TLT Symposium reflection: is teaching essentially real life Inception?

Apologies for the bizarre title, but one line from the movie Inception (2010, directed by Christopher Nolan) that impressed me the most, was "You need the simplest version of the idea, one that will grow naturally in the subject's mind."

The keynote talk of the symposium was focusing on how to instill an idea and make it last in someone else's mind, defined as SUCCES, or Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Stories. The part of the talk that impressed me the most, was his demonstration of how to make your papers, ideas, talks, presentations and other communications "stick" with the audience. As a PhD candidate I have too many occasions where I had to give an "elevator speech" when asked what my research focus is, as well as other occasions such as teaching, seminars and writing manuscripts for submission. I have been unconsciously some of the SUCCES idea, but hearing the idea demonstrated in such a easy to understand and relate manner (essentially, the talk itself was a fine example for SUCCES), was beyond inspiring.

After the keynote talk, I went to three seminars focusing on introducing new technologies (VR, shared educational resource, and remote education). Variability, as a characteristic of successful teaching, has been on my mind for a while and I found the idea of implementing new technologies very refreshing, but also challenging, and in some cases limiting.

Reflecting on the experience, I found myself wondering how to incorporate SUCCES into the discipline of plant science. This field of study calls for a lot of hands-on experiences and some form of autonomy to convey and digest the knowledge better. Bite-sized information may be more effective when it comes to more theoretical classes, but taking notes in a lecture in plant science is only half way done. Traditionally the course design in plant science includes lab sessions, and field trips. But after taking some inspirations from the new technology seminars, ideas such as incorporating VR or AR into teaching plant science, such as displaying a time lapse video of plant growth in virtual reality, could be a good variation from conventional lectures, provide a "story" like context, and still convey credible information.

I was very excited to have the chance to learn about ideas and participate in discussions with other educators. The take-away from this experience will provide me with some inspirations, if I get to design a class in the future.

Designing a syllabus focusing on the hands on component

Before getting into this topic, here's a brief background: syllabus is not popular in Chinese universities. The course instructor usually tells the students how the grade will be given between quizzes, midterms and finals, and that was as close as students can get to a syllabus. Course projects are fairly rare in the course design procedure, and therefore not considered a part of performance evaluation. College education in China is very different, but the one aspect that stood out was the lack of autonomy on the students' part.

I experienced a little bit of a cultural shock when I walked into the classroom for the first class I took at Penn State. The teaching assistant handed the students a syllabus, detailing the course schedule, course objective, evaluation standards, contact information of the instructor, and resources students may find useful.

It never crossed my mind that a syllabus would be so helpful in the learning experience of students. When the opportunity of designing a syllabus came up during AEE530, I was very excited, as I could finally put down what would be an ideal syllabus in my opinion.

I chose to create a syllabus for a class I took two years ago (Plant Ecology, HORT450). The class was no longer offered since Dr. David Mortensen retired. But the idea of combining lectures, experiments, field trips, and most importantly, a student-chosen final project has become an ideal system to design a class that inherently involves a lot of hands-on practice.

Keeping the idea of maximizing students' experience as much as possible, I put down the course objective, resources, and evaluations plans emphasizing that students can choose their own final project ideas. Speaking from my own experience, being able to know in advance the topic/activities of a certain lecture is very helpful for me to prepare my study. I incorporated that into a weekly schedule of what the lectures or field trips will be about.

The peer review response I received was mostly positive, with comments like "this is a class I'll be interested in taking, if I have background in plant science". During the deep dive process, Jesse also gave me a similar remark. I was glad to say that I feel like this would be a helpful and tangible class for the students to take.

Student introduction: Xiyu Yang, Ph.D. candidate in Horticulture

Hello everyone!

My name is Xiyu Yang, currently a second year PhD candidate in Plant Science. I work with Dr. Jonathan Lynch, focusing on identifying and probing the ideal crop root phenotypes.

I finished my undergraduate study in Plant Genetics and Breeding at China Agricultural University. I had been focusing on biology and chemistry since high school and the choice of studying biology in the university seemed like a natural choice. I applied for a few research intern and assistant positions during Summer breaks throughout my college years, and the idea of going to grad school started to formulate.

I applied to the master of science program in Plant Science at Penn State in 2015, and finished my master's with Dr. Lynch in 2017. Given the minimal opportunities in the job market as an international student, and driven by the idea of further study and research, I continued into the Ph.D. program.

