; working backward from
end-of-class outcomes, 138
Quick case study, 119
Quick thinks, 120
Quiz show questions, 143
R
Racial/ethnic cultural center, 331
Readiness assessment test, 165
Reading ability, correlation with income,
213
Reading list, annotated, for syllabus, 34
Readings, student compliance: nonclass
activities effect on, 212; reading habits
effect on, 212; reasons for
noncompliance, 211–213; teacher
workload effect on, 222. See also
Readings, student compliance strategies
Readings, student compliance strategies,
213–219; academic reading skills, 214;
accountability, 218–221; active recall
strategy, 214–215; homework
assignments, 219–220; in-class written
exercises, 220–221;
marginalia/highlighting/underlining,
216–217; multi-step strategies, 215; oral
presentations, 221; preliminary
exploration of text, 214; promoting
readings, 218; purpose for reading,
215–216; quizzes, 220; reading loads,
218; stop lecturing readings, 214;
student review of readings, 217–218;
transitions and verbal signals, 216
Read/write learning style, 232
Recitation teaching method, 106
Reflection/reaction paragraph, 118
Reflective learning, 275
Reflective observation (RO) mode, 230,
231
Reflective writing, 218
Restatements, using in lecture, 115
Reverse discrimination, 58
Richardson, J., 90
Rieke, R., 223
Rodgers, M. L., 309–310
Role playing, 106, 147–148
Roy, D., 241
RSQC2 (recall, summarize, question,
connect, and comment), 277
Rubrics: analytical grading, 307–309, 308t;
graded assignments/assessments, 30t;
holistic grading, 305–307; lab report,
309–310; for statement of teaching
philosophy, 323t
S
Sakai, 257
Sandoe, K., 87
Sass, E. J., 52
SCALE-UP (student-centered active
learning environment for undergraduate
programs), 202–203, 205
Scavenger hunt, 48–49
Schechter, E., 175–176
Scholarship of teaching and learning, 279
Schönwetter, D. J., 322
Science education: facilitating, 201; grading
lab reports, 309–310; importance of,
207; lab experience, 203–205; lab safety
and management, 205–207; lecture
method in, 200, 202–203; POGIL
(process-oriented guided inquiry
learning), 202–203, 205; reasons
students dislike/drop out of, 200;
reducing student cognitive load in, 201;
SCALE-UP (student-centered active
learning environment for undergraduate
programs), 202–203, 205; writing and,
225
Second Life, 269
Seldin, P., 325
Self-confidence survey, 49, 276–277
Self-introductions, on first day of class, 48
Seminar course format, 105
Send-a-problem, 165, 221
Sequential vs. global learning, 236
Sequential-interactive case, 184
Service-learning, 106, 151–153; defining,
151; effects of, 151–152; implementing,
152–153
Seventh inning stretch, 120
Sexual harassment, 332
Seymour, E., 200
Shaffer, L., 221
Shodor Interactive, 264
Shotgun questions, 143
Silverman, L. K., 234–236
Simages, 150
Simon, H. A., 241
Simulation and Gaming: An Interdisciplinary
Journal of Theory, Practice and Research,
150
Simulations, 106; debriefing, 151; finding,
150; frame, 149; running, 150–151
Sixbury, G. R., 319
Skeletal lecture notes, 124–125
Slatta, R. W., 175–176
Smartboard, 261
Smith, D. M., 231
Smithsonian Institution, 263
Social bookmarking tools, 267–268
Social cognitive model, 54
Social learning, 4; outcomes, 19, 20e
Social networking tools, 268
Socratic method, 137–138, 203
Software, lecture-related, 260–262
Software Publishers Association, 69–70
Sokoloff, D., 205
Solve a problem task, 118
SQ3R (survey-question-read-recall-review),
215
Staats, S., 88
STAD (student teams-achievement
divisions), 164, 221
Stalnaker, J. M., 290–291
STEM fields, student-active break activities
in, 122
Structure, effect on learning, 5–8
Structured/academic controversy, 146, 164,
221
Student bill of rights, 75
Student evaluation, of teacher, 316–320;
improving, 319–320; reliability of, 319;
validity of, 316–319
Student honor code, 87–88
Student names, leaning and using, 47–48,
75
