Thinking about decolonising the curriculum (inspired by Dessent et al., 2022)

3 Replies

[Edit 5.9.2022: I just read “Decolonization is not a metaphor” by Tuck & Yang (2012) and I am very much using decolonization as a metaphor in the blog post below. That does not mean that my thoughts are bad or not important — I think there is still a lot of good stuff in them! — but what I am doing is not decolonialization. So please keep that in mind!]

I just read the article “Decolonizing the Undergraduate Chemistry Curriculum: An Account of How to Start” by Dessent et al. (2022) and found it a really nice and encouraging introduction to a topic that might otherwise seem scary to tackle. Because what does “decolonisation” even mean? If we don’t have colonies any more as a nation, or never had them as a community of scientists, what is there to get rid of? There are of course many structures and relationships that either originated in a colonial system or from similar traditions. Like for example the way we talk about where knowledge comes from and how we hadrly ever question what kind of knowledge is included in curricula. Not reflecting about this is very likely propagating injustice and definitely limiting. Decolonialising in the sense of Dessent et al. (2022) means to “develop a more complete scientific perspective that better includes global voices.” And shouldn’t that always be our goal? For me, this ties in super well with efforts towards diversity, equity and inclusion that I want to strengthen.

The authors present small, manageable steps towards decolonialisation that can be approached one by one rather than all at once (and I am presenting them here with my own thoughts on what that could mean in oceanography):

finding best practice examples of decolonialising a science department. This is such an obvious starting point, but one worth mentioning. Reading this article is a good start!
collect good practice examples that already exist at the institution — a great way to increase buy-in and make the efforts feel bottom-up rather than top-down. In oceanography, I know for example of efforts to highlight the role of women: Did you know that Eunice Newton Foote first proposed in 1856 that atmospheric CO2 concentrations would change atmospheric temperatures, a discovery that is commonly attributed to John Tyndall three years later? Or showing Polynesian stick charts that use waves for navigation is quite common in introductory oceanography. But even just writing this, I opened something like 15 new browser tabs with more information on how they worked, because I realise that despite my fascination with all things waves, and despite having showed pictures of them in introductory classes, I have only a very vague understanding of them — much more vague than all the other things I would have shown in that class.
compiling resources that can be used as starting points for others, or several in their case: (A) a list of Black scientists that have done important work in their field, and (B) a list of scientists from the Indian continent. This point that mostly white men are highlighted is a very obvious starting point in the oceanography context I “grew up in” — at the institutes both in Hamburg and in Bergen it would be very easy to get the impression that all relevant research in oceanography had pretty much happened by our forefathers at each of the institutions, respectively, or at the very least involving cooperation with them. There is a lot of patriotism and pride and culture etc entangled with a tradition of following in the footsteps of Bjerknes & co, but focussing on this too much effectively makes contributions of others invisible. So starting to compile lists of scientists from other regions of the world, or with specific underrepresented characteristics, is a useful start!
making sure the images displayed in the department show diversity. This brings to mind the galleries of historic oil paintings of all the oceanographic celebrities that are all old white men… Which are all somehow tied in with the history of the institution, yes, but that also paint a very one-sided picture! Plenty of room for improvement there!
celebrate Black History month. Or maybe, thinking back to the Polynesian stick charts, there are events that could be organised around other traditions that we bring in? I watched a super interesting YouTube video of a 2017 seminar on “Wave Piloting in the Marshall Islands” and they say that wave piloting is easier by night because you aren’t distracted by so many other impressions as when you see the waves. Maybe we could include a session on reading waves in the dark? Or we could look at what other opportunities we might have to showcase diversity, like the international women’s day.
survey the culture of the department to figure out next steps — always good to get an idea of the baseline we are working with, and the specific needs at our own place!

The authors report on how they approached this with a work group, while always transparent towards the whole department, first focussing on specific parts of their teaching but with the intent to, little by little, look at all areas.

