In this article, I will share to you the student engagement technique (SET) I applied in my class. The SET is called ‘analytics team’ (Barkely, 2010) which is a collaborative learning activity. In this SET, a group of 5 students explore a material (article, case, video, lecture, etc.), analyze it through the guide questions, and share their findings in written or oral format to the entire class. Each member of the group has a specific role which includes being a proponent, critic, example-giver, summarizer, and questioner.
I had the opportunity to use the ‘analytics team’ in the psychological assessment course that I am teaching. To fit into my class, ‘analytics team’ was structured for a session with 4 hours and 30 minutes to spend. I divided ‘analytic teams’ into 3 phases which are all conducted online (see Appendix A for the activity handout). Phase 1 was a 90-minute individual reading of a module related to personality testing (contents: theories of personality, personality tests, and issues in personality testing) to prepare each student for the small group discussion. To facilitate reflection during phase 1, students provided five-sentence responses to each question: 1) What personality theory or perspective are you most interested in? Why? 2) What personality test are you most interested in? Why? 3) What personality tests have you already taken? If you were to administer those tests, what could have been done better?
Phase 2 was the ‘analytics team proper’ wherein each team, for 45 minutes, analyzed a person’s life story. The team had to include in the analysis the following 5 points: 1) highlight of the main points that can help understand the person’s personality, 2) description of the person’s personality anchored on a specific personality theory or perspective, 3) suggest at least 2 personality tests to assess the person, 4) two advantages and two disadvantages of using the suggested personality test, 5) other suggestions to substantiate the psychological assessment. In the context of psychological assessment, the specific roles include the 1) assessor (highlights main points appropriate to understand the person’s personality; works closely with the summarizer), 2) theorist (makes sense of the person’s personality), 3) test administrator (selects the best personality tests to administer), 4) evaluator (presents the positive and negative sides of the points discussed in each question), 5) summarizer (summarizes main points in the discussion; works closely with the assessor).
Phase 3 was the presentation of findings to the entire class by discussing the 5 analysis points. The team had a choice to have one representative as presenter or all members as presenters. After 10 minutes of presentation per team, the teacher provided clarifications, feedback, and inputs to substantiate the presentation. Students were also encouraged to ask questions throughout the 3 phases.
What’s interesting in this SET?
One of the course outcomes for psychological assessment is for the students to evaluate the fitness of psychological tests in understanding and predicting human behaviors in various contexts and settings. ‘Analytics team’ is a practice for students to engage in critical thinking by examining the theories and psychological tests and how these make sense and fit to the case at hand. It also prepares the students for their final requirement which is a psychological assessment report. Finally, this SET aligns with my teaching philosophy on scaffolding the student to be a self-directed learner – they exercise their autonomy in dealing with the case and I support the learning process through providing feedback to their outputs and adding inputs to substantiate what they learned. As a point of improvement, it is ideal that the rubrics in assessing the students’ outputs are explicitly presented. In the future, I will be referring to the intellectual standards in critical thinking (Elder & Paul, 2013; Paul & Elder, 2013) as my bases for assessing the outputs for this SET. I will also be making use of the recorded session as an example for future students to improve on.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using this SET?
I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of ‘analytics team’ based on the literature and on my experience in implementing it in my own class.
In terms of what is found in the literature, the disadvantages include sociocultural and technological limitations. First, there are sociocultural influences that limit small group discussion and two of these are language barrier and material comprehension (DeWaelsche, 2015). Hence, although participation is increased through providing the members specific tasks during the group discussion, I have to make sure that the members of the group are instructed to communicate in a language that they are all familiar with. Moreover, I have to make sure that the students have basic understanding of the materials to which they will base their analysis – I addressed this limitation by being available online throughout the phases to respond to their questions and concerns.
Second, because this SET was conducted online, there was the challenge of fostering teacher-student and peer relationships throughout the small group and class discussions especially with a large cohort (Henman, Herbert, & James, 2018). I have to make sure then that the students have already spent a considerable amount of time interacting with the teacher and the fellow students so as to make the atmosphere of the activity light and welcoming. We have been interacting with the class since the second week of September, so it is safe to say that we have already spent enough time interacting with each other.
In the actual implementation, some groups had less than 5 members or more than 5 members, so assignment of roles were not fairly distributed. There was a member who assumed 2 roles and there were 2 members who assumed only one role. Nevertheless, all group members contributed substantially to the discussion with the help of their specific roles. It is also better to assign the sequence of presenters in phase 3. This lessens the time to wait for a specific group to volunteer, and also helps organize the presentation all throughout.
On a positive note, ‘analytics team’ as a critical thinking activity empowers the students through contributing their ideas in response to a problem situation (Henman et al., 2018). This reinforces the drive for students to be self-directed learners and to go beyond the basic materials in order to come up with a better analysis of the case. Moreover, this socially interactive SET offers an opportunity for partnership among the students, and between the students and the teacher by working together on a case and providing feedback from time to time (see engagement framework of Kahu & Nelson, 2017).
In the actual implementation, I gave the students a choice as to what specific role they want to take part in phase 2. Most of them chose a role which aligned with their skills, and they committed to that role. For example, I noticed that the summarizer was a student who was more engaged through writing whereas the assessor was a student who was more comfortable speaking. With these specific roles, students were able to contribute to the best of their ability and were also able to interact with me by asking clear questions.
When using this SET, what is the role of the student? the instructor?
Throughout the 3 phases, the emphasis is on the role of the student as a self-directed learner and the role of a teacher as a facilitator. The teacher acts as a facilitator by responding promptly to the questions and concerns of the student regarding the materials and the activity, clarifies confusion and difficulty, substantiates the discussion with additional information, and provides feedback to the outputs.
The student, as a self-directed learner, exercises autonomy in learning the material especially in the first phase. During phase 2, all students practice their analytic and critical thinking skills by examining the life story of an assigned person and propose appropriate psychological assessment. In phase 3, students become the persuader in a sense that they have to exercise their communication skills to present the adequacy of their proposed psychological assessment in understanding a specific person.
References
Barkley, E. F. (2010). Student engagement techniques: A handbook for college faculty. John Wiley & Sons.
DeWaelsche, S. A. (2015). Critical thinking, questioning and student engagement in Korean university English courses. Linguistics and Education, 32, 131-147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2015.10.003
Elder, L., & Paul, R. (2013). Critical thinking: intellectual standards essential to reasoning well within every domain of thought. Journal of Developmental Education, 36(3), 34-35. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1067273.pdf
Henman, J., Herbert, S., & James, R. (2018). Developing student engagement as a stepping-stone to partnership: Teaching and learning in critical thinking. Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education, 1(25), 12. https://repository.brynmawr.edu/tlthe/vol1/iss25/12
Kahu, E. & Nelson, K. (2017). Student engagement in the educational interface: Understanding the mechanisms of student success. Higher Education Research and Development, 37(1), 58-71. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1344197
Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2013). Critical thinking: Intellectual standards essential to reasoning well within every domain of human thought, part two. Journal of Developmental Education, 37(1), 32. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1067269.pdf
Acknowledgment: My sincere gratitude to Glenn Galy, PhD for the feedback of the previous version of this article.
flowjame 