welcome to… “Setting the Tone from Day One” 2012 American Society of Engineering Education Gulf Southwest Annual Conf

1. welcome to…“Setting the Tone from Day One”2012 American Society of Engineering Education Gulf Southwest Annual Conference based on Lesser/Kephart paper in Nov. 2011 J. of Statistics Education, which has all references (won “best paper” award at 2012 Sun Conference); a related (Jan. 2012) webinar (also open-access) is archived at causeweb.org; (partial support from NSF DUE-0618861 “Cultivating Authentic Discourse for the 2020 Engineer”, PI: L. Everett; included developing inquiry-based models based on “counterintuitive concepts”) Larry Lesser, Professor The University of Texas at El Paso

2. Day 1 Matters (Lesser & Kephart, 2011) • Brouillette &Turner (1992): “Students will never be more receptive…” • Dorn (1987): high correlation of student evalson Day 1 or 2 with those at end of the term • Wilson & Wilson (2007) randomly assigned students to + or - first day experience: the former reported higher motivation for most of the course, and ended with higher grades (p < 0.05)

3. Day 1 Likes & Dislikes Lesser & Kephart (2011) has much more Day 1 lit review • Faculty like: set positive atmosphere, communicate objectives, introduce oneself, preview content • Students like: practical information, grading standards, work required • Students don’t like: covering new material, HW assigned, using full class time

4. For a spring 2009 class, I wanted to…. • Use that first meeting(3 hours: a whole week!) in a compelling way, beyond discussing the syllabus and taking roll • Set the tone (for a course about which students have anxiety & misconceptions) • Build classroom community/norms • Model process for active learning • Let them (and me) see that they have prior knowledge/intuition to build on

5. instructional cycle* Lesser & Kephart (2011) Good problem presented Initial Individual Reflection reduces anxiety, prepares students to share in groups, especially ELLs (Fischer & Perez, 2008; Gibbons, 1998) Small Group (3-4 students each) discussion makes it more likely students will share in whole class; creates contexts for meaning (Rosebery, Warren & Conant, 1992); active learning called for by ASA (2010) Whole Class Discussion (with instructor as facilitator and co-learner) optional: further individual reflection * variation on “think-pair-share” (Lyman, 1981) or “1-2-4-whole group” (Minich, 2010) structures plan to allow about 5 minutes per stage, but be prepared to modify as needed

6. a “liberating structure” “We call [this] a ‘structure’ because it is a constraint imposed on the participants. We call such a structure ‘liberating’ because it also unleashes people to engage, in pairs and quartets, in conversations and exchanges that would not happen going directly into the whole group discussion. People in pairs automatically talk to each other; this immediately creates engagement of all participants. Groups of two create several spaces for speaking up that are much safer than the whole group. Quartets deepen the pairs’ exchanges in mostly safe spaces. These additional conversations will frequently lead to significantly different outcomes. LS do not create a ‘free-for-all’ environment; rather the facilitator maintains a well-defined but minimal structure, and freedom flourishes within its confines.” -- Lipmanowicz & McCandless (2010, p. 9) Henri Lipmanowicz & Keith McCandless “Liberating Structures: Innovating by Including and Unleashing Everyone” March 2010 E&Y Performance, 2(4), 6-19)

7. a good problem... • Has context relevant to student backgrounds • Has minimal (math) prerequisites • Is efficient to pose • Is efficient to compute (e.g., simple numbers; Lesser, 2011) • Will be revisited/deepened later in course • Is open to multiple approaches, representations, interpretations • Stimulates habits of mind/questioning • Shows statistics as “numbers with a context” • May reveal a misconception

8. methodology • DESIGN: case study; discourse analysis of lesson • DATA: transcribed video of all day 1 group and class discussions • RIGOR: transcripts checked and analyzed by multiple researchers • DELIMITATION: not designed to make claims about student learning, but rather to identify features of inquiry-based class

9. enough theory/background/literature: Let’s see some problems!

10. “Student Test Performance” Who did better, Amy or Bob?

