How-to-Integrate-Self-Regulated-Learning-into-Your-Courses-Transcript

MAGNA ONLINE SEMINARS Transcript How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses A Magna Online Seminar was presented on June 24, 2014 by Linda Nilson, Ph.D How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses teaches participants to: • Select, adapt, and design activities and assignments that will enhance your students’ self-regulated learning skills • Incorporate these activities and assignments into appropriate course components such as readings, written assignments, and exams • Explain how and why these activities and assignments increase student learning, strengthen students’ problem-solving skills, improve students’ exam performance, enhance the quality of student work, and reduce student overconfidence Editor’s note: This is a written transcript of an audio recording Our policy is to edit only the occasional unintelligible phrase Everything else appears exactly as it was spoken © 2014 Magna Publications Inc All rights reserved It is unlawful to duplicate, transfer, or transmit this program in any manner without written consent from Magna Publications The information contained in this online seminar is for professional development purposes but does not substitute for legal advice Specific legal advice should be discussed with a professional attorney To make this program available to all your faculty and staff, contact Magna’s Customer Service department at 1-800-433-0499 Ext and ask about our Campus Access License Magna Online Seminar Rob Kelly: How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses Linda Nilson, Ph.D of 23 Hello, and welcome to Magna's Online Seminar How to Integrate SelfRegulated Learning into Your Courses cosponsored by Magna Publications and the Teaching Professor I'm Rob Kelly, Editor of the Teaching Professor and today's moderator I'm pleased you could join us If you haven't already printed the handouts, select the file you wish to print from the file share box on the left of your screen, and then click the save to my computer button to download, open, and print it You may listen to this seminar through your computer, or you may choose to listen through your telephone To listen to your phone, dial the number and use the access code shown in the box at the bottom left of your screen And now I'm pleased to introduce our presenter, Linda Nilson Linda Nilson is Founding Director of the Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation at Clemson University and author of Teaching at Its Best: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors now in its third edition Dr Nilson has also published many articles and book chapters and has presented conference sessions and faculty workshops at colleges and universities both nationally and internationally on dozens of topics related to teaching effectiveness, assessment, scholarly productivity, and academic careers Welcome, Linda Nilson Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Thanks you very much, Rob It's a real pleasure to be here to talk with out about self-regulated learning It's a topic that's really dear to my heart, so dear I wrote a book on it But the reason why is because I look at selfregulated learning as the closest thing to a magic bullet that we have for student learning So here is the, here are the outcomes for you, the promise You're going to be able to define self-regulated learning and also its three phases You're going to be able to wisely choose and set up activities and assignments that enhance your student's self-regulated learning skills, and you're going to be able to put these in the proper places in your course, course components, the beginning, the end, you'll have a lot of choices Another outcome for you is that you're going to be able to explain how and why self-regulated learning has the benefits that it does, and this includes benefits in terms of student learning, problem solving skills, exam performance, performance, the quality of student products, and also self-regulated learning reduces student overconfidence, which you've probably encountered You're also going to make very quick work of any kind of assessment that might be needed, and you don't always need assessment of these activities anyway ©2014 Magna Publications of 23 Magna Online Seminar How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses Linda Nilson, Ph.D of 23 Okay So what's self-regulated learning? It's the ability to plan, monitor, control, and evaluate one's learning for the purpose of maximizing your learning It has three stages, before, during, and after a learning or assessment experience So in the first stage, you're talking about planning and goal setting for the activity that is, that a person's about to do, and at this stage, a learner should be asking questions like, at least on the cognitive side, what kind of a task is this, what strategy should I use, what strategies have worked before for a similar task? There's also an emotional side to this or meta-emotional How interested and motivated am I to the task? And if I'm not feeling very motivated, how can I motivate myself? How can I realize or appreciate the value of what I'm going to be learning? And then there are the environmental factors where a learner will ask him or herself what's the best environment for the task that I'm going to be doing, and have I put any distractions far away? So that's before It's assessing the setup that one has created for oneself During the learning or assessment activity, one is monitoring one's self, one's learning, one's progress, one's emotional state, one's physical setting, one's resources and asking one's self questions like am I making good progress? Am I sufficiently focused? Am I staying alert? How well are my strategies working? On the emotional side, it's looking at, well, am I learning anything that really goes against my beliefs or my values? Am I resisting anything that I am learning? And on the environmental side, just checking to see, let's see, am I in a good physical position? Do I need a break? How well is this environment working for me? And then, finally, in terms of evaluating one's learning at the end, after the activity, or one's strategy or the project or the goal that one had set out for oneself, and here the questions are looking at, you know, what material can I recall? What material can't I recall? What strategies seem to work very well? Emotionally, it's looking at how one is reacting to one's metacognitive results So, gee, I didn't remember all that much I should go back and learn it But is this getting me down? Is this bad news inhibiting me from feeling confident enough to learn it? And then on the environmental side, I have to experiment with different parts of my physical environment to get better returns on my learning? So these are the sort of questions that one is asking along the way One is observing one's self learning ©2014 Magna Publications of 23 Magna Online Seminar How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses Linda Nilson, Ph.D of 23 This is a list of self-regulated activities and assignments that we're going to be at least touching on in this online seminar You'll see that some of them are for different times in the course, and some of them are attached to different components of the course Some of them are called wrappers, like they wrap around various components of the course, readings or a podcast, or live lectures or assignments, quizzes, exams And assignments in particular have two nicknames, they have meta-assignments as well as assignment wrappers So this is what we're going to be looking at Let's get the grading topic out of the way early You're going to have to be grading, probably on a rubric, major experiential assignments and any portfolios that you have students put together, yes, those But there aren't than many of those, and we're going to be touching on those They're attached to service learning and long simulations and role playing Most of the assignments that we're going to be talking about here, you should