The old adage suggests, “You’ll have never have a second chance to make a first impression.” This is true in our interactions with others, but also with our students. Nothing sets the tone for a new semester like the first day of class. Blogger Michael Hyatt refers to making a positive impression as creating a “wow experience.”  While not an educator, I think the way he characterizes “wow” can be really instructive for us.

For Hyatt, creating a “wow” experience begins with first determining the specific expectations a customer (or student, in this case) brings to the experience. From there, you determine what both meeting and failing to meet those expectations looks like. With these in mind, think about what it would mean and look like to exceed their expectations.
 
Let's consider how we might create a “wow” experience for our students on the first day of class. First, though, let’s consider a typical first day.
 
What is a typical first day like?
On the first day of class, students are typically nervous, unsure or overwhelmed. If they registered for your course as an elective, they really have no idea what to expect other than the short blurb in the course description and what they hear through the proverbial grapevine. If they are a major in your department, they might have additional anxiety related to the pressure of doing well in their major course of study as well as to impress you as a potential mentor or advisor. They also might feel overwhelmed as they receive syllabi from all the courses and may be wondering how in the world they will get all the work done over the course of the semester.
 
So what do these students typically experience? Speaking for myself, I know that I’ve been known to go over the syllabus in painstaking detail. I’ve also gone to great lengths to explain my rationale for the course, why I structured assignments the way I did, research I’ve conducted, and more not-so-exciting activities. When I shift perspective and put myself in their shoes, I have a really different view of how I have approached the first day. It’s not exactly the kind of “wow” experience I’d like to create.
 
How might we “wow” our students instead?
This was essentially the question my colleague Lindy Johnson and I posed to our school’s faculty in our opening faculty retreat. Specifically, we asked small groups the following three prompts:

1. What specific expectations does a typical student bring to the first day of class?  What might they be feeling and thinking?
2. What does failing to meet students’ expectations for this experience look like?
3. What does exceeding students expectations for the first day look like?  How might you “wow” students to set the stage for a meaningful and engaging semester?

 
At the conclusion of this simple, 15-minute empathy exercise, our colleagues had some amazing ideas. Perhaps some of these ideas will inspire you as they did us…

• Begin class by introducing a controversial case to begin meaningful discussion and engagement right away.
• In a course focused on teaching reading, students develop timelines of books that have been very important in their lives and then share with a group. This helps to kindle the passion for reading and inspires students.
• Begin class with common false assumptions or misconceptions related to the focus for the class. This captures students’ curiosity and draws them in.
• Students begin by sharing in small groups the experiences in their lives that brought them to where they are today. The instructor then bridges this to encourage them to think about how the course might help them in future efforts.
• Because many students have anxiety related to courses, one instructor plans to encourage them to name and share their concerns about the course. The instructor can then tie back to these concerns to illustrate how the course will help them alleviate their fears.

 Sometimes developing empathy for our students can lead to simple or substantial shifts in our practice. Like a lot of elements of teaching, it’s important to remember that even small shifts in our practice to enhance the student experience can have a significant impact.
 
Armed with this new perspective and hopefully inspired by these new ideas, how might you “wow” your students on the first day of class?

The following article is a guest post from Barbi Honeycutt, a speaker, scholar, and author. Dr. Honeycutt is the founder of FLIP It Consulting in Raleigh, NC, and an adjunct professor at North Carolina State University. She facilitates workshops, shares strategies, and creates resources to support educators who want to develop learning environments that involve students, increase engagement, and improve learning. You can connect with Barbi at flipitconsulting.com & @barbihoneycutt

For the past five years, the “flipped classroom” model has dominated conversations in all areas of education. From K-12 classrooms to college lecture halls to corporate training programs, educators continue to experiment with the design and analyze the results to determine if the approach actually improves student learning and engagement. Now as more educators are becoming well versed in the approach and have started implementing flipped strategies in their courses, they are beginning to ask more questions and share their experiences. Here are the top three most frequently asked questions I hear from faculty about the flipped classroom model in higher education:
 
