Effective Classroom Learning

The classroom learning environment presents a number of opportunities for student and faculty growth. The following resources allow the classroom environment to meet the needs and opportunities of students and faculty.

On This Page:

• Inclusive Teaching
• Peer-to-Peer Learning
• Teaching Large Classes
• Group Activities
• Discussion-Based Teaching & Learning

Inclusive Teaching

Inclusive teaching creates teaching and learning experiences in which students feel respected, seen, heard, and included regardless of their identities or background. The importance of fostering an inclusive environment is evident in the feeling of belonging that increases student satisfaction with their educational experience. Here are some inclusive teaching tips:

• Reflect on your own biases and recognize potential micro-aggressions perpetuated directly and indirectly in daily interactions.
• Plan a diverse course with various teaching methods, materials, and voices. When selecting authors, examples, and topics, consider including various representations. 
• Promote a positive classroom environment where respect is paramount so all students feel welcomed and valued. 
• Encourage feedback from your students. Clear communication helps them but also helps you understand how to meet their needs and interests better. 
• Respect and accommodate diverse needs for greater equity in teaching, learning, and grading. 

Peer-to-Peer Learning

Peer-to-peer (P2P) learning is more than just a buzzword; it’s a transformative educational approach that empowers your students to take charge of their learning journey. It’s an educational approach emphasizing collaboration and knowledge sharing among individuals within a group or community.

Peer-to-peer learning complements traditional teaching methods and can be particularly effective in enhancing student engagement, motivation, and overall learning outcomes. It can be implemented in various ways, such as group projects, peer tutoring, study groups, cooperative learning activities, online forums, and discussions

P2P Benefits

• Collaboration: Peer-to-peer learning fosters collaboration among participants. Learners work together to solve problems, share information, and achieve common learning objectives. Peer learning provides opportunities for authentic practice; teamwork and collaborative argumentation are often good models for the modern workplace.
• Active Participation: In P2P learning, learners actively participate in the learning process. They are not passive recipients of information but actively contribute to discussions, projects, and activities.
• Diverse Perspectives: Participants come from diverse backgrounds and experiences, which enriches the learning environment. Different perspectives and viewpoints lead to a deeper understanding of the subject matter.
• Informal Learning: Peer-to-peer learning often occurs outside traditional classroom settings. It can occur in informal settings like online forums, study groups, or collaborative projects.
• Constructive Feedback: Peers provide feedback to each other, promoting self-improvement and a deeper understanding of the material. This feedback loop enhances the learning process.

Strategies

• Peer Reviews of Papers or Projects: Have students submit drafts of research papers, essays, or projects to be reviewed by their peers. Each student provides feedback on several papers/projects based on predefined criteria. This helps improve writing and critical analysis skills.
  • Use student upload folders with differentiated assignments in Perusall to do P2P assignments.
  • How to set up a Peer Review in Perusall
• Group Research Projects: Divide students into groups and assign them a research topic related to the course. Each group is responsible for conducting research, preparing a report or presentation, and peer-reviewing other groups’ work. This encourages collaboration, research skills, and critical evaluation of peers’ work.
• Case Study Analysis: Assign students a complex case study related to the course material. In groups or individually, students analyze the case, identify issues, propose solutions, and present their findings to the class. Peers can then provide feedback on the analysis and proposed solutions.
• Simulations or Role-Playing: Engage students in a simulation or role-playing activity relevant to the course material. This could involve real-world scenarios, historical events, or hypothetical situations. Students work together to navigate the scenario and reflect on their experiences.
• Creative Projects: Encourage creativity and innovation by assigning collaborative creative projects such as designing a product, creating a multimedia presentation, or producing a piece of art related to course themes. Peers can critique and provide feedback on the projects.

Teaching Large Classes

Teaching large classes can often seem daunting and challenging. However, with the right resources and pedagogical tools, teaching in a large classroom setting can be intellectually stimulating and exciting for both instructors and students.

Here are some steps for a successful semester: 