be grading pass/fail So, really, you're checking the assignment in, you're not actually assessing it, you're not getting any kind of feedback, but you are setting the standards to begin with So you're saying, okay, to get full credit, to get a full number of points, whether it be one point or ten points or whatever, the assignment has to be complete, and it has to be of a certain, minimum length So you have to write a certain amount in answer to these questions, or, perhaps you're just looking for a good faith effort But anything short of your standards gets zero points And for the students, this makes a more serious assignment for them So this is really going to count I really have to follow the directions, sure as they are I really have to it right And, of course, with in-class activities, you won't be grading those at all So let's look at a few activities and assignments for the beginning of a course Students don't really know a lot about learning and thinking, and so it's a good idea, it can be one, to assign them some sort of a reading on learning and thinking, and I recommend a couple of them They are, at the very end of your bibliography, there's one by Robert Leamnson and another one by Wirth & Perkins The one by Leamnson is particularly good, particularly accessible, easy to read, and it, you know, the major point that it makes is learning takes work Learning requires effort And, oftentimes, students did not have this experience of effort for learning when they were in high school Another thing you can in the start of the course is you can have students write a little essay called how I earned an A in this course This is ©2014 Magna Publications of 23 Magna Online Seminar How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses Linda Nilson, Ph.D of 23 for, to get them to set the goal of getting an A and for them realize what it will take, and, usually, they'll look at it and say, yes, I can these things I can come to class on a regular basis I can get my assignments in on time And this will help them meet the goal You can have students some sort of reflective writing on the subject matter, perhaps something like what is science? How is chemistry a science? And you'll get whatever prior knowledge they have, but you'll also get them to write down their misconceptions, and that's very, very helpful information for you, because you're not going to be able to really teach them new, valid knowledge unless you weed out those misconceptions first Another thing you could at the start of the course is give them a knowledge survey, which is really a student confidence survey So you're giving them a series of questions or tasks covering the course or the material on the unit, because some people these for every unit, and you're looking at the content and skills at different levels of thinking, so not just lower level, but also higher level like application and analysis You can get these questions or tasks from your list of outcomes, old final exams or midterms, handouts, exercises You have them whatever And you're not asking them to the task or answer the question but to assess their self-confidence to be able to it Usually in three or four levels, from very confident to not at all confident, or from yes I can this at an A level to no, I don't even know what the question is asking I don't understand the vocabulary Now students know what they and don't know? Most students don't have a good handle on it Your best students do, but most students will tend to overestimate their abilities and their knowledge, especially at the beginning of the course, when they know the least This is, however, less likely in engineering and the sciences and more technical fields, because there is an esoteric vocabulary attached to them And students know that they've never heard of an ion before, but there are some terms that, say, in psychology like abnormal, gee, abnormal, yeah, I know what abnormal means But they don't know the term in psychology, what abnormal means to a psychologist They don't know that yet So let's look first at reading wrappers that are perfectly appropriate for videos and podcasts as well, if you've been flipping your classroom There are reflective study questions that you can ask your students if they fall into different categories, but, really, you have to tailor these to the particular reading or listening or watching assignment ©2014 Magna Publications of 23 Magna Online Seminar How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses Linda Nilson, Ph.D of 23 For instance, asking students what the most important concepts or principles in the reading are and also asking them to identify what they understand clearly That's a very important self-regulated learning activity to know what you don't know, or, you know, what you're not grasping You can have students make some sort of comparisons or connections to what they already know, get them to hook on the new knowledge to the prior knowledge, or to examine their preconceptions in light of this new knowledge, or to connect what they're learning in your course to what they've learned in other courses For instance, you can have them look at their emotional responses and look at their attitudes and values or their belief systems, and this will bring in emotions, and this really helps students' memory of the material that they're learning, because it brings in new neurotransmitters, not just from the brain, but also from the limbic system Another thing you can have your students is called a self-testing procedure Read, Recall, Review You have students read the material through once, then to put away their books and notes, then to recall everything that they can recall, to recite it aloud, or if you want to make this homework, to write it down, and then they go back and review that reading for whatever they misunderstood or forgot So you're getting them to go through it at least twice, but with a goal in mind, to learn what they didn't learn the first time Very effective Lots of research on Read, Recall, Review And what they found is in terms of learning fact-based passages on recalling them, it's way better than rereading again and again and again, the same read, or, and if note taking, but it takes a lot less time and effort than note taking It gives students deliberate practice, that is practice with feedback, on how well they are learning the material, practice in retrieving the material, the more times you remember something, the more times you can remember or the better you can remember it, and that feedback is absolutely immediate while they're still doing the task Visual study tools are also good to complement readings, and they also make good lecture wrappers And here what we're talking about, we're talking about drawing pictures or maps or diagrams of the material, putting it in visual form We know from a lot of research that visual study tools improve reading comprehension by getting students on that conceptual level They have to be able to develop the visual, because they're really having to pick out what's really important on a conceptual, more abstract level ©2014 Magna Publications of 23 Magna Online Seminar How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses Linda Nilson, Ph.D of 23 Visual study tools also foster long-term retention and make retrieval easier How tools that? Well, when students are putting together their own visual, they absolutely have to integrate that material and structure that knowledge on their own They have to organize it And this is how we remember anything long-term It has to be organized in our brains When we associate it with a visual, we can remember it longer Visuals are less taxing on the brain It requires, visuals require less working memory and fewer cognitive transformations that text does Imagine, if you will, taking 5,000 words, and, especially if you're not that strong a reader for a second-year student, making sense of that trying to get a picture of the organization from that versus just developing a visual as you are reading It's really boiling down what is