Student portfolio, 278–279
Student-active break activities: listen, recall,
and ask; then pair, compare, and answer,
119; multiple-choice item task,
118–119; multiple-choice test item task,
119; pair, compare, and ask, 118; pair
and compare, 118; pair/group and
discuss, 119–120; pair/group and
review, 120; periodic free-recall, 118;
quick case study, 119; quick thinks, 120;
reflection/reaction paragraph, 118;
seventh inning stretch, 120; solve a
problem task, 118
Student-active method. See Group learning

374 INDEX
Student-peer feedback teaching method,
106
Studio course, 202
Study aids, on syllabus, 36
Summary and synthesis questions, 142
Summative assessment: advantages of, 294;
completion (fill-in-blank), 283–284;
essay questions/writing assignments,
290–294; formative assessment vs., 281;
matching, 285–286; multiple choice,
286–289; multiple true-false, 289–290;
objective test items, 283–290; scenarios,
286–288; true/false, 284–285. See also
Summative assessment, grading;
Summative assessment, testing guidelines
Summative assessment, grading: analytical
grading, 307–309, 308t; atomistic
grading, 304; contract grading, 311;
criterion-referenced grading, 302–303;
feedback and, 313; grading constructed
responses and papers, 304–309; grading
mechanics, 310–311; holistic grading,
304–307; lab reports, 309–310;
limitations of grading, 314;
norm-referenced grading, 302;
outcomes grading, 311–312; qualities of
grading system, 303–304; returning
student work, 312–313
Summative assessment, testing guidelines,
281–283; clarity and content, peer
evaluation of, 282–283; compose
questions after material covered, 282;
instructions for tests, 282; item analysis
of new objective items, 283; outcomes,
281–282; proofread test form for errors,
283; test early and often, 282; warm-up
questions, 282
Support/resources, institutional: for
faculty/students/staff, 329–332; for
students, 332–333
Syllabus: appropriate items for, 33–37;
computer use in classroom policy, 81;
defining, 33; getting students to read,
40–41, 46; graphic syllabus, 37–39, 38f ;
late work penalties, 82;
learning-centered, 33; office hours, 91;
online “living syllabus,” 39–40
Symposium, 147
T
Tablet PC, 261, 265
Talking chips, 164–165
T.A.P.P.S. (talking aloud paired problem
solving), 164, 221
TEACH Act, 68
Teacher-centered learning, 4
Teacher-directed classroom assessment
techniques, 274
Teaching, assessing effectiveness of:
comprehensive approaches, 326–327;
course portfolio for, 325–326; defining
effectiveness, 315; peer/administrative/
self-evaluation for, 320–321; problems
with measuring student learning,
315–316; student evaluation for,
316–320; teaching philosophy statement
role in, 321–322; teaching portfolio for,
322, 324–325
Teaching, purpose of, 17
Teaching and learning tools, Web, 262–263
Teaching assistant (TA), 5; classroom
incivility and, 74; development using
case method, 182; office hours and, 89,
90; science education and, 203, 205. See
also Course coordination, between
faculty/teaching assistant
Teaching Goals Inventory, 322
Teaching methods, matching with learning
outcomes: to achieve different learning
outcomes, 107t–108; consequences of
choice, 112; perfect fit example, 104f ;
teaching moves for, 108e–111e; teaching
toolbox, 104–111
Teaching moves, 108; for Bloom’s cognitive
operations, 108e–111e
Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI), 322
Teaching philosophy, 36, 321–322
Teaching portfolio, 321, 322–325, 326, 328
Teaching principles, 5; for diverse students,
14; role of structure in learning, 7–8
Teaching toolbox, 104–111
Teaching/faculty development/instructional
development center, 330
Team development, stages in, 157–158. See
also Group learning
Team learning. See Group learning
Technical writing, 227–228; accuracy and
timeliness, 228; evidence to justify
purpose, 228; format, 228; language and
style, 228; purpose, 228; specific
