This past week was Thanksgiving break, but Michigan State’s classes met until Wednesday. I had heard from colleagues that many students do not attend classes this week. In fact, some said that in their classes of 250+ students, about 10-30 will attend on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, a claim corroborated by my own observations of other’s classes on Wednesday. This decreased attendance has led some of my colleagues (and me) to question why we even hold class on the day prior to Thanksgiving. To be fair to our students, East Lansing is a college town and most of them have family in other parts of Michigan, and who wouldn’t want to get home to their family earlier?
But this post isn’t about that (really). It isn’t about how my class attendance is still high, even for this past week, the penultimate week of class. What it is about is what I think drives that high attendance and what we might do nurture it. Some colleagues have asked me about this. My daily attendance still hovers around 85%, and this week I had 180 students attend Tuesday’s class and over 100 attend Wednesday’s.
I have been hard-pressed to identify a single feature that helps me understand this phenomenon. Some of my colleagues have attributed it to me (“Your students really like you.”), some to the pedagogy (“Your class is really active.”), and others to the syllabus (“Clickers are mandatory?”). I believe what is most likely contributing to this phenomenon is that students want to learn in an environment where their ideas are respected and validated. Respecting and validating student ideas is part of the instructor’s role and can be done using particular pedagogies, but is what, I believe, students want from the teaching of their classes.
Getting students to express their ideas in a large lecture section
In a class of more than 250, getting students to express their ideas freely is very challenging. Students must feel the learning environment is safe and comfortable, that is, that their ideas can be expressed, that we (the class) want to hear them, and that we (the class) want to discuss them to gain a deeper understanding. When students feel comfortable doing this, each class meeting is that much more valuable.
I have worked to cultivate this type of environment over the entire semester. Because of the size of my class (and other environmental and cultural constraints), my primary pedagogy has been clicker questions coupled to Peer Instruction. While clicker questions can be used for good as well as evil, I chiefly use them for two things: (1) To check how students’ “knowledge development” is going, and (2) To have students express their ideas (right or wrong). Checking in with students using qualitative clicker questions is a common pedagogy for this size of class. But, a number of clicker questions are simply “What do you think?” or “We’re just looking for ideas here.”
These questions are meant to act as discussion starters. They might involve thinking about a strategy to approach a problem (should we use conservation of momentum vs conservation of energy), what physics can be extracted from a given situation (what is the slipping condition for some system), or what a solution might imply about some real world application (what can a melting ice cube tells us about global warming). Students then offer answers and I encourage them to (respectfully) critique the ideas of others until we come to some consensus. Usually, this takes about 5-7 minutes of class time, which is a lot given the pace of this course (a chapter per week).
A “result” of respecting students’ ideas
This brings me to last Wednesday class when 100 students attended the last class meeting prior to Thanksgiving (which absolutely shocked my colleague who teaches after me). I asked my students in the previous class, “How many of you will be here tomorrow?” About 85 said they would. So, I asked my postdoc to attend class, so we could run a tutorial activity. Students are learning about simple harmonic motion; there’s few tutorials out there for this topic. We modified a middle-division tutorial developed at UMaine and GVSU.
The room in which our class is held is a typical large auditorium. Prior to class, we placed numbers 1-20 around the edges of the room and asked students to draw numbers from a hat. We started 20 groups of 5 (or so) students working on the tutorial. Only 1 student chose to leave when he realized there would be “no lecture.”
At first, most of the students were working individually (and were fairly quiet). As we walked around the room, we asked individuals to compare the answers they were writing with their group members (who were often working individually as well). Many times their answers didn’t agree, which lead to productive discussions. As the class went on, students began sitting on the floor and climbing over rows to discuss with their group mates. The volume in the room went up tremendously.
I have used tutorials a lot. I wrote several for middle and upper-division mechanics while I was a postdoc at Colorado. Just like clickers, they are not a silver bullet, but they can be used to encourage students to express their own ideas. And if the tutorials are facilitated such that students feel their ideas are validated and respected (even when they are not quite correct), they work hard to develop their own understanding of the material.
Investing in students
In the future, I would like to use more activities like tutorials in classes at MSU. The challenge is the scale that we are working with. Empirical evidence shows that a student-to-instructor ratio of around 20:1 works well for these activities. In this class meeting, we were fortunate that one of our lecturers was very interested in observing the tutorial. We started with a 50:1 ratio, and he quickly became another facilitator giving us a ratio closer to 30:1. For a 250+ person class meeting, this represents an investment of 12 to 13 instructional staff (professor, graduate and undergraduate TAs), which is tall order. If you have ideas on how to broach this, I’d love to hear them.
