Teaching Social Issues

Section I: Challenges and Ideas

Challenge 4: What teaching methods will most involve students?

The most common teaching method in most undergraduate science, engineering, and management courses is still the traditional lecture or lecture/discussion format, despite a large body of educational research that has demonstrated its relative ineffectiveness. Students listening to a lecture are rarely "involved" in the topic. A few students in a discussion class might be involved--most probably aren't. In either case, it's unlikely that they are learning to debate the issues and formulate their own views.

Fortunately, there are other ways to teach. The strategy we'll discuss here is a combination of in-class small groups, carefully focused individual activities, and term projects. A short lecture or "lecturette" may be helpful for clarifying terms or setting the stage for other class activities. And we hold full-class discussions--often to allow small groups to share their results. Variety is important. An occasional video can spark interest; Jonathan Grudin has used audio tapes effectively in small group assignments.

As with choosing topics and materials, you will want to select teaching methods, class activities, and assignments that match the specific course environment--undergraduate or graduate, small or large enrollment, availability (and experience) of teaching assistants, and so on. But unlike choosing topics to meet the students on familiar ground, we are not at all hesitant to use teaching methods that may be different from what they expect.

All of the techniques that we use could be applied effectively to other courses. But in a social-issues course, the life experiences and personal values of each student are uniquely relevant to their learning process. Therefore, this type of course places a premium on teaching methods that can build on those life experiences and help to clarify and strengthen those personal values.

IN-CLASS SMALL GROUPS (T.J.)

Much of my approach to in-class activities is based on the educational methodology in an area termed cooperative learning. Long studied and used at the K-12 level, cooperative learning techniques are now finding wider application in university classes. According to Cooper, et.al. (1994), cooperative learning "is a structured, systematic instructional strategy in which small groups of students work together toward a common goal."[1] The authors list and describe six distinguishing features of this approach: positive interdependence, individual accountability, appropriate assignment to groups, the teacher as coach or facilitator, explicit attention to social skills, and face-to-face problem solving. They cite a number of studies which find that "cooperative learning is generally more effective than more traditional forms of instruction and is rarely less effective." (Cooper, et. al., 1994). A simple small-group activity might be structured as follows:

I assign a specific question or problem. This is usually based on a previously-assigned reading.
The class breaks into small groups. Each group develops an answer or point of view. I give them a specific, short time limit for this.
Groups either report back to the whole class, or trade answers with another group. I might designate a spokesperson for each group, or I might have the group select their own spokesperson --different each time, of course.

There are many possible variations in group organization (see Kagan, 1994) and group assignments (see Section II). You could have them:

clarify concepts or terms,
identify and prioritize key issues from an article they've read,
"brainstorm" ways to approach a problem,
conduct a miniature design project,
develop strategies based on assigned points of view,
share personal experiences,
role-play a scenario,
conduct a structured debate (Bellin 1995),
hold a mock "trial" (Basse 1995), or
analyze a case study (Epstein 1994; Christensen 1987).

Small group organization

I've found that careful organization is the key to small-group success. Here are some helpful strategies:

You should form the groups. If students select their friends as partners, they'll probably spend their time talking about anything but course material.
Groups of four or five are best. Smaller groups represent too few viewpoints; larger ones make it easy for a student to "hide".
Make groups as heterogeneous as possible. Try to mix academic ability (high, medium, low), personality (outgoing, reserved), major (in a mixed-major class), gender, and background. I also make sure that each group is ethnically and culturally diverse. This and the two preceeding points address Cooper's "appropriate assignment to groups."
You have to be involved in the group discussions, moving from one to another frequently. This gives you more personal contact with each student, helps you learn names, and keeps each discussion "on track." This is the "coach and facilitator" role that Cooper recommends.
Vary the group activity format from day to day. You can give all groups the same project, then compare results; you can give each group a different portion of a larger project. You can split groups into one-on-one interview teams (Cooper's "face-to-face problem solving"). You can ask for individual work (for example, identifying key issues) prior to the group discussion. You can have each group spokesperson write results on the board, or have the group prepare a one-page overhead transparency for presentation to the class. (The latter may make it easier for the spokesperson.) See Kagan (1994) for many more specific techniques that can be used (but without their "cute" K-12 oriented names).
I encourage each group to think and act like a team. Group members trade email addresses and sometimes phone numbers, in case one has to miss class. In my culturally-diverse California classroom, they learn to greet each other in everyone's native language (literally from Arabic to Vietnamese, with ten or more others in between).[2] Jonathan Grudin takes a Polaroid picture of each team; Sandy Cynar does the same with her hardware design project teams at CSULB. This helps in learning names (see below)--and if there's a visible place to post the pictures, it also gives the groups some public recognition.
Jonathan changes his group membership in the middle of the term. This exposes students to a wider range of views and experiences. I tried to do the same, but faced a mutiny--I'll prepare them for it in advance next time.

