Collect Ideas, Discuss, and Vote Using Tricider

The TLT Group has been exploring the app, Tricider for the past few weeks, thanks to an

introduction by Penny Kuckkahn. Tricider is an easy tool to collect ideas, discuss and vote. So it facilitates brainstorming and voting all in one. It also facilitates debate.

Tricider works great for teams in the work place and for students as a part of a class.  The app is free and no registration is required.

Here is an example of a Tricider we used at the end of a webinar.  We used it as a space for participants to reflect on this question "What advice would you share with students or colleagues based on the readings and today's discussion?  We were also experimenting with the Tricider app.

We used the voting feature the next week to encourage people to share their ideas for the webinar around this question "What is one tool or strategy you or your institution uses to support student learning?"  The idea with the largest number of votes was the recipient of a prize. 

Tricider addresses many of the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education:

• Encourages active learning.
• Facilitates contacts between students.
• Emphasizes time on task
• Respects diverse ways of learning

The TLT Group shares something from "the Bleeding Edge" and a Low Threshold Application(LTA) each week prior to the start of FridayLive! This information is also available for TLT Members after the session.  See the up-coming FridayLive!  lineup here.

Using Quizlet to "Make It Stick" and Other Random Ideas

I have been reading the book Make It Stick and have come away with SO many ideas. I highly recommend the book.  There are also some shorter ways to connect to the content here. 

I love this quote from the book "Learning is deeper and more durable when it is effortful. Learning that's easy is like writing in the sand, here today and gone tomorrow" (pg. 11). I think this is one to the key misunderstandings about learning.  By making mistakes and then correcting them we strengthen our learning. As teachers there are ways we can use the information presented in this book to help our students become better learners and to deepen their learning.

Testing is a learning tool and according to cognitive science research practicing retrieval is key.  Practicing should be spaced, varied and interleaved to to be most powerful. So using quizzing before a lesson, after a lesson and students creating their own quizzes should we used more often.  To that end, I reconnected to Quizlet. There is even an apple and android app.  Below is the set of flash cards I created to help me learn the concepts in Make It Stick.  I will continue to add to this.




Now for just some random ideas and examples of things I would like to incorporate into my teaching.

1. Write down 10 facts you didn't know before reading the chapter. I was thinking about adapting this and asking participants in a webinar to write down 3 things they did not know before the webinar.
2. Retrieval practice that involves short answers and essay is more effective for long-term learning than multiple choice and true/false.
3. Practicing via flashcards is super powerful.  I would like to develop flashcards and provide a link to the set for participants to use after a training session.
4. Mixing up the practice is important. Provide some space between practice sessions, interleave practice sessions with different content. Important to note that this will feel more effortful but will actually produce better learning.  Also interesting is that even presented with this information will tend toward mass practice and rereading as ways of studying.  I love this quote "Practice like you play and you will play like you practice" (p 52).
5. Reflection involves both retrieval practice and elaboration. A good practice is to take a few moments after an experience to ask yourself a few questions: what went well, what would I do differently, what does this experience remind me of,
6. Embracing difficulty is a key to learning.  I love the idea of generation, being asked to supply an answer or a solution to something that is new to you. Give students some problems to solve before coming to class.
7. Explain a concept in your own words.
8. After a mini lecture, ask the class a few questions, but ask them not to refer to their notes.  This way they need to think harder about the answer and thus strengthening the pathway to that new knowledge.
9. Repeated retrieval is important to long term memory.
10. Listen to an audio recording and explain one key take away in your own words. Could be shared in a small group.
11. After listening to a recording, present students with some conceptual questions to talk about in small groups.
12. Reflecting on one's own learning and making it into a story strengthens learning.  This could be related to the role that structure building has in learning.
13. The focus of dynamic testing is identify what areas you need to strengthen, refocus and then retest.
14. The most powerful learning happens when wrestling to solve a problem.
15. Elaboration involves finding additional layers of meaning in new material. Examples of this are in the use of metaphor and creating a visual image. In essence you are relating new material to something you already know, explaining it to someone else and describing how it relates to your life.

