Do you pass back exams, a set of papers or grades on some other student project and offer generic comments on what the class did and didn’t do well on the assignment? Most of us do, and for good reasons. The feedback gives students the chance to compare their work with that done by the rest of class, which can build more accurate self-assessment skills.

A colleague raised a very interesting point in response to the February 17 post on evidence-based teaching. That entry explored some of the reasons instructional practice is not better informed by research findings.

Simon, who teaches very large economics classes wonders in a blog comment if the kind of facilitative learning described in the March 2 post is possible in mass classes. I’d like to use this post to address his query. First off, as any large course instructor knows, teaching those big, required, introductory courses is not easy. In fact, it may well be the most difficult teaching assignment given to teachers. In my mind this raises a host of intriguing questions about who should be teaching and taking those courses. But that’s a topic for another post.

I so appreciate the comments that are now appearing with some regularity on this blog. Thanks to those of you contributing. We have much to learn from each other.

This week I’m writing articles for an upcoming issue of The Teaching Professor newsletter and that always prompts lots of reading, thinking, rethinking and revising. Two articles I’m highlighting for the March issue begin with instructional problems, plagiarism in one and poorly written lab reports in the other, which are addressed by thoughtful and creatively designed assignments. With the plagiarism problem, it’s a brand new assignment and with the poorly written lab reports, it’s a complete redesign of the lab report assignment.

I just read a study that pretty much blew my socks off. An article highlighting the details will appear in the March issue of The Teaching Professor. I’ll give you the nutshell version here. The researchers were interested in finding out if there was empirical evidence to support the frequent criticism that introductory courses are fact filled with little content that challenges higher order thinking. Beyond anecdotal evidence, this research team didn’t find much empirical documentation so, being biologists, they decided to look at introductory-level biology courses.

This week I’ve been reading up on a variety of group structures now being used, mainly in the sciences, to get students working together on understanding and mastering course material. As I read about these interesting models, I keep hearing faculty respond: “Great, but I teach content that must be covered in this course.” And that excuse prevents them from considering any strategy that diminishes the amount of content they can get through in a class period, even though most are wise enough to know that just because it’s been covered doesn’t mean it’s been learned.

Have you ever used any sort of group testing activity? The approach is not without benefits. Most students find exams enormously stressful and abundant research documents that high levels of test anxiety can compromise performance. Said more bluntly, students can know the information, but be so anxious they can’t summon it for the exam. Letting students work together on test questions reduces that anxiety considerably. It could be a case of “misery loves company” or the “two heads are better than one” scenario.

My former colleague Jim Fairweather has written a paper commissioned by the National Academies National Research Council Board of Science Education which makes some interesting points. But first a bit of background.