Small group challenges

The small-group approach can involve substantially more work (at least initially) than designing a traditional lecture, since it involves not only studying or reviewing the substantive material but also designing an effective intellectual structure for the task. Challenges which I've encountered with this format include:

Questions and activities for the groups must be carefully focussed--simply asking "what did you think about this article?" is not productive. One of the most difficult aspects of cooperative learning for me to structure has been the "positive interdependence" that Cooper, et al. (1994) cite as a key element of their approach. Although I've introduced some elements of positive interdependence in larger tasks (for example, term projects), I've found it harder to incorporate in short in-class exercises.
Some students will initially be passive, or uncertain how to react. This is understandable, since the majority of their courses--especially technical ones--have probably been conducted in very traditional lecture format, with strictly individual work. Suddenly, they're expected to develop and share their own ideas. Provide them with a non-critical, non-threatening atmosphere in the group. Most will repond, even if they wouldn't in a full-class discussion. Only a very few never seem to feel comfortable in this environment.
Other students may monopolize the conversation (not necessarily on purpose). This can generate strong resentment or withdrawal on the part of others in the group. Your role as "coach and facilitator" will be challenged here; in an extreme case, you may have to spend some individual time with the "monopolizer," to assist this student in developing a more appropriate role within the group.
Established groups don't work well if several members are missing, so you'll have to place a premium on attendance. On the other hand, a motivated group may provide peer pressure that encourages attendance.
It's easy to feel that you've "lost control" of the class. There is no central focus on the instructor; many students are talking at once. This is good! Students who are talking about the topic are at least thinking about it--they're likely to be involved.
You can't outline in advance the whole-class discussion that follows a group assignment. Instead, you are now responding to the students' ideas (rather than the other way around)[3]. It's exciting! You are--"on the fly"--simultaneously trying to:
- keep the discussion focused on a specific topic or objective,
- encourage participation and involvement,
- explain points that students may have misunderstood,
- reinforce the best ideas that they present,
- help fuzzy thinkers clarify their ideas (without embarassing them),
- incorporate lessons from the students' own experience, and
- add examples from readings and your own experience.
You may also have to overcome problems in the physical classroom arrangement. A room with completely movable furniture is ideal, but may not be available. Some of my classes are held in rooms designed as laboratories, with long tables fixed to the floor. Fortunately, small groups can work across the tables, just as they might do in a business meeting. But the same rooms have a stage in front for the lecturer--a built-in barrier against full-class discussion. I tend to vary my position in the room, frequently sitting on top of a table or in the middle of a group. Jonathan Grudin has found that moving closer to students that are reluctant to speak helps to draw them "out of their shells." Avoid traditional lecture halls if at all possible!
You may spend more preparation time than if you were designing a traditional lecture (at least initially). You're not only studying or reviewing the substantive material, but also designing the group structure and tasks to help students master the material. I've been less inventive in using group activities than I want to be--just because of this limitation.

Lesson learned

As I was first working on this section, I had just completed the first week of class in a new semester. On Tuesday, I lectured about technological utopianism and technological anti-utopianism[4]--to establish some key terminology and ideas that we will use throughout the semester. A few students seemed interested; fewer contributed to the discussion; most did neither. I should know better. On Thursday, I used the well-known Therac disaster[5] as the basis for a small group exercise[6]. The difference was dramatic, even though the group structure was very informal. The difference was even more dramatic the following semester, when I opened the first class meeting with Jonathan Grudin's "priority-list" exercise (Section II). Many students who otherwise might not have spoken all semester were engaged. Some began responding to others' views even without my intervention. "First impressions are critical, and the first-day group exercise imprinted on them that this was a class they'd participate in." (Grudin, 1995) No, their arguments are not yet sophisticated. But they have started to become involved in the topic.

INDIVIDUAL ACTIVITIES

The individual-level activities of a traditional course--notebooks, homework, and examinations--can also help involve students in a social-issues course. But the ways in which you structure them may be slightly different here.

Notebooks

We've had mixed results with course-notebook assignments. Some semesters, we've asked students to develop short summaries of each reading (before class). These summaries can also indicate what parts of the reading were confusing, and what ideas in the reading sparked agreement or disagreement (and why). After class, students add to the notebook what they've learned about the reading, and how their views on it have changed. Students should also add to their notebook articles from newspapers and popular magazines that are related to the course.

At best, the notebook encourages students to prepare in advance for each day's activities, helps them understand each reading, and gives them a cumulative record of work that they've done in the course.