I love the idea of teaching in college after my PhD, but realized I'm not at all knowledgeable in teaching. Taking this class has been a positive step towards that goal and studying the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) has been incredibly helpful thus far!

TLT Symposium Reflection

The symposium was a show of great ideas and technological innovations for use in teaching, all very good, some very bold, some easy to apply, others not so much... But yet, in the middle of those talks, in between trying hard to follow the speakers fast English - sometimes loosing track of it - and trying to picture all that being applied, I felt like "wow, that's so much... why again are people trying so hard to incorporate all that in the classrooms?". 

This sounds like a very stupid question I guess. But I think at that moment I was relating this to what I experienced from the education system in which I grew up in Brazil, where in a big number of colleges and schools, specially the public ones, there is a noticeable lack of infra-structure, transportation, textbooks, and preparedness of teachers. It just sounds like too much when there is a need for the basic things first, kind of like putting modern racing tires in a 1940 VW beetle that won't go past 50 mph.

That is why I think for me the most marking moment of the event was Dan Heath's talk. It was... eyeopening when he made everyone realize the reason why many don't achieve their course dream. When he reasoned about the importance of the syllabus and the appropriate way to make it. When he gave a lesson on how to make ideas stick, how to catch students attention and make them want to learn... The more conceptual tone of his presentation, showing the role of the professor's skills and understanding of their students learning process on their actual learning, independent of how many technological devices you have at your disposition, was something that I could see yielding more results at the moment. At least from my perspective.

A True "SUCCES" Story

I learned a lot while attending the TLT symposium this past Saturday.  The keynote speaker was the was best speaker I have seen at a conference.  I think it further validates his credibility that the underlying theme of his presentation was on making ideas stick and I still vividly remember the majority of the presentation a few days later.  It really resonated when he discussed the concept of sticky ideas and related it to urban legends.  In order to get students to remember we really need to find a way to grab their attention.  This reminded me of the interest approach Dr. Curry mentioned in a previous class regarding crop circles and how they related to irrigation methods.  The unexpectedness of seeing an image of crop circles at the beginning of class acts to really pull in the students’ attention and participation.  As Dan Heath directly quoted, “unexpectedness buys attention and curiosity sustains attention.”  I was really interested when he talked about the concept of “the curse of knowledge.”  I thought that was an interesting factor that many teachers don’t take time to self-reflect and consider before teaching a class.

The individual seminar I found most intriguing was on the topic of using virtual reality in the classroom, specifically using it to facilitate “virtual field trips.”  I had no idea that Penn State has 3 virtual reality rooms on campus.  While sitting in on this seminar, I thought of the potential connection between VR technology and achieving higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.  I was also very surprised to see that the VR field trip showed better performance results than the actual field trip.  I do see many potential pitfalls to the widespread use of this technology, though, with the main concern being cost and logistics, especially for larger classes.  I found the seminar very intriguing as I had never even considered the use of VR for facilitating learning.

An event I don't want to forget.

I will be honest; Saturday's symposium was my second one, and if someone asked me what do I remember from the first one, a year ago, I would be blank. In addition to the delicious food I ate on 2018 symposium, my mind could only retrieve vague memories. I remember I was as excited as I was last Saturday; however, the valuable knowledge that I know I learned rested hidden in some broken synapsis. Will it happen the same with this symposium? That was the question I made to myself time and time again while drinking roasted coffee and eating beagles during the multiple breaks. Actually, I noticed that it is a question I make to myself frequently, and I guess the reason is that I don't want to miss a thing of this beautiful and varied life.

But going back to my discouraging question about forgetting, Am I going to forget this symposium? And, I'm glad to say that not only this event but also our AEE530 class have given me the inputs to say NO, I won't forget. And I consider there is something different from last year that made me see this symposium differently: my current motivation to understand how do we learn. And that motivation, as we have seen in our course, is a critical factor in for learning.

Regarding the symposium, the first talk fit like a glove to help me answer my concern. If an idea, message, or whatever we want to communicate is Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and in a Story form, it will be more likely to remembered or to stick. And because it is expected that I won't remember these six words the next year, Dan Heath created a simple acronym that I'm not likely to forget, "SUCCES". I also had the opportunity to participate in Mr. Heath’s Questions/Answers session, space where great questions and magnificent answers came and went. I won’t forget an emotional story about how easily life changes. In this story, due to a mentor, Mr. Heat canceled his law career, changing what he studies, what he writes, and the audience he speaks.