The authors also suggest different strategic approaches that could be taken individually or combined:

Looking at the impact of the field in different global contexts. Oceanography is inherently a global science, since the ocean covers more than 70% of the Earth’s surface, and 40% of the world’s population lives within 100km of the coast. But looking at what we teach, neither the area nor the population are represented well.
Diverse histories that don’t only focus on our own tradition. As I described above, I have newly discovered my fascination with the polynesian stick charts, and I’ll go looking for more examples like this. With so many people living so close to the coast, there must be so much knowledge that I am not aware of! Like the old tsunami stones in Japan, warning people that anything closer to the sea is in danger of tsunamis, which were mostly forgotten for a long time.
Role models! From different backgrounds and cultures for decolonialisation specifically, but also from different minority groups for diversity more generally. Off the top of my head, this reminds me of “OceanInsights — musings of a blind oceanographer“, a blog by blind sea-going oceanographer Amy Bower. And I’m embarassed to say that right now, I can’t really think of other good examples!
Science as a global endeavour, not just happening in the ivory tower or by a lone genius. This comes down to for example how we speak about science, for example by giving out Nobel prices to mostly individuals and not the whole networks of people without whom the research would not have been possible.
Ethical considerations. Who benefits from our research? Why do we investigate certain questions and not others? These questions are asked by far too little (at least by me — I usually go for what I find most interesting at any given moment).
Structures and hierarchies in science. How do they influence what we do, and do we really want that influence in that way? Important topic to discuss and tackle!
Student voice and leadership. The authors found that the initiative to take on decolonisation of the curriculum came from the students, and I think that’s one reason I’ve been so interested in co-creating recently: Because students show us where we are (maybe even unknowingly) stuck in traditions, and inspire change. Of course, we can’t rely on students driving changes that we already know need to happen, but we should take their perspective into consideration to show us where our blindspots are.

So yep, these are my thoughts on that article, and now I need to figure out how to actually translate it into action. Which I am very inspired to do, so thank you, Dessent et al., for the great article!

Dessent, C. E., Dawood, R. A., Jones, L. C., Matharu, A. S., Smith, D. K., & Uleanya, K. O. (2021). Decolonizing the Undergraduate Chemistry Curriculum: An Account of How to Start. Journal of Chemical Education.

Reading about quality cultures in academia (Harvey & Stensaker, 2008)

1 Reply

With my new job as academic developer at Lund University, I’m reading even more about changing academic cultures than before (but don’t worry, I have a couple of wave watching posts in the works, too!). Just now, I read about “Quality culture: Understandings, boundaries and linkages.” by Harvey & Stensaker, 2008.

The article first starts out with describing that “culture” is a term that has many different meanings depending on the context it developed in and is used in — it can be about artistic endeavours as much as it can be about describing traditions or pattern of ideas. This whole part went a bit above my head, but the next part, discussing the term “quality”, was really interesting to me, especially applied to how we understand quality in higher education. There are five ways the term “quality” is used in this context:

exceptional: Quality means going above and beyond what is expected; we are the best of the best. This is something I encounter a lot in academia: everything has to be exceptionally good, and better than last time and everybody else, in order to be deemed acceptable. Moving goal posts…
perfection or consistency: Quality means knowing what the measures for success are and meeting them every time without fail, but those measures staying (mostly) the same over time.
fitness for purpose: Quality means meeting practical internal or external requirements, like learning outcomes or accreditation criteria: someone or something does what they are supposed to do.
value for money: Quality means that funders, including students, feel that they receive adequate return on their investment.
transformation: Quality means supporting a process of change in students, enhancing and/or empowering them throughout their time at university.

Looking at these different understandings of what quality means, it is not surprising that the perception of quality of any given project or product can differ widely. And it makes it very clear that agreeing on what understanding of quality one wants to base discussions is necessary for constructive dialogue.

Based on these different understandings of both culture and quality, and looking at the two axis of control being located with the individual vs the group, and rules being mainly internal vs external, four different “ideal-types” of quality cultures are distinguished in the article:

responsive quality culture, with a high degree of group control and strong external rules, where impulses from the outside are mostly taken up as opportunities and only sometimes are perceived as imposed and constricting ownership and degrees of freedom;
reactive quality culture, with a low degree of group-control and strong external rules, where measures of quality are imposed from the outside and are dealt with when necessary, but not in an integrated way;
regenerative quality culture, with a high degree of group control and weak external rules, where external expectations are incorporated as far as they are perceived useful to further the internal agenda;
reproductive quality culture, with both weak group control and external rules, where the status quo is maintained with as little influence from the outside as possible.

