What is the theory of small teaching?
The theory of ‘small teaching’ comes to us from James Lang (2016). He asserts that small teaching is the minor changes to course design, assessment structure, or communication with students that impact student engagement, motivation, and achievement. His book Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning organizes these small changes into three categories – knowledge, understanding, and inspiration. We can also look at the small changes as techniques that can be implemented into individual class sessions at the beginning (in the first fifteen minutes), in the middle, or at the end (in the last fifteen minutes). This series of posts will share small teaching techniques to implement in these sections of a course session – the beginning, middle, and end. Below we will discuss different techniques to use at the end of a class session or the last fifteen minutes. Click here to see the first post on techniques to implement in the first fifteen minutes and here for the techniques shared to implement in the middle of a class session.
The Last Fifteen Minutes
The last fifteen minutes are a prime opportunity to enhance student learning by incorporating a small teaching technique. When students are allowed to leave class without closing their thinking on the day’s material, they are less likely to retain that material. It can be tempting to continue to teach new content into the final minutes of class, but there are several small teaching strategies that can be used in the final fifteen minutes to enhance student learning.
Connecting
In order to help students solidify learning at the end of a class session, faculty can prompt them to make connections. Connecting asks students to provide one or two examples of how the material connects to other class sessions, larger units, courses in their curriculum, current events, or real world application. Students can be asked to share these connections with a short minute paper or through an online submission. Asking the students to make connections between the class material and things of relevance to them can facilitate transfer of learning, an often forgotten aspect of teaching. Perkins (2009) argues that making connections and facilitation of transfer must be an intentional aspect of teaching in order to make the most of student learning.
Summarizing
Another small teaching technique is summarizing. At the end of class, faculty can ask students to write a 3-5 sentence summary of the class session. This helps students begin to put the day’s learning in their own words by asking them to write a short paragraph summarizing that day’s material. This technique can help with later retrieval of information for students, which was shown by Karpicke and Blunt (2011) in their study. They found that when students were tested on material, they were better able to recall that material in future re-tests. While the summary technique may not be a formal multiple choice test, it can be helpful in student recall of information in the future.
Muddiest Point
Last but not least, an important small teaching technique to use in the final fifteen minutes of class is the muddiest point. In this technique, faculty ask students to write the one item or topic that they feel is the most confusing for them at this point. This helps students to reflect on their learning progress by asking them to list the muddiest points of the day’s lesson, which the faculty can then encourage them to to revisit in their next study session or stop by their office to discuss in more detail. The muddiest point can also inform instruction in the next class session if there is a pattern in student responses. Faculty can also post supplemental materials to Canvas or the learning management system if there are patterns in student responses.
To assess or not assess?
Like the small teaching techniques presented in the first and second posts, student responses can be collected or not collected. For the techniques discussed above, it is very beneficial to collect student responses. If students perceive this small teaching technique to be ‘optional’ they may rush out the door to leave class early before fully engaging in the activity. Using the chat feature in Zoom or a platform like Top Hat to collect student responses to these activities can serve as an attendance tracker. Informally collecting student responses when utilizing these small teaching techniques are also very useful to the instructor in that they provide a gauge of student understanding of material, which can inform future instructional decisions.
This post focused on small teaching techniques to implement in the final fifteen minutes of class and is part of a series of posts related to small teaching techniques to implement in the beginning, middle, and end of class. For more information about small teaching, see the resources listed below. If you would like to discuss ways to incorporate these ideas into your teaching, make an appointment with an Instructional Designer in the Center for Teaching and eLearning.
Looking for more information?
If you would like to learn more about Lang’s concept of small teaching, there are several resources available. Consider requesting his book Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning from the library. He also visited University Park in January 2020. The recordings of his presentations are available on the MediaSite Library.
Presentation 1: Small Teaching: From Minor Changes to Major Learning
Presentation 2: Teaching Distracted Minds
Instructional Designer, Dani McCauley, also presented a one hour webinar on small teaching techniques which was hosted by the Schreyer Institute of Teaching Excellence.
References
Karpicke, J. D., & Blunt, J. R. (2011). Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), 331(6018), 772-775. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1199327
Lang, J.M. (2015, November 15). Small changes in teaching: The minutes before class. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved February 11, 2021, from https://www.chronicle.com/article/small-changes-in-teaching-the-minutes-before-class/
Lang, J. M. (2016). Small teaching: Everyday lessons from the science of learning. Jossey-Bass.
Lang, J. (2020). Small teaching: From minor changes to major learning [Video]. https://live.libraries.psu.edu/Mediasite/Play/f169bddf458a455cae07850b5c8e14b21d?catalog=8376d4b24dd1457ea3bfe4cf9163feda21
Lang, J. (2020). Teaching distracted minds [Video]. https://live.libraries.psu.edu/Mediasite/Play/77c23163c9a24f31851fb4c0e74604341d?catalog=8376d4b24dd1457ea3bfe4cf9163feda21
Perkins, D. (2009). Making learning whole. Jossey-Bass.