audience pitch, 227–228
Technology, instructional: blogs, 266–267;
board, 253–255; chatrooms, 260;
choosing, 256–257; class email, 259;
conferencing software, 260; discussion
boards, 260; flip chart, 255; future of,
269; laptops in classroom, 264–266;
learning management systems, 68, 86,
257–260; learning objects, 263–264;
lecture-related software, 260–262; link
rot, 264; low-tech tools, 253–256;
mobile devices, 266; MOOs, 260;
multimedia research sites, 263; online
preclass quizzes, 259;
overhead/document projectors,
255–256; podcasts and vodcasts,
261–262; posting course material,
258–259; presentation software,
260–261; productive uses for, 264–265;
social bookmarking tools, 267–268;
social networking tools, 268; teaching
and learning tools, 262–263; virtual
worlds, 268–269; Web 2.0 tools,
266–269; Web resources, 262–264;
wikis, 267
Technology center, 330–331
Technology Harmonization and Education
Act, 68
Television programming, and copyright,
67–68
Terry, R. E., 231
Test blueprint, 296
Tests, preparing students for: advantages of,
299; anxiety-reduction measures,
298–299; definitions of key test terms,
297–298; help sessions or course clinics,
297; reading/review strategies, 296;
review sessions, 297; review sheets, 296;
study groups, 296; test preparation
measures, 295–298. See also Summative
assessment
Think-pair-share, 164
Thornton, R., 205
3R (read-recite-review), 214–215, 296
‘‘Three before me” rule, 163
Tobias, S., 200
Topaz, C., 267
Toulmin, S., 223
Town meeting, 146
Transitional knowing, 8, 9t
Treisman, P. U., 156
True/false test items, 284–285
Tucker, D. L., 91
Tutoring, 196, 198
Twitter, 268
Typologies, of discussion questions,
140–142; brainstorming, 142;
Brookfield and Preskill’s “momentum”
questions, 141–142; cause-and-effect,
141; clarification, 141; comparative, 140;
connective and causal effect, 140–141;
critical, 141; evaluative, 140; focal, 142;
Gale and Andrews’s “high-mileage”
types, 142; hypothetical, 141; linking
and extension, 141–142; McKeachie’s
categories, 140–141; more evidence
request, 141; open, 141; playground,
142; summary and synthesis, 142

Index 375
U
Ultimate outcomes, 24
Uncertainties, in knowledge base, 10
Undergraduate student body profile, 3–4
University of Wisconsin, 264
V
VARK model, 232–234
Venn diagram, 248–249f
Verbal learning, 235
Virtual worlds, 268–269
Visual argument theory, 240–241
Visual learning, 233, 235
Visuals, 8; benefits of, 250–251; cognitive
theory on, 241–242; concept circle
diagram, 248–250, 249f ; concept map,
243–245, 244f ; copyright and, 66;
dual-coding theory on, 240; matrices,
250t, 275; mind map, 245–248,
246f –247f ; for science education, 201;
types of, 115, 242–250; visual argument
theory, 240–241
Vodcast, 261–262
W
Wallace, H., 88
Wandersee, J., 250
Warmath, W. H., Jr., 160
Weaver, B. E., 264–265
Web 2.0 tools, 266–269; blogs, 266–267;
social bookmarking tools, 267–268;
social networking tools, 268; virtual
worlds, 268–269; wikis, 267
Web resources, 262–264; learning objects,
263–264; link rot, 264; multimedia
research sites, 263; teaching and learning
tools, 262–263
Weblog. See Blogs
Wieman, C., 202
Wikis, 267
Williamson, K. J., 231
Wilson, M. A., 40
Wisconsin Online Resource Center, 264
Wolcott, S., 224
Women’s center, 331
Wood, M., 120
Worked examples, 177, 195
World Lecture Hall, 263
Writing: advantages of informal, 167;
concept assignment, 168; dialectical
notes, 170, 220; directed paraphrasing,
170, 274; freewrites, 168, 218;
inkshedding activity, 168; journals, 169;
learning logs, 169–170;
letters/memos/notes/electronic posts,
170–171; mock tests, 171; muddiest
point, 274; multiple purposes of, 172;
one-minute paper, 168–169, 274;
one-sentence summary, 169; outcomes,
18–19; peer feedback, 171–172;
reflective, 218; student reading
compliance and, 220–221;
writing-to-learn exercises,
168–172