Story – A Strategy for Generating Ideas

We know that stories make information come alive and are a great way to connect learners to new information and concepts.  Meaning and involvement become more personal for the learner when stories are involved. This is an example of how story was used during an advisory committee meeting as a way to generate ideas from members.  In this case advisory committee members were asked to individually create their own story.  This story would be rich in detail  and would depict someone in the community that would benefit from completing an associate degree in the Business Management program.  They were given five minutes to write their stories.  Each member shared their story while someone outlined the important details on an individual flip chart page.  Next, the group was paired up with an advisory committee member and a college representative.  The pairs reviewed the various pages and brainstormed ways to connect with the person in the story. Ideas were captured on post-it notes.  What resulted from this activity were new ideas and very rich information.  The advisory committee members reported enjoying the experience.

This example comes to us from Karen Barr, Beth Kost and Dianne Lazear.  October 2011

Creating a Story from a Picture

Story can be used in every phase of the learning cycle.  This is an example of how story is used in the “generalizing” phase. It comes to us from Sherry Nazer, a student in Dianne Lazear’s Business Management class.  Dianne was teaching a unit on ethics.  The students were asked to create a learning activity around the concepts they had been studying and then facilitate the activity in the class. If they created a game they needed to supply the answer key to the game. While studying this unit, Dianne displayed various ethical principles on posters around the classroom.  Sherry gave each student a different picture and asked them to create a story from the picture that pulled in one of the ethical principles. Dianne reported a high level of intense engagement as the students developed their stories which were then individually shared. The photos combined with the stories made the information come alive in a personal way. You can see how various aspects of the brain were engaged. The pictures evoked emotion and triggered memories.  Both the right and left sides of the brain were involved with the right brain looking for the big picture and meaning while the left brain fills in the details. 

How to use WebEx Polling Questions to Promote Deep Learning

I am on a quest to find ways to utilize web conferencing software to create deep learning experiences. The Winter 2011 POD Network News contained a great article by Derek Bruff, “Multiple-Choice Questions You Wouldn’t Put on a Test: Promoting Deep Learning Using Clickers,”  The polling feature in WebEx and clickers will create similar results.  This is how it works: participants respond anonymously which makes it safer to share their perspectives and to take risks; their results are displayed which in turn generates greater interest in discussion as multiple perspectives are revealed.

Bruff (2009-2001) suggests four question types:

1.      One-Best-Answer Question. In this situation, there is more than one defensible answer. Participants are asked to commit to one answer, the results are displayed and a discussion takes place as to why various answers were chosen.
Example: present a short scenario and then pose a question to the group, such as, “select the best option to explain the characters motivation.

2.      Student Perspective Question. Participants are asked to share opinions and personal experiences. These types of questions can help participants personally connect to the content.  When viewing the results they also begin to understand each other a little better and possibly appreciate multiple perspectives.
Example: could ask student views on a current event or to share what type of personal experience they may have had related to the topic.

3.      Misconception Question. A question is chosen that will surface common misconceptions. After the results are displayed, Bruff suggests that participants be given time to discuss in small groups.  The WebEx breakout group feature could be used for this.  After small group discussions, the question is posed again and then a large group discussion takes place around the reasons for and against the various answers.

4.      Peer Assessment Question. Participants are given an opportunity to provide feedback on a fellow participant’s presentation. Anonymous feedback tends to be more honest and constructive and can lead to good discussion regarding discipline standards.

“Based on various definitions for deep learning and what we know about the brain and learning, deep learning involves five traits: (a) focusing on the big picture, the overall meaning, pattern, or principle; (b) connecting new ideas to previous knowledge and personal experience and ultimately fitting these into a coherent whole; (c) linking with internal learning goals; (d) processing actively by being open, creative, and curious; and (e) embracing change, new situations, and multiple perspectives” (Dailey, 2011, p.9). By utilizing questions in this fashion, experiences are created where participants connect new ideas to personal experience and link their learning goals as they think independently in answering the questions.  By seeing the results of the poll, participants are more likely to actively process through discussion and become aware of and appreciate multiple perspectives.

References

Bruff, D. (2009-2010). Multiple-Choice Questions You Wouldn’t Put on a Test: Promoting Deep Learning Using Clickers. POD Essays on Teaching Excellence.  Accessed May 3, 2011 http://www.podnetwork.org/publications/teachingexcellence/09-10/V21,%20N3%20Bruff.pdf. 

Dailey, B. (2011). Creating Significant Deep Learning Experiences. The Cross Papers Number 14. League for innovations in the Community College.