 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
|
|
 |
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Assessment of Small Group Learning Activity
This entry explains teaching and learning in one class period in October, 1992. I explain what I did, why I did it, how it turned out, and what I might do to improve students' learning in the future. Background. There are 38 students in the class; most are junior or senior teacher education majors. The session took place during a point in the semester when we were studying the general topics of learning and thinking. My major goal for the unit is to improve students' ability to explain how teaching affects cognition (i.e., learning and thinking). I want my students to have a sound grasp of how people learn and think, and to be able to explain how teaching practices influence how students learn and think. This ability, I believe, is an essential foundation for good teaching.
What I did and why. My goal in this learning activity was to have students explore the connections between teaching and learning, and explain from a cognitive perspective how teaching affects the ways that students learn and think. We had spent two prior class periods examining a general model of learning and thinking, and students had already read a number of articles and chapters on the subject. Their previous discussion assignments indicated that they had a good grasp of the major concepts and mental processes involved in learning and thinking. The class session consisted of four parts. 1. During the first 25-30 minutes I described reciprocal teaching, an interactive teaching approach designed to enhance reading comprehension. RT has been well-researched and is an extremely effective way to get non-comprehenders to develop strategies that improve their understanding and memory of text. 2. Following my description of RT, I asked students to work in small groups and explain why reciprocal teaching has such a strong effect on comprehension. I made it clear that they should incorporate the cognitive concepts that we had developed in previous class sessions into their explanations. They worked for about 45 minutes, and each group completed a summary of their explanations. 3. In the remaining 10-15 minutes, I led a class discussion to compare the groups' ideas. I wrote their explanations on the board, asked for clarification, orchestrated comments and reactions among the groups, and in some cases challenged the ideas in an attempt to sharpen their reasoning. 4. At the end of class I asked students to fill out a Discussion Evaluation Form (See appendix for the form)
How it turned out. There are two sources of information about students' learning experiences. First, the groups' summaries provide a direct measure of students' learning and thinking related to the activity. Second, students' evaluations of the discussion provide information about their perceptions of the learning activity.
Assessment of student's learning. Overall, there was one striking finding--although the groups worked diligently, they did not produce cognitive explanations for the effectiveness of reciprocal teaching. Their explanations did not connect at all with the material from previous classes. They produced what I refer to as "person-on-the-street" answers (i.e., anybody could come up with the explanations without having been in the course or read the material). Actually, the class explained RT's effectiveness in terms of how it affects students' motivation (e.g., it involves students in small groups thus increasing their interest and engendering more self-responsibility for learning). They missed the cognitive perspective altogether.
In this instance, students invoked their own implicit theories about human behavior and ignored academic theory and research. The previous readings and class sessions did not influence their ideas. This happens frequently in psychology. People already have ideas about what accounts for behavior and they tend to rely on their own theories rather than integrate what's known formally from theory and research. Assessment of students' perceptions of the learning experience. At the end of class I had students assess the quality and effectiveness of the discussions. Below are the results based upon the responses of 24 students who completed the form.
How much did you: learn from the discussion A. a lot- 22 B. a little- 1 C. nothing- 0 participate in the discussion A. a lot- 21 B. a little- 3 C. not at all- 0 enjoy the discussion A. a lot- 24 B. a little- 0 C. not at all- 0
Overall evaluation of the discussion as a learning experience A. excellent- 11 B. good-13 C. ave.-0 D. fair-0 E. poor-0
How effective was the group in allocating time and getting work accomplished A. very-22 B. somewhat-2 C. barely-0 D. not at all-0
Students reported a range of productive discussion behavior in their groups. The most prevalent counter-productive activities in the groups were monopolizing discussion, frequent irrelevant comments, changing the subject often, withdrawn or non-participating group members. There were 13 students who cited no counterproductive activity for their groups.
Five students said that the groups would be more effective if everyone contributed to discussion, and four said that the groups needed to stay on task. Most students had no recommendations.
In summary, students did not achieve the specific learning goal I had in mind. They were unable to explain connections between teaching and learning from a cognitive perspective. On the other hand, they had a great time--they enjoyed and interpreted the class session as an effective learning experience.
What I learned, what I would do differently and why. This episode illustrates the difficulty that students have in applying abstract material to complex situations. There is a tendency for students to disregard academic theory and research in favor of accounts derived from personal experience. This highlights a very stubborn problem in teaching--how to get students to revise their knowledge and beliefs in light of new information that conflicts with prior beliefs. This is especially curious because students claim that one of the most important things they get from group learning is an opportunity to hear alternative perspectives from classmates. Students believe that the diversity of views helps them to extend and refine what they know. However, in this case the groups did not incorporate perspectives introduced through the readings.
There are two approaches I could take to improve their learning in this situation. One assumes that students' failure to use formal theory is due to the difficulty in applying abstract ideas to classroom situations. If this is the case then additional practice should help. I could plan one or two more class periods in which students practice the same activity (i.e., give them a teaching approach and have them explain how it affects learning and thinking). My role would be to intervene in the discussions and try to focus students on working with the cognitive perspective. I might also ask students to engage in different types of teaching/learning experiences and discuss the ways that these affect their own learning and thinking differently. It may be that students need to start by thinking about how teaching affects their own learning, and then work their way towards the abstract, general interpretations later. A second approach assumes that students' prior beliefs interfere with new learning. The cognitive perspective is foreign to students and perhaps given their belief in the motivational aspects of group learning, an unnecessary point of view. If this is the case then I need to create better examples for use in the classroom--examples that highlight the limitations of their prior theories.
There are a couple of ways to tinker with the activity itself. It might help to define the task more specifically. For example, instead of asking the class to "explain how RT affects students' learning" I might ask them to explain "how and why one aspect of RT (i.e., such as summarizing material) affects students' comprehension." I might participate more actively in the small group discussions, and try to give specific help and feedback on a group by group basis. I might also model a cognitive explanation before asking the class to do it.
As a result of analyzing this activity I realize that I need to establish a better foundation to help students bridge the gap between learning theories and teaching practices. This event also reinforces my belief that the course should be more "problem-based." Since my goal is to get students to be able to use the material to analyze, evaluate, solve and resolve problems, they should work regularly on complex, authentic kinds of teaching and learning problems where they practice applying theory and research to actual situations.
I am pleased by the positive evaluation of the group discussion. I am not bothered that they had a good time getting the "wrong answers." One overarching goal for the course is to promote a critical community--a setting in which students challenge and support one another's learning. The evidence suggests that this is happening, although the specific challenges within groups did not lead to the kind of outcome I had intended. I believe that students did experience productive discussions and that my assessment of their learning does not reflect the full measure of what students did get out of the class session. Consequently, I might need to ask students on the discussion evaluation form to indicate the most important things they learned in the discussion. |
|
|