Writing, in own discipline: commonalities
among disciplines, 223–224;
metacognitive differences among
disciplines, 224–227; metacognitive
model, 224; metacognitive model
discovery exercise, 227; technical
writing, 227–228
Writing and speaking teaching method, 106
Writing-across-the-curriculum, 223–224
Writing/communication program,
332–333
Writing-to-learn exercises, 220
Wueste, D. E., 88
Wulff, D., 96
Y
Yale University, 301
YouTube, 257, 268
Z
Zeilik, M., 245

www.josseybass.com
TEACHING AT ITS BEST
This third edition of the best-selling handbook offers faculty at all levels an essential toolbox of
hundreds of practical teaching techniques, formats, classroom activities, and exercises, all of which
can be implemented immediately. This thoroughly revised edition includes the newest portrait of the
Millennial student; current research from cognitive psychology; a focus on outcomes maps; the
latest legal options on copyright issues; and how to best use new technology including wikis, blogs,
podcasts, vodcasts, and clickers. Entirely new chapters include subjects such as matching teaching
methods with learning outcomes, inquiry-guided learning, and using visuals to teach, and new
sections address Felder and Silverman’s Index of Learning Styles, SCALE-UP classrooms, multiple
true-false test items, and much more.
Praise for the Third Edition of Teaching at Its Best
“ Everyone—veterans as well as novices—will profi t from reading Teaching at Its Best, for it provides
both theory and practical suggestions for handling all of the problems one encounters in teaching
classes varying in size, ability, and motivation.”
— WILBERT MCKEACHIE, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, and coauthor,
McKeachie’s Teaching Tips
“ This new edition of Dr. Nilson’s book, with its completely updated material and several new topics, is
an even more powerful collection of ideas and tools than the last. What a great resource, especially
for beginning teachers but also for us veterans!”
—L. DEE FINK, author, Creating Signifi cant Learning Experiences

“ This third edition of Teaching at Its Best is successful at weaving the latest research on teaching and
learning into what was already a thorough exploration of each topic. New information on how we
learn, how students develop, and innovations in instructional strategies complement the solid
foundation established in the fi rst two editions.”
— MARILLA D. SVINICKI, Department of Psychology, The University of Texas, Austin,
and coauthor, McKeachie’s Teaching Tips

T H E A U T H O R
LINDA B. NILSON is the founding director of the Offi ce of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation at
Clemson University. She is the author of The Graphic Syllabus and the Outcomes Map: Communicating
Your Course from Jossey-Bass.
Cover design by Michael Cook
EDUCATION/HIGHER
LINDA B. NILSON
A Research-Based Resource
for College Instructors{ }
T H I R D E D I T I O N
TEACHING
AT ITS BEST
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IN
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T
IT
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B
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T
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Teaching at Its Best, Third Edition: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors
CONTENTS
THE AUTHOR
PREFACE
PART 1: LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR STUDENT LEARNING
Chapter 1: Understanding Your Students and How They Learn
YOUR UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT BODY PROFILE
HOW PEOPLE LEARN
HOW STRUCTURE INCREASES LEARNING
THE COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERGRADUATES
ENCOURAGING COGNITIVE GROWTH
TEACHING THE MILLENNIAL GENERATION
THE ADULT LEARNER
INCLUSIVE INSTRUCTING
THE CHALLENGE
Chapter 2: Outcomes-Centered Course Design
WHY OUTCOMES-CENTERED COURSE DESIGN?
