 All right, guys, welcome to the eighth and penultimate session of this semester's reading group. So chapter eight looks at making connections, so helping students kind of see the connections between their lives and the material that they're looking at in class, the academic material to increase engagement and increase relevancy and retention and everything else. And so, Patrick, you're gonna give us a quick synopsis of this chapter. I am, I am, okay. Can you see that? You can, indeed. Wonderful. Black and teal, my favorite. Yeah, making connections. And right off the bat, I picked up on this notion of connected learning, which is a nice way. And I didn't realize there was a lab doing research just on this particular topic. But it all kind of ties in and she does a nice job of walking us through this activating prior learning, which is kind of intuitive from the get-go. We were not all shocked by the fact that you try to make the material relevant for students to kind of get some sense of where they are. So she talks about co-creating conceptual frameworks, guiding the connections between the material and the student experience upfront, and relevance, right? It's something that increases student motivation. It increases their confidence if they come in knowing that, hey, I know something about this or I've heard of it before. And of course, the student engagement. So yeah, it's a pretty kind of standard thing where teachers will do a little bit of assessment. I'll talk about that in a minute. But yeah, she does quote some research, which is nice in connecting learning to experience and prior knowledge apparently increases achievement and increases student interest. More for those students who are perhaps less confident and less interested at the beginning than those that come in as the keeners and knowing a little bit about it. So I thought that was really, really interesting. So in education, we call this whole step diagnostic assessment. It's the triumvirate of diagnostic, formative and summative. So it's the things you do at the beginning to get a sense of benchmark of where you are, where the students are. Oftentimes teachers will come in with a clear plan and not really take a little bit of time to see, hey, what do my students know about this anyway? She does speak about a pre-assessment process and I put some question marks there. I'm a little dubious about that. Anytime I see pre-assessment or quizzing what students know at the very beginning, that would have to be done very, very carefully, right? I can't imagine the emotional trauma that would happen if an instructor walked into the classroom and say, okay, you guys, let's see how little you know about this and we'll go from there. I've had instructors do that, best of intentions. No, no, this is not a test. It doesn't really count for anything. It just lets me know how little you know and where I need to start. It's a terrible way to begin, but there are some really creative ways to get students talking and to uncover some of their common misconceptions or gaps and you listen carefully, do some little activities with students, get them talking about it and you can reveal that. And then she talks about some of those, right? Frameworks, partial notes, get students to fill in, close activities, concept maps. I like the idea of the partial notes that students then they watch a mini lecture or listen to a mini lecture, watch a video and then it's their responsibility to kind of fill in the blanks as they're listening. So they're a little more engaged in fleshing out the ideas as they go. So that was my only kind of little bit of a red flag when she talked about some, you know, quizzing or some kind of a formal assessment at the very beginning, but there are ways to do that. And it ties right in with last week. I believe we talked about student responsibility for learning, she does a really nice job and just thinking about personal learning networks. I mean, we all have them. So I thought that was, I hadn't really thought about that before with so many opportunities through social media, Twitter and connecting students to the field, right? So they get a sense of, hey, who are the real people doing this work in the real world? And how can I kind of, you know, look over your shoulder and see the neat things they do? And they're just people who get up and put on their pants in the morning like or your pajamas in the morning, like we do and you connect them and it makes it more relevant. And this stuff is just not pie in the sky. We're in this classroom, these four walls doing all this conceptual abstract stuff that doesn't have any applicability to my life. So that, I thought that was a great idea. So you can share your own, ask students to start creating theirs and where they would look to create that. So I thought that was a really neat idea. So that was just some takeaways that I had from the chapter and certainly happy to talk a little bit more about what you guys thought. Yeah, thanks. That's a great overview of Patrick. Do you wanna jump in here, Jeff? Anything you wanna, you're jumping at the bit to say? I got lots of things to say. Sure, I mean, this got me reflecting on various things that I still think I do sort of poorly in my courses. I mean, one of the things I do that sort of fits into all of this is I get them to do reflective writing. And part of what I target in their reflective writing is getting them to explicitly connect what they just saw in the lessons with things they've seen previously, right? So I'm trying to get them to build these webs of connections between the different ideas in the courses. Concept maps are something I've sort of toyed with adding in, but they're again, yet another thing to add into my already very complicated courses. I like the idea of a close activity, right? I hadn't thought of using, like I've only thought of using clothes in a quizzing capacity, but using it as a set of mostly constructed notes that they can then fill in the blanks on is a really good idea. It ought to be, I'll say in air quotes, easy to implement and wouldn't add a lot of time to the students commitments in the course, which is part of why I'm at this stage sort of resistant to adding