Tbers, 

The dates for the spring 2005 Teaching Breakfast's are:

Feb. 2, Wednesday
March 3, Thursday
April 6, Wednesday
May 5, Thursday

All meetings are in Morris 103 from 8 - 9:30 am.  Hope to see you all there.

To get us started this semester I offer the following posting
which is an editorial on Just in Time Teaching (JiTT) by James Rhem,
executive editor of the National Teaching and Learning Forum. It is number
and is #26 in a series of selected excerpts from the National Teaching and
Learning Forum newsletter. If you are not already a subscriber I urge you to
consider becoming one. You can check it out at [http://www.ntlf.com/] The
on-line edition of the Forum--like the printed version - offers subscribers
insight from colleagues eager to share new ways of helping students reach
the  highest levels of learning. National Teaching and Learning Forum
Newsletter, Volume 14, Number 1 © Copyright 1996-2005. Published by James
Rhem & Associates, Inc. (ISSN 1057-2880) All rights reserved worldwide.
Reprinted with permission.

If any of you would like to try this method and need help posting items to
the web, or collecting student responses electronically please contact me at
[log in to unmask] or x 2701.


                 JUST IN TIME TEACHING


James Rhem

A quick and dirty description of  "Just In Time Teaching" (JiTT) compares it
to putting the "Study Questions" once found at the end of textbook chapters
up on the Web. But there's a lot more to it. For one thing, the affect
generated by JiTT differs markedly from that associated with a student
pondering study questions alone in the dorm. The questions and exercises
posted for students on the Web before each class meeting become the grist
for that class meeting, not a quiz per se or a tidying up of understanding
before getting on with the dispensing of another huge chunk of content. In
this pedagogy, student questions, student understanding (and
misunderstanding), student learning become the focus of instruction, and
dialogue replaces lecture.

                Mechanics

The mechanics of JiTT appear overtly simple: professors post a number of
queries (commonly called "warm ups") on a course web site prior to each
class meeting. Students must log on and post replies to these by a certain
deadline (usually a few hours before class). Professors review the student
replies before class and make the understanding, partial understandings and
complete misunderstandings the focus of the class meeting. Indeed, the
concepts being explored and the students grappling with understanding
replace traditional lectures in JiTT, according to Scott Simkins, professor
of economics at North Carolina A&T and an enthusiast of the pedagogy.

Simkins and colleagues from Indiana University-Purdue University
Indianapolis (IUPUI) presented stories of how they are using this approach
successfully in a number of disciplines at the inaugural meeting of the
International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in
Bloomington, Indiana last October. Currently, under sponsorship from an NSF
grant, Simkins is examining a number of pedagogical approaches previously
funded by NSF to see which have worked well and which have transfer
potential to multiple disciplines. Physics, a discipline currently famous
for vigorous pedagogical innovation and success, is the original home of
JiTT. Originally developed by Gregor Novak at IU, it has quickly attracted a
band of enthusiastic practitioners who have coauthored a book on the subject
with Novak: Just-In-Time Teaching : Blending Active Learning with Web
Technology (Prentice Hall, 1999).

So aside from using the Web, how does JiTT differ from simply having
students read study questions and bring their own questions to class?
Practitioners would say the whole latent premise of the question is
misleading. For one thing, as Marshall McLuhan wrote in Understanding Media
(1964), "the medium is the message." The immediacy, the "in timeness," the
sense of personal control associated with the Web matter a great deal. They
convey a message of involvement and interaction rather than a message of
questioning an authority. The equality of involvement sets the stage for a
far different class meeting than the serial, oral confessions of what
individual students did not understand, which responding to study questions
might do.

"This approach lets us get into students minds," says Simkins, "it helps
make their thinking visible." "It changes the character of the classroom,"
he continues. "The comments we are responding to are 'their stuff,' not my
stuff from lectures or stuff from the book; so there's a different kind of
involvement and a different level of involvement."

As class meetings shift from being presentation and discussion of blocks of
material and into an ongoing learning dialogue, everything becomes more
fluid. That unsettles some professors. "Professors sometimes are not as
confident about working on their feet or working without a net so to speak,"
says Simkins. But those who make the leap find a quality of "buy in" from
students that transforms their teaching. Says Simkins: "They see you as
focusing on 'them,' on their needs; they don't see you as just presenting
information. You're caring about them, not just presenting information."