I found reading about those four types quite eye-opening, as I definitely recognise different previous workplaces in several of these descriptions. Most interestingly, reading about the regenerative quality culture after two quality cultures that I could understand and come up with examples for, but didn’t really vibe with, felt like I had found my way of thinking. Especially with the last sentence “…if regeneration stalls or is interfered with externally, be it by a higher layer of management or by an external force, the quality culture will have an intrinsic subversive potential.” :-D

Having read about these definitions of both quality and quality cultures is definitely useful both in terms of becoming more aware of my own assumptions about what those terms mean, and going forward also for making it explicit how I use the term when talking to others, and enquiring how they use it. That’s actually going to be very interesting to see!

Harvey, L., & Stensaker, B. (2008). Quality culture: Understandings, boundaries and linkages. European journal of Education, 43(4), 427-442.

Funded: Our project on “co-creation to promote active learning and communities of practice”

3 Replies

This week, we got super exciting news: Kjersti‘s and my proposal to the active learning call by the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Competence (HK-dir) got funded (perfect timing, since our article on co-creating learning on oceanography was also published this week!)!

Below I’m sharing the translation of an interview that Kjersti gave to the MatNat faculty, but here is a quick overview over what we are planning to do:

Co-creation to promote active learning and communities of practice

The project’s goal is to use “Co-creation to promote active learning and communities of practice” at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Bergen. We work towards this goal in four work packages (called AP (“arbeidspakke”) in my cheesy illustration below):

In many courses at GFI, the seeds of co-creation are in place and being cultivated already. Our AP1 is about supporting and strengthening those efforts by evaluating and iteratively improving them in some specific courses, in order to gain more experience at our institution and create pilot projects that can serve as proof of concept and that we and others might learn from. In AP2, we help ground those efforts by creating supportive boundary conditions at GFI in terms of looking at how the organisation is structured, whether there are places where student voices could be elevated, and whether the administrative framework could better support co-creation at an institutional level. AP3 is then about engaging more and more teachers and students in other courses in co-creation, and supporting this development by creating meeting places and conversations about the topic, and supporting evaluation and discussion of results. Lastly, we are not doing this alone: AP4 brings together expert advice we are receiving as well as our efforts to share what we are learning. We have the support of the iEarth community, and specifically an advisory board with internationally renowned experts on co-creation and leading academic change processes to help us. As our efforts flower and bear fruit, we will produce a range of publications, infographics, “how-to guides” and many other formats to share our learnings with both the scientific community and interested practitioners.

We are super excited to start working on this with our great colleagues at GFI and within iEarth, and most importantly with our students!

If you are curious about our thoughts on how to get started with co-creating in oceanography (or any other subject, really), Kjersti and I just published an article with some really easy and then some a little more advanced examples (Glessmer & Daae, 2021).

Kjesti’s interview

Kjersti gave an interview to the MatNat faculty who wrote an article about our project. Here is the translation of the questions she was asked and the answers she gave:

How did you come up with the idea for this project?

The Geophysical Institute (GFI) is a partner in the center of excellence iEarth. Together with Mirjam Glessmer (co-author, and Adjunct Associate Professor in iEarth), I have had the opportunity to participate in many discussions with inspiring researchers in both geosciences and education-related research fields. We quickly got in touch with Catherine Bovill and Torgny Roxå (both Adjunct Associate Professors in iEarth) and the Geoscience Education working group at the University of Oslo. All their expertise in the field of co-creation and changing academic cultures fit perfectly with what we want to achieve at GFI. The application therefore was inspired by, and builds on, positive experiences with testing new ways of teaching in introductory courses at GFI with our colleagues there, and dialogue with colleagues and professionals from iEarth.

What is the major weakness of today’s teaching in your subject, and what do you want to improve?

