DAY 6 Microteaching Session (1) ・Goals and Objectives ・Mini-lectures, Feedback, and Discussion ・Reflection
On DAY 6, participants finally conducted their 6-min mini-lectures, which were followed by feedback and discussion to refine the lectures.
A little more than 20 participants were divided into four groups of 5–6. There was an instructor per group, who facilitated the approximately 25-min sessions with a cycle of “Mini-lecture (6 min),” “Feedback from the instructor to the lecturer (3 min),” and “Group discussion on how to improve the lecture (13 min).”
Structuring a 6-min mini-lecture that makes students satisfied with their learning while incorporating an introductory section, main section, and concluding section, is so difficult that you can easily surpass the time limit should you slightly wander from the subject or take a little extra time to explain a topic. Polishing the design for a short-time class lets the lecturer face up to the question, “What are the essential things that I really want the students to learn?”
According to the instructor of the program, the art of advising the trainees in microteaching is “to try to think about ‘first-of-all’ issues instead of techniques.” Students need to restructure the knowledge they received from the teacher to really feel that they learned something in the class. Are there any structures missing when students try to restructure knowledge? First of all, is the knowledge structured correctly so that they can easily restructure it? I realized that it is important to focus on the “structure of knowledge” before “teaching techniques” with these questions to become an expert in conducting classes.
“First of all, did I examine whether the structure of knowledge of this class is appropriate for learning to occur?” I would like to ask myself this question every time I work on class design.
Center for Research and Development of Higher Education, The University of Tokyo invites applications for a Project Researcher on the administration of “The University of Tokyo Future Faculty Program (UTokyo FFP).” The new Project Researcher is scheduled to be appointed in March 2019. The application deadline is January 11th, 2019.
We look forward to the applications from those who are eager to plan various projects and improve education by considering the post as their opportunity to “learn how to teach” by getting involved in the administration of the UTokyo FFP!
Mini-lecture Program at the Library is an event where the UTokyo FFP alumni give mini-lectures and practice their teaching skills in an interactive teaching manner.
We have held the event 11 times so far in different styles. The next will be the 12th.
The schedule for the next event will be announced as soon as we are ready. Stay tuned for the next Mini-lecture Program at the Library and UTokyo FFP!
DAY 5 Summary & Exercise in Giving Feedback on Lectures ・Review of the Previous Session ・Goals and Objectives ・Exercise in Giving Feedback on Lectures ・Review of the Program So Far (Poster Tour)
Participants started by creating questions to review what they had learned in the previous session (about evaluation) and asked and answered them in pairs. This reviewing activity has become increasingly complicated week by week; a simple activity of explaining the keywords of the previous session in pairs (DAY 3), discussing the usefulness and limitations of the topics that appeared in the previous session (DAY 4), and creating questions (DAY 5).
As a course develops, students not only acquire knowledge but also become proficient in their learning. It made me realize that designing activities that align with the learners’ development can help them deepen their learning.
In the first half of the session, two participants conducted 6-min lectures respectively, followed by individual/group feedback and activity of overviewing the points of the lectures from a meta-cognitive perspective. In the second half, participants reviewed what they had learned so far (i.e., motivation, active learning strategies, class design, syllabus, evaluation, exercise in giving feedback on lectures, and the whole FFP) by conducting a poster tour.
In FFP, the instructor gradually lets the participants take the initiative in the class weekly. In today’s session, the instructor did not explain the material aggressively but instead let the participants engage in group discussions and realize something on their own, answered their questions when they shared their ideas with the whole class, and abstracted/generalized their insights to make them easier to understand, which helped them deepen their learning. According to the instructor, she deliberately “left the learning to the participants.”
I have always assumed that “To explain something skillfully equals to teach something,” but it seems to be “the skill in generalizing what the learners realized” that is the essential art of teaching/instructing. The session made me realize that the students’ learning process surely occurs without teaching them if you can generalize their ideas.
Here is a brief report of our latest event and a preview of our next event.
“Interactive Teaching” Academy: Part 6 “Course Design (Syllabus)”
Date/Time: November 11th (Sun), 2018, 10:00–17:00
Venue: 93B, Faculty of Engineering Building 2, Hongo Campus
Participants: 21 people
Instructors: Kayoko Kurita (Center for Research and Development of Higher Education, The University of Tokyo)
Lui Yoshida (College of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo)
Nagafumi Nakamura (Center for Research and Development of Higher Education, The University of Tokyo)
1. Topic and Goal
This time, the topic was “Course Design (Syllabus).” Based on the goal, “Reconsider the syllabus as a tool to enhance student learning and be able to create a syllabus,” we set specific learning objectives as follows:
① Be able to explain the significance of course design and a syllabus. (Preparation)
② Be able to create a graphic syllabus for your own class. (The exercise in the first half of the session)
③ Be able to improve the syllabus you have brought into one that enhances student learning (The exercise in the second half of the session)
2. Summary
This program was conducted in a flipped-classroom manner, and participants worked on pre-class assignments beforehand. During the session, they reviewed what they had learned in the preparation and then worked on exercises of creating a graphic syllabus for their own classes and improving a text syllabus.