WRITING OUTCOMES
TYPES OF LEARNING OUTCOMES
TYPES OF COGNITIVE OUTCOMES
DESIGNING THE LEARNING PROCESS
HELPFUL FRAMEWORKS FOR DESIGNING A COURSE
SHOWING STUDENTS THEIR LEARNING PROCESS
OUTCOMES-CENTERED COURSE DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 3: The Complete Syllabus
APPROPRIATE SYLLABUS ITEMS
THE GRAPHIC SYLLABUS
THE ONLINE ‘‘LIVING SYLLABUS’’
GETTING STUDENTS TO READ YOUR SYLLABUS
THE EVOLVING SYLLABUS
Chapter 4: Your First Day of Class
BEFORE THE FIRST CLASS
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
EXCHANGING INFORMATION
SOCIAL ICEBREAKERS: GETTING TO KNOW YOU
SUBJECT MATTER ICEBREAKERS
DRAWING CLASS TO A CLOSE
Chapter 5: Motivating Your Students
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT MOTIVATION IN LEARNING
CREDIBLE THEORIES OF MOTIVATION
STRATEGIES FOR MOTIVATING STUDENTS
EQUITY IN THE CLASSROOM

PART 2: MANAGING YOUR COURSES
Chapter 6: Copyright Guidelines for Instructors
WHERE COPYRIGHT DOES AND DOES NOT APPLY
COMMON COPYRIGHT MISCONCEPTIONS
FREE USE: FAIR USE, FACTS, AND PUBLIC DOMAIN
PRINTED TEXT
VISUAL MATERIALS
IN-CLASS PERFORMANCES
RECORDING BROADCAST PROGRAMMING
ONLINE/ELECTRONIC MATERIALS AND DISTANCE LEARNING
OBTAINING PERMISSION OR A LICENSE
HOW COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS ARE ACTUALLY HANDLED
FOR FURTHER AND FUTURE REFERENCE
Chapter 7: Preventing and Responding to Classroom Incivility
WHAT IS INCIVILITY?
WHY THE INCREASE?
PREVENTING INCIVILITY: YOUR CLASSROOM PERSONA
RESPONDING TO INCIVILITY
SEEKING ASSISTANCE
Chapter 8: Preserving Academic Integrity
HOW PREVALENT IS CHEATING?
WHO CHEATS, AND WHY?
DETECTING CHEATING
PREVENTING CHEATING
HONOR CODES
CHANGING STUDENT VALUES
Chapter 9: Making the Most of Office Hours
GETTING STUDENTS TO SEE YOU
MAKING THE TIME PRODUCTIVE
STUDENT-ACTIVE TUTORING
STUDENTS IN ACADEMIC OR EMOTIONAL TROUBLE
Chapter 10: Course Coordination Between Faculty and Teaching Assistants
BEFORE THE TERM: COURSE REVIEW AND ROLE SPECIFICATIONS
DURING THE TERM: REGULAR MEETINGS AND TEACHING FEEDBACK
EXTENDING MANAGING TO MENTORING

PART 3: CHOOSING AND USING THE RIGHT TOOLS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING
Chapter 11: Matching Teaching Methods with Learning Outcomes
TYPES OF TOOLS
DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE?
Chapter 12: Making the Lecture a Learning Experience
PURPOSE: TO LECTURE OR NOT TO LECTURE?