1. What is the flipped classroom?
This is probably the most controversial question. Depending on where you look and who you talk to, you will find different definitions, models, and interpretations of what a flipped classroom is. My mission for the past five years has been to encourage us to expand what we mean by “flipped” classrooms. Most of the discussions focus on the use of videos which students watch before class. However, many of us in higher education have pushed against this limited definition. There’s more to student engagement than watching videos of lectures. And a video of a lecture is still a lecture. Even with more innovative and engaging videos, most educators are expanding on their interpretations of what it means to flip a classroom. The model was first introduced as “inverted” instruction by Lage, Platt, and Treglia in the Journal of Economic Education in 2000. Many educators who are using the flipped classroom model may not be familiar with this history, and I encourage you to take a look at that article for some of the original thinking as this idea was beginning to take shape.

In my work, the FLIP means to “Focus on your Learners by Involving them in the Process.” It’s actually based on my teaching philosophy and my research. I have developed a 4-part framework which includes the integration of student development, instructional design, learning environment research, and faculty development. All of these components are essential to creating a successful learning experience.
In this framework, the pre-class work focuses on the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and the in-class work focuses on the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. I show educators how to design active learning strategies to involve students in the process of applying, analyzing, and creating knowledge during class time.
 
2. How do you encourage students to actually DO the pre-class homework and come to class prepared and ready to participate?
This is the number one most frequently asked question!  It’s not a unique problem to flipped classrooms since we have always assigned homework and expected our students to come to class prepared. But since the flipped classroom relies heavily on the pre-class work for student engagement, more faculty members want to know how to encourage students to actually DO it.  I recently wrote two articles to help address this question, and I approached them from different perspectives in an effort to start analyzing how we can address this challenge. In the recent Faculty Focus article, I address the challenge from the perspective of holding students accountable and making the learning visible. In a separate blog post titled 3 Strategies to Encourage Students to Complete the Pre-Class Work in the Flipped Classroom, I addressed the question from the perspective of student motivation. Using Dan Pink’s AMP model as a framework, I encourage you to take a closer look at how your pre-class work is designed.
 
The main point is students have to know their pre-class work is valued, relevant, and not “busy” work. Once you meet that expectation and they see how their work contributes to their success in the classroom, they are more likely to do the work and not get left behind when their peers are prepared.  And peer pressure can be a strong motivator too!
 
3. What can I do about student resistance? What if they still don’t do the work or participate?
This is the second most frequently asked question!  I don’t know if I’ve ever talked with a faculty member who had 100% of the students 100% prepared and 100% engaged all of the time in every class. Students have “off” days just like we do, and sometimes life gets in the way of the best laid plans.  However, the first place to start is to understand where the resistance might be coming from.  The college classroom can be a scary and intimidating place for some students. And when we add a new way of learning on top of that stress, some students may shut down or choose to disengage. My favorite resource for addressing this challenge was written by one of my teaching mentors, Dr. Richard Felder. His work on the intersection between the active learning classroom and the stages of grief is fascinating, and I wrote an article titled 5 Ways to Address Student Resistance in the Flipped Classroom based on his findings. It might be a helpful place to start as you think about who your students are, where they are coming from, and what prior experiences might be influencing their behavior. I always say, “Support your students in flipped and active learning classrooms. Just as you are learning how to teach in this way, they are learning how to learn in this way.”

Please post your comments below.

For almost ten years, my children have attended a Montessori school. When we enrolled them, we hadn’t had any prior experience with the Montessori method. All we really knew was that the approach emphasized hands-on learning and a philosophy that allowed kids to work and grow at their own pace. What I’ve realized over these last ten years is that one of the primary benefits of the Montessori method is the personalized approach to learning that it affords to the students.
 
Increasingly, public charter schools and “regular” K-12 public schools are making efforts to personalize learning for their students. There are a variety of different efforts to provide students with more choice – in the courses they select, the delivery model, the location of classes, time of day, and dual enrollment in community college courses. Although it can be very difficult from a logistical perspective, many schools are exploring efforts to allow students to work at their own pace, base course completion on mastering competencies, and even build customized programs of study. Not exactly a “School of One,” but certainly a move in that direction.
 