(1) Preparation
All participants were asked to watch the videos for WEEK 5 of “Interactive Teaching,” read Chapter 5 of the book “Interactive Teaching” (Kawai Publishing, 2017), and submit a text syllabus for their own classes.
(2) Session
[1] Introduction (10:00–10:15)
Participants listened to the explanation of the goals, structure, and rules of the program before introducing themselves to others.
[2] Review of What the Participants Learned in the Preparation (10:15–10:30)
Participants reviewed and organized what they had learned in the preparation through group activities. They reexamined the roles of a syllabus.
[3] Exercise of Creating a Graphic Syllabus (10:30–12:30)
Participants worked on creating a graphic syllabus for their own classes. The activity was to let them visualize whether they were successful in designing a course that enhanced student learning or not and further improve the design.
Participants learning from each other
[4] Exercise of Improving a Text Syllabus (13:30–15:30)
Based on the points they had learned in the morning and the “Syllabus Rubric” (i.e., a tool developed at the University of Virginia to quantitatively/qualitatively assess whether a class design is centering around learning), participants worked on improving their text syllabuses. They thoroughly examined whether their syllabuses, from the whole picture of the course design to minute details, were appropriately designed to enhance student learning by going back and forth between individual work on improvement and group discussion.
[5] Improvement (15:45–16:00)
Participants immediately applied improvement points/plans they had realized during the morning/afternoon exercises to their syllabuses while they were still fresh in their memory.
[6] Wrap-up (16:00–16:30)
Lastly, participants organized what they learned, what kind of questions they had, and what they wanted to bring back to their own work through group activities and Q&A sessions.
3. Participants’ Reactions
The affiliation of 21 participants was as follows: 11 faculty or staff members of the university or technical college, four graduate students or postdocs, two teachers or staff members of junior/senior high school, one teacher or staff member of elementary school, and three teachers or staff members of vocational school. According to the five-point scale question asking the degree of satisfaction (Extremely satisfied; Very satisfied; Satisfied; Not so satisfied; Dissatisfied), 55 percent of the respondents were “extremely satisfied,” 40 percent were “very satisfied,” and 5 percent were “satisfied.” According to another five-point scale question asking whether participation in the program would affect your future practice (Yes (very much); Yes; No (not so much); No (not at all); Unsure), 39 percent of the respondents answered “Yes (very much)” and 61 percent answered “Yes.”
Here are some of the feedback we received in the comment section:
“I used to write syllabuses partly because it was compulsory to do so, but I realized that reviewing a syllabus leads to class reform.” (Faculty member)
“I had no one to ask for advice in my daily life, so I was grateful for the opportunity to receive comments through Q&A sessions with the instructor and group activities.” (Faculty member)
“I learned the points of creating a syllabus and realized that they are beneficial to both me and my students.” (Teacher of senior high school)
We are relieved that the program was appreciated to a certain extent like the past events. We are eager to provide the participants with the opportunities to share their practices and improve our events to satisfy future participants by examining the points we need to improve as indicated in the feedback.
4. Preview of the Next Program
We are planning to hold a two-day seminar on microteaching on March 2nd (Sat) and 3rd (Sun). Details are to be announced. We look forward to your participation.
DAY 4 Evaluation ・Review of the Previous Session
・Goals and Objectives ・Significance of Evaluation ・Basics of Evaluation (Summative Evaluation and Formative Evaluation) ・Rubrics (Exercises in Creating a Rubric) ・Reflection
In general, evaluation is considered to be the “final judgment” that decides whether to pass or fail a learner from the students’ point of view and troublesome paperwork from the instructors’ point of view. The session started with the instructor’s words that asked the participants to change such views on the evaluation and instead consider it as an “escort runner” or a “compass” for students and a “tool to support teaching activities” to check the comprehension of students and improve classes for instructors.
Evaluation is divided into summative evaluation and formative evaluation. The former is for grades at the end of the learning process like term-end examinations, whereas the latter is for supporting learners during the learning process. Formative evaluation can be replaced by feedback, a more familiar term. If you only use summative evaluation, evaluation becomes the goal, and what matters for students will be a single examination, which makes them forget what they learned once the exam is over. Formative evaluation is necessary to avoid such a situation and let the students keep learning by making the evaluation a starting point.
