Changing Minds and Language

In the second half of March, I was part of a working group hosting a biologist who is also an expert in science education. Helping organize and attending multiple workshops and meetings made me think a lot about teaching and what I do in the classroom. It also prompted me to read a slew of chemical education papers. I’ll be sharing my thoughts on some of the readings in the coming weeks. Today I wanted to reflect on three things that stood out to me from the past two weeks.

The first has to do with crafting questions to change minds. I had recently thought more about how to ask questions as part of formative assessment, and started to apply some of these strategies in my classes. However, I feel that I’m still doing this haphazardly instead of systematically – although I expect to improve with time. At one of the workshops a couple of weeks ago, we discussed how to leverage asking questions into a “sticky” learning experience, particularly suited for important concepts we want to stick with the students.

I often ask questions at the beginning of class. These take two forms: Sometimes I have pop quizzes to assess whether students have understood material from the previous class or did the reading for the present class. Other times I use questions as a starting point to motivate thinking about the topic we will be covering. What I hadn’t considered was to carefully construct a single multiple-choice question pertaining to the topic that superficially resembled a quiz, but did not function as one. The question is used not primarily to assess student knowledge, but for students to assess their own thinking, and to see that as a result of learning something about the topic, that it is okay and perhaps even desirable to change one’s mind.

As part of her visit, our illustrious visiting professor and science education expert provided binders of material with data. While these were all in biology, they were mainly at the introductory level, and I was able to see many, many examples of different questions. Each of the questions showed the pre- and post-results of the student responses. They also included a narrative on why the faculty member chose the question (and the crucial multiple choice answers) and a reflection on whether they would reuse and/or modify the question. The questions and answer choices were crafted particularly to target misconceptions. Students have typically had some science in high school, and they remember or misremember a range of concepts that are also covered at the introductory college level.

When students see the pre-results, they see a diversity of opinion and this forces them to pay attention. Why did so many of my classmates choose a different answer from me? Some form of metacognition is triggered. The student looks more closely at his/her own answer in addition to the other offerings. From what I gathered about what actually goes on in class, the instructor makes clear to the students that being able to change one’s mind after learning new information is not just permissible but even encouraged. The actual lesson can then take various forms, but at some later time the same question is asked again. Inevitably the post-results are “better” than the pre-results from an assessment point of view, but more importantly the student retention of the “key concept” is increased significantly. (This can be tested in a variety of ways including crafting a different but related final exam question.)

The language of the instructor is important in all of this. It sets the framework for why we as a class are doing a particular activity. This brings me to the second thing that struck me. In discussions with our visiting expert and with my colleagues, and also watching how she ran the workshops, I became very aware of what words are being used to motivate a particular activity. I often use Think-Pair-Share in class. When I do, the class participates both visibly and audibly. But I do two things to ensure this happens. The question is not one that has an easy or obvious answer, and the students know that I will call on several of them individually. Nobody wants to look ignorant when called-on in class. Thus the motivation is fear. While effective, I’m not sure this is the best motivating factor. It occasionally works well in the early stages, but as an extrinsic motivator (and a negative one) I don’t think it is a good strategy for deep learning in the long run.

The third thing that stood out to me was how much jargon I was using in my non-majors chemistry class. The last two weeks of March coincided with my introducing organic chemistry. There is a lot of nomenclature that the students need to know as they learn about different functional groups. In a workshop two weeks ago, we did an activity on traxoline. If you’ve heard of traxoline, you know exactly what I’m talking about. (If you haven’t, a quick internet search will yield many ways this activity is used.) Subsequently in class, I found myself consciously modifying my language to make sure I didn’t throw too much jargon in a single sentence, and inserted extra “terminology checks” throughout the class to make sure students were on the same page. The traxoline activity was very timely for me.

Of the three things I highlighted, language and jargon is beginning to make an impact in my classes. These are easier changes to make, and being more aware of what I was saying was sufficient to prompt those changes. On the other hand, crafting excellent mind-changing multiple-choice questions is not so easy. While I inevitably started thinking about some examples, I expect it will take multiple drafts to really get some of these just right. I now have a new summer goal as I prepare for my classes next semester. I should identify some of those key concepts I want to stick with my students and then work on question-craft!