Identifying Actions to Facilitate Specific Student Engagement Practices

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Identifying Actions to Facilitate Specific
Student Engagement Practices

• Bob Smallwood
  
  
  Texas State University-San Marcos

UCF Faculty Development Summer Conference

April
26-29, 2004


Orlando
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Presentation Objectives

• Approaches to Establish Engagement Priorities
• Methods to Generate Ideas to Facilitate a
  Specific Student Engagement Practice
• Two Exercises as Illustrations
• Some Ideas To Enhance Student Engagement That
  (sorta) Dont Cost Anything

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I. Approaches to Establish Engagement Priorities
? Norm referenced approach
? Criterion referenced approach
? Identifying what practices are important to
faculty that students report are not occurring
very often
? Gap analysis between NSSE FSSE Outcomes
? Other approaches?
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II. Methods to Generate Ideas to Facilitate
a Specific Student Engagement Practice
1 Check out the Literature
http//www.assessment.txstate.edu/ (Click on)
NSSE at Texas State (Click on) Annotated
Bibliography
www.indiana.edu/nsse (click on) Research
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II. Methods to Generate Ideas to Facilitate
a Specific Student Engagement Practice
1 Check out the Literature
http//www.assessment.txstate.edu/ (Click on)
NSSE at Texas State (Click on) Annotated
Bibliography
www.indiana.edu/nsse (click on) Research
2 Ask your faculty staff
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• Two Exercises As Illustrations
• Examine Items 1a 1 v on the College Student
  Report 2004. Which one of these engagement
  practices do you think has the greatest impact on
  student learning?

2. Identify an action faculty could take to
enhance the selected engagement practice.
What might the faculty member do to maximally
impact this engagement activity?
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IV. Some Ideas To Enhance Student Engagement
That (sorta) Dont Cost Anything
Share a NSSE Findings
Offer a Reflection
Suggest an Idea
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Idea 1
NSSE Item
1
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Idea 1
National Outcome
1
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Reflection
Idea 1

• Increased email due to Blackboard, WebCT,

• Most departments expect faculty to set aside 5-8
  hours per week for office hours

• The frequency of faculty-student contacts during
  office hours varies widely among faculty

• Nature of interaction varies widely

• Office hours often inconvenient for commuting
  students who work off campus

• Many student reluctant to go to a faculty
  members office

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Action
Idea 1

• Consider revising faculty office hour requirement

• Faculty permitted (encouraged) to maintain some
  of their office hours electronically

• During electronic office hours, faculty might
  only answer questions or provide clarification
  principles, concepts, etc. presented in class or
  in their assigned readings

• QA shared via distribution list to all classmates

• Best timeSunday evenings, 8-10 p.m.

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Idea 1
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Idea 2
NSSE Item
7
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Idea 2
National Outcome
7
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Reflection
Idea 2

• Perhaps there is little interest in working on
  research projects with faculty (or independent
  study item 7g)

• Perhaps the interest is there but students are
  simply not aware of what opportunities for
  research participation might be available

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Action
Idea 2

• Make known to students opportunities for research
  or independent study

• Call a special meeting of your academic majors
  and make known the research opportunities

• If there is an academic club within your
  department, could this topic be featured at one
  of their meetings?

• Prepare a special handout identifying the
  opportunities, and make the handout available to
  your academic advisors

• Timing?just before advance registration

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Idea 2
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Idea 3
NSSE Item
10
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Idea 3
National Outcome
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Reflection
Idea 3

• Ways the university could help students succeed
  academically include

• Time management skills

• Note taking skills

• Study skills

• Test preparation skills

• Students frequently do not want to take these
  classes or workshops they believe they do not
  need them or they will not be helpful

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Action
Idea 3

• Develop a diagnostic instrument (inventory) that
  could be self-administered and would be
  reasonably accurate in identifying students who
  need

http//www.ucc.vt.edu/stdysk/checklis.html
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Idea 3
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Idea 4
NSSE Item
1
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Idea 4
National Outcome
1
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Reflection
Idea 4

• Students come up to us after class to ask a
  questiona question prompted by something that
  was said in class

• Great teachable moment student motivated
  interested in learning

• Seems tragic if you have to cut off these
  after-class discussions because you have to rush
  off to another class that follows immediately

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Action
Idea 4

• Establish a rule within your department that no
  faculty member is permitted to teach back-to-back
  classes

• After class teachable moments could be further
  enhanced if students were encouraged not to
  schedule back-to-back classes

• Academic advisors might be asked to discourage
  students from scheduling back-to-back classes
  (other additional benefits!)

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Idea 4
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Idea 5
NSSE Item
1
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Idea 5
National Outcome
1
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Reflection
Idea 5

• Collaborative activities difficult in large
  classes

• Many institutions are turning to large lecture
  classes as a way of doing more with fewer
  resources

• Research suggests lecture method may be one of
  the least effective approaches to student
  learning

• This idea from Doris Christopher, Director,
  Center for Effective Teaching Learning,
  California State University, Los Angeles

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Action
Idea 5

• Break up class meetings into various segments
  that include lecture and collaborative/active
  learning activities

• Divide 75 minute class period into segments

• Mini-lecture (25 minutes)

• QA (10 minutes)

• Group quiz (15 minutes)

• Feedback session (5 minutes)

• Group activity (10 minutes)

• Wrap up (10 minutes)

• During QA, uses class roster calls on
  students, engages every student at some point
  during semester

• Group quiz teams of 4 students answer 15 mc,
  t-f, and sa questions

• Group activity exercise performed by team
  addressing on of the mini-lecture concepts

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Idea 5
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Idea 6
NSSE Item
1
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Idea 6
National Outcome
1
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Reflection
Idea 6

• Service learning linking the work students do
  in the classroom to real-world problems real
  world needs

• AAHE has under taken a multi year initiative to
  enrich service learning practice

• Website www.aahe.org/service/series_new.htm

• Preview Table of Contents to each publication

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Action
Idea 6

• Early 1990s Elon University changed their basic
  course structure from 3 hour courses to 4 hour
  courses

• The focus of the 4th hour is on active, engaged,
  experimental learning

http//www.elon.edu/teachingfocus

• An approach to embed many different engagement
  practices into the curriculum

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Idea 6
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Identifying Actions To Facilitate Specific
Student Engagement Practices
Conclusions
1. Check out the literature
2. Ask your faculty staff
3. Check out the Student Engagement Idea
Database to be launched at Texas
State in August
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Questions
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Thanks for your attentionBobSmallwood_at_TxState.ed
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