As I learned from the book HPL II, emotions play a role in developing a neural substrate for learning. And this was a fact that came to my mind when I was in the session of “Learning through the art of storytelling.” Although storytelling is not as important to transfer knowledge as it used to be, two things make it still relevant, especially to increase learner engagement (there are more, but I prefer to stick to Dan’s “S” of Simple). The first one is that storytelling emotionally connect the learner, and the second one is that It makes complex concepts lucid, especially when linking theory to practice. And despite the session described a process that some professor followed in designing a course based on storytelling, the topic of the course was even more interesting to me: children adoption. I won’t forget that just before entering the session I was talking to a friend about my interests on child adoption, a topic that was told us then. Even more Unexpected, the professor who guided the session revealed us that she, as an adoptive mother, was one of the main characters of the story told to us.

The exercise of writing this note has made me think again about what I’ve retained from this great event; I’m sure this activity itself reinforces my symposium experiences, which will help me to don’t forget. 

Finally, being aware of this blog existence allowed me to dive into the thoughts and reactions of other students towards the 2018 event, the one I had forgotten. I could recall, for instance, about the keynote speakers. Probably I wouldn’t be able to do it if I wouldn’t know about the Blog, which took me to the conclusion that knowing where information is can be as worthful as knowing the information. I’m convinced that the massive amount of useful information generated demands us to be efficient and strategic in the way we organize it. I would love to hear from you about methods to keep information that allowed you to retrieve it successfully.

TLT Symposium: Thoughts and Reflections

I had never attended this symposium before, so I really didn't have any idea what this event would actually be like. I planned which talks I would attend, woke up early, had a great breakfast, and looked forward to anything I might be able to learn during this symposium. I will say, I'm glad I attended this event for reasons I'll get into.

Firstly, the keynote speaker was phenomenal. Dan Heath almost immediately captured my attention when he started his introduction as he delved into ways to improve teaching as well as overcoming common challenges. Coincidentally (on purpose, I'm sure), the part that stuck with me the most was his emphasis on making your talks, knowledge, and overall delivery of information 'stick' with people by making your ideas unexpected yet simple. While this was overall interesting to listen to, it was not necessarily new information as if anything you try to teach doesn't stick, that you and your student have effectively wasted each other's time. What really stuck me was when Dan began discussing the "Curse of Knowledge." This concept I know all too well, both on my own end trying to share my ideas with others during talks or in my writing as well as trying to understand the material of some of my own peers. As a result, I try very hard to avoid these scenarios when I teach by learning the material with the students/peers I would be educating. I read what I plan out and dissect each word, each term, to make sure that enough information is present that people are able to refence idea's they're already familiar with. While I never got to listen to his explanations for Credible, Emotional, and Stories (although I lean their importance later), I still found Dan's talk on SUCCES(S) to be the most interesting part of the symposium. 

There were two other talks I thought were interesting. First, "Learning through the art of storytelling" discussed, well, using real stories as an effective teaching method. The main draw in using a strategy like this is upon listening to the real stories told by real people, students will become emotionally invested (remember Dan's 'E' in "SUCCES") in the material and as a result, both retain the material better and become storytellers themselves. This is done by storyboarding stories told by these speakers and having students identify key moments in the story in order to summon empathy within themselves. This was a very straight forward talk and an interesting method of teaching that I never really considered until now. 

Second, ending the final round of talks, I attended "Serious games and gamification: What has research shown us since 2014." Ever since I learned that my middle school began using World of Warcraft to teach story building and money management, I needed to know why people thought this was a good strategy for teaching. As an occasional gamer myself, while I know of ways in which certain games and platforms can be used to teach aspects of life and some skills, I always believed there were better ways to teach the same idea. If the game isn't focused on the 'learning' aspect of the experience, I believe that the core idea of what might be gained by playing games is ultimately lost. The talk delved into the pros of using games to teach, examining the use of intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards, allowing students a safe place to fail and work at their own pace, as well as finding ways to tie concepts into real-world situations, among others. Despite this, along with the other cons mentioned in the talk such as having the game be a closed system, lack of control over content, and an inability to analyze the gameplay done by students, I remain unconvinced that games should be used as a serious way of trying to teach any school subject-type material. While certain games can certainly improve social skills, and other more difficult games teach aspects of mathematics or other subjects, in the end I still think that other, more conventional methods of teaching are more effective and less risky. I would be open in the future to more ideas like this, however.