important You have to pick out what's important And then once you have that visual organization, that picture, the visual itself will cue the text and the details in the text Visuals are amazing tools I'm going to show you some pictures of common visuals or maps This first one is a sort of a template of a flowchart Flowcharts show the sequence of events or operations It can show a causal process or a procedural process There are concept circle diagrams, for instance, Venn diagrams We're usually familiar with those But there are all different kinds of concept circle diagrams that show the relationships among concepts, categories, principles, topics in terms of, you know, what's overlapping and what isn't overlapping at all, what's partially overlapping Then there are matrices Matrices are like tables, but they enable the students to classify the information or the knowledge or to compare and contrast different types of whatever you're having them learn So this is a visual that has to with comparing wars on different facets of war like the cause and the effects of war This is, of course, a cycle, some of your material might fall into cycle form This is a concept map, perfect for when the material falls into a hierarchical organization, where you put the most occlusive general or abstract concept or principle, it works with principles as well, at the top, and then you work your way down the hierarchy or the map, the concept map, to the more specific ones, exclusive, narrow, concrete ones right down to examples A mind map is similar, but it also can be used for free association, or you can use it for a hierarchy And here the central concept goes not at the top but in the middle These are some examples of the sorts of, of pieces of concept maps or mind maps, and note there are words associated with the lines, and that's a good idea to have your students specify exactly what the ©2014 Magna Publications of 23 Magna Online Seminar How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses Linda Nilson, Ph.D of 23 relationship is And this first example, weather, well, a major type of weather is precipitation There are other kinds of weather There are other kinds of precipitation too, rain is simply the liquid form, so that's an example Now we're going to our very first activity Now if you've listened to the first part of this online seminar, and I want you to take the role of a student listening to a lecture, and this is also foreshadowing an activity that you might with your students during a live lecture What I want you to is to put your notes away, put your handouts away, and I want you to write down all the important points so far that you can recall and enter any questions into the chat And if you are with a group of people, to take it to that step further which is what you would with your students in class, and to work with a partner to help each other remember Just fill in the blanks of what you can remember and also to answer one another's questions So I'm going to give you a minute to that, at least a minute to that, to write down all of those important points, and then to enter any questions into the chat Rob Kelly: Okay We'll give it a little more time I see that there are several people typing, so we'll give them a little bit Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Okay Great This is good You're remembering a lot Rob Kelly: Okay Let me share a little bit of this, not a question but a comment This would work well with incoming nursing students who don't know the language Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Yes And it would get them to start using that language, and, again, practice and recalling it This is practice and retrieval, and it's also direct feedback as to what you learned and what you didn't learn, what you understood, and what you didn't understand Is it a self-testing procedure? Self-testing is so powerful Rob Kelly: I can see that people are still typing They're certainly putting some thought into this Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: That's great Rob Kelly: Okay Well, here's one Self-regulated learning as three stages, before, during, and after Grading reflection activities Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Oh, I think you're putting in the chat what you're recalling, and I just wanted questions in the chat You can recall You can just scribble on any ©2014 Magna Publications of 23 Magna Online Seminar How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses Linda Nilson, Ph.D of 23 piece of paper, on the back of your handouts or whatever what you can recall But I’m glad to hear you're recalling all these things I really am very happy to hear this Rob Kelly: Here's a question Are these responses, especially emotional responses, shared with others in the class? Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Not necessarily Maybe with you, maybe with you, because you might find you might be getting a certain kind of important feedback from your students, because you might want to know those But, no, they're not necessarily meant to be shared at all In fact, it might be safer if you don't, if, what the students don't share, if you don't happen to share it Rob Kelly: Okay It appears that many of the activities mentioned so far deal with students working outside of class Is this correct? Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: What we're going to be talking about now will be in class, because we're going to be looking at live lecture wrappers But before, we were talking about reading wrappers and podcast, yes, that was all outside of class Rob Kelly: Okay I think that's about it I don't see anyone else typing So I think we can move on Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Okay Great All right So let's launch into live lecture wrappers We just did this It's called periodic free recall, a self-testing procedure You have the directions you can give to your students It's a very powerful technique, and, of course, it gets students working together Here's another one Active listening checks And this goes on in class And what you do, you tell the students to listen for key points that you're making and take notes as well, that's fine, then you have them push their notes away, close their notebooks, and recall, write down the most important points And, usually, we're talking about three most important points, okay, good example, and to turn those in to you, so you can see what they thought Well, that's not really the idea The idea is, is you then, in class, review those three most important points, and then students assess their own listening skills From the first to the third time, this was done in some research by Martha Lovett, first time 45% of the students got all the three points correct By the third time, 75% did They got used to listening to you and more used to picking out what was important So this is very useful for them to learn how to listen to you ©2014 Magna Publications of 23 Magna Online Seminar How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses Linda Nilson, Ph.D of 23 Then there are minute papers, and this would be something that you'd usually have them at the end of a mini lecture or, perhaps, at the end of a longer lecture, at the end of class, even after activities, really So here you'll be asking them, and you can take your pick of these, what's the most important or valuable or useful thing that you learned today, what are the most important points, what surprised you, or what was unexpected to you, what ideas struck you as something you should practice, put in practice now, what ideas stand out in your mind, what helped or hindered your understanding? And this not only has, some of these things have some, an emotional dimension as well, and that's good, but it also gets them to review the lecture or your mini lecture This is wonderful Me review is really an important part of learning and remembering It's getting students to elaborate on that new material, and its elaboration starts to move material from the working memory into long-term