Defining personalized learning
There are a number of ways to define personalized learning. I like the definition that emerged from a large-scale research project funding the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and conducted by the RAND Corporation. Their definition of personalized learning, summarized on pages 2-3, is characterized by three elements:

• "Systems and approaches that accelerate and deepen student learning by tailoring instruction to each student’s individual needs, skills and interests.
• A variety of rich learning experiences that collectively prepare students for success in the college and career of their choice.
• Teachers’ integral role in student learning: designing and managing the learning environment, leading instruction, and providing students with expert guidance and support to help them take increasing ownership of their learning.”

The framework for implementation includes the development of learner profiles, personal learning paths, competency-based progression, flexible learning environments, and emphasis on college and career readiness. You might be thinking that these examples and efforts are limited to K-12 schools. Obviously, the context is very different from higher education. I would suggest, though, that there is a great deal that colleges and universities can learn about personalized learning from our K-12 colleagues, particularly in terms of learner profiles and personal learning paths.
 
Learner profiles
Learner profiles, “seek to give teachers an up-to-date record that provides a deep understanding of each student’s individual strengths, needs, motivations, progress, and goals to help inform his or her learning” (p. 3). In smaller courses, it can be very rewarding and productive to take the time and make the effort to understand students’ prior experience with the course content, their motivations, and their individual strengths, weaknesses, and interests. One could even challenge students to develop individualized learning goals within the parameters of the course syllabus.
 
With larger courses – all the way up to large lecture classes – we can create a Web survey in the beginning of the course. In this way, we can glean information from the students that would enable you to group students with similar interests in terms of course topics that might inform research or project groups. We might also ask students about prior experience with the content to create discussion sections with students at similar levels. Finally, we could even ask students to take the Myers-Briggs assessment for personality type to form effective small groups for class activities.
 
The development of a learner profile can be particularly important in working with graduate students. The more that we can get to know them and customize a student’s program of studies, research and writing experiences, the more successful students will be. This kind of flexibility will help them to engage more fully and deeply in their study.
 
Personal learning paths
With personal learning paths, “students are able to make choices about the content or structure of learning and the school uses a variety of instructional approaches and curriculum materials to meet the learning needs of all students” (p. 3). I talked about this in relation to personalizing the learning experience for students. In this post, I explored options for giving students choices in terms of content, process, and product.
 
One thing that can be very important with providing personal learning paths for students that I haven’t touched on is the importance of mentoring and advising. We can build in a great deal of variability that may appeal to different students. The advantage in providing individual academic support is that we can help students to make better, more effective choices for their learning. We can also develop understandings that may inform additional personalization opportunities in our courses.
 
This consultation and support can take a variety of forms. We can offer face-to-face and/or virtual office hours (Google Hangouts work great for this). We can offer small group mentoring sessions for interested students. We can even go so far as to work with students to design individual learning contracts – an approach that is particularly effective with adult learners.
 
Personalized learning provides a number of benefits for students, including a more metacognitive orientation and developing the habits of mind for independent learning. With some effort to develop learner profiles of our students and to support them in navigating personal learning paths, we can help students maximize their learning experience.

What efforts have you made to personalize learning in your courses?
Please post your comments below.

Of all of the 21st century skills being actively promoted these days, perhaps none are both as important and difficult to develop as collaboration. It’s hard to imagine any career or scholarly study that doesn’t require, or at least, benefit from collaboration. Even a career like teaching, which is often viewed as a rather solitary endeavor, increasingly requires team-based planning, assessment, and coordination. Fortunately, considerable scholarship on teaching and learning explores strategies to encourage collaboration in our courses.
 
Recently, I read an article on Faculty Focus by Brigitte Vittrup on how to improve group work. In the article, she argues that typically college students resist group work primarily because of uneven contributions by group members (or, “social loafing”). Despite this resistance, research suggests a number of benefits for this kind of work. She concludes by encouraging faculty to explain the benefits for students to buy in to the process. While certainly important, I would add that there are certain elements we can consider in our planning that can maximize the benefits and help to minimize some legitimate student concerns.
 