In the latter half of the session, participants created rubrics, a tool for formative evaluation, in groups. I heard many groups discussing, “Do we really need to evaluate from this perspective when posing this task?” “It is becoming too superficial. It seems to be unable to evaluate what we really want to.” I felt that the participants truly grasped the role of rubrics as a tool for class reform by making them ask themselves, “What kind of learning do I want to enhance? Is this evaluation appropriate for that purpose?”
Whether it is a rubric or an examination, reexamining the evaluation from the perspective of “enhancing learning” leads you to face the question, “Do you really need to evaluate that?” No evaluations or classes can be said “absolutely correct” or “perfect,” and that’s why you need to keep working on improvement, an endless process. Class reform is, as the instructor said, like “building Sagrada Família.”
“The 11th Mini-lecture Program at the Library” took place on November 8th, 2018.
We held the event at the Library Plaza (General Library Annex) for the first time.
Following the same style as the previous event (the 10th Program), those who completed the 11th UTokyo FFP conducted mini-lectures they worked on in the microteaching sessions.
For more details on the microteaching and the previous event, please click here.
The audience was 17 people (including the speakers) consisting of graduate students and faculty/staff members at the University of Tokyo and other universities.
We received positive feedback from the participants. About 75 percent chose 4 or 5 when asked the following five-point scale question: “Did you get interested in the UTokyo FFP?” About 70 percent chose 9 or 10 when asked the ten-point scale question on the degree of satisfaction with the mini-lecture program.
We are planning to hold this “Mini-lecture Program at the Library” regularly. Please check the website for the announcement of the next event.
Lastly, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to all the University of Tokyo Library System staff members for their cooperation.
DAY 3 Syllabus: Syllabus Design and Course Design that Contribute to Learning ・Review of the Previous Session ・Goals and Objectives ・What Is a Syllabus? ・Exercise in Setting Goals and Objectives of a Syllabus ・Course Design (Exercise in Creating a Graphic Syllabus) ・Exercise in Improving a Syllabus into One that Enhances Learning ・Reflection
This time, the class was about syllabus design and course design that contribute to learning.
In the beginning, participants reviewed what they had learned in the previous class in pairs. They explained the seven keywords that had appeared in the previous class in a way that could be understood by novice learners (i.e., those who didn’t take this course) to their partners in turn. I found it effective both for warm-up exercises for the participants and in making them organize their knowledge, so I would like to adopt this activity in my own class next time.
Syllabuses are not only a means for students to choose which courses they would like to take but also something that could enhance their learning, and are an effective tool for the instructors to design their courses; in FFP, we call every session a “class,” and a series of classes a “course.”
Participants first set goals and objectives, then determined how to check whether the objectives are accomplished (i.e., the evaluation methods), and moved on to the content and strategies for the class. Many of the classes that do not contribute to learning seem to decide on the content and strategies before setting goals, objectives, and evaluation methods. In contrast, “Backward Design” refers to setting goals and objectives thoroughly first and then examining how and what students should learn to achieve them.
One of the participants who seemed to have fun in course design activities said, “So what you should do is to design a course that you wanted to take yourself in the past.” I think the words capture the heart of Backward Design.
The art of the course design is said to recognize the points (i.e. expert blind spot) where the instructors (or experts) are capable of doing something unconsciously and so they are likely to consider, “Why can’t students do this?”, to “scaffold” for the students so that they could learn easily, and to gradually remove the scaffolds during the course to let them become independent learners. It was impressive to know that the instructor did remove the scaffold for the participants and let them learn by themselves by allocating more than half of the class time for their activities in this third session of the program.
DAY 2 Class Design ・Goals and Objectives ・Motivation (Flipped Classroom) ・Class Design ・Active Learning ・Exercise in Class Design ・Reflection
This time, the class was about the relationship between goals/objectives and motivation and class design that deepens learning while maintaining motivation.
We received the following feedback on the previous session from one of the participants: “The goals and objectives were specific, which made me prepared for the program as a learner.” Indicating “Why do I have to learn this?” and “What will I be able to do?” inspires and maintains learners’ motivation. What is interesting about FFP is that you will be able to observe your own learning experiences from a meta-cognitive perspective by taking the course as if you are shown magic and explained the trick at the same time.
The session was conducted in a flipped-classroom style, where participants watched lecture videos on motivation (and related basic theories) as a pre-assignment and deepened their understanding of knowledge by using it in a group discussion on how to advise a professor who has problems with his/her classes. Also, in terms of active learning strategies, they learned the effects of peer instruction by actually experiencing it.
The active learning strategies that the participants experienced in this class were limited to flipped classroom and peer instruction, and the others were just explained in a lecture, but according to the instructor, the course is designed so that they can experience all the typical strategies at least once for each throughout the course.