memory And, of course, that's what you want That's what real learning is, when you can remember something Okay Let's look at meta-assignments or assignment wrappers, and let's start with problem solving, math-based problem solving There are a couple of things you can for your students to help them make that leap from what you were saying in class or what the book said to actually being able to the problems, because, oftentimes, it's difficult for students to make that leap Hey, they understood what was in the book, they understood what you were saying, but they can't make the leap to doing the problems Get them to start on the problems in class in pairs where they think aloud their approach to the problem, they talk through the problem with a partner, and the partner helps them So they talk that through They're not necessarily doing the problem That's their homework Right? And then get them to start on a second problem where the pairs can switch roles Very useful to get students over that hump of being able to apply the material Another thing you can do, and there's research on this, you can get students to just put down on their homework their confidence level before they solved the problem and their confidence level after they solved the problem And, usually, this will help students notice when they are overconfident Because, you, yeah, I can that problem It looks just like some problem you worked out in class, but then they realize, no, it's a little bit different They can't transfer it They might work on the problem, they should work ©2014 Magna Publications of 23 Magna Online Seminar 23 How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses 10 of Linda Nilson, Ph.D on the problem Right? But they realize, hmm, I tend to get overconfident That's very important that they realize that And perhaps the most important thing you can have them is to learn from their mistakes, because normally what we is, okay, we get their homework, and we mark it wrong, we give it back to them, and they never revisit the problem again Get them to work with their mistakes, to an error analysis Why did they get it wrong? Where did they go wrong? And then give them a similar problem to solve So this way, they're learning by their mistakes Then there are meta-assignments for papers and projects, and these are just a number of things you can do, but, of course, it depends on the assignment as to what would be most appropriate And there are other alternatives as well So if they're doing a research process, or it's a writing process where they're doing a lot of planning in the writing, have them make a record of what they're doing Write down the steps they're taking Write down the strategies that they have, they're adopting to this assignment, the problems they're encountering along the line, and how they're overcoming those problems So they actually are writing down what they are observing themselves doing They're keeping track of the process If you're giving them a fuzzy problem to solve, let's say a case to debrief or a problem-based learning problem to solve, get them to write about their reasoning How did they decide to define the problem the way they did? How did they come up with alternative solutions, and how did they deem one better than the rest? What reasoning did they go through? So they're recording that Have them, at the end of the assignment, talk about the skills they gained or improved to the assignment, and when these skills might be useful to them in their lives and the future Have them evaluate their work, have them self-assess, look at their strengths and weaknesses, look at their progress, look at their achievements And, of course, this is a sort of a reflection that goes into portfolios So this might be part of students building a portfolio as well Have students paraphrase your feedback You might be surprised to find out what they're misunderstanding or what they're skipping But if you're worried about your students not reading your feedback, get them to paraphrase it They'll have to read it Right? And give them some sort of, you know, three points or whatever for doing it properly, three points or no points, right, pass/fail ©2014 Magna Publications 10 of 23 Magna Online Seminar 23 How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses 11 of Linda Nilson, Ph.D If they're going to revise a paper, have them write down their goals for the revision and their strategies for revising it, and that way they will approach the task in an organized way So this is a planning activity After the assignment, have them reflect on why it was valuable, what they learned, and what they're going to differently to the task better next time they have a similar assignment And this is a way to really motivate your students to think about what they were doing on the assignment Have them write advice for the next cohort of students Have them reflect on, okay, this is how they prepared, these are the strategies they used, these are the strategies that did work, these are the strategies that didn't, these are the mistakes you can make along the line, so avoid them, and this is the value of the assignment They will give good advice to the students who are coming up Now let's talk about meta-assignments for experiential learning like service learning, fieldwork, engagement, simulations, role plays And these are often fairly substantial assignments, so these you might be grading on a rubric, but it depends on how substantial the experiential learning experience actually is Okay One thing you can have them is to have them connect the experience to the course, the course content, the course outcomes, because oftentimes students will get carried away with the experience and not make that course connection unless they are told to so This is particularly true of service learning You can have them monitor and describe their self-regulated learning behaviors and activities in the course of the experiential learning experience You can have them explain their goals and strategies, and, you know, why they made the decisions that they did, how they responded to other players This would be perfect for their debriefing of a long simulation or a substantial role play, because it has to with how they responded to other players Or you could have them simply assess how well they achieved their goals, how well their strategies worked, and what they thought of their own performance, and then how they might better next time Let's a section activity now And this is an awareness-raising, oneminute paper And, again, you don't have to think about writing a paper You can write a sentence But in the chat, I'd like you to answer this prompt How does the material you've heard so far connect with or ©2014 Magna Publications 11 of 23 Magna Online Seminar 23 How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses 12 of Linda Nilson, Ph.D conflict with your prior knowledge about learning, or your beliefs or values about learning? So I'm going to give you a minute to that Rob Kelly: Okay We're starting to get some responses here Here's one It doesn't conflict, it connects with my own experiences of learning and with the behaviors of students I've seen while teaching Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Oh, that's wonderful You know, a lot of us learn to be self-regulated learners, and so it's easy for us to expect our students to be doing what we've been doing, but, really, we're the weird ones The fact that we got into academia means we learned a lot of learning techniques that our students didn't pick up along the way Rob Kelly: Okay Another one, similar It's consistent with what I've heard from others and experienced myself I like the idea of paraphrasing the instructor feedback It supports some things we are already doing It reminds us we need to more I learned about concept mapping in my master's program I love it, and I've used it throughout my academic and research career Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Excellent Well, teach it to your students They too will find it beneficial Rob