Teaching at all levels, including at universities, is changing. More and more people are moving away from lectures and instead trying out new research-based teaching methods where the focus is on active involvement of students. Through instructional methods that activate the students, the students practice skills such as discussion, analysis, problem solving, sketching, etc. Research shows that students learn more and better from active forms of teaching, even if they do not necessarily experience it that way, or prefer this form of teaching. Teachers therefore appreciate support and guidance in making this transition to more and more active forms of teaching and learning in dialogue with students and leadership.

What does your focus on co-creation and community of practice mean?

Focusing on co-creation and community of practice is largely about changing the relationship between teachers and students, in order to provide students with the best environment for learning during their studies. The students are our most important “customers”. It is important that they are included in everything that happens at the department and university, that they are seen and heard, and that they are given the opportunity to influence their own studies and thus lives.

“Co-creation” encompasses a wide range of student activity and engagement, from individual activities during a single teaching session to larger activities that take place over long time, where students take on responsibility for shaping their learning together with their teachers. In co-creation activities, all participants have the right to contribute equally, but not necessarily in the same way. An increased degree of co-creation can help make teaching more inclusive and increase student engagement; at the same time, students learn more, they experience learning as more relevant, and they develop as democratic citizens. If you are curious about specific examples of co-creation activities, you can take a look at the article Mirjam Glessmer and I recently published in the magazine Oceanography (https://tos.org/oceanography/article/co-creating-learning-in-oceanography).

“Communities of practice” are groups of people who share common interests, where the participants know each other, collaborate on common goals, and develop through the exchange of knowledge. This means that teachers and students encourage and support each other in various forms of development.

So ultimately both co-creation and communities of practice are tools towards more dialogue: between students and teachers as well as within both groups individually.

What kind of responses have you received to the idea in the professional environment and from the authorities?

The very process of writing the application has affected how we think about teaching. We have had many good discussions about teaching and learning with teachers, students, and administration at both GFI and in the new network of colleagues we have found through iEarth. This has been a great help in the development of the idea and the project application, and we have received a lot of support and encouragement to move forward with our plans.

What is the common denominator for the work packages?

The common denominator for the work packages is a change in relations between students, teachers, and administration. Both students and teachers must want change and learn about how change can happen in a good way for all parties. In addition, we must put boundary conditions in place that make the changes possible at the departmental level.

What is culture created to wanting to change teaching?

Everyone involved with a university has their own opinion on how teaching at the university is or should be. This perception often reflects a traditional understanding of the role of teachers and students, where teachers must lecture on subject matter and students must acquire the subject matter and be measured by how well they can reproduce it. As long as these expectations persist, it is difficult to change the relationships between teachers and students. We want to influence teachers and students to change their focus so that teachers learn more with the students, and the students inspire the teachers. This is already happening to some extent, and through this project we want to support and strengthen this change process.

When the project is finished, what is the most important experience you will have gained?

Through a common and consistent focus on co-creation and community of practice, GFI will provide students with the best prerequisites for learning during their studies. We want to be an educational institution that helps students develop on both an academic and a personal level. This is achieved through a better dialogue between students, teachers, and administration and through a continuous development of the teaching culture at the department. When the project is completed, we hope to see a cultural change towards “more students” that is founded in the department and that continues to grow beyond the project. We also want to discuss our experiences with the higher education community and hope to inspire more people to get involved in co-creation and community of practice with the goal of improving education.

Just published: Co-Creating Learning in Oceanography

Students as partners as a threshold concept for students and teachers?

1 Reply

One of my goals as a teacher is to change culture towards responsibility for student learning being shared equally between teachers and students. This is an idea that is met with some resistance, both from students who need to put in more work, and from teachers. An article by Cook-Sather (2014) sheds light on difficulties teachers often experience when letting go of traditional understandings of the relationship between teacher and students, and adopting this new form of collaboration with students:

Taking on a students as partners mindset is described as a threshold concept for teachers: a gateway that, once crossed, opens up a whole new world. While walking through such a portal is transformative and irreversible (evidence of both is given from teacher reflections after they have adopted the new mindset), it is also troublesome. Especially for new teachers who are struggling with legitimacy issues, accepting students as equal partners can be a daunting and difficult process, where students might be perceived as adversaries rather than partners, or as not contributing any new and inspiring thought.