That more or less wrapped up my experiences at my first TLT symposium. I'm glad I attended and got to listen to ideas and opinions from many successful teachers. The shark-tank-like event was particularly great, and I'm a little upset only one could be funded (I thought they were all great). I'm excited to bring what I experience into my AEE 530 class and discuss with my peers what they got out of this enlightening experience.

TLTSym: What an incredible event! Though it was Saturday but worth it!

Before the event, I had one question running in my mind “What should I learn from this event that helps me to become an effective teacher”. So, I looked into the schedule of the event to mark some interesting sessions that can answer this big question. The good thing about the schedule, it fairly covered the details of each session and so it was not hard for me to decide what sessions could be more relevant to my big question. After spending some time, I signed up for a few sessions. After that, all I could do was just wait for March 16^th.

Finally, on the pleasant morning of March 16^th I reached The Penn Stater, completed my registration and made it to The Presidential Hall, and I was super excited to spend my day at the event where I could learn a lot of things. The keynote presentation by Dan Heath was great and the way presented his thoughts on ‘Sticky” ideas and the way he addressed the urban legends — you use only 10% of your brain, only great wall of China can be seen from space, and minhoca/earthworm burgers was something new that I never thought of. The non-typical presentation by him kept me involved in his talk. The essential question of his presentation was how do you make the idea to stick? What you want your learner to remember after 5 years? If just 5% of what you structure in a course is what you want students to remember. How do you get to that 5%?. His entire talk was focused on how to make the ideas that stick to the learners.  He made an acronym “SUCCES” about the features of a great sticky idea and that acronym itself is sticky. The basic concept I got from his presentation was “Curiosity sustains attention” to make it stick, the idea should be more than just saying ‘hey’ and have some unexpected or surprise element to encourage the learner to think and get excited about it. I really enjoyed his whole presentation and, I have never attended a presentation like this before. The idea was very well explained, and his style kept me involved and excited throughout the presentation. 

From the first concurrent session, I signed up for “Technology hacks for cementing learning”. The reason for choosing this session is to learn how to use technology smartly for a long-term knowledge transfer to help learners. If the learner doesn’t remember what you want them to remember for a longer period, then you probably have chosen the least effective method to cement the learning. The session covers how cognitive science research can be quickly and easily applied in a variety of classroom contexts to truly help learners to retain what they learn. Though it was a short session, it was comprehensive. It covered all the technology tools we could use like Zoom/Katura, HSP, Kahoot, Poll everywhere and Canvas etc. It was very informative, and all the resources discussed seem practical to implement in the classroom. But again, I would say it was a short session and it could be made longer as I wanted to learn more about tech hacks because in my opinion, cementing your ideas is a key to the learning process and one should be able to use technology effectively for this process. 

For the next concurrent session, I attended “Open Educational Resources (OER) innovation: Moving beyond the basics”. That session was fascinating. There were five different groups from different field of studies, who have prepared there OER to help learners. They explained the work and discussed how their work is benefiting the students. From different OER presented there, I liked the one called BBookX where the team developed e-book using Wikipedia sources with three layers of knowledge. The good thing was the student should have access to the course material from the very first day and that too available free of cost. I really liked the idea of using hyperlinked text in the book to go in detail level 2 and 3 of topics if a student really wants to dig into it. The Open Innovation Challenge was also good where five educators presented their innovative ideas to improve learning process using technology. I believe that’s the perfect platform for educators to share their ideas with other educator and researcher to get feedback. Overall, that event covers a wide spectrum of teaching and learning, and I really enjoyed being there among the inspiring educators. 

I would like to add some thoughts about concurrent sessions at the event. It was hard to decide only one session to attend because there is so much to learn from each of it. But overall the event was very organized and covered diverse topics. Finally, this blog post is incomplete if I don’t mention about the food and refreshment, which was awesome. In the end, I wish to say thanks to Dr. Foster because I feel so lucky to have an opportunity to attend this great event. 

Reflect of 2019 Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT).