more things to my courses because my courses are already overloaded from the student's point of view, right? But I think those would work well. Yeah, I do a number of these in various ways. So pen and paper, I've always resisted the, in fact, I actively put up my PowerPoints after the lecture because I'm afraid students are gonna print them. And my PowerPoints are done old school, the way you're supposed to use slides, which are that they're almost all images or things that support me actually talking. They're not, there's very little text. And so if you print them, what you end up, I also use black as a background. And so if you print them, you just kill your toner cartridge and you've got 40 pages of just like black pictures. But anyways, it's a disaster, but I used to see people who would do this, they'd print their whole PowerPoints and bring them in and then annotate them like that. So I purposely don't do that because of the paper wastage, but I do do things like there's a, this is fantastic video I found, which is a hour and a half long, but really engaging overview of essentially the history of the planet. And so in my Earth history class, the first third of it is kind of modern geomorphology and modern surface processes. And then we jump suddenly back four and a half billion years and we start looking at the evolution of the planet, applying those rules we just learned to how the planets evolve. And so before we do that, we watch this hour and a half long video. And so I give them a two-page sheet with questions and I don't have timing points within the movie, but there are questions to distribute the whole thing where they have to just fill in the answers as they're going along, they pop up. And I found that works really well. It engages them, but also I get to pull out things. I can also use it to correct things as well, because there's a few errors, it's an older movie now, right? So every once in a while we get to a point and I'll have a line in there that says, they just said this, but this is actually the thing, or I have them just note an error in the thing. And the other thing is I do, they kind of fill in the blanks using again, and I know Jeff, I can't say it, they close, is it closed? Close, close format on, you could write a block of text and then have drop down multiple choice things, right? So I do a lot where I'll have a whole passage of text and they watch a two minute video or something and then they come in and they have to fill in all the missing words in a few paragraphs of text. Just as a really quick one off kind of assignment going through and making sure that they understand those the terminology and that works really well. And it's a really simple thing to do in a digital context as well. So have you guys tried pre-assessments? I have thoughts too, but I'm just curious, like Peter, is your, Peter, Patrick, is your objection theoretical or is it based on an experience? What is that? Just being kind, right? It's, you know, you can give a fun little quiz activity. You know, it all depends on how you approach it, but students are super sensitive to any sense that this is gonna be an assessment or even if you're saying, don't worry about it, it's just a little quiz, just tell me what you know. I've seen students just blanch, you know, they think, oh my God, we're, we've just sat down here and this guy's giving us a quiz. So, but, you know, you can break them into groups. You can give them a few questions to discuss. You walk around the room and you kind of listen to what they're saying, you know, and you pick up all kinds of information about, well, what do they know about this topic starting out, you know, so that's very low stakes. So you can collect or just a discussion, some pointed questions and some people will know, some people will chime in, you know, so or it's dead silence. You can probably read the room that way as well. So yeah, so if it's done in a very low level, low stakes way and it's good to do, you want to know where to begin, you want to be boring people saying, oh yeah, we did this two years ago in another course, you know, that kind of thing. And you might get that feedback. Yeah, no, we know a lot about this. We've done this in XYZ or whatever. So great idea, just has to be handled carefully because some people see assessments, instructors, I mean, in tests, right? The Derby doesn't deal with this as well as, I mean, the format of this book is different, but laying in his version of the book, it's a lot longer, the chapters are maybe 30 pages, not a lot longer, but he has a portion in there of probably 10 pages, you know, getting into the actual psychological literature and stuff. And I remember this stuff from that book and he gets in a fair bit more into experiments where they actually go and, you know, expose people to a test before and then it gets into that activating prior knowledge, identifying knowledge gaps, you know, creating kind of an internal stress where you don't know and then you quickly provide the information and then looking after the fact of the impacts of retention, apparently it works. But I get what you're saying about the, and it made me actually reflect a little bit more about whether I'm freaking students out because I do these kinds of things, but I try to do them, I mean, there's a lot of different ways like you said where you could do them where it's a lot in assessment, like you could, it could be a no grades anonymous thing for example, if it's online where it just goes in and then you get real data that you can use to inform but it can also be something at the beginning where they literally don't even hand it in. I've done that where I have them pull out a piece of paper and I'll say like, draw your best depiction of the interior of the earth. And they have, no, I do this, this is literally, every time I teach what the structure of the interior of the earth looks like, I need to just draw a circle and maybe there's mushrooms down there. I mean, it's not really, but it's just not, they have no idea, they have no idea. I think look at me, right? But I don't have them handed in. I don't know, I just have to do it. I teach it, but it's got them going, they're paying