Kelly: Okay This material is validating It is also giving very specific ideas about what we already know should work Supports my prior concepts and significantly adds to them Provides more clarification and structure Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Very good This is very, very happy news for me It's interesting it doesn't conflict with your prior knowledge or beliefs, because, I mean, it could You might've learned not doing these, not practicing these techniques, but they are really important for solid learning Okay Let us move along to exam wrappers And the first one can be so beneficial to students Students often don't know I don't know why I got the grade I got All right? Well, this makes them think about it, so they start to realize it So you have them answer these questions So you have them, okay, look at your, what you expected to get and what you actually got Okay What's the difference? How you feel about it? Well, how many hours did you study, was this, did it prove to be enough hours? How did you study? What were you doing while studying, were you just rereading? That won't work very well Or were you doing Read, Recall, Review? What were you doing? And then there is a, you know, why did you lose points? Go through your tests, a little error analysis? Are you seeing patterns as to where you were losing points? And then, finally, you have them set the goal for a ©2014 Magna Publications 12 of 23 Magna Online Seminar 23 How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses 13 of Linda Nilson, Ph.D next exam What are you going to differently? What are you going to to get your grade up? What you have you learned about learning from this exam? This is really, again, learning by your mistakes, making the most of an exam, turning it into a true learning experience There are other things you can as well Strongly recommend this one for mathematical problem solving disciplines, to have students, again, like with homework, re-solve in correct problems or a similar problem and then to write out the correct strategy They're learning by their mistakes You can have them simply write or revise a study game plan for the next test after they see the results from each test, or you can a test autopsy I love the term test autopsy And what it is is an error analysis, and there's model for one in your handout called the post-test analysis And as you can see, you've provided students with reasons for why they might have missed a certain question, carelessness, unfamiliar material, misinterpreted, didn't complete And, usually, students will see patterns in why they lost points, or they might see a pattern in the type of question that they were missing So this will give them tips as to what they have to work on But these are very, very helpful for students, and it can literally change a student's life when they start to analyze their errors And then there are regular and occasional activities you can throughout your course These aren't necessarily connected to class components or course components, they're just things that students will on a regular basis Some people really like knowledge surveys Knowledge surveys are very big in the geological sciences, for instance, since that's where the idea came from And so some faculty will knowledge surveys on, let's say, every unit, even every week before students are going to learn, just as students take their temperature to what they think they know now, and they the knowledge survey at the end of the unit or the end of the week, and then they assess what they are pretty confident in their ability to So the knowledge survey also will, in a sense, foreshadow, tell them what they're going to be learning as well, tell them, really, it's also like, almost like a list of their learning outcomes Then there's the weekly learning journal, or you can have them this in a discussion board as well This is an assignment that's really focusing in on self-regulated learning activities And if you have students this on a regular basis, and you tell them what to write about, they will be doing a whole range of self-regulated learning activities or assignments, reflections ©2014 Magna Publications 13 of 23 Magna Online Seminar 23 How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses 14 of Linda Nilson, Ph.D So you have them write about the effectiveness of their learning strategies in the past week, what strategies, new strategies they might've adopted, other ones they dropped, the value and utility of the material that they're learning, connections they've been making, insights into themselves they've been gaining, improvements or growths they've been noticing in themselves, changes in their values or belief systems or opinions or attitudes, and where these changes came from So students are literally observing themselves in the process of learning And then, finally, there are the end-of-the-course activities, and some of these will look familiar to you from the beginning-of-the-course activities But the first one stands alone as an end-of-course activity Students will the best job they can on this one It's a letter to the next cohort of students on how to succeed in your course, and the value of the course, what skills they wound up learning, the content that they learned, what was interesting, what they, things that they realized throughout the course that were beneficial to them And these are well worth passing on to that next cohort of students, at least the better ones, so get your students' permission to be able to pass these on, to post them on your learning management website or what have you, so they can read this And tell students, yeah, at least the next cohort, some of, we'll be reading at least some of these, so a good job Communicate well You could also have them pick up from their how I earned an A in this course from the first week by, at the end, having them a self-evaluation How I earned an A in this course or I didn't So they have to account for themselves as to why they didn't earn an A if they didn't earn an A Those who did earn an A, well, it's going to be easy for them to look at their original version of the essay, how I earned an A and say, let's see, yeah, I did these things, and I got an A Very easy assignment for them For those who have some true confessions, self-confessions, it will show them as to why they didn't earn an A So they didn't all the things that they knew would've gotten them an A Remember that reflective writing assignment at the beginning? You could have them repeat it Now what is their idea of science? Now how they see chemistry? You can, of course, say they need their original answers Then you could have them compare their original answers to what they would write now They can also correct the answers that they gave from the start of the course And I know faculty who used this as the final exam This is wonderful, because they, students get to look back and see, God, this is what I thought ©2014 Magna Publications 14 of 23 Magna Online Seminar 23 How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses 15 of Linda Nilson, Ph.D science was? And now I know better So never again will you get the complaint on your student rating comments I didn't learn anything in this course Oh, they know exactly what they learned And with a lot of these tools, with before and at the end of the course, they will learn what they learned But, anyway, one faculty member that I know who's an anthropologist, he gives the students seven statements that involve taking a stand Is this true or false, and why did you choose what you said? And then they looked and they repeat doing this at the end of the semester, this is their final exam, and now they have evidence to back up their decision, their stance on the particular issue So he is actually grading them on the amount of evidence they bring to bear from the course for their particular opinion If this is an opinion thing, a lot of it is, it's not really quite opinion, it started as an opinion, but now it's an actual positon And then, finally, you can repeat