PREPARING AN EFFECTIVE LECTURE
DELIVERING AN EFFECTIVE LECTURE
INCORPORATING STUDENT-ACTIVE BREAKS: THE INTERACTIVE LECTURE
TEACHING STUDENTS TO TAKE GOOD NOTES
MAKING THE LECTURE EFFECTIVE FOR EVERYONE
Chapter 13: Leading Effective Discussions
WHEN TO CHOOSE DISCUSSION
HOW TO SET THE STAGE FOR DISCUSSION
HOW TO MAXIMIZE PARTICIPATION THROUGH SKILLFUL DISCUSSION MANAGEMENT
Chapter 14: Questioning Techniques for Discussion and Assessment
QUESTIONING AS A PROCESS OF INQUIRY
TYPOLOGIES OF GOOD DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
POOR QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION PURPOSES
TURNING THE TABLES
Chapter 15: Experiential Learning Activities
STUDENT PRESENTATION FORMATS
ROLE PLAYING
SIMULATIONS AND GAMES
SERVICE-LEARNING: THE REAL THING
Chapter 16: Learning in Groups
A GROUP BY ANY OTHER NAME. . .
THE CASE FOR GROUP WORK
CHANGING METHODS, CHANGING ROLES
THE SETUP AND MANAGEMENT OF STUDENT GROUPS
MANAGEMENT TIPS
TRIED-AND-TRUE GROUP LEARNING STRATEGIES
PREPARING STUDENTS FOR LIFE
Chapter 17: Writing-to-Learn Activities and Assignments
FREEWRITES
THE ONE-MINUTE PAPER
JOURNALS
ONE-SENTENCE SUMMARIES
LEARNING LOGS
DIALECTICAL NOTES
DIRECTED PARAPHRASING
LETTERS, MEMOS, NOTES, AND ELECTRONIC POSTS
MOCK TESTS
DRAFTS FOR PEER FEEDBACK
MULTIPLE PURPOSES

PART 4: MORE TOOLS
Chapter 18: Inquiry-Guided Learning
DEFINITIONS OF INQUIRY-GUIDED LEARNING
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INQUIRY-GUIDED LEARNING
OBJECTS AND MODES OF INQUIRY
VARIATIONS OF INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING
Chapter 19: The Case Method
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE CASE METHOD
THE APPROPRIATE SUBJECT MATTER
WHAT MAKES A GOOD CASE
TYPES OF CASES
DEBRIEFING CASES
A POSTSCRIPT FOR PIONEERS
Chapter 20: Problem-Based Learning
HOW PBL WORKS
GOOD PBL PROBLEMS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PBL
WHAT STUDENTS THINK
KUDOS FOR CREATIVITY
Chapter 21: Quantitative Reasoning and Problem Solving
UNDERSTANDING STUDENTS’ PROBLEMS WITH PROBLEMS
MODELING EXPERT REASONING
TEACHING THE STEPS OF PROBLEM SOLVING
TUTORING STUDENTS OUT OF BAD HABITS
ROUTINIZING PEER FEEDBACK
MAKING PROBLEMS MORE REAL AND CHALLENGING
USING THE POWER OF GROUP LEARNING
ACCOMMODATING NEW METHODS TO TRADITIONAL SETTINGS
Chapter 22: Problem Solving in the Sciences
WHERE SCIENCE EDUCATION FALLS SHORT
HOW TO HELP STUDENTS LEARN SCIENCE: GENERAL ADVICE
HOW THE LECTURE CAN BE MADE INTO A MEANINGFUL LEARNING EXPERIENCE
HOW THE LAB CAN BE MADE INTO A MEANINGFUL LEARNING EXPERIENCE
THE ESSENTIALS OF LAB SAFETY AND MANAGEMENT
WHY SCIENCE EDUCATION IS SO IMPORTANT

PART 5: MAKING LEARNING EASIER
Chapter 23: Getting Students to Do the Readings
WHY STUDENTS DON’T DO THE READINGS
