Yesterday, March 16th, 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
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