that knowledge survey and, again, have students compare their confidence with the material now versus when they started Final activity This is a review and evaluate one-minute paper And, again, this is something I want you to put into the chat Answer just one of these two questions, whatever intrigues you the most What is the most valuable or useful thing that you learned, or the most valuable and useful things that you learned in this online seminar, or what is or are the most surprising and unexpected idea or ideas that you encountered during this seminar? So, again, this is getting you to review the whole seminar, and it takes stock of different things that you learned So give you a minute to that Rob Kelly: Okay We're getting some responses here The most valuable thing I've taken from this are the specific strategies you've highlighted to use in the classroom Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Okay Good, good Rob Kelly: I like the active learning checks I also have a good idea for a final question on a final, comprehensive exam Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Excellent Rob Kelly: I had them refer to this course syllabus where I discussed success in the class and what it will take They were to post their own personal plans and three steps they would take to carry it out, most useful Now at the end of ©2014 Magna Publications 15 of 23 Magna Online Seminar 23 How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses 16 of Linda Nilson, Ph.D the course, we will revisit that plan and compare to their success as part of the ending post Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Excellent So you're already doing one of these activities, or actually two of them They're sort of like bookends And that's wonderful I'm sure none of your students ever say I didn't learn anything in your class Rob Kelly: A useful tool to help increase the student's own accountability for learning It was surprising to see a focus on individual rather than group learning Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Can I comment on that? Learning is ultimately, in my mind anyway and in psychology as well, an inside job Ultimately, you teach yourself Our job, as I see it, is to motivate the students to want to learn the material, get them excited about it, get them to realize, yes, it does have value, so we can help along those lines, and, hopefully, to put them in situations where it's difficult for them not to learn, but, ultimately, it's got to go to their brain They must reflect on the material, or it's not going to stay This is how, just talking really about how the brain works There's all kinds of stimulus out there that may or may not get into working memory or even into sensual memory to begin with Then it might get into working memory But then unless the student works with that material, rehearses it, elaborates on it Elaborating on it is simply thinking about it and thinking about, okay, how does this connect to what I already know? Does this sound familiar to me? I don't know that I understand it I'd better get it straight This is elaboration of the material This is how things get into long-term memory And there's no other person that can really help you that Yes, group work is very good for articulation in the learning process, for listening to yourself think and to listening to how other people, other students see a certain topic It's very important Very important for multimodal learning So you're reviewing the material again and again but in different ways Maybe you read it Then you a concept map of it Then you discuss it in class and small groups That's excellent Then it's yours But it's still something that you have to in your brain If you're not reading the material with focus, it's not happening That was not a mode that your brain was actually using to experience the material So, yeah, action's on the inside Rob Kelly: Okay Here's an interesting comment I was most surprised by the fact that student self-assessment of beliefs, prior knowledge, learning strategies, etc., actually helps in their learning process ©2014 Magna Publications 16 of 23 Magna Online Seminar 23 How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses 17 of Linda Nilson, Ph.D Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Yeah It does And it does in a couple of ways Again, they're conscious, if they had preconceptions that were misconceptions, they become conscious of that And so they're willing to see, yes, I have to let this go, because it doesn't fit with this new stuff that's coming in And that's critically important that they let go of the junk, they let go of the bad models, the faulty models to make room for the new and better ones out of your discipline So that's very important And could you say that question again or that comment again? Rob Kelly: I was most surprised by the fact that student self-assessment of beliefs, prior knowledge, or new strategies, etc., actually helps the learning process Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Yes It really, really does Yeah And, so it gets them to see where they were wrong It gets them to make the change There's also an emotional component to a lot of this, looking back on where you were in terms of like your values and beliefs and things like that, because that gets at the affect, and it makes, that makes a better imprint Learning is all about strengthening synapses, and emotion strengthens synapses, repetition strengthens synapses, but that's kind of repetition is of the Read, Recall, Review variety and the multi-modal variety In other words, you're using a different part of your brain, a different modality to look at the material again What are some other things? Rob Kelly: Surprised that there were no comments on the efficacy of these in improving student learning Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Ah, you mean like in terms of like evidence? Rob Kelly: Yeah Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Oh, okay, the evidence Right And that would, that would be another online seminar, because there is so much of it I would say that the best research that's out there, and by the way, it's in the bibliography, has been done by Zimmerman and his teams He was doing his research at City College in developmental courses, and he was doing it in math and also another part of his team did it in developmental writing The differences it made in these students, first of all, passing the course, for one thing, because he was doing it, you know, experimental, the right way, with three sections just going about their regular business, and then three sections, and this was over some time, doing it with, having selfregulated learning activities infused through it ©2014 Magna Publications 17 of 23 Magna Online Seminar 23 How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses 18 of Linda Nilson, Ph.D Anyway, so it was like doubling like the self-regulated work, learning with doubling the pass rate of the course It was more than doubling the pass rate of the, what they call a gateway exam, and this, the gateway exam allows you to take regular courses And then also increasing, greatly increasing the pass rate in the regular courses So, I mean, I could've shown you tables, I suppose of this, but it was just an issue of time It's, again, that's why I say it's as close to a magic bullet as you're going to get And, by the way, the students who need this the most, the students who are struggling, are those who tend to reap the greatest benefits, where you get the greatest gains in, well, in general exam performance, good course performance It made just as much difference in the writing class as well And you say, well, you know, if you'd see the math class, yeah, they were correcting their mistakes, and they were doing all these exercises, and they were doing some reflections on the exams and all that But in addition, in the writing, how they correct the writing? They were And then most of the tasks on the exams were paraphrase this or put this in terms to this audience And what they