Crossing the threshold might be aided by academic developers inviting for reflection, or by supporting teachers in taking small actions towards giving students more responsibility on a confined and “safe” aspect of the course (note by Mirjam: for some ideas, check out our collection here!). The beginner-level one-on-one setting of teacher and student in partnership (for example working with student representatives) can then, in the long run, be widened to include more students. Providing spaces for reflection, discussion, and revision within and beyond course settings (for example also including educational researchers) can support the transformation towards students as partners.

Reading quotes from teachers struggling to see the benefit of collaborating with students on developing their teaching opened my eyes to struggles with the changing relationship – especially around seeing the student partners as enemies rather than supportive partners — that I did not anticipate for our own application, but that might quite possibly exist. This might be another aspect of threshold concepts – that it is retrospectively difficult to imagine what life was like before crossing the threshold. Therefore, reading this article was a good reminder that supporting reflections on roles, identities, relationships should be an important part of any project if we want to successfully implement students as partners.

Reference:
Alison Cook-Sather (2014) Student-faculty partnership in explorations of
pedagogical practice: a threshold concept in academic development, International Journal for Academic Development, 19:3, 186-198, DOI: 10.1080/1360144X.2013.805694

Kaur & Noman (2020): A study applying self-determination theory on Students as Partners

Using rubrics

2 Replies

I’ve been a fan of working with rubrics for a long time, but somehow I don’t seem to have blogged about it. So here we go!

Rubrics are basically tables of learning outcomes. The rows give different criteria that are to be assessed, and then performance at (typically three) different levels is described. Below, I’ll talk about the benefits that working with rubrics have for both teachers and students, and give two concrete examples of how we used them and why that was helpful.

Rubrics are a great tool for teachers

Designing a rubric makes you really think long and hard about what it is that you want students to be able to demonstrate for the different criteria, and how you would distinguish an ok performance from a good performance for each criterion.
Once the rubric is set up, grading becomes a lot easier. Instead of having to think about how well any given response answers your question, now it’s basically about putting crosses in the relevant cells matching the performance you see in front of you.
This makes it a lot easier when there are many people involved in grading — the dreaded “but x got a point for y and I didn’t!”-discussions become a lot fewer because now grading is a lot more objective
Giving feedback also becomes a lot easier, since all the performance descriptions are already there and it’s now basically about copy&paste (or even sharing the crossed-through rubric) to show “this is where you are at” and “this is what I was expecting”.
It also helps in course planning…

One example of where I was really glad we did have a rubric is the project that Torge and I collaborated on: We bought four cheap setups for rotating tank experiments and designed a course around making otherwise really unintuitive and difficult to observe concepts not only visible, but manipulating them in order to gain a deeper understanding. We had written down a rubric pre-corona, but when we went into lockdown in March 2020, having the rubric helped us a lot in quickly figuring out how to transfer a very much hands-on course online. Since we had clearly identified the learning outcomes, it became very easy to think of alternative ways to teach them virtually. The figure above shows part of the rubric, and circled in red is the only learning outcome in that selection (of a lesson that we thought was all about the hands-on experience!) that wasn’t just as well taught virtually. But looking closely at the rubric, we realised that the students did not actually need to necessarily do the rotating experiments themselves, as long as they were doing some kind of experiment themselves to practice conducting experiments following lab instructions. With the rubric, we had a checklist of “this is what they need to be able to do at the end of class” to directly convert into activities. We ended up with me showing the rotating experiments from my kitchen, while the students were doing non-rotating experiments, using only readily available household items, from their homes. Without the very explicit learning outcomes in our rubric, converting the course would probably been a lot more difficult.

Rubrics are also great for students

They get a comprehensive overview over what the instructor actually expects from them
They can use the rubric to make sure they “tick all the boxes”, or strategically decide where to put their time and effort
Instructor feedback is now a lot more helpful than “2 out of 5 points”.

Kjersti shares an example of how she “negotiated” rubrics in her GEOF105 class to co-create it with her students:

The goal is to invite students to negotiate an assessment rubric for written assignments. We have tested this out in the following way:

The teacher drafted a rubric and assigned an equal weighting of 5 points to each assessment criteria (15 criteria gave a total score of 75 points).
The students voted anonymously for which criteria they wanted to assign a stronger weighting. We made no limits in how many criteria each student could vote for.
The votes were counted up, and the remaining 25 points in the assessment were distributed based on the number of votes for each criterion.