How can we gauge and increase the level of collaboration in our courses?
As I’ve written previously, the 21st Century Learning Design framework from ITL Research offers great insight into effectively integrating 21st century skills in the classroom. The 21CLD framework not only offers six skills to consider (including collaboration), they also offer insight into different levels of their integration into learning activity design in the form of rubrics. When we look at the four levels of collaboration in the 21CLD rubric, we can gain some insight into how to increase the quality of collaboration in our courses.
 
Shared responsibility
To make sure that each member contributes to the group effort, faculty can ensure that group members have shared responsibility in their work together. This can often take the form of clearly defined roles in the group. These individual roles distribute the tasks and provide each member with a unique contribution with the larger group effort. For example, one student might have the task of summarizing multiple data sources, while another’s job might be to identify themes across sources. The group can then only be successful when each member contributes. These individual roles also enable the instructor to assess the work collectively and individually.
 
Make substantive decisions together
If we were to stop at ensuring that students have shared responsibility, we may have achieved cooperative learning. In this model students essentially divide the workload. To me at least, this is different than students working closely together in a collaborative way. To move to a more collaborative experience, we can amplify the group dynamic when we require group members to make substantive decisions together. Rather than providing all the parameters of a task or project for the students, we can leave some choices up to the group. These decisions can take the form of deciding on their own process, developing a group contract, or determining how they might present their work. Not only does this increase personalization and student engagement, it also requires the group to come together to create and execute a shared vision of the work. 
 
Student work is interdependent
Even with encouraging individual responsibility and making substantive decisions together, some students may still be less engaged than their peers. To minimize this “social loafing,” faculty can make sure that group members’ contributions are interdependent. This can be accomplished by ensuring that member roles each contribute a unique perspective or point of view on the project. For example, if a portion of the project would encourage them to explore multiple perspectives on an issue or to consider multiple possible solutions to a problem, the instructor could build in an experience where students review and comment on each other’s work to create a group consensus. Drawing on a design thinking experience I recently wrote about, group members could engage in a process of ranking and developing themes in their work. When students must thoughtfully bring their own ideas to the table and simultaneously draw on the work of their peers, their contributions become interdependent.
 
Parting thoughts
Not every group project or task would need to include all of these elements. Particularly with a short-term experience, it may not be practical to do so. What we can say, though, is that the more of these elements are present, the greater the level of collaboration is involved. If substantive collaboration is one of our key learning goals for an experience, it can be helpful to consider these different elements in the design.
 
In assessing collaborative work, I think it’s important to include some mix of group and individual metrics. I think it is important to have some portion of the grade be based on each individual’s contribution to the group. This increases personal responsibility and accountability that may also promote group cohesion. A wiki is a great tool for the instructor to track individual contributions to a group document (I describe this here). This can also be augmented by a brief questionnaire in which each group member anonymously rates the contributions of each member.
 
I’m also a believer, however, in assigning a portion of the grade to the cumulative efforts of the group. After all, the end product should provide at least some measure of how well the group worked together.  This provides a reward structure for those groups that make the effort and put the time in to generate work that is greater than the sum of its parts.
 
Collaborative work in the classroom is not easy. However, when we mindfully design the experience to require students to share responsibility, make substantive decisions together, and work interdependently, we can take comfort in the fact that we are engaging them in the kinds of work that allow them to contribute to their careers, community and world beyond the classroom.

How do you encourage and structure collaboration in your courses?
Please post your comments below.   

Recently, there has been a great deal of discussion about re-imagining the American high school. There is widespread agreement that the current model for secondary education does not serve students well in terms of engagement, authenticity, and preparation for college or careers. This growing focus was most recently in the spotlight with the White House Summit on Next Generation High Schools. It is quite a challenge, however, to navigate the myriad contextual, policy and political challenges in significantly shifting the focus of a century-old institution like high school. The documentary Most Likely to Succeed provides one vision for how we might reconceptualize schools to provide greater personalization of learning, problem- and project-based learning opportunities, and models for creative and innovative thinking. 

