Johanne Smith-Nielsen

Abstract

Unprepared and inactive students: what can we do about it?

Background. Across university disciplines it is not unusual that students do not complete the assigned reading prior to lectures or classroom teaching. This is not only be frustrating for the teacher who has prepared in-class activities that require knowledge from the assigned literature. More importantly, it limits student learning because unprepared students tend to engage less in in-class activities and it limits the students in terms of critically discussing the literature on an adequate academic level.

In this TLHE project, this issue was addressed by changing the requirements for passing a seminar course for MA psychology students: to pass the course, 24 hours before to each class, the students were to hand in a short written assignment based on the assigned readings for the class. In addition, the teacher limited traditional lecturing to a minimum and increased in-class activities that required knowledge gained from the literature.

Methods. Survey questions (midway and by the end of the term) and a focus group interview was used to investigate the effect of the changed format.

Results. The changed format increased the time the students spent on individual processing of the material prior to classes. Based on the data, it is argued that in turn, this caused an increase in student engagement in class as well as increased learning. At the same time, the data indicated that multiple factors affect time spent on reading and student engagement. These were 1)in-class activities where gained knowledge is applied, 2)tight structuring of activities in class; 3)use of practice examples in group work; 4)activation and variation; 5)atmosphere in the classroom; 6)presentation of next week’s topic and key points; 7)interest in the subject (students); 8)high expectations & engagement (teacher). An unexpected finding was that the changed format positively affected the students’ academic reading strategies in terms of more efficient, yet more focused and thorough reading. Finally, it is discussed whether the rather tight structure of the format (in and out of class) could be a barrier for the development of independence and self-regulated learning strategies.

Read the project here