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John Sloman

Improving Student Motivation through Interactive

Lectures and Seminars

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Tell me and I will forgetShow me and I will rememberInvolve me and I will understandStep back and I will act

(Chinese proverb)

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I've taughtSnoopy to

whistle

I can'thear himwhistle

I said that I'dtaught him, not that

he'd learned

Learning is fundamentally about making and maintaining connections: biologically through neural networks; mentally among concepts, ideas and meanings; and experientially through interaction between the mind and the environment, self and other, generality and context, deliberation and action.

Learning is enhanced by taking place in the context of a compelling situation that balances challenges and opportunity, simulating the brain’s ability to conceptualize quickly and its capacity and need for contemplation and reflection upon experiences.

Learning

James Eison, Teaching Strategies for the Twenty-first Century, 2002

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Rethinking the Seminar

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Traditional approachesto seminars

• Pre-prepared worksheet / problem sets– Nature

• Pre-set questions

• Students assigned to present answers

• Clarification by tutor as necessary

– Strengths

• Structured study by students

• Can reinforce material in lectures/reading

• Chance to ask questions of tutor

• Chance to evaluate progress

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• Pre-prepared worksheets / problem sets (cont.)

– Weaknesses

• Largely passive for students

• Students are poor tutors

• Problem when students have not done the answers: question of incentives

– Answers?

Traditional approachesto seminars

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• Giving a paper– Nature

• Individual (or two), possibly with respondent• Discussion (with pre-prepared questions?)• Tutor steered

– Strengths• Gives students opportunity to present

(key skill)• Helps develop research skills• Useful for further work (e.g. essay), helped

by tutor feedback in seminar

Traditional approachesto seminars

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• Giving a paper (cont.)

– Weaknesses

• Poor learning experience for other students

• Can degenerate into dialogue between presenter and tutor

• Other students may not prepared for it (being solely concerned with their own presentation)

• May encourage overspecialisation by student

– Answers?

Traditional approachesto seminars

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Interactive Teaching

• Almost always appeals to students

• Increased involvement = increased responsibility for learning

• Improves understanding

• Improves motivation

• Often leads to higher pass rates(lower referral rates)

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The first seminar

• Establishing expectations

– Student expectations of

• Tutor

• Other students

• Themselves

– Informal contract

• Revisit contract in subsequent seminars

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Seminar activities

• Reporting back on pre-prepared work• Individual work

– Reading– Calculations– Preparing answers to questions

• Working in pairs or threes– Preparing answers to questions– Clarification of ideas– Comparing and agreeing on answers– Composing essay plans– Marking each other’s work; deciding marking

criteria

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Seminar activities

• Working in fours or fives– Debating topic and arriving at team view

– Preparing answer for plenary (use flip-chart / OHT)

– Project team with division of labour

• Pyramid– Bring together small groups which do preliminary

work

• Fishbowl– ‘Fish’ discuss issue, others observe and note

• Envoys– Individuals change groups to inject new ideas

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• Formal debates– Individuals assigned roles in advance

– Given topic in advance: small groups prepare one side and then tutor chooses presenters

• ‘Your Witness’ / ‘The Moral Maze’– Panel to ask questions of pre-assigned witnesses

• Presentation with primed respondents– One presenter, one respondent, others have to

bring pre-prepared questions

– Two or more presenters (different aspects)

– Group presentations

Seminar activities

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• Role playing– Pre-allocated roles and scenario– Pre-reading; roles allocated at time

• Games, simulations and experiments– Whole class– In groups– Single session or over long time period

• Videos– Followed by quiz, debate or small-group work

• Computer lab sessions (individual or pairs)

• Virtual seminars

Seminar activities

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Lectures andLarge Workshops

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Activities and breaks

• Student attention– Diminishing returns

• Attention wanes

• Comprehension and learning declines

– Give students things to do that aid their learning

• Don’t worry about not ‘covering so much’

– Even give them a break

– Less is more!

Comparing lectures in which 90% v 70% v

50% of the sentences disseminated new

information (with the remaining time in case

being used for restating, highlighting

significance, giving more examples, and

relating to the students’ prior experience) it

was found that students given the lower level

of new content learned and retained the

lecture information better.