At worst, the notebook becomes a perfunctory paperwork exercise and a strongly-resented time-consumer.

The difference between "best" and "worst" results is frequent, meaningful feedback. Students need to know exactly what level of detail is required; what percent of each entry should represent the author's thoughts and what percent their own reactions; and so on. They need specific comments on their work, not just a "check mark" that it was done. If we can't provide this level of feedback, we won't assign the notebook.

Homework

We generally use homework assignments to summarize or connect the key ideas of a major unit of instruction. Each assignment is a short essay with specific focus, guidelines, and questions to answer. Timely, meaningful feedback on homework is just as important to the students as it is for a notebook (discussion above). We've included a selection of assignments (from several instructors) in Section II.

You may have a choice of how the students can submit their work: on paper or in electronic form--either individually to you (email) or publicly to you and the rest of the class (via a class newsgroup or bboard). Your decision is important: it's a social choice about computing.[7]

Even if your course is for computer science students, electronic assignments presume adequate resources such as easy-to-use software, processing power for large numbers of users, and access times and places that are convenient for students (and you). Lacking any of these, we ask for assignments on paper.
Students may write electronic homework quickly, but sloppily. They seem to write paper homework more slowly, but more carefully. We try to select the medium to fit the "message" that we're looking for (with apologies to McLuhan). You might ask them to contrast the two in a separate assignment.
You may want to teach the mechanics of using electronic media as a specific course objective (see challenge 2). You probably won't want to combine this with an assignment that requires substantial thinking about another course topic.
Assignments that are emailed to you are similar to paper, in that you are the only one who sees them. Your choice between the two depends on which is more comfortable for you and the class to use.
If assignments are posted to a newsgroup, all students can see each other's work. The advantage is that they can share and compare ideas. The disadvantage is that if there are many postings, they quit reading any of them. With a large class, Jonathan Grudin requires only a limited number of students to post each week.[8]

EXAMINATIONS (T.J.)

For a few years, I wouldn't give exams--even short quizzes--in a social-issues course. I didn't think then that exams could adequately measure student performance, and I was afraid of encouraging rote learning. But I've found that several of my course objectives ("Bloom's Taxonomy" in Challenge 2) are easier to measure in an exam than by other methods. For example: A.1.a. "define relevant terms," A.1.b. "identify major concepts," and A.2.b. "categorize ... points of view."

You can use exams (or quizzes) in lieu of a notebook to "encourage" students to carefully read the assignments and pay close attention to class discussions.
My present strategy is to give two short "midterms" in a 16-week semester. A term project (see below) serves in lieu of a final exam. I've used multiple-choice, short-answer, and essay questions--trying to measure appropriate objectives with each format.[9] I select question topics from the assigned readings, the class discussions and activities, and the homework.
I've asked students--individually or as an in-class group exercise--to write suggested exam questions (with answers). I don't promise to use any of them verbatim, but I will adapt many of their ideas. They get an extra review of the material while they are doing this. I get a preview of their level of understanding before I build the actual exam.
Jonathan Grudin (in a 10-week term) uses a short-quiz format. He writes: "I post the general question in advance although I usually focus it a little more in the class, or narrow it to a particular reading, so that it can't be written out in advance. I also make all quizzes open-book. An advantage of doing this is that it encourages students to show up for class, since most classes have an exercise or quiz" (Grudin, 1995). His approach is particularly good for encouraging students to focus on the issues and discouraging them from rote memorization.

TERM PROJECTS

Students are most likely to be "involved in"--and motivated by--a term project that they can create around a topic that interests them, and a project that is structured well. They may be demotivated by a project that gives them no topic options or one that they can put off until the last minute. You may not want a major project in every course. But even a small project is a good way to tie together all of the themes that you've discussed during the term. Constraints of course length, class size, and teaching-assistant availability will all influence your design of a project. We've used a variety of project formats, which can be classified along three different dimensions.

Academic or applied

First, you can design the project to emphasize:

academic skills: independent library research, analysis, and synthesis of personal views and recommendations,
or:
applied skills: designing a socio-technical system which demonstrates an understanding of key social impacts of technology,
or any combination of the two.

We give some possible term project assignments--for each emphasis--in Section II, Resource 3.

Continuous or capstone

Second, you can design the time-line for project work to be continuous throughout the semester or to be concentrated as a "capstone" at the end.

