Enhancing students’ sense of responsibility in learning by a

weekly reflection activity

Problem

• Many Furman students believe that a meaningful and successful learning experience depends solely on the instructor.

• Why shouldn’t they think this way?– End of the course evaluation form

• Therefore, they don’t always realize that they are responsible for the success of their learning experience.– They think studying and memorizing course

content is being responsible.

Problem (on the side)

• Some faculty members use these evaluation forms as their guides for course design and to allocate their teaching efforts, for lack of a better course evaluation form.

Goals

• An activity to enhance students’ sense of responsibility in learning

• An evaluation form that is useful for course design

Hypothesis

• Students who are engaged in the “sense of responsibility in learning” enhancing activity will master each lecture topic with greater confidence.

Method• Two sections: one experimental group and one

control group• Activity: Students are asked to reflect, not to study,

what they have learned on a weekly basis, then answer these two questions:

(1) I wish my teacher had spent _______ more minutes on _______ (topic/concept).

(2) I think I can be responsible for learning ________ (topic/concept), which is _____ minutes (ideally the same # as Q1) worth of materials, on my own.

• They e-mail the answers to their instructor before Monday lecture.

Method

• We all know that any task with no points attached or no response provided, students won’t do it. Therefore…

• On Monday, or the first lecture of the week, the instructor will give a practice question on the topic/concept students identified as “needing help”.

• Also give this question to the students in the control group.

• Difference between these groups: one asks for help and one is given help.

Method

• Assessment

– Identify 10-15 key concepts I want my students to take away with.

– “How confident am I if I were to explain this concept to a high school senior/a first year college student/a biology major?”

– And other questions

Expected outcomes

• Students who reflect more frequently will be more confident in the subject matter.

• Instructors can use the results of the assessment for future course design.