The two criteria most students voted to weight stronger, were the structure of the lab report and the reflection part. I suspect they wanted more points for the structure partly because it is not too difficult, but also because they spend much time figuring out how a lab report should look. I also found it interesting that they wanted more points for reflection. Last year we asked the students to write a reflection paragraph that would not be assessed. We thought it would be stressful for the students to write the reflection knowing it would be evaluated. But, I guess we were wrong!

They also wanted more point for making/discussing hypothesis, using good illustrations and relating the experiment tank to the Earths geometry — all of which are objectively difficult parts of the lab report.

We found two main results after using the negotiated rubric:

The students (on average) achieved higher scores than the previous year (were the rubric was fixed)
The students made fewer complaints to the assignment score

We think the students achieved higher scores because they spent more time getting acquainted with the rubric before writing their assignments and could use it more constructively as a checklist.

So those are our experiences with using rubrics. How about you? We’d love to hear from you!

Small groups work on shared artefacts

1 Reply

Participation in shared production of artefacts is a great way to learn in a community, because putting things on paper (or, as we will see later, on online slides or physical whiteboards) requires a clearer articulation of the topic of discussion, and a level of commitment to a shared meaning (Wenger, 1998). We give two examples of methods we like to use, and then a trick to break up roles in student groups so it is not always the same person taking notes or reporting back to the group.

Physical whiteboards

One of Kjersti‘s favourite teaching techniques is the use of whiteboards, especially in GEOF105, a second-year course introduction to oceanography and meteorology (see many examples of great student artefacts on her Twitter; and multiple-choice questions to support discussions as her other favourite method here).

For in-person teaching with group discussions and exercises, the groups can draw or write their main results on portables whiteboards (best trick: Picture frames with just white paper behind the glass! Very cheap, very effective. Great idea, Elin!). When the students are asked to document their results on a whiteboard, they need to be concrete and agree on the level of details they provide.

In our GEOF105 course in undergraduate oceanography, we use many sketching exercises. We find that the sketching exercises provide many positive aspects:

Students like sketching. They often decorate the sketches with smiling suns or add wildlife to the sketches, contributing to a relaxed atmosphere and a positive learning environment.
Many questions arise when the students start sketching, because suddenly having a vague idea is not enough any more. First, they discuss, explain, and check if their ideas make sense. Then, they need to combine all the ideas into one concrete sketch.
The sketching activates more students in the discussions. Some students take responsible for sketching, some provide input, and some ask questions.

Below, you see an example of one group’s work on coastal up- and downwelling on the Northern vs Southern hemisphere (note the use of appropriate animals to illustrate the hemisphere ;-))

Shared online slides

But this type of negotiating of meaning can also happen in a virtual space. We have used shared online slides during group work in both digital and in-person teaching. The slides provide an easy way to provide figures and questions the groups can work on, and you can also add one slide for each group where they write down a summary of their discussion or answers key questions. The sharing of online slides and collaborative writing on them provides several opportunities:

You can keep track of the groups’ progress by looking at their slides. Especially in digital teaching, where you cannot as easily eavesdrop on the students’ discussions, it is difficult to visit all the different breakout groups and get an idea of their progress. Students often dislike it if the teacher jumps into their breakout-group unannounced (ehem, some teachers dislike doing it, too…). We have experienced that students prefer the teacher to pay attention to the slides and not visit the breakout-groups uninvited.
You can choose to allow the students to look at the other groups’ slides. This gives an opportunity to help the students if they feel they get lost or need some ideas to proceed with the discussions.
You can review the slides from the different groups and make a summary after the group activity, prepare how to structure a discussion based on the points different groups wrote down, or how to proceed (giving students more or less time in the group, picking up or dropping a topic, …).
The students have access to the shared slides — and thus their combined notes — after the lecture

Anecdotal evidence, but students that are asked “which ice cube will melt faster, the one in salt water or the one in freshwater?” without also being asked to sketch the mechanism they base their answer on, almost always get it wrong (or right only for the wrong reasons). This year’s class all came to the correct response based on the correct mechanism (see below)!

