How to take charge of forming study groups for the benefit of student learning and wellbeing.
Why student background matters
When teaching students, their backgrounds matter. Their prior knowledge matters when we want to build upon it. Their experiences with studying matter for how they will approach our teaching. And our ability to keep our students engaged heavily depends on the interests and aspirations they have in relation to their studies.
In this spotlight we will show how knowing about these three aspects of our students' background can help us in teaching them, how to gather this information – and how to use it.
New learning builds on existing knowledge
When students engage with new material, they use the knowledge they already have to make sense of it. If what they're presented with is too far away from what they already know, it will be very difficult for them to actually engage with the new knowledge. They will be left behind from the teaching activities.
Students may also have learned the same concepts but in different ways.
A study at Danish technical universities looked at three different courses, all dealing with thermodynamics in three different programs. What they found was that thermodynamics was conceived of and presented conceptually to students in different ways, and the textbooks had different approaches. Even if students from these three courses entered a new course building on thermodynamics, you cannot take for granted that they know it in the same way. Therefore, we need to consider not only what students know, but also how they know it.
How to understand students' repertoire
When students enter your course, they are already experienced learners. They have learned for a long time – from high school, lower secondary school, and primary school. They have experience with what works and what will be recognized by teachers. These experiences have formed their repertoire for how they engage with teaching.
Science students in the first 1-2 years often mainly experience courses based on lectures and exercise classes – very structured, organized, with the teacher telling them what to do in what sequence. When they're presented with doing an open project where they have to pick a topic, work on their own in groups, look up material, formulate hypotheses, and write a report, they may feel at a loss. Therefore, it's relevant to have an idea about what kind of previous experiences students have with different teaching formats.
Understanding students' interests and aspirations
Engagement is not simply about spending time, not just about showing up or doing exercises. Engagement can relate to:
Cognitive engagement: Do students put in an effort to understand the material, solve exercises, and grasp what the concepts and ideas are about?
Emotional engagement: Are they interested? Do they get curious? Are they excited, or are they bored?
Getting students to engage is connected to their interests and aspirations, because engagement is related to students' sense of relevance. Do students find the course or content relevant to whatever they'd like to learn, wherever they'd like to go with their studies?
It's important to remember you can have students in the same class, in the same program, but with different ideas about what the study is about.
For instance, when first-year physics students were asked "Why do you think you fit in with physics?", some said it's because they like math. Others said it's because they think physics can provide solutions to a lot of problems. Others again said that they would like to engage with the fundamental questions in life, and that's what physics can help them do.
These groups of students were both enthusiastic and interested in physics, but for different reasons.
How to get information about students' background
Here are practical strategies you can use before, during, and after the start of your course to gather information about what students know, their study repertoire, and their interests.
Before the course begins
- Research previous courses and curricula: If the course is part of a mandatory program, look at earlier course descriptions to see what was covered and what kind of assignments were given. Ask teachers who have taught similar courses: what do students usually come with? You might even get to see exercises or exam questions students were presented with.
- Check high school curricula: If they're first-year students, look into the curricula for high school disciplines (physics, mathematics, etc.) available at the Ministry of Education. This helps you understand at what level students encountered the material before.
- Coordinate with colleagues: If you're teaching alongside other teachers on the same course, ask what kind of teaching they use so you can understand what students are experiencing elsewhere. If there's a course coordinator, ask what students are doing in other parts of the course.
- Create a pre-course survey. Before the first class, ask students to complete a survey with both factual and open-ended questions:
- About their knowledge: What courses have you taken? Which study program are you in? At what level did you take this discipline in high school?
- About their repertoire: Have you experienced this kind of teaching before? Have you done projects before? What are your experiences with that?
- About their interests and aspirations: What made you sign up for this program/course? What do you hope to take with you from the course? Is there anything in particular you expect to be really interesting? Is there anything you think will be very boring?
You can use a pre-course survey to get to know the students before your teaching begins. It can be to be able to adjust your teaching, but it could also be to ask students questions that take more time to answer than one or two minutes during class. The weakness of the format is whether students will respond to the survey when it is not a mandatory part of the course. The advantage is that your questions reach out to the students, not necessarily attending class.