For several months, a group of us has engaged in this “grand challenge” with a local high school. Faculty members from William & Mary and administrators, faculty and staff from the local school and division have been working together to form a clear vision and pathway to making this shift. We had a number of productive meetings to discuss the issues, but we realized that we needed a process to help move from conversation to action. With this in mind, we recently took part in a design thinking boot camp under the leadership of William & Mary Mason School of Business professor Graham Henshaw in the Jim and Bobbie Ukrop Innovation and Design Studio. In the past, I interviewed Michael Luchs from the business school on design thinking. I thought that describing the boot camp process might provide an interesting view of this process in action as a strategy to help a diverse group solve a complex and ill-defined problem. 
 
The process described below uses Luch’s model of design thinking. There are many other approaches as well. The d.school at Stanford, IDEO and the Nueva School all offer models that share some steps but approach the process differently. I’d encourage you to compare and contrast the different models.
 
The Boot camp
Design thinking is a process that can be used in a variety of ways, from short-duration problem solving sessions to long-term, multi-phase projects. The example I describe here was a “boot camp” or intensive approach designed to both build familiarity with design thinking and to begin the process for developing a vision for a new kind of high school. The boot camp included approximately 30 participants (high school and college faculty, administrators, counselors, and a school board member) and lasted about five hours. We began with a fun challenge designed to illustrate all the steps of the design thinking process and also served to help the participants get to know each other and get the creative juices flowing. Then, we shifted to the primary focus of developing a vision for high school.
 
Discover
One of the key tenets of design thinking is to develop empathy for the stakeholders of the challenge, problem or opportunity you hope to address. We began this process of discovery by conducting focus group interviews with our primary stakeholders - current high school students. We conducted these interviews and summarized the themes as a way to understand the perspective of high school students. This was just the beginning of this phase, however, as we will systematically widen the circle of stakeholders in search of feedback and ideas as the process unfolds.
 
Define
Informed with the students’ perspectives, we next shifted to defining the problem. We wanted to frame the problem around the needs of our stakeholders and also to identify why the problem was important. The key at this step is to be as specific and concrete as possible. Through an iterative process of working individually, then in small groups, we honed in on a problem statement that would frame our work for the remainder of the boot camp. In this case, we identified the problem in this way: "How might we create opportunities for students to solve real problems, engage with knowledge that matters in the world, and learn from each other and people in their community?"
 
Create
In the Create phase, our goal was to generate as many possible solutions to the problem as possible. The goal was for volume rather than focusing on the most practical or realistic approaches. In our small groups, we each announced ideas one at a time and posted them on a large group white board with sticky notes. In some cases the ideas were framed as single words, phrases, or even pictures/diagrams. After a period of time, we looked for themes, patterns and connections among the ideas, rearranging the sticky notes as needed. We jotted notes on the white board to make the connections or relationships between ideas clear. At the end of this process, each group voted on the most promising potential solution. The groups then shared these ideas and began to discuss common themes among the approaches.
 
At this point, we concluded the boot camp, but the design thinking work will continue. We are currently involved in the development of one or more prototype designs grounded in the solutions we identified in the boot camp. These are not meant to be fully fleshed-out concepts, but rather just enough of a vision to elicit feedback from the stakeholders. We will then circle back to the Discover phase with different stakeholders to get feedback on these prototypes. This may cause us to revisit and revise the problem statement as we better understand the challenge. We will engage in multiple rounds of this process until we have a well-developed prototype. At that point, we will shift to the final phase.

Evaluate
In this phase, we will develop a more formal, multi-faceted vision and plan for redesigning the high school experience. Again, we will elicit feedback from a range of stakeholders (students, parents, teachers, community members, etc.). We will identify strengths of the approach, possible challenges, questions and suggestions. Drawing on the iterative process of design thinking, we will then go back through the stages as necessary to fully develop our vision and plan. We anticipate this process taking several months. While time consuming, we’re confident that this approach is critical for devising a robust solution to a wicked problem.
 
Parting Thoughts
We left the design thinking boot camp very different than we began. We came together as diverse individuals with different concerns, ideas, and constraints. We left energized, excited, and more cohesive as a group. While engaging in the design thinking process takes time and can feel a bit like “two steps forward, one step back,” I would argue that this kind of problem-solving experience is productive and encourages innovative approaches. Now, I just need to figure out how to embed this kind of experience in the courses I teach.
 
How might (or do) you use design thinking in your teaching?
Please post your comments below.