The cold weather seemed not affecting the heat of the symposium. I enjoyed the keynote speech with good bacon. The six tricks of a sticky idea were delivered with simple but unforgettable examples, and Dan is a master of manipulating words, for sure. In his speech, SUCCES is the results of Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Stories. Without fancy terminology and complex definitions, the speech kindled the thoughts of how to effectively deliver the knowledge to the audience. The Next session I attended was Technology Hacks for Cementing Learning. The time was limited for a full introduction of all tech hacks updates, but applying IT in each step of teaching a course would reduce the stress of students and helping teachers create various modules that tracking students attention. Open Educational Resources (OER) innovation was the following session and it introduced several updated practices of applying open sources in teaching. The application of BBookX can create a textbook that fits a specific, new frontier subject. I was also interested in providing video materials to enhance the teaching procedure. After the exciting open innovation challenge, two presentations I went were both introductions of new technology: Kaltura which introducing video into a course for both teachers and students, and GIKS writing-to-learn tool which can help teachers and students to assess the learning.

Learning some new idea in a single day was great, but concerns accumulated while I reflecting the symposium afterward. The six tricks of making an idea sticky are quite helpful for teaching a concept or a fact, and it will be a challenge to apply them to all courses and disciplines. In a course needs critical logical reasoning, or a pure theoretical course, like math or statistics, the tricks may not help much to teach calculating equations. Besides, instructors need to pay their major attention to the knowledge that students need to learn. If a teacher spends too much time on designing an idea sticky, the class may turn to a sideway of amusing students instead of teaching. The technics introduced in the symposium are fancy at first glance, and I believe they will accelerate students' learning. However, my concern is whether fast learning is better than the conventional way of learning like reading? The social media spreads immediate news and messages that can be swallowed in seconds, gifs and short videos can stimulate brain within a minute, these are the new ways to access information but are they effective in learning all course and disciplines? New technics will make it easier to access knowledge for students, and students may be satisfied with finishing watching a video or completing a quiz, but never come back. Learning is never a once-for-all deal. The conventional ways of learning, like reading, may not excite learners as much as new tech does, but old-fashioned ways can slow minds down and let the learner digest information.

New technology is always welcomed in the classroom, but they are just vehicles that deliver knowledge. We should not evaluate a teaching and learning process just based on how "fancy" of a class. By the way, advanced technology means a high investment of equipment in classrooms and some times the extra cost of students. This may also lead to educational inequity between students or schools, especially in developing countries.

In general, applying new techs in teaching and learning is exciting for all participants, while we should keep in mind that teaching and learning procedures are designed and built for the learners, not for showing new techs.

What I learned from creating a Syllabus and peer review

In the second assignment, we tried to design a syllabus for a course that we would like to teach. My plan was that building a syllabus for an introductory course of horticulture, HORT 101. With the help of materials and instructions offered in AEE 530, the basic outlines of the assignment were listed. After the detailed information added on, it looked like an organized course plan with all the information that students need to know.

The first draft of the assignment was reviewed by class and it turned out that something important missing in it. The syllabus was created as an assignment instead of student-orientated course instruction.  The reviewers' suggestion helped me to understand that the syllabus should effectively deliver the information of a course as well as being interesting to students. The tone of a syllabus could influence the willingness of students learning. So I adjusted some directive sentences into a more suggestive mode and explained the benefits in detail.

Another advice for modifying the draft is to clarify the learning goals with positive and active verbs. In the first version, the course objectives were described by unclear and difficult assessing words, like "knowing". This would make students misunderstanding the acquirements and hard to make an assessment of how students perform. Therefore, the revised draft used more specific verbs in the word list to make the teaching objectives clear and solid.

Two of my reviewers complained about the structure of my syllabus that some related information was distributed into separated sections. So in the revised draft, I gathered similar information and listed in one block. The structure of the whole syllabus was modified to make sure every information easy to access for students.

Besides the suggestions from the viewers, I learned a lot from reviewing others' syllabus drafts is that using an appropriate strategy to lead students learning instead of driving them. In some of the syllabus I reviewed, I could get the message that "you will enjoy learning this course" between lines. This helps me to memorize that the syllabus is not only a course plan but also a method of communication between students and teachers.