1. Communicate Clearly: Set clear learning outcomes for your course and communicate them clearly for your students. You also want to have a clear syllabus that explains your expectations and the pathways for students to succeed in your course. 
2. Communicate Frequently: Use your learning platform resource to communicate with your entire class. If you get individual questions from students on content, grades, or assignments that don’t include personal information, answer in a broader email to the whole class. Chances are, if two or three students ask you a question, others share the same concern. This cuts back on the volume of personal emails you must respond to. Remember to never include personal student information in your emails.
3. Plan Strategically: Using tools like backward design, plan your course around specific objectives and keep it concise. Understand your audience and the overall message you want to relay, and keep it simple. In large enrollment classes, it is often better to focus on key points and themes that can be tied together through relevant examples and material.
4. Use Active Learning Pedagogy: Engage your students through the use of diverse Active Learning tools such as think-pair-share, clicker or poll questions, group discussions, exit tickets etc. Break down the larger classroom into groups to offer students the opportunity to engage with each other and with the material in an active way. 
5. Check for Understanding: Use polls, clickers, or online low-stakes quizzes or assignments to help check student understanding. This allows you to adjust your method to help students reach the desired learning outcomes. 
6. Incorporate Flipped Classroom Techniques: When possible, consider using flipped classroom teaching techniques, allowing your students to prepare for class, learn on their own time, and utilize classroom time for broader conceptual discussions. 
7. Use Adequate Feedback: Use rubrics to help your students understand their grades. This minimizes the need for individual feedback. 
8. Move!: Resist the temptation to lecture from the front of the classroom. Move around the classroom to engage your students, create greater interaction, and reduce the physical space between instructor and students. This helps your students refocus and helps you see which sections of the room need your attention. 
9. Work with Teaching Assistants: Whenever possible, work with teaching assistants to help with grading and class management. Your TAs can supervise group work, proctor exams, and even participate in lecturing. Not only is this a great practical learning opportunity for the TA, but it also offers a greater workload balance for you and adds diversity to your students’ learning experience. 
10. Build Properly: Structure your course, assignments, policies, and assessments in a way that you offer scaffolding of content, formative and summative assessments, and content value. By carefully building a course that adds value to your time lecturing and to students’ time studying you avoid having to deal with daily attendance, cheating, and increased student dissatisfaction.

Manage Large Classes in Folio

Logistics can also be a challenge when teaching a large class. How does one best manage the daily administration? Folio can help instructors handle the challenges of teaching large classes.

• Use Intelligent Agents to automation to your course and boost instructor-student interactions.
• Use Replacement Strings to increase instructor presence.
• Use Release Conditions to customize students’ learning paths.
• Use Rubrics for grading assignments or discussions. This will improve the quality, or at least the consistency, of their work and reduce redundant requests for clarification.
• Create feedback using audio or video.
• For more Classroom Management Tips, visit Teaching with Folio Guides.

Group Activities

You’ll participate in group projects on the job or in school. Working in groups provides an excellent opportunity to collaborate with other seasoned professionals and explore different viewpoints, strategies, and solutions. Many instructors use group activities to enhance their student learning. Group activities recognize the value of collaboration, active learning, and social interactions. Some instructors often turn to small group work to capitalize on the benefits of peer-to-peer instruction.  Group work creates an inclusive and dynamic learning environment that prepares learners for real-world challenges and equips them with the essential skills for their future endeavors. 

Group Activities Support

• Active engagement: Group activities encourage active engagement with the learning material. Students can discuss, question, and explore ideas together, enhancing their understanding and retention of the subject matter.
• Collaboration skills: Students develop valuable collaboration and teamwork skills by working in groups. They learn to listen to others, communicate their ideas effectively, negotiate and resolve conflicts, and collectively solve problems.
• Social interaction: Group activities provide a learning environment where students can interact with their peers, share perspectives, and build relationships. This fosters a sense of belonging, supports their emotional well-being, and promotes a positive classroom culture.
• Critical thinking and problem-solving: Group activities often involve complex tasks that require critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Through discussions and interactions, students can analyze information, evaluate options, and develop creative solutions, enhancing their cognitive abilities.
• Diversity and perspective: Group activities bring together students with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. This diversity enriches learning by exposing students to different viewpoints and promoting cultural understanding and empathy.

Think-Pair-Share

In this technique, students are given time to think about posed questions or scenarios before sharing ideas with a peer and the whole class. This activity increases student participation and the quality of student contributions to classroom discussions.

1. Before class, develop question(s) or scenario(s)
2. Pose the Prompt to the entire class
3. Students are instructed to think or write about an answer to the prompt(s)
4. Create groups and ask them to discuss their answers
   • Asynchronous (Online): Assign groups to break out rooms in Zoom with a time limit (ie. 10 mins), so students will have time to share their thoughts with group members.
   • Synchronous class: Preassign peers who can work together frequently over an extended period. Consider forming groups (6 or 12, depending on the class size) that are further organized into pairs early in the semester.
5. Groups come together to share their responses with the class. If in Folio, use a large class discussion.

Variations/Extension: Students can write the responses down before pairing; this is Write-Pair-Share. Students can compare their “paired” answers with another pair instead of the whole class; this is Think-Pair-Square.

Adapted from Vanderbilt University

Jigsaw

This technique helps motivate students to accept responsibility for their own learning. It also helps students develop teaching skills and allows for teaching multiple topics simultaneously during the same class session.

1. Assign different concepts or topics for which you desire students to become “experts.”
2. Either by assignment or by choice, have the students form groups they would like to be responsible for developing expertise.
3. Students will work in these “expert” groups to master their subject matter and develop materials (graphs, illustrations, etc).
4. The class is then rearranged, forming new groups of four to six(4 -6), and each group will have one member from each “expert group.”
5. The new (jigsaw) group’s expert members will take turns teaching each other the material.
6. Have the class reflect on the group discussion in a closure activity.
   