Assigning responsibilities to break up established roles

Group dynamics can be tricky, and groups very easily fall into pattern that might engage students very unequally. To facilitate shared responsibility for taking notes, sticking to the topic of discussion, or reporting back from group work, you can assign and re-assign the roles based on semi-random criteria. For in-person teaching, you can use their birthday (e.g. birthday closest to Christmas, or ’today’), or other semi-random information to distribute roles. In online teaching, you can also use the students’ physical location as a criterion. You can, for instance, ask the student located furthest south/north/east/west to report back from the group. The students will need to first figure out who is responsible for each role and then follow through with that. Great icebreaker, and not always the same person taking notes or reporting back!

Including missing topics that students suggest

Guest post by Kjersti Daae: Using voting cards to increase student activity and promote discussions and critical thinking

3 Replies

I got permission to publish Kjersti Daae‘s iEarth conversation on teaching (with Torgny Roxå and myself in April 2021) on my blog! Thanks, Kjersti :-) Here we go:

I teach in an introductory course in meteorology and oceanography (GEOF105) at the geophysical institute, UiB. The students come from two different study programs:

Most students do the course in their third semester. They have not yet learned all the mathematics necessary to dive into the derivation of equations governing the ocean processes. Therefore, we focus on conceptual knowledge and understand the governing ideas regarding central ocean processes, such as global circulation and the influence of Earth’s rotation and wind on the ocean currents. The students need to learn how to describe the various processes and mechanisms included in the curriculum. I, therefore, use voting cards to promote student discussions during lectures.

I first heard about voting cards from Mirjam’s blog “Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching”. The method is relatively simple. You pose a question with four alternatives A,B,C,D, accompanied by different colours for easy recognition. The students have a printout each with the four letters on it.They spend a few minutes thinking about the question and prepare their answer. Then they fold their paper so that only one letter/colour shows, and hold it up and provide direct feedback to the teacher. The questions can, among others, be used to checking if the students understand a concept or let the students guess the outcome of something they haven’t learned yet.

However, I prefer to use voting cards to promote discussions among peers. This procedure is following the Think-pair-share method developed by Lyman (1981). By carefully selecting alternative answers, I can make it hard for the students to choose the correct answer, or the answers can be formulated so that the students can argue for more than one correct answer. When the students hold up their answers, they can look around at the other students’ responses and find someone with a different response than themselves. Then they can pair up and discuss why they answer differently and see if they can agree on one common answer before sharing their opinion with the rest of the class. During this exercise, the students practice talking about science and arguing for various answers/outcomes based on the voting cards’ questions.The exercises serve at least two purposes:

The student practice answering/discussing relevant questions for the final exam.
The students get active instead of listening passively to the lecturer.

Usually, I can see the students becoming very tired after 10-15 minutes of passive listening. These voting questions “wake up” the students, and after one such question, they tend to stay focused for another 10-15 minutes.

I think the voting cards work really well. When I display a question, the students usually move from a relaxed position to sitting more straight and preparing for being active. I can hear them discussing what they are supposed to. I also get very good feedback and responses in whole-class discussions/summaries following the discussions in pairs. Such summaries are especially interesting if multiple answers can be correct, depending on how the students argue. I can select responses from students based on their visible letters and make sure we can hear different solutions to the same question. During a semester, I see a clear development in the way students reflect on the various questions and express critical thinking governing oceanographic processes. The exercises show the students how important argumentation is. An answer with a well-founded argumentation and critical thinking is worth much more than just the answer/letter. My observation is consistent with Kaddoura (2013), who found that the think-pair-share method increased nursing students’ critical thinking.

Lyman, F. (1981). “The responsive classroom discussion.” In Anderson, A. S. (Ed.), Mainstreaming Digest, College Park, MD: University of Maryland College of Education.

Kaddoura, M. (2013). «Think Pair Share: A Teaching Learning Strategy to Enhance Students’ Critical Thinking», EducationalResearchQuarterly, v36 n4 p3-24