Is there a cost? A critical reflection of TLT Symposium

As I continue to turn over the ideas and technology presented at the Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) symposium, I always have some point of concern. The keynote speaker gave the traits of "sticky" ideas, among them being simple, unexpected and concrete(sensory). My concern is rooted in technology magnifying the two latter, potentially at the detriment of the first. In other words, it seems that technology main be applied and cause shock and ah without bringing the learner to question. The questioning or huh moment as the keynote phrased it, is why unexpected is listed as a trait. Also, in trying to make an idea concrete by not only using sensory language but engaging multiple senses with multimedia or virtual reality(a favorite in the innovation challenge) is there not a risk of loosing the learner to sensory overload? In a sense, taking in all the details of the trees while missing the forest which is that learning goal we should be focused on helping our students achieve.

To clarify, I am not against integration of technology into teaching environments. I am merely cautioning that, as with all things, it can be mis- or over-applied producing unwanted effects. Most of the ideas presented in the innovation challenge as given in 5 min showed great potential to fall into the pitfalls mentioned above. This may be due merely to the brevity of the presentations not allowing for the full rational design to be articulated. There were technologies showed cased that touched on this idea of being careful and intentional in technology application. The first which comes to mind is the presentation on teaching design with addictive manufacturing (3-D printing). During the discussion of the learning goals for the 3-D printing courses at different levels (freshmen, upperclassmen and graduate students), the speaker made it clear that he needs to help students to see a 3-D printer as a manufacturing tool and active research area, not just a novel piece of tech. for printing figurines. Thus, he recognizes the ah and glitz of 3-D printing, but works to guide his students past that to learn its practical applicability in design as well as its limitations. This example speaks to the awareness of pitfalls mentioned above and intentionally structuring the course to avoid them.    

The Cranial Wall: Making it Stick

 After a hectic week of work of being a 4-H Educator, I sit down Friday night reviewing the schedule of events for the symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT). I know that Saturday will be a crazy day for me, with having to get up at 4:45 AM to pick with the 4-H Livestock Judging Team to get them to the Snider Arena for the Spring PSU Judging Contest by 8 AM, along with rushing to the Penn Stater to attend this conference by 8:30 AM.

Photo Image: https://lafayettecc.org/

A chatty van ride up with mostly teenagers, made me oddly excited to attend this symposium to learn new tips, hacks and ideas to bring back to my 4-H program. Quickly checking in at the Penn Stater, name tag tossed around my neck, I rushed into the President Hall to find my colleagues seated dead center to the stage. Taking a deep breath, as they announced the key note speaker, Dan Heath, I opened my notebook to take notes on his presentation.

Dan Heath walked briskly on stage and began to give his presentation on "Sticky Ideas". His energy and non typical PowerPoint was immediately captivating. His acronym of SUCCES, was broken down into morsel size pieces that was easy to understand his theory behind making ideas stick. It brought attention that most of today's education is not designed to make learning objectives stick, and things that often stick are simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional and a story (SUCCES). During his presentation, his one segment really had me spellbound. He mentioned about the Dream Course, that had professors attend to help revive their class syllabus. The question along the lines of "aving your dream student, what would they recall from learning from your class in 3-5 years? Most professors listed many things they wanted their students to know. Then the question was asked, how do these items are embraced in your syllabus? Everyone in the audience gasped and had the "Ah-Ha" moment.

This really struck me, as I think back to my 4-H programming I've developed and taught to many youth. How much information did they actually learn? What main points did I make "stick" with them? As Dan worked through the slides of how teachers create lectures by taking the text book, take the chapters, and break them into lectures by chapter topic, it began to make sense that most teachers have taken the wrong approach to teaching. This was eye opening, to think back to all of my undergraduate classes that were mirrored off the textbook. I think this presentation was extremely informative and eye opening in helping teachers/educators/instructors think about lesson planning.

I plan to take the key message of Dan Heath's presentation and apply it to my profession as an Extension Educator. Now, I am challenged to think first about what I want to "stick" with my students, then work towards the methods of how to make it stick.

How can we use technology to help students review a course’s foundational knowledge?

Yesterday, March 16^th, I attended Penn State’s 2019 Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT; search “#TLTSym” on social media). It was a great day, with an awesome keynote presentation and a full day of sessions focused on how different technologies can be applied to transform education!