11. Who did better, Amy or Bob?

12. Whole-class debrief • Clarify what “doing better” means: Amy had higher test passing % each term, but Bob did for the year; for number of tests passed, Bob won in spring, but Amy won for fall and overall year • Explore when comparisons can reverse upon aggregation (Lesser, 2001), but delay explicit label “Simpson’s Paradox” because that can inhibit student exploration (Harper & Edwards, 2011) • Make decisions carefully of when/how to group

13. Let’s try another problem…. that’s been in the news a lot (e.g., recent front page of El Paso Times)

16. “Average Class Size” Exploration (Lesser, 2009, 2010a) 185 students are divided among 7 rooms as: 20, 20, 20, 25, 30, 35, and 35. What would you say is the ‘average class size’? we can use a simpler substitute dataset: 20 students divided among 4 rooms as: 3, 3, 4, and 10

17. what’s Average Class Size? Room 1: 3 kids Room 2: 3 kids Room 3: 4 kids Room 4: 10 kids Give answers your students would likely give. Go ahead, call one out!

18. what’s Average Class Size? Room 1: 3 kids Room 2: 3 kids Room 3: 4 kids Room 4: 10 kids answers I usually get: 5 (mean), 3.5 (median), 3 (mode), and sometimes 6.5 (midrange)

19. Average per what? Preceding answers were on per-class basis: {3,3,4,10}. Now, have students use a “per-student basis” with: {3,3,3, 3,3,3, 4,4,4,4, 10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10} Al,Bob,Carl,Dee,Ed,Flo; Gil,Hal,Ivy,Jo; Kay,Lia,Mo,Ned,Olga,Pat,Qing,Ray,Sue,Ted

20. Average class size per…..? {3,3,4,10} for per-class basis {3,3,3, 3,3,3, 4,4,4,4, 10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10} for per-student basis

21. whole-class debrief • Ambiguity of the word “average”: need to specify not only which average, but also basis unit over which you are averaging! • Which basis results in a larger number? • Which basis is more useful for consumers? • How to count auditing students, online courses, lab/recitation sections, etc.? • Connection to “student-teacher ratio”?

22. some observations from transcripts(see Lesser & Kephart 2011 for detail) • Students often made assumptions explicit: “My assumption was that each test has the same weight” (Kara) [‘who did better?’] • Professor was facilitator/co-learner, eliciting multiple responses and finding something to validate in each • Technique: Professor asked class: “How do you all think Kara came up with 3?” [‘avg. class size’]

23. Time for Discussion! You’re invited to: • Ask questions • Share your insights & experiences • Propose a new good opening problem

24. Thanks for attending this talk! May you set a good tone with your next class! Professor Lesserrelated archived webinar: http://www.causeweb.org/webinar/activity/2012-01/

25. Which of these 5 countries did best at the 2008 Summer Olympics? (Isaacson, 2011)

26. How to adapt for: • Shorter periods • Larger classes • Other days of the course • Other courses

27. Scaling to shorter periods(Lesser & Kephart, 2011) • Shorten periods in the instructional cycle Individual, Small Group, Whole Class, Further Individual • Move individual post-reflection to out of class • Use problems even more streamlined, such as: On a high-stakes test where minimum passing score is a 7, which teacher’s class did better? Mr. Jones’ 5 students’ scores were: 2,3,7,7,7. Ms. Gomez’ 5 students’ scores were 4,5,6,6,8.

28. Scaling to larger classes (Lesser & Kephart, 2011) • Have more groups (but keep each group size the same: 3 or 4 per group) • You may not have time for every group to report out, but you can have only groups report out that had different results or approaches than the first group reporting

29. Other days of the course • When introducing a new concept/unit • Day after test or holiday break (when students did not do HW/reading since last class meeting) • Anytime you sense that they need a reminder about the importance of identifying and questioning assumptions

30. Setting the tone on the last day(Hulsizer & Woolf) • Have students write letters of accomplishment & advice to future students • Assess increase in learning & reasoning • Present certificates of accomplishment • Parting e-mail of appreciation to the class • Tyrrell (2003) gave out individual bags of chips and had students brainstorm how to apply all tools they had learned to their supply of chips

31. How I started Day 1 for my intro stat(literacy) class, spring 2012 • Showed many stories in that day’s front page section and had them discuss how they thought statistics was used in them [ bar graph for GOP primary poll, graph of child obesity rates by state, fingerprints database upgrade, redistricting maps(using Census data), projections for Alzheimer’s, wait times on El Paso bridges ] • Top 10 facts about me • Survey to learn about them • “Opening Intention” reading (Lesser, 2010) • Collection of anonymous data for repeated future use