Some of the types of questions from the one-minute reflection could be used in the pre-course survey as well, but you can also ask questions that take slightly more time to answer. You can ask about their interests, their aspirations, their previous courses and education, but you could also make small tests of prerequisite knowledge, e.g., their conceptual understanding.
The following are examples of open questions from a quiz presented to first-year students:
- What made you decide to enter this study programme?
- Is there anything you think will be particularly interesting? Fun?
- Is there anything that you have been surprised about so far at the course/programme? Something that is different from what you expected?
- Do you at this point have any ideas about what you would like to do in the future (be it vaguely or specific)?
Examples of questions concerning previous courses could be:
- Did you take chemistry at A or B level in high school? [especially teaching first-year students]
- Which course in linear algebra did you take? [as an example of a course that is a prerequisite, but can be taken at different programmes and that may differ depending on where it is taken]
- Which bachelor degree do you have and at which university did you take it? (at MSc level with international students and students from other Danish universities)
You could also make quizzes that test specific skills or knowledge, e.g., doing specific types of calculations. You could also ask questions focusing more on the students’ understanding. Two examples of this could be (both adapted from Jakobsen & Rump, 1999):
- The Bernoulli equation can be presented like this … Can you, in a qualitative way, describe the physical meaning of the individual parts of the equation? What are the preconditions for applying the Bernoulli equation?
- In your own words, describe what you understand a state function to be.
During the course
- Targeted diagnostic tasks: At the beginning of the course, have tasks that can give you insight into how students understand and approach problems. Ask for explanations, not just answers. Use exercises or surveys with open responses where you ask students not just to solve exercises, but to explain what a particular formula, equation, or law means.
- Use concept maps: Concept maps are graphic representations of students' understanding of concepts and the relations between them. Students create them by identifying concepts related to an overarching phenomenon (like photosynthesis or thermodynamics), then showing how these elements are related to each other. This provides insight into how students think, what they understand, and how complex their understanding is. You can use concept maps at the beginning to find out what they know, and again at the end to see how the complexity has developed.
- One-minute reflection: Ask students to briefly – for one or two minutes – to write down their thoughts and reflections about something you would like them to think about. If you would like to know about their thoughts – which is the case when using it to get to know about the students – you can ask the students to submit their reflections to you. Usually, they should do so anonymously.
The one-minute reflection is best used when students are present in class during teaching. You can use the survey in the quiz section of Absalon or other online survey systems (SurveyXact, Socrative, etc.). If you use padlet, the students will be able to see each other’s reflections, which will jeopardise their anonymity. In some cases, you may wish to allow the students to see the posts of other students.
The question should be simple enough to allow for brief and immediate reflections. It can, e.g., address their expectations and experiences, but you could also make them reflect about a part of the course content. You should not ask more than one or two questions at a time. You can use the reflection tool more times during the course.
Questions could be:
- Typically, at the beginning of the course:
- Is there anything in particular you are looking forward to learning about in this course?
- What made you decide to sign up for this course [provided it is mandatory or a restricted elective?]
- How would you say this course fits in with what you have been doing previously during your study programme? How does it fit in with what you plan to do later?
- What would you like to take with you from this course?
- What earlier parts of your study programme would you say have prepared you for taking this course?
- Typically during the course – e.g., by the end of a lecture or course day:
- What did you find particularly interesting in teaching today?
- Is there anything you found difficult during class today or more generally in the course so far?
- Could you mention one or two ideas you have had in relation to taking this course? For instance, about future courses, things to inquire into, applications, etc.
How to use this information
You can use what you learn about your students to:
- Identify if parts of the course foundation – prerequisite knowledge – need brushing up
- Get an idea about the variety of background and knowledge in the class
- Consider if parts of the course should have more time, and others perhaps less
- Understand what different kinds of interests are present in the room so you can capture and build on them
- Recognize the different reasons students have for being there (mandatory vs. elective) and how this might affect engagement
- Address the gap between what students expect and what they experience, especially important for first-year students
We cannot accommodate everything, but we can try to get an idea about what different ideas, experiences, and backgrounds are present in our room. If some are important enough, we should address them even if we didn't plan to.
First of all, we should be curious. If we take an interest in who the students are and know how we can best try to meet them and their interests in our teaching, it will improve the likelihood that they'll actually learn what we'd like them to learn.