One of the sessions that I attended was “Creating digital content to engage students in prerequisite review”. I had selected this TLT session because many of the courses I have been a student in built upon knowledge from previous entomology, biology, chemistry, leadership, or other courses. It was important to recall information from these courses in order to understand the new class’s material. Most of the time, if I or another student needed to review something from a previous course, we would look back at our notes, presentations, or other materials from those classes. I also believe that courses I may lead in the future will also rely on prerequisite material, at least at some level. I was interested in seeing what types of digital content could be created to facilitate students’ review of material and the processes for making them.

Prior knowledge has been shown to predict student achievement and the depth of prior knowledge plays a role in future success. New knowledge is also influenced by prior knowledge and each student in a class comes in with a different background. The process for creating prerequisite review material should start by identifying the content to include. In other words, you need to decide what the students in your class need to know beforehand in order to succeed. The TLT session I participated in started with a simple, yet profound exercise for deciding this – answering three questions:

1.      What are 1-3 objectives that you expect students to have met before starting your course?

2.     What do you expect students to be able to do with this knowledge?

3.     How will you know what the students know?

Once you have outlined your objectives and expectations for incoming students, and you know how you can evaluate their competency of each area, you can begin to create review content that reaches these goals. As demonstrated in the TLT session, review modules in a class can consist of three parts:

1.     Content: videos and text that explain the prerequisite concepts, embedded with questions based on this material for self-testing.

2.     Practice Problems: a quiz consisting of 5-8 questions per objective (and drawn from a larger pool of questions) that students can take an unlimited number of times within the first two weeks of the course. The highest score on the quiz is retained and makes up 50% of the student’s grade for the prerequisite review assignment.

3.     Summative Assessment: a quiz, taken only once and either in class or at a testing center, that makes up the remaining 50% of the student’s grade for the prerequisite review assignment.

Since the Content is the most extensive part of the review module, I’m going to spend a lot of time describing it here. Content is created in a Kahn Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org/) like-style, using videos that can be recorded at Penn State’s One Button Studio (https://onebutton.psu.edu/). Other university systems or libraries may have resources available, or be able to obtain them for this purpose too.

In my opinion, the coolest technology used in the content creation example during the TLT session was a Lightboard. While you can record PowerPoint presentations, be shown in front of a greenscreen, or write on a chalk or whiteboard while being videotaped, there is evidence that videos made using Lightboards increase student engagement with the video (1). This is because a Lightboard is a large, clear pane of glass that you can stand behind and write on while recording. The recording is converted to a mirror image, so that students can see your face and the content you’re sharing with them simultaneously! This format simulates instructor presence. See it in action at this link (https://mediacommons.psu.edu/faculty/lightboard/) or by clicking play below:

Each content video is 5-10 minutes long, once edited using Adobe Premier or another software, and they are also interactive. At intervals throughout each video, the presentation of content is broken up with a self-testing quiz, which mimics a clicker quiz that students might have in class. This is done using H5P (see an example here: https://h5p.org/interactive-video), but other applications may have this function as well.

The Content portion of the module should also contain information about how the material in each module relates to the current course, to help students make and retain connections in what they are learning. Instructors can also include examples of learning strategies that students can use throughout the course as a part of their prerequisite content.

Students in the example used during the TLT session have the first two weeks of class to complete the prerequisite review assignment. However, they are encouraged to use distributed practice by instructor-set goals and incentives within this time frame. An example of this might be “complete half of the Content by X date and you’ll get X number of points toward the assignment”. This way, students review and learn a little at a time, and at their own pace to an extent, instead of cramming everything at once before the deadline. During this time, they are also learning new material as a part of the current course. Then, they can complete the Practice Problems potion of the review for one week, before taking the Summative Assessment at the end of the first two weeks of class.

I really like this outline and set of methods for engaging students in prerequisite review. Technology is becoming more widely accessible and students are interested in using it. It seems like it could take a lot of time to create the Content and access to resources could be a potential challenge to this as well. However, the benefits of the review to student learning would be worth the effort and then, once established, modules could be reused/adapted from year-to-year. I’ll look forward to seeing how other instructors use these types of technologies to facilitate prerequisite review in their classes, and incorporating it in my own future courses as well! 

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please post a comment below. Additionally, if you’re interested in learning more about the annual TLT Symposium or attending the event next year, please visit the event website: https://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/

1.     Stull, A. T., L. Fiorella, M. J.Gainer, and R. E. Mayera. 2018. Using transparent whiteboards to boost learning from online STEM lectures. Computers and Education, 120, 146-159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.02.005