The deep focus on student learning so changes students feelings about the
class that they report it motivates them to go further, ask questions, look
things up that they wouldn't have before. And yet, as with so many felt
differences, the improvement currently eludes psychometric testing. As
Simkins writes: "Regress analysis of pseudo-control/treatment group exam
results, controlling for demographic and academic differences among
students, suggest that there is a small, measurable, positive effect on
cognitive learning with JiTT-based pedagogy."

That hasn't deterred instructors at some 80 institutions from adopting the
approach and setting up a website to share information about it - at
www.jitt.org.

                Warm Ups

Eventually, that website will post a wide range of "warm ups" from various
disciplines, "warm ups" like those developed by Kathy Marrs, a professor of
biology at IUPUI who presented with Simkins in Bloomington. "Subject mastery
is always the primary concern of JiTT," says Marrs. Thus, "a
well-constructed Warm Up assignment asks students to address open-end
questions at the conceptual level and in writing." These exercises, she
emphasizes, are not quizzes.

Marrs gives these examples of good ways to begin an effective Warm Up:

"What is the difference between . . .  ?"
"Why do you think . . . ?"
"What happens if . . . ?"
"Do you think that . . . ?"
"Estimate how many . . . ?"
"In your own words explain . . . ?"

The big advantage of this sort of exercise over a quiz, says Marrs, is that
while a quiz encourages students to do assigned reading, it doesn't
necessarily get them thinking about the material beyond the level of
memorization as these questions do.

Warm Ups can take on big general questions or very pointed specific ones.
For example, a question Marrs asked that might be posed in many fields is:

"What is the difference between a theory and a belief? You may want to look
these terms up before answering. Be as specific as you can, and give an
example of each."

But a more pointed question (and some student answers) better convey the way
in which JiTT exercises enliven class meetings:

"Which gender is doing more meiosis RIGHT NOW in class - the males or the
females? Or do men and women undergo meiosis at pretty much equal rates?
What type of cell is the end product of meiosis in men? What type of cell is
the end product of meiosis in women? How many chromosomes do these cells
have compared to our other body cells?"

Student replies included:

*  "If I read my notes and didn't get confused I think it is the guys who
are doing more meiosis, but I'm not definitely sure why. The sperm cell is
the end result for the male and the egg for the female. There are half as
many chromosomes for these cells, 23 instead of 46."

*  "Both genders are undergoing meiosis at pretty much equal rates. The end
result for men is a sperm cell and the women is an egg cell. Both of these
cells have 23 chromosomes each and not 46 like other cells that go through
mitosis."

*  "Men and women do undergo meiosis at equal rates, but RIGHT NOW the
'female(s)' are doing more meiosis, this means you Dr. Marrs because you
have a little one growing in 'the oven'!!! The end product of meiosis in men
is the sperm, and the end product in women is the egg. These cells have 23
chromosomes each."

Typically Marrs and other JiTT teachers display a range of student responses
anonymously to start discussion. Partially correct responses are
particularly useful as "classroom discussion fodder," says Marrs. Any
teacher who's faced the difficulty of dislodging incorrect prior knowledge
welcomes the opportunity JiTT affords of correcting misconceptions while new
concepts are still fresh in students' minds. And partially correct responses
make that easier. It's not as though students have gotten the concept all
wrong; their understanding just needs a little adjustment. Again, the
egalitarian ethos effected by filing Web responses and having these hold the
spotlight in class casts students as active learners right from the start.
They come to class with an investment in understanding.

Marrs and Simkins agree that the JiTT approach creates a "positive learning
cycle" with students at its center and they see few barriers to using the
approach in many disciplines. Updated "study questions"? Well, kinda, sorta
. . .

For more information on JiTT see:

* Gregor Novak, Andrew Gavrin, Wolfgang Christian, Evelyn Patterson,
Just-In-Time Teaching : Blending Active Learning with Web Technology
(Prentice Hall Series in Educational Innovation, 1999)



Mr. James B. Greenberg
Director Teaching, Learning and Technology Center
Milne Library 
SUNY College at Oneonta
Oneonta, New York 13820

email: [log in to unmask]
phone: 607-436-2701
fax:   607-436-3081
IM:  oneontatltc

"Ignorance is curable, stupidity lasts forever"


------ Forwarded Message
From: Rick Reis <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 11:27:38 -0800
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: TP Msg. #615 JUST IN TIME TEACHING

                 JUST IN TIME TEACHING

------ End of Forwarded Message