HOW WE CAN EQUIP AND INDUCE STUDENTS TO DO THE READINGS
SPECIFIC TOOLS FOR HOLDING STUDENTS ACCOUNTABLE
MANAGING YOUR WORKLOAD
Chapter 24: Teaching Your Students to Think and Write in Your Discipline
CROSS-DISCIPLINARY COMMONALITIES
TEACHING CRITICAL THINKING THROUGH THE DISCIPLINE’S METACOGNITIVE MODEL
METACOGNITIVE DIFFERENCES AMONG DISCIPLINES
MAKING STUDENTS BETTER THINKERS AND WRITERS
TEACHING STUDENTS TO WRITE FOR THEIR FUTURES
THE MANY WORLDS OF WRITING
Chapter 25: Accommodating Different Learning Styles
KOLB’S LEARNING STYLES MODEL AND EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING THEORY
FLEMING AND MILLS’S SENSORY-BASED LEARNING STYLE TYPOLOGY
FELDER AND SILVERMAN’S INDEX OF LEARNING STYLES
PARALLELS ACROSS LEARNING STYLE MODELS
MULTISENSORY, MULTIMETHOD TEACHING: MOST EFFECTIVE FOR ALL
Chapter 26: Using Visuals to Teach
WAYS THAT VISUALS ENHANCE LEARNING
TYPES OF VISUALS FOR LEARNING
THE FUTURE OF VISUALS IN TEACHING AND LEARNING
Chapter 27: Using Instructional Technology Wisely
RELIABLE LOW-TECH TOOLS FOR THE CLASSROOM
THE CHOICE OF HIGH-TECH ALTERNATIVES
LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
LECTURE-RELATED SOFTWARE
WEB RESOURCES
LAPTOPS IN THE WIRELESS CLASSROOM
WEB 2.0 TOOLS
LOOKING AHEAD

PART 6: ASSESSING LEARNING OUTCOMES
Chapter 28: Assessing Student Learning in Progress
CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES
FORMATIVE FEEDBACK
STUDENT PORTFOLIOS
EXTENDING CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT TO CLASSROOM RESEARCH AND THE SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING AND LEARNING
Chapter 29: Constructing Summative Assessments
GENERAL TESTING GUIDELINES
OBJECTIVE TEST ITEMS
CONSTRUCTED RESPONSE INSTRUMENTS: ESSAY QUESTIONS AND WRITING ASSIGNMENTS
TESTS AND ASSIGNMENTS: THE ULTIMATE TEACHING EVALUATIONS
Chapter 30: Preparing Students for Tests
TEST PREPARATION MEASURES
ANXIETY-REDUCTION MEASURES
WHAT THE EFFORT IS WORTH
Chapter 31: Grading Summative Assessments
THE MEANING OF GRADES
SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENTS AND GRADING SYSTEMS
THE QUALITIES OF A SOUND GRADING SYSTEM
GRADING CONSTRUCTED RESPONSES AND PAPERS
GRADING LAB REPORTS
HOW TO GRADE MECHANICS QUICKLY WHILE ENSURING STUDENTS LEARN THEM
OUTCOME-BASED GRADING
RETURNING STUDENTS’ WORK
HELPING STUDENTS USE YOUR FEEDBACK TO IMPROVE
THE REAL MEANING AND LIMITS OF GRADES
Chapter 32: Evaluating and Documenting Teaching Effectiveness
DEFINING AND MEASURING TEACHING EFFECTIVENESS
STUDENT EVALUATIONS
PEER, ADMINISTRATIVE, AND SELF-EVALUATIONS
DOCUMENTING YOUR EFFECTIVENESS
COMPREHENSIVE APPROACHES TO FACULTY EVALUATION
COMPLEX BEYOND MEASURE

APPENDIX: Instructional Support and Resources at Your Institution
REFERENCES
INDEX