Ready! Click! Learn!

When I taught college in the 1990s and early 2000s, I created a motto called, "Learning for Success."

The narrative on this page tells the story of how "Learning for Success" evolved from an ideal to real-world, classroom success for my students.

This period in my teaching career pre-dates my formal entry into Instructional Design at the corporate level, but definitely influenced my passion for igniting my talents in this profession.

For several years, I taught as a college adjunct professor in New York City and Brooklyn. The standard college teaching method, which we professors were expected to follow, was the lecture format, followed by exams filled with multiple-choice questions, FITB, and short essays, plus a researched term paper. Sometimes a lecturing professor would toss the class a Socratic question….but that was rare. These were the circumstances under which I had been taught.

After several semesters of following this standard teaching format myself, I had a dramatic insight that led me to a radical shift in attitude toward the accepted status quo.

The usual college lecture and testing format, I could tell, was NOT working at all for the majority of my students – no matter in which college I taught.

Here’s why…..In NYC, whether I worked for private art colleges or public institutions, the bulk of my students spoke English as their second language. Even many of those students for whom English was their first language struggled at times when they were taught a subject via the standard college teaching method.

I realized that I needed an instructional solution to truly enable those students whom I KNEW could learn more – and better –  if I upended the classroom status quo.  As an adjunct professor, I had nothing to lose except my students. And I had grown tired of losing student interest, achievement, confidence, etc., in the classroom.

What I did contrary to the status quo was to completely change the way I designed and conducted my classes.

First, I took all of my lectures and created my own textbook from those notes, which I put online, interspersing my text, and pertinent illustrations, with critical-thinking questions. Students had access to the “lecture” in advance of the class and could work through the “lecture” AT THEIR OWN PACE. This approach, I believed, would especially help those struggling with reading or comprehending lectures delivered in the classroom.

Second, I made verbal class participation 75% of the students’ grade. Students were required to discuss IN CLASS their reflections on the questions they encountered in my online “lectures.” This put students in the driver’s seat of communicating the course content through their own critical thinking. I took the role of facilitator. There were no “wrong” answers because the questions were formatted in a way that suggested “what do YOU think?”.  This method ENCOURAGED students to speak up in public, before their peers.

Third, I changed the status quo testing method. Instead of multiple choice and short essays, requiring students to memorize course material (which they generally forgot right after the test), I devised take-home essay questions. This form of testing was similar to a standard “term paper,” but designed entirely different.

I had found that in the typical term paper, many students simply cut and pasted portions of their essay from other sources and rarely reflected on the concepts of the course in a critical way.

Moreover, most students had not been taught how to write a paper in a way that followed a logical sequence. I designed a “how-to write a paper” guide AND critical-thinking essay questions. These questions were devised in such a way that students could ONLY provide their own answers, using their own thoughts on the subject – there was no way ANYONE could create a copy-and-paste term paper.

Fourth, I was dissatisfied with another aspect of the term-paper status quo, where an instructor graded a term paper, sometimes wrote remarks to the student, then handed the graded term paper back to the student, which was usually then added to the “circular filing cabinet.” I honestly thought, “What has the student learned from this typical process?” My answer to myself was, “Probably very little.”

I really wanted students to enhance their communication skills by practicing their writing. Having worked as a textbook editor while also teaching, I thoroughly edited each essay and allowed students to re-do their papers, based on following directions in my edits, for a higher score. I would often reiterate aspects of the “how-to” guide in relation to a particular paragraph or sentence in a student’s paper. This way, students had a RELEVANT roadmap to help them upgrade their writing skills.

My policy was that a student could never receive a worse score than the first one. So students (even very poor writers) were incentivized to practice their writing. Close to 100% of students in each class I taught took advantage of this opportunity. This approach genuinely empowered those students for whom English was not their first language, as it gave them a chance to develop their writing skills in English without relying on the copy-paste term paper method to simply get by.

Was this change successful?

When following the status quo method of teaching, my students had very few A’s. The percentage of students who fell in the C range outnumbered the percentage of students who achieved B’s. I also had a small percentage of students in the D range. It was virtually the same at the end of every semester, no matter where I taught.

The first semester when I applied my re-designed course, I saw students’ grades increase dramatically. The typical B student was getting A’s. The typical C students were getting B’s and sometimes higher! The percentage of C and D students was practically nil.
 
Granted, student scores were one way to measure the success of upending the status quo. But IN the classroom, I could tell that I had empowered my students.

I had enriched their classroom experience AND their communication skills – both writing and verbal – by changing HOW a subject was taught.

And for those students whose English was not their first language, when they realized that they had an instructor who had confidence in THEIR abilities to participate in this new type of class, they gained a new confidence in THEMSELVES.