   Adapted from Vanderbilt University

Fish Bowl

This activity serves two purposes: to provide structure for in-depth discussion and opportunities for the students to observe group dynamics and processes in a discussion setting. The fishbowl strategy is good for organizing medium to large group discussions. In Fishbowl, there will be two circles, an inner circle and an outer circle. Students in the inner circle are challenged to engage in an in-depth discussion, while the students in the outer circle observe and listen to the discussion and critique the content, logic, and group interactions.

Fishbowl can also be a useful discussion-structuring technique for online classes, creating “virtual” inner and outer circles using online discussion boards.

1. Choose a topic or text. Develop open-ended questions to start the discussion. If using text, students may read the text before or may be used to introduce the text.
2. Ask a small group of students (4-5) volunteers to be inside the fishbowl (inner circle) and ask the remaining students to form a larger circle around them (outer circle). Instruct the outer circle to remain quiet, observe and listen to the discussion, and critique the content, logic, and group interactions.
3. Give the students the prompt question(s) or tasks for discussion and have them begin. The instructor does not participate in the discussion but poses questions to prompt deeper conversations and ensure everyone in the inner circle has time to talk.
4. Debrief with a follow-up discussion, which will address the content issues that arose and the group processes.

Adapted from Pocket Guide for Evidence-Based Instruction.educationalblueprints.com

Groups in Folio

Working in Virtual Groups – Participating in Group Work or Projects Online

Whether you are in school or on the job, you will find yourself participating in group projects online (or teamwork). Working in groups provides a great opportunity to collaborate with other seasoned professionals and explore different viewpoints, strategies and solutions.

Because group projects for online classes & courses can sometimes be challenging, especially for the online learner, Drexel University has created an infographic detailing some best practices for effective online group work and collaboration.

Tips for Online Students to Work Successfully in Virtual Groups

Working in Groups remotely can be difficult, especially for the online learner. Below are some tips to share with your students that can help them work in groups successfully.

1. When possible, choose group members with similar schedules. Online students reside in different time zones and can have opposing work schedules.
2. Be proactive and begin setting the groundwork early. As online learners, your time is extremely precious.
3. Align group roles and responsibilities with individual strengths and interests. 
4. Identify what project activities must be accomplished, in what order and by when.
5. Choose a group leader who is comfortable taking on that role.
6. 6. Communication is key; establish clear guidelines around when, where and how your group will communicate with each other.
7. Create a comfortable forum to communicate through, even if it’s not the online classroom setting.
8. Schedule extra conference calls closer to project deadlines to address any last minute hiccups and tasks.
9. Always be honest, but respectful, in a group. If either the project or a fellow group member is heading down a path you don’t agree with, speak up.
10. Ask your professor to implement mandatory peer evaluations. This strategy encourages equal participation by ensuring individual accountability.
11. Lastly, don’t be afraid to talk to your professor. Provide regular group updates, which can then be used to track progress and mediate concerns.

Discussion-Based Teaching & Learning

Discussions are an effective tool for promoting active learning, critical thinking, communication skills, collaborative learning, and engagement in the classroom. There are several reasons why an instructor might choose to use discussions in the classroom:

1. Encourages Active Learning: Discussions engage students in the learning process and encourage them to take an active role in their education. This will lead to a deeper understanding and better retention of the material.
2. Develops Critical Thinking Skills: Discussions help students develop critical thinking skills by encouraging them to analyze and evaluate information, and to consider multiple perspectives.
3. Improves Communication Skills: Discussions improve students’ communication skills by providing opportunities for them to express their ideas and opinions, listen to others, and practice effective communication techniques.
4. Promotes Collaborative Learning: Discussions promote collaborative learning by encouraging students to work together to solve problems, share knowledge and skills, and build a sense of community in the classroom.
5. Enhances Engagement: Discussions help students feel more engaged with the material by connecting it to their own experiences, interests, and values.

Overall, discussions are an effective tool for promoting active learning, critical thinking, communication skills, collaborative learning, and engagement in the classroom.

Managing Discussions

Consider the size of your class.  If you have less than 30 students, you may find responding to most posts manageable. However, with classes above 30, discussion forums can get overwhelming.

• Post a summary – Summarize a series of posts rather than respond to each one. Let the conversation develop its momentum before wading in.
• Consider using groups to divide your discussions for large classes and then post a summary of each group discussion.
• Be clear and concise with instructions for the discussion. List netiquettes in your instructions to guide students’ behaviors.
• When writing responses or summaries, it’s nice using students’ names. This helps to create a sense of community.
• Encourage the use of media in posts. Folio supports this. It can potentially make a thread more engaging. Consider a thread that is a video or audio recording of you asking the question.
• Use Rubrics for grading discussions. Using rubrics allows you to list your expectations for the activity.