For a continuous, incrementally-developed project, you can encourage students to start after the first few weeks of the term--as soon as they begin to have some familiarity with the course's content and forms of analysis. You can require small bits of work to have the students engage early with the project, and to help them shape it--for example a 1-2 paragraph project description in week 4 and a bibliography in week 6. Reviewing their bibliographies can help prevent them from focusing too broadly or too narrowly, and from using only superficial sources such as newspaper stories.[10] You might also require a full draft, followed by a grading and revision cycle.
For a concentrated, capstone approach, you will probably want to provide substantial in-class project development time, so that this work doesn't get buried under the students' other class assignments and final-exam preparation. This schedule is probably most practical in a longer course (for example, a 16-week semester).

Individual or team

Third, you can structure the work as either an individual effort or a team effort. You may be happiest with a combination of the two: students work on the project in teams, but submit individual papers at the end.

Assigning a team project, by itself, is not the same as developing the interpersonal and communication skills that students will need on the job. Younger students, especially those without work experience, need to be coached.
The team structure should be similar to in-class groups (see above for details). If you haven't used the in-class groups, you will probably want to spend some project time, in class, on team development.
Try to design the assignment to enforce equal division of work, and allocate substantial in-class time for teams to work together. No more student complaints: "I did all the work because my partners wouldn't come to meetings".
On the other hand, you should not make any student's grade depend on any other student's performance (or lack of it)[11]--hence the individual report. You may want to grade each student on the degree to which he or she contributes to the team result.

LEARNING NAMES (T.J.)

I've long been convinced that one of the most effective ways to involve students in a course is to learn and use their names--as soon as possible. In some schools with small classes--or at the graduate level--it may be common for instructors to know each student by name. But in larger universities, especially in large undergraduate classes, students simply aren't used to having an instructor know (or care) who they are. Thirty years ago at the University of Illinois, my father would startle students on the second day of class by standing at the door and greeting each of them by name as they came in. His course, History of Engineering, was in many ways a precursor to our current social-issues courses, and it required the same kind of student involvement that we are looking for here. Students responded to his interest in them; my students today do the same.

I wish that there were a "magic formula" that would make it easy to learn names, but I haven't found it yet. It's a lot of work (and I still can't get them all by the second day of class). Some techniques that I've tried include:

Review the Registrar's printed enrollment list before the first class meeting. There may be some students that you've seen in a previous class--you can greet them by name even on the first day. This will also give you a preview of the cultural makeup of the class, and a first look at names that may be unfamiliar to you.
Circulate an attendance roster. As soon as it's complete, you know who is sitting where (on that day). Include a column for the students to list what they want to be called (by middle name, nickname, anglicized name, etc.), in addition to their name as it appears on the official registration. As students respond in discussion, use their names (I always ask if I've got the right one, and if I'm pronouncing it right). Come back to the same students, using their names again--until the faces and names are connected in your mind. I try to learn a few new ones each day, rather than all of them at once (especially with 30 or more in a class).
Use name-tags. In a 60-seat lecture hall, this is the only way that I've been able to get beyond knowing only a few. In the same situation (at the UCI Graduate School of Management), John King asks students to turn in pictures of themselves. He studies the pictures against the class roster as he prepares for class meetings.
Use small-group discussions (see above). As you circulate between groups, you can learn names four-at-a-time rather than 30-at-a-time with the full class. This is also good for picking up the names of students who aren't as active in full-class discussions.

Even after all of these efforts, you may find that there are a few remaining faces that you just can't quite connect with a name--or some pairs of students that are hard to distinguish. I work especially hard on these; I don't want students to feel that the instructor knows everyone else but them.

NOTES

1 The cited reference contains many additional references and other sources of information, which need not be repeated here. A newsletter and an extensive annotated bibliography are available from the Network for Cooperative Learning in Higher Education: contact Jim Cooper, California State University Dominguez Hills, HFA-B-316, 1000 E. Victoria St., Carson CA 90747, (310)516-3961.

2 See Cuseo, 1991 and Reese, 1994 for more benefits of this technique.

3 The same challenge applies equally to the lecture-discussion technique.

4 See Rob Kling, "Hopes and Horrors: Technological Utopianism and Anti-Utopianism in Narratives of Computerization," in C&C2.

5 Jonathan Jacky, "Safety-Critical Computing: Hazards, Practices, Standards, and Regulation," in C&C2.

6 We'll give details of this exercise in Section II, and discuss the organizational strategy in Challenge 4.

7 See C&C2 section V for a substantial discussion of electronic communications and community formation.

8 For other electronic-assignment ideas, see Lewis, 1995.

9 The simplest-appearing questions can be the most difficult to construct well. You may want to consult any standard text in the educational field.

10 Articles in C&C2 provide good leads for key sources for many topics. Students should also read the relevant "lead articles" from the appropriate section of C&C2 and follow up with the bibliographic sources discussed in these articles.

11 Many educational researchers emphasize this point (cf, Cooper, et. al., 1994).