attention, right? Or have them do it, write the answer down and then I put them into peer groups, take their answers together and collectively work on a better answer, right? And that's what they hand in. That's exactly the kinds of strategies you can use and no testing required, right? But I see what you mean about the professor might just come in and suddenly just give them the exam right off the bat and they're gonna feel like they're horrible especially if you don't immediately give them a chance to improve their performance. Exactly, exactly. So what I do is I use in my fall course, now I didn't do it this year because I didn't think I could do it online properly, but we use what's called the force concepts inventory. Well, I mean, concept inventories are sort of a standard thing. But so it's run at the start of the course and then again at the end. And it contributes nothing to their mark and I tell them at the offset, this is not testing you, this is testing me, right? Because it's to see, I expect that a lot of you will get very low marks on this at the start. What I'm hoping is that you'll get much higher marks at the end and this gives me a way of seeing whether the course is working, right? But it does have the ancillary effect that they do this test at the beginning and they see what their mark is on it. And so for a lot of them, that shows them how much improvement is going to be needed. But no, I agree with you, Patrick, but it has to be done very carefully and my whole thing of telling them that this isn't testing you, it's testing me, I hope makes it better, but... Yeah, they can tuck it into a binder and say, and then compare it after and say, wow, look at my growth in knowledge from the time we had that quiz at the beginning and now look at what I know. Yeah, I mean that's... Then the other thing that is sort of almost pre-testing is just the fact that, and I think of it this way. Again, in the online lessons where they're watching the videos and then answering questions in between the videos. No, it's not really pre-testing because they've just watched a video and now they're answering a question on it. But A, it doesn't count for marks in any way. It's purely, the lessons are, the mark is for completion only. And B, it's at the very beginning stage of their learning, right? The expectation is they're gonna watch the video, they're gonna answer these questions largely to see how much they're getting the ideas. And then they're still gonna come to class and learn more and then go away and do the assignments and learn more, right? So it's, right? How pre is pre, I guess, right? So I actually sort of think of those as pre-testing in part because they're so early in their learning process and in part because I do look and I see, well, you know if I see that a lot of the students are getting, you know, 20% on the questions in the lessons then that tells me something, right? That tells me, you know, possibly that the lesson isn't working very well or possibly something that in a few lessons I already know that it's a really tough topic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. When they talk about the partial notes is just to share this and, you know that the vexing question for all instructors you really want the student to read that chapter. It's a real gem of the chapter. There's great, great information in there. You have to read it before you come to class and you know that you're just not gonna slog through that. So what I've done is in the past is a strategy you can use. Something like the partial notes is graphic organizers. So I do up flow chart ideas, circles, you know maybe a van and I'll put maybe a key theme or a key idea from, you know, first part of the chapter. Here's what I really want you to get in and maybe three or four bullet points. You fill in the bullet points from your reading. So they're doing the reading and they're kind of taking directed notes that I've kind of created. Here's what I want you to get from it but there's that little bit of a puzzle aspect and then they can bundle those together and pass them in at the end. They're graphic organizers for their reading. It's kind of like a guided reading in a way but it picks up on some of the ideas that she shares there. They start filling in the details and fleshing things out a little bit better making connections by my guided arrows and bubbles and things like that. So that has worked well. They complained about it if there's too many of course but if you do hit the sweet spot it works well. One of the things I do in my lessons which is very basic and I only started doing it this year but at the very start of each lesson there's just a quick little paragraph saying what the lesson is going to be about and then they're supposed to write three things that they think they already know about the topic or three things they've seen previously in this topic but know that they're confused about. Now I never look at them. It's purely for them to reflect, right? And I don't look at them just because I've got so much other marking to do I don't get to those. But that is one thing I do and I would like to look into whether it's having any measurable effect but I'm not sure how to do that. So the personal learning networks this is an interesting one. So I'll note first off what not to do maybe because I've heard a lot of complaints about this where sometimes they have these assignments where it's like contact the author of this paper or contact a scientist in this field and then get them to tell you something and the problem is there's like eight people in the world who are really public about this and so like if the assignment's on a shark there's the one shark guy who gets hit with 1,000 emails a semester and he's like stop sending your students to me, right? So that is don't do that. Don't just say randomly reach out to somebody and ask them, tell me stuff, right? If you have a directed question, that's one thing but don't do that. But I think you a little bit actually literally more personal. I'm thinking a couple of examples. So I had a assignment this last semester where I had students use Google Earth to create guided tours of any geological spot they wanted in the