had to afterwards was look at what they wrote and reflect on what was wrong with it, and the task again, a similar task in sort of like, I guess you might call it an exam debriefing or exam follow up So they still had to correct their mistakes it was just of a different order This makes the hugest difference in these pass rates Rob Kelly: I like the self-evaluation of how I earned an A but would reformulate it to how I met my goal in order to take away possible negative effect Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Take away possible negative effect In other words, if they didn't get an A, you're afraid that they might find that very discouraging Well, that's the funny part of the emotional part of self-regulated learning, because at the end of a task, students can go either way in terms of their, when they selfassess, and they can see, okay, I didn't well, and now I'm discouraged, so I'm going to give up But the idea is to encourage students to see this is a learning experience too You don't have to perform perfectly, but you can learn from the experience So the thing is is that oftentimes those students will sell themselves short, and they won't what they need to even though they could what they need to So you don't want to necessarily make the students who got the poorer grades feel bad But you want them to face up to where they fell short, ©2014 Magna Publications 18 of 23 Magna Online Seminar 23 How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses 19 of Linda Nilson, Ph.D so they won't keep falling short Because some of them, they're not even sure what they didn't Anything else? Rob Kelly: Okay Well, let's end with one last comment Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Or questions, yeah Rob Kelly: The most useful thing I learned was the idea to have students reflect on their confidence level at the end and the beginning I work with adults returning to college, and their confidence is shaky, at best, as they start the class I think looking back on their success in the orientation class will boost that confidence as they move forward Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Yes Absolutely And that they would, yeah, funny thing about adult learners, that they are the most humble of them all They didn't fly through high school and not, probably did not in their particular generation, but, in any case, yes, they need deep encouragement Anything else that might be comments and/or questions Rob Kelly: We're coming to the end here We have a few questions left over, and I will forward them to you, and we will forward your responses to the entire audience Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: Thank you very much Rob Kelly: Okay Thank you, Linda Nilson Here's a slide of your book if you want to talk about that briefly Linda Nilson, Ph.D.: And there are plenty more activities and assignments in that book that you can choose from to build the self-regulated learning skills of your students, lots of them Rob Kelly: Okay Thank you all for joining us As I mentioned, there are a few leftover questions We will send those questions out to Linda, and she will answer those And we'll send the responses onto you Look for that in an e-mail from us Your campus has received an e-mail evaluation form from us Please fill it out and tell us what you think of today's program, and what programs you'd like to see in the future Complete information about our upcoming seminars is available at www.magnapubs.com Thanks again for joining us and have a great day ©2014 Magna Publications 19 of 23 Magna Online Seminar 23 How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses 20 of Linda Nilson, Ph.D Adobe Connect Chat Transcript with Additional Q&A Thank you to everyone who participated in our chat during the online seminar: "How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses." The following lists the Adobe Chat transcript, and answers to questions asked by the participants has been added How you see learning journal as a tool to improve SRL in particular in self-reflection? I am a lecturer in an Asian university and students whose first language is not English are reluctant to write learning journals Apart from awarding marks to so, what would be other alternatives? A learning journal is an excellent tool for fostering students’ SRL and self-reflection in particular IF you ask students to answer specifics questions that get them to self-reflect on their learning For instance: • What strategies have you been using to the readings? How effectiveness have your strategies been for helping you understanding and remember the reading material? • What changes in reading strategies have you tried recently, and how did they work out? • What value you see in the course material you are learning? • How does the material in this course connect to a) what you have been learning in other courses and b) what you know about the subject matter before the course? • What have you learned about yourself in this course? What have you learned about how you best learn? • What skills and abilities have you developed or improved in this course thus far? • Have you changed any of your values, beliefs, attitudes, or opinions as a result of learning the material in this course? How have they changed? What pushed you to change them? Tell your students that they will not be graded/marked on the basis of their English or the substance of their answers All you insist on is that they answer all the questions and write a reasonable response of at least XXX number of words, and they will earn a “pass” (so many points) on this basis A learning journal should be graded just pass/fail This should make your students feel more at easy writing in English Tarleton State University: Used this with my 4th graders! OU College of Nursing 4: This would work well with incoming nursing students who don't know the language Spelman College: SRL has three stages: before (planning and emotional readiness), during (self-monitoring of progress, space and emotion) and after (evaluation); l Grading (grade major assignments, pass/fail for low stakes assignments — all points for good-faith effort, zero points for all else); reflection activities (read, recall, ? ) (visual indications of learning (mind-maps and other visual charts) ©2014 Magna Publications 20 of 23 Magna Online Seminar 23 How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses 21 of Linda Nilson, Ph.D University of Cincinnati: are these responses, especially emotional responses, shared with others in the class? No Spelman College 3: It appears that many of the activities mentioned so far deal with students working outside of class Is this correct? Yes, up to that point, which was just before live lecture wrappers Rock Valley College: Do you find that students who are resistant (and just don't participate) become less resistant if you this multiple times? I have not heard of students being resistant to these activities If you encounter resistance, yes, it a few more times in class Otherwise, have students hand in their free-recall notes, minute papers, etc Do you get better participation if students this in pairs? You periodic free-recall in pairs, but no other live lecture wrapper that I described University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center: On the active listening checks: is it the 3rd time you used the exercise or the 3rd time you repeated the same points/topic? Answered above OU College of Nursing 4: At OU, we are working on flipping classrooms I can see where the Active Listening Check could be tweaked to use as a beginning of class quiz University of Cincinnati: are there special techniques that you use to engage the low performing student in self-reflection this is useful for her or him? No special techniques other than the ones I talked about Rock Valley College: It doesn't conflict It connects with my own experiences of learning, and with the behaviors of students I've seen while teaching Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences: It is consistent with what I have heard