Guided Notes and Response Cards

(Sent to Faculty Jan. 2018)

Hi all, 

I stumbled across a recent article published a few days ago by Nature Partner Journals: Science of Learning that I wanted to share. The article from Rebecca Markovits and Yana Weinstein at UMass-Lowell discussed how two fields (behavior analysis and cognitive psychology) have independently come to similar conclusions about some best practices for learning. It catches my attention whenever I hear about two fields drawing a similar conclusion (aside: there was a similar experience when discovering the acceleration of the expansion of the universe, and also when extrasolar planets were first detected). The two items of focus for the article are 1) guided notes and 2) response cards.

1) Guided notes. In the literature, these tend to focus on taking notes during lecture, which hopefully we are rarely doing here. However, I think a great example of "guided notes" was an artifact provided by a colleague for our tuning protocol activity. In fact, a good way to think of guided notes comes from the authors: as structures to "cue students to respond to key information." This could be for homework or for classes, even if they don't resemble lectures at all.

- Benefits: increase of accuracy in recalling information, increased skills in finding important information, more engagement with the information, and additional resources for future review (see Konrad et al., 2009 for a meta-review of the benefits). Note that here I don't just mean "information" as simple facts, but broader concepts as well. 

2) Response Cards. The main idea here is that instead of asking a single student to answer a question (example from me yesterday: "[Student], what would be the next step here and why?"), you provide a space for everyone to answer. One colleague does this in classrooms with plickers, but it can be done with index cards, small whiteboards, or even just a simple thumbs up/down/middle. The key is to provide space and time for each student to answer individually, and then hopefully be able to get feedback on their response.

- Benefits: increase of accuracy in recalling information, dramatic increase in longer-term retention, quick and fast check of understanding, retrieval practice to enhance understanding, and instantaneous student feedback.

My requests: 

- Think about the homework you assign. Is there a way to provide more guidance during the process? What about in your class? Are you building the skills for students to focus on the information/concepts you need them to? 

- Consider the questions you ask in class. Are they geared to one student (or open-ended with one student answering)? Is there a way to ask more questions that everyone could answer?

As always, come and find me to chat about thoughts you have or answers to these questions (or feel free to send me a message).