Presentation by Dr. David Law on the article "Awake, Accountable, and Engaged" by Lisa J. Lucas as found in
The National Teaching & Learning Forum (Oct. 2010).
Link to the video.Appling These Ideas to an Interactive Broadcast ClassOn the questions at the end of class, you could have IVC (Interactive Video Conferencing) students write down their question and then randomly select a couple of students to share their questions. As each student reads their question, you could have students vote, by raising their hands, if they agree that the question just read could be considered a major topic from that day's lecture. (This would also be a great way to break-up a 2 1/2 hour class. You could do questions in the middle and questions at the end of class.)
After class, you could have students post their questions to a Blackboard discussion board and then choose one or two to use as the start of the next class. You could even have the students read each other's questions and vote by responding with "I agree that this is one of the main points from the lecture" or some similar statement and then the questions with the most votes (replies) would be the ones that the majority of the students agree are the most important. As the instructor, you wouldn't have to necessarily read all of the responses, but you could if you looked at one that had a lot of responses that weren't of other students agreeing.
To do the thoughtful response technique in an IVC class, you could have the students write down their sentences or essays and then randomly call on one or a few of the students to share what they wrote with the class. You could also have a "journal" in Blackboard that they would type up their responses after class and they would build on the journal for the unit (all discussions up to the exam) and this could be used as their study guide because you would be asking questions about topics that are "most important" to the material you are teaching. You could even give them participation points, based on the number of entries and a scan of whether they seemed to follow the material presented.
Both of these technics are good for the IVC classroom because they are not dependent upon having multiple students at the same site. There is the obvious limitation of not being able to wander around the classroom to see whether or not students are actually doing the participation assignment/writing.
Applying These Ideas to an Online ClassWith an online class, you could employ the discussion board techniques, as described above, having students respond to readings or recorded lectures. Depending on your objectives, you should consider using a journal for student responses so that they don't just read the first one or two postings and then post something similar or something like, "I agree with so-and-so." A journal is private between the student and instructor so that the instructor can get a better sense of how the student is feeling about the progression of his or her own learning and what he or she is learning individually. If there is a topic that is discussion worthy and you want students to interact with each other and share their points of view, stick with the standard discussion board.
Elisa O. Taylor,
Instructional DesignerUSU Regional Campuses