world. And one of a couple of students did them on Sydney's coal mines around Inverness and then around the Glacier Bay area. And one of the students said, actually my dad used to work in the mines. Would it be okay if I talk to him? And I'm like, yes, right? Absolutely, you do first hand research? Absolutely. And so mixed in with all the actual academic research were these personal anecdotes and stories. And that was amazing. She's got this person sitting right next to her. And then frequently, and maybe you guys have had this experience as well, the little voices that come off camera when you're doing the online stuff because someone's mom or someone's husband or someone's daughter is actually sitting right beside taking the lesson in. And sometimes I'll hear a little voice and it'll be correct, right? It'll anticipate something I'm saying. And I was like, hey, who was that little voice? And they're like, oh, that was my husband. And I was like, bring him in, man. He's great. You know exactly what he's talking about, right? Or that was my wife or whatever. There's one where one of my students, their mother is actually a geologist and is back doing a master's right now in like petroleum geoscience. And she's in my petroleum geology class, right? Her daughter. And I'm like, you've got this amazing resource right here. So tying those in those direct personal resources. But also there's an aspect I think there where you can by acknowledging and endorsing the kinds of knowledge that are parallel to formal academic knowledge, but different. We can also validate those other ways of knowing, but also validate often, especially students coming from blue collar backgrounds or indigenous backgrounds. We can validate and acknowledge the knowledge that they're bringing in and that their culture might have about these kinds of things. I might teach you some academic history about the coal mines, but your family lived through it, right? And that might be something you actually feel some shame about, right? Because it's not highfalutin like the guy at the PhD over here, but your knowledge is actually deeper and more valid than mine in many cases. So I think a personal learning network that acknowledges those different forms of knowledge that often surrounds students, I think can also kind of democratize the learning whatever in addition to just being useful and tie in personal connections in that. Anyways, that's just a thought. I don't know, that's great. I mean, it also hits on that interdisciplinarity, right? You look at coal mines for a lot of different lenses and science is one and geology, but then the history, the cultural stories, all of those things really builds up the knowledge base for sure. Great idea. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, let's go, let's look at a couple of these, a couple of these final kind of things here. What about the idea of using online resources to kind of extend what students are doing? Do you guys do that where you encourage them to go and Google in real time or take advantage of the smartphones in their pockets rather than fight it? Do you guys have to leave that? Certainly, so I mean, for example, one of the things that I'm constantly doing all through my first year courses is just getting them used to the fact that just numbers are stuff they can look up, right? So you need the conductivity of copper. You don't wanna know what the acceleration due to gravity is on the moon, whatever. All those things are just easily looked up as you need them. And so you absolutely should, including during class, right? So I leveraged that. And I do say, I tell them explicitly, partly this is my constant battle against memorization, right? I fight against memorization when I think my students are memorizing. I try to push them in other directions, right? And so if they just need an equation, I say, well, hopefully you've got it on your cheat sheet, but if you don't have it on your cheat sheet, pull your phone out and Google it. You'll probably come up with it. Just be careful because you'll find some wrong ones too, right? Yeah, yeah. What about you, Pat? Do you? That's great. Even since this has been written, there's just so many, like we talked about the video and having notes and taking notes and writing things. There's software now where you can actually post questions at a certain point, it pops up. Students can respond and all that kind of thing. And I'm trying to think of the program. I used it, it was a part of a quick, quick little seminar we had, and it's a Google product, Google Jam or something. I can't remember the little nifty name, but Jamboard, that's it, yeah, and it really kind of just simulates that, you know, as we all do at conferences, you go around and you colored sticky notes and one group explores an ID and then you can bring them all together. It's literally that, and I said, wow, that has so many uses for making connections, right? And getting students to kind of work together in real time online, right? So I thought that was really neat and it's easy to set up, you just open it up and way to go, yeah. Nice, all right, well, it brings us to the end of our time here. So yeah, that's it. If you guys have any final thoughts or anything you wanna throw in and you feel free to speak up. Good, no, it was great, great chapter, enjoyed it, lots of things you think about them, but they just give you that little other perspective to think about it. You know, speaking of connections, for me, one of the things, anytime I read this, a lot of these things I'm doing already or I've done as a one-off, I walked into class and I just came up with it as a epiphany. And then off it, I forget, I did that. Reading through this, you know, activated prior knowledge, right? Reading through this, I'm like, oh yeah, I did that one day and that works. I was doing it. I was reading for it, right? Good for me. Hey, I might actually know what I'm doing. But also, I just, it forces me to, I often recall things that worked that I completely forgot. Now like, oh, I better do that again. That actually worked great when I did that in class. That's actually, yeah, great. Okay, we'll see you guys on Tuesday. All right. Bye-bye. Bye, Ben.