from others and experienced myself Daemen College: like the idea of paraphrasing the instructor's feedback! Ou Nursing: It supports some things we are already doing and reminds us we need to more! Marcia B: I learned about concept mapping in my master's program I love it and have used it throughout my academic and research career Blinn College 5: This information is validating It is also giving very specific ideas about what we already know should work Frank D Robbins: This material supports my prior concepts and significantly adds to them It provides more clarification and structure University of Michigan-Flint: We utilize many of these techniques in our classes at UMF NDSCS: This material strongly connects with how I like to learn and how I would like to see students learn OU College of Nursing 2: Learning is physiologically and emotionally based It is not just read and recall Thank you reminding me of this through the information you are providing Spelman College 3: I teach a blended course that focuses on student iterative learning - they need to review and recall information regularly Oklahoma State University: This material helps me think about how I can integrate selfregulated learning activities as a natural part of my teaching Spelman College 4: Not very confident, based on experience, of students asking inquiry based questions that would advance their understanding beyond procedural questions: "I'm just lost I don't know where to start?" "I shouldn't wait so long before I begin writing?" When students express their confusion so vaguely, ask them more specific questions: Do you understand (concept/operation/principle #1)? Do you understand (concept/operation/principle ©2014 Magna Publications 21 of 23 Magna Online Seminar 23 How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses 22 of Linda Nilson, Ph.D #2)? Okay, exactly which concept/operation/principle is not clear to you? Or ask students to define or describe pieces of the material until they can’t it Gini Calcerano: Activities seem like common sense We are thinking of ways to apply these activities in an all-online environment James Madison University: Some of the suggestions for minute papers, reflections would be good discussion questions for the portfolio class I teach Asking students to assess confidence level would be a great assessment tool for our orientation class both for the students and for program administrators Oklahoma State University 2: Reinforces approaches that are (currently) used to improve student learning in the classroom Marcia B: Will a transcript of the chat be made available to participants? UAMS: Can you speak to the balance between these techniques and the need to teach for the knowledge and skills of the course? Yes If you don’t teach your students how to learn effectively, they won’t acquire the knowledge and skills that you hope that they will in the course In addition, almost all SRL assignments and activities are related to the course material, so students are reviewing the knowledge and skills, practicing retrieving the material, and elaborating it into their long-term memory WVU Tech: It does not conflict with my beliefs however I not think freshman students would have knowledge of it and we need to teach it to students It could be difficult to use the assignments in very large classrooms In this case, you may want to confine students’ SRL activities to out-of-class assignments Nancy Kern, Magna Publications: Yes, you will receive a copy of the chat and a transcript of the seminar in a couple of weeks University of Alaska Anchorage: Do you ever ask students what you could have done differently? Absolutely, such as what they could have done differently on a paper or project or to prepare for an exam WVU Tech: These would be great concepts to develop in a freshman seminar course simply because most of us are teaching very specific courses with lots of material to cover in a limited time I agree with the response above about balancing this information with the course material Nancy Kern, Magna Publications: If Linda can't get to all of the questions and comments in the chat, she will answer them after the seminar and we'll send that to the person who signed up for the seminar Marcia B: WVU Tech person This is Marcia Contact me after the webinar Thanks Nancy Kern, Magna Publications: Marcia - please include your email address or if you both email me, I can put you in touch with each other nancy.kern@magnapubs.com Rock Valley College: The most valuable thing I've taken from this are the specific strategies you've high-lighted to use in the classroom OU College of Nursing 4: I like the active listening checks I also have a good idea for a final question on a final comprehensive exam next week! Thanks! Tarleton State University: I had them refer to the course syllabus where I discuss success in the class and what it will take they were to post their own person plan and three steps they would take to carry it out Most useful: NOW at the end of the course we will revisit that plan and compare to their success as part of the ending post OU College of Nursing 2: A useful tool to help increase the student's own accountability for learning ©2014 Magna Publications 22 of 23 Magna Online Seminar 23 How to Integrate Self-Regulated Learning into Your Courses 23 of Linda Nilson, Ph.D Dr Nilson addressed the following questions during the seminar: Eastern New Mexico University: It was surprising to see a focus on individual rather than group learning Tarleton State University 2: I like the wrappers and using them to help student reflect on their performance NDSCS: The most valuable thing to me is seeing so many practical examples of how to facilitate self-regulated learning! Marcia B:I appreciated the chat comment regarding using recall lists for nursing students swinburne university of technology sarawak campus: practical ideas and strategies that i can use for class Spelman College: I love the "How I Earned an A" essays at the start and the end, and the letter to the next cohort of students Frank D Robbins: The most useful thing is the need to incorporate multiple types of presentation along with multiple types of feedback and evaluation in the courses Eastern New Mexico University the idea regarding recalling and reviewing content Spelman College 3:I was most surprised by the fact that student self-assessment of beliefs, prior knowledge, learning strategies, etc actually helps in their learning process University of Cincinnati: surprised that there were no comments on the efficacy of these in improving student learning UAMS: most useful: repeat reflective writing Oklahoma State University: The most useful think I learned was that, through self-regulated learning strategies, I can help students reach the end of the term knowing for certain what they learned WVU Tech:the most useful things I learned that I will actually use in the classroom include: Reflective beginning and end of course paper, having students write down the threee concepts they learned each lecture, the letter to future students about how to succeed in this class Eastern New Mexico University:the large quantity of writing strategies Ou Nursing:integrating self regulation into our course work Blinn College 5:We like the specific activites, especially "How I earned and A" and the statements Ou Nursing:Love the Test Autopsy! UAMS:Most surprising : use of repeat reflective writing for the entire grading! Gini Calcerano:Like the self evaluation of How I Earned an A but would reformulate to "how I met my goal" in order to take away possible negative effect Marcia B:OU Nursing Thanks for reminding me yes, I like the Test Autopsy idea James Madison University:The most useful thing I learned was the idea to have students reflect on their confidence level at the end and the beginning I work with adults returning to college, and their confidence is shaky at best as they start the class I think looking back on their successes in the orientation class will boost that confidence as they move forward ©2014 Magna Publications 23 of 23