Cathy N. Davidson

Christina Katopodis

The New College Classroom

Srinivasan Tatachari

This book was provided to me by the Publisher through the NetGalley platform. I am thankful to both for the opportunity to go through the book and provide my thoughts.

The book came at an opportune time, when I was just starting off with my teaching for the current academic year. Reading through the book and having some of the ideas that were being shared was extremely useful. I am ever open to new ideas which I can use, be it in terms of teaching or technology or in research. This book fit in nicely with the teaching part. I was inspired by some of the ideas and immediately implemented it in the classroom. One idea which was not novel to me was the Think-Pair-Share idea - I had been exposed to this idea as part of the Harvard executive education on participant centred learning. But I was not aware of the “think” preceding the pair and share. It gave me something more than I knew and used. I could immediately apply this in my classroom at the next opportunity - I did that with a self-assessment the students did with respect to knowing their learning styles. It was a nice break from the routine that the students were going through and they seemed to enjoy the opportunity to share with their neighbor what they had learnt about themselves. 
A bit more serious was the insight into the active learning method of teaching, which is what our B-schools typically follow. Though we do a lot to inform the students of the sudden change in their experience from a passive to an active mode, I felt it was not enough. The authors very nicely explain in the book through use of detailed research (especially a paper in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences), which statistically showed that the active learning model actually improves the outcome of learning, but ironically, has the students feeling that the learning is lesser compared to passive learning. I thought this was a great piece to share with the students to break them into the active learning mode. I used graphics from the paper to show the students that though they may feel that learning is not really happening in the active model, the outcome is shown to be better. Across different fields of study. I think it was a good input for the students to deal with the sudden change.
The next interesting input for me was about the syllabus crafting - where the authors suggest how students can be involved in the co-creation fo the same. This is something that appealed a lot to me but in the courses that I teach it is difficult to achieve this. Probably this is something that can be looked at in some of the elective courses that are taught - it may actually be very useful and popular. 
One very simple but practical input that I took from the book to my classes immediately was the concept of warming up the room - or entry tickets, which is to offer everyone a chance to contribute. The version that I applied in my class was to inform the students that the whiteboard was open for anyone in the class to come and write their thoughts before I walked in (which is normally 5 minutes before time). It was a pleasant way to get into communication anonymously and in equal opportunity. I did get some interesting comments on day 1. It is yet to be seen how this will progress through the entire term. But it is definitely something useful and worth trying. Another interesting suggestion is to have an open days session - where there is no set agenda. We had this over the last two years in our classes which were purely online, however it did not go very well. Students were not very forthcoming on doubts they wanted to ask. 
A suggestion they offer about the first class is to have students break up into groups and discuss parts of the syllabus and then discuss/annotate and share with other groups. This seems very interesting and will surely bring up the enthusiasm levels in the first class. This may be something I will try in the next course that I will take up. 
The authors suggest an interesting method to get engagement levels up - everybody raises their hands to a question asked and then they can say they do not know the answer when specifically asked, and also pass it on to someone else who may know. This is a very good idea to try out - more so because as they suggest it shows that the starting point can be that they do not know the answer - and there is no shame in admitting that. 
Another good input from the book is about feedback giving to students - how there is a problem when there is too much focus on grades, and how ungraded feedback works a lot better. Feedback that helps students figure out best ways to get things right is better than telling them what they are doing wrong. Students who are primarily concerned about grades struggle academically compared to those who have a learning orientation. 
In summary the authors have done an excellent job of going through the entire lifecycle of the teaching process - from syllabus creation, to execution in the classroom to feedback and grading. In each part they provide great examples, some from their own classes and some from great teachers elsewhere. They constantly provide research references throughout the way - like the PNAS paper I mentioned above. 
This book is one I would highly recommend to teachers at every stage in their teaching career - because it has a lot to offer to each. I have learnt a number of things which I can implement right away - and some that I will try at a later stage.

The New College Classroom

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