Father, Husband, Teacher, Circus Animal, and Assistant Professor of Physics at Michigan State University
Think like a physicist... 
I’m a big fan of larger lecture-hall-sized classes (100+) having multiple smaller-sized recitation sections (your ideal 20-30) to facilitate material reinforcement (sometimes in deference to, or in lieu of, lab), though that does not serve as a complete substitute for tutorials or other interactive and engaging pedagogy during the lecture period. Adult learning theory posits that most individuals will learn through a variety and mixture of methods (auditory, visual, and/or tactile). In a large sample size of a course section like you have, you are bound to have all combinations of these learning styles in students. As long as you continue to engage in multiple ways to accommodate every student and to even mix up individual learning moments with group collaboration, I think you will see higher attendance because every student will find some benefit to every session you teach.
I just don’t think that schools that currently utilise a recitation section for their intro-level math/science courses are using (or, more effectively, teaching) them properly. When I was an undergrad, they were used mainly to hash out the previous week’s HW problem set or provide more examples of problems that covered the topics in that week’s lectures. On a similar level, what do students do when they’re not in the lecture? Most will prefer to complete HW together. The cast majority of adults thrive when they collaborate. We know this in research too. Giving them the stage or platform to do that already in lecture encourages them that learning is going to happen in class, not just the copying of your lecture slides onto sheets of paper for them or annotating presentation slides (which I have done multiple classes over). I know that I preferred to get together with classmates when I was an undergrad to work on problem sets, lab reports, or just plain study. Seeing multiple perspectives is important in the learning process and to be able to rationalise why things are wrong versus correct.
Respecting students’ ideas validates their effort and energy they are putting forth in the course. Maintaining a “safe learning environment” also helps, and that seems to be something you are very passionate about. Instead of a “you’re right” or “you’re wrong” attitude, if we say “not quite, but let’s investigate that deeper if you don’t mind…” might be the approach that all students wish all of their professors pursued. Students need to feel fulfilled and rewarded with their investment into the course material. I feel like students are disengaged when their efforts are neglected or not recognised, or if they are just told they are wrong, which means they did not learn anything (yet). If they feel belittled or disrespected or unappreciated, why have any reason to go to class, except for the motivation to simply learn? There are sites out there that students can go to rate professors and hopefully help them sign up for a section that is taught by one that has higher peer ratings. I think of the motivation to create sites like that and a compelling reason I arrive at is because students really do want to succeed, but they want profs that can relate to them, profs that they will have an easier time learning from (and consequentially easier time earning a higher grade). I know I used them as an undergrad as I guide for professors I should avoid.
When we can get through to students that learning, by any which means possible (especially in groups versus self study), is acceptable in a certain balance, then I think we can see higher engagement and, thus, attendance. Deeper engagement is much easier when students feel more fulfilled, valued as an individual, have fun, and respect their teacher. I love that you have observed more relative success than other colleagues, but are still seeking to set the bar that much higher for yourself. Your students are lucky to have you as their instructor and teacher!
I had about 80% attendance the day before Thanksgiving, but 0% attendance a week earlier, when all entrances to the campus were blocked by striking workers. (I got to campus by bike up a sidewalk that was not being picketed, but no buses crossed the picket line, and the only private cars to do so were those of people who lived on campus.) Most of my students were unable to get to campus, and those few who lived on campus may have been blocked by the administration’s locking of all classroom, office, and lab buildings that day.
In my 31 years of being a professor, I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than a 25% drop on the day before Thanksgiving. Of course, I’m teaching at UCSC, which does not have the jock-culture of MSU. (I say that as an alumnus of MSU—other than the honors college, I would not want to teach at MSU, even if I could still tolerate the winters.)
Hi Danny,
Thanks for the post. I’ve been thinking a bit recently about the importance of respecting student contributions to a class. You mentioned clicker questions and tutorials as tools with which to support and encourage student thinking and sharing. My question for you is, in your experience, how important is the instructor in all this? Does it all hang on the instructor’s facilitation skills, or is adding these activities enough to convince students that their ideas are important? Where is the tipping point, and what things can instructors do to get there?
Thanks for the question, Jared!
The instructor needs good facilitation skills. For example, there’s a big difference in using clicker questions and using them well. We are all guilty of shutting down conversations and discussion. I certainly notice when I do it in my own practice. I want to encourage thoughtful discussion in class generated specifically from students’ own ideas, but there’s often a pressure to move forward.
So, just adding the activities doesn’t do it. You have to work on your practice. There’s a wealth of evidence-based resources for that if you are interested. http://www.cwsei.ubc.ca/resources/clickers.htm