Less is more

Russell, I.J. et al., 1984, ‘Effects of lecture information density on medical student achievement’, Journal of Medical Education 59: 881-9

When students are constrained to the role of listeners while a lecturer delivers a monologue, they tend to be passive, not only at a behavioural level, but on a cognitive level as well

They do not engage actively in the kinds of elaborative information processing that helps to ensure understanding, retention and transfer

Active and Passive learning

Jessica Ball, ‘Strategies for Promoting Active Learning in Large Classes’, Journal of teaching Practice, vol 3, 1994

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Activities and breaks

• Activities– Tests/quizzes (use of PRS?) .– Brief discussion with neighbour

• e.g. policy implications• List of advantages / disadvantages

– Doing a calculation / completing a diagram– Worksheets

• Hybrid between lecture and workshop

• Break– Watch video– Compare notes– Tidy up your own notes .– Entertainment

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Building on the lecture

• Note takers– Post on discussion board– Use for seminars

• Post questions on discussion board– Use it as FAQ– Start debate going with students

• Directly link to seminars/workshops– Material covered– Activities in the lecture

• Online study guide: your own or published– Think of incentives for use

• Preparation for next lecture

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Workshops in Lectures

• Can be used with large lecture groups

• Use worksheets– Useful for technical and other closed-ended

questions

• Student work through questions in pairs

• Lecturer goes through them at front

• Other considerations– Layout of room

– Use of GTAs

– Use of audience voting system

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Classroom Experiments

Learning by doing

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Games, experimentsand role playing in PBL

• Strengths

– motivation, involvement, empathy, fun!

– encourages active and deep learning

– illustration and contextualisation

• Potential weaknesses

– over-simplification

– not taken seriously

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Games, experimentsand role playing in PBL

• Overcoming the drawbacks

– clear guidelines

– feedback and reflection

– drawing on concepts in later classes

– linked to seminar activities

• The Exeter FDTL5 project (link)

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Game 1: A trading game

• Students divided into buyers and sellers• Students given cards

– Black for sellers of the item• Number on card gives cost of item in £s• Want to sell above value of card

– Red for buyers of the item• Number on card gives value of item in £s• Want to buy below value of card

• Trading takes place– Individual buyers and sellers agree prices– Mark their gain on their sheet– No deal gives no gain or loss

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Game 1: Reflections

• Students get considerable insight into the working of pit markets

• Equilibrium prices rapidly emerge

– Can vary the cards to see the effects on equilibrium

• Easy to demonstrate producer and consumer surplus

• Can discuss information issues

• Can introduce a tax of £x on suppliers

£2 tax imposed on sellers

(b) One we tried earlier(b) Potential gains

An 18 player game

www.whystudyeconomics.ac.uk

www.whystudyeconomics.ac.uk

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Game 2:Expected value game

• TV show: Deal or No Deal?– Channel 4, six days per week (45 mins)

• US version playable online (link)

– 26 people each with a suitcase of money, the amount not known to them

• Sums of money vary from 1¢ to $1,000,000

– One contestant us selected to play• … who eliminates suitcases in batches, whose

contents are then revealed

• After each batch, the contestant is offered a ‘Deal’ by the ‘Banker’, based on the values yet to be eliminated

• The contestant chooses ‘Deal’ or ‘No Deal’

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Game 2: Reflections

• Virtually all students will be familiar with the game

• Easy to set up:– It can be played online

– Or with envelopes and the sums of money on the whiteboard

• Illustrates decision-making under risk– Expected value; risk premia; probability;

risk attitudes and what affects them

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Game 3:Production function game• Activity

– Production runs (2) in a factory, involving moving balls from one place to another

– Extra workers are added one at a time

• Equipment:

– About 30 balls (e.g. tennis balls)

– 4 buckets (or baskets or cardboard boxes)

• Students divided into two teams

– Object to get as many balls from one end to the other in 30 seconds

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Game 3: Reflections

• Easy to set up and fun to play– Can bring alive a potentially dry subject area

– Flexible: can be played with 1, 2 or more teams

• Can demonstrate– Diminishing returns

– TP, AP and MP

– Can derive TC, AC, MC, TR, AR, MR and Profit

– Shifts and movements along product and cost curves from technological change

– Effects of changing fixed and variable costs

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Game 4:Public goods game

• Aim– Aim is to make as much money as possible,

irrespective of what others make

• Activity– Each person (or pair) is given four cards of the

same value (e.g. four threes or four queens)

– Each person plays two cards each round

• Scoring– Black cards have no value

– Red cards are worth £1 for everyone if played and £4 just to the individual if not played.

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Game 4: Reflections

• Very easy to set up and fun to play

– Can easily be played in a seminar

– Flexible: can be played with up to 13 individuals or pairs

• Can demonstrate

– Public goods and external benefits

– Prisoners’ dilemma and Nash equilibrium

– Collusion versus competition

– Motivation and altruism

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Game 5:Auctioning a pound coin

• Activity

– This is a simple auction of a pound coin

– The only difference is that both the winner and the next highest bidder have to pay

• At the end

– The money earned can be returned to students (but don’t tell them this at the start).

– A discussion can then take place about the issues raised

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Game 5: Reflections

• Simple and flexible

– Simple equipment: a pile of pound coins and a sheet for recording results

– Can be played in a seminar group

• Can demonstrate

– Sunk costs and marginal costs

– Risk attitudes

– Collusive bidding

– Concepts of equity

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Game 6: A ‘Keynesian Beauty Contest’

• A game about investor expectations– predicting share prices based on what you think

other people will do

• Simple to play– No equipment required other than:

• a calculator for the tutor

• a whiteboard/flipchart for recording results

• The game (each round)– Students have to select a number from 0 to 100

– A prize is given in each round to the student who selects a number closest to 2/3 of the mean

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Game 6: A ‘Keynesian Beauty Contest’

• Each person of N-players is asked to choose a number from the interval 0 to 100.

• The winner is the person whose choice is closest to p times the mean of the choices of all players (where p is, for example, 2/3). The winner gets a fixed prize (e.g.a chocolate).

• The same game should then be repeated for several periods. Students are informed of the mean, 2/3 mean and all choices after each period.

• Students should write down each time (or at the end) a brief comment about how they came to their choice.

• Time to think in each period: about 3 minutes

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Game 6: Reflections

• Link1 Link 2

• At the end

– Students can be asked to explain their decisions

• Can demonstrate:

– Expectations formation

– Iterative thinking / progression

– Movement to Nash equilibrium

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Game 7: TradablePermits Game

• Six teams– Each represents a polluting firm– Each team is given a worksheet and a marginal abatement

cost (MAC) curve

• Each team is given an emissions allocation– The same for all firms (1480 units)

• Round 1– Establishes cost of abatement with no trading

• Round 2– Teams can now trade allocations– Price is adjusted by tutor until demand equals supply– Establishes the cost with trading at market clearing price

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Game 7: Reflections

• Uses MC = MR analysis in a different context

• Demonstrates how emissions trading can achieve any given pollution reduction at minimum cost

• Flexible: no. of permits can be varied to demonstrate

– Effect on equilibrium price

– Abatement costs

• Seminar can analyses worksheets of all teams after the game

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References

• Classroom Expernomics– http://www.marietta.edu/%7Edelemeeg/games

• Charlie Holt’s Games papers– http://www.people.virginia.edu/~cah2k/papers.html

• Charlie Holt’s Veconlab– http://veconlab.econ.virginia.edu/admin.htm

• Charles A. Holt, Markets, Games and Strategic Behaviour, Pearson/Addison Wesley, 2006

• Bringing Economic Experiments into the Classroom (FDTL5 project: Univ. of Exeter)

– http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/projects/fdtl5/experiments.htm

Evidence suggests that for immediate recall of a lecture, students who take most notes themselves come out best and those who rely on tutor notes come out worst.

In the medium term (a couple of weeks) those who listened, but took no notes, came out best.

Longer term, and with the chance for revision, those who took no notes came out worst, and those how have tutor notes come out best.

Note taking

Liz Barnett, LSE, 2003

Audience response system