Fun, rigor, intrinsic value, and threats: what's not to like?

There was a perfect storm of reasons to come to Logic class yesterday, but there were apparently also insurmountable obstacles preventing it.  Yesterday, we had the Truth Table Olympics final round (prizes!  competition!  fun!), an assignment due (hand-in-able only in class, as usual on Mondays), the promise of new material essential to the coming last days of the semester, and a rainy cold day (as opposed to a warm morning that would have tempted students to go outside instead of to class).  Who wouldn't want to go to class?

Slightly more than half of the 21 students.

Sigh.

Truth Table Olympics

There's a lot of talk in K-12 and higher ed these days about "gamification," which is  just what it sounds like--using a gaming design to interest students in learning.  Vocabulary like "leveling up" is starting to sound as familiar as "grading" to many educators.  Whether it makes sense to go full force into this way of framing college education (and, let's face it, we dusty professors mostly wish that students would just find learning intrinsically rewarding), I've always enjoyed throwing a little competition at my students in Logic, at the very least to give them a goal to train for and a group activity that's fun and different.

So, today was the 7th annual Truth Table Olympics!  I put students on teams and established a system of tip-offs and rounds which left two teams for our final round next week (with chocolate gold medals).  I think there are a lot of benefits of this activity, aside from the fact that it's fun.  Students work together to solve problems, they help each other and care about how they're doing (including empathizing with teams whose simple mistakes take them out of contention for the gold), and they get a lot of low stakes practice (because it's not a graded assignment or exam) with fairly complex logical problems.  Another benefit is that there's a lot of student work being done publicly--that is, everyone in class gets to see how others are doing.  Under some circumstances, this could be discouraging to students who are having difficulty; but with a little careful framing, I've found that it's helpful for students to see each other excelling.  It's clear that complex logic is doable, and it causes students to seek help (ideally from each other, but also from their TA and me) so that they can achieve the same goals their peers are.

Having students fill the whiteboards with correct truth tables to determine validity of arguments, and to feel proud when they finish, fills me with the thrill of victory.

Rollin' up the sleeves for some fresh, organic logic

Last fall, I attended a presentation by one of my colleagues on an interesting, though complicated, concept in math.  He spent most of his presentation writing on the chalkboard and talking through the math while drawing examples.  About 2/3 of the way through his presentation, he switched to powerpoint slides.  I noticed that I was less able to keep up with the mathematical bits of his presentation when he was using the packaged version, probably because the extra time he took writing on the chalkboard was time I apparently needed to process what he was talking about.  Since then, I've tried to approach fairly difficult topics in Logic in the same way.  Last week it was swapping myself out and putting in my excellent and patient teaching assistant.  Today it was staying far away from the computer/projector, instead working through problems on the whiteboard.

I enjoy these kinds of days in Logic.  Let's face it, sometimes our old powerpoints put us to sleep, as well as the students (as easy as it is to dust them off and use them again and again).  I like my Logic fresh, though, and I actually enjoy working through problems. I sometimes even make mistakes, which is an excellent learning opportunity for those astute students who catch me, and for others who need to see that it's OK to take risks and sometimes fail.  I also figure that if they see me enjoying the work, they might open themselves up the possibility that Logic could even be fun.

Logical frost heaves

Typical of Vermont in the springtime, we've hit some bumps in the road in Logic this week.  The field of deductive logic involves many ways to achieve the same goal--to determine the validity of arguments.  Though this is generally an advantage (if you don't like Venn diagrams, just wait until truth tables!), there are often rough spots when we transition from one kind of logic to the next (if you DO like Venn diagrams, why bother with truth tables?!).  We're having those rough spots this week as we venture into truth functional logic (and putting "truth FUNctional logic" on a power point, it seems, doesn't actually make people think it's fun.  Huh.).

I've been scrambling to find ways to help students do well with truth tables, from extra office hours (not very many takers) to slowing things down in class.  I've made practice worksheets for each class day this week, with the idea that students can move at their own pace (i.e., hit those bumps slowly or gleefully become airborne).  That seemed to work somewhat.  Maybe the best idea was to have my superstar TA teach much of class today.  Possibly he's more patient than I am, but he also moves a little more slowly (he's only had the class once--I've taught it 10 or more times).  I think the change of instructor and the pace was helpful today.  Then we still did some individual work on worksheets, and I started feeling a lot better about class at the end of this week than at the beginning.

Stay tuned for next week--it's the annual truth table Olympics!  I'm optimistic that students who at the start of class today thought that 4 line truth tables were insurmountable will be burning up the whiteboards on 32 lines!

More disrobing: midcourse review

One of the most useful things that our new teaching center offers is a midcourse review.  While students have a chance to weigh in on the success of the course at the end of the semester in course evaluations, their suggestions (often quite constructive) can only benefit future students.  A midcourse review by a teaching center staff member or faculty colleague, has the advantage of students being able to suggest adjustments (or reinforce successful strategies) for the course for the remaining part of the semester.

Though it may be awkward and perhaps embarrassing (yes!) to allow someone else into your classroom mid-semester, whether it's for an observation or for a review, I've found that the benefits outweigh the risks.  There are gentle and minimally disruptive ways to conduct such a review that emphasize constructive comments, and I've always found when I do reviews that the students very much appreciate the chance to talk about the structure of the class and quality of instruction (whether or not they feel successful in the course), and that just asking them to be part of the review process gets them more engaged in the class.  There's also the obvious benefit of getting some data that allow you to make adjustments during the rest of the semester.

We introduce three topics when we conduct a review:  what instructional methods are working well, what could be improved, and what students can do (individually and collectively) to enhance their own learning.  We find that this last question causes students to really think about their own role in the class community, and they often publicly promise to do things such as prepare better or show up to class more often and on time.  Having students answer these questions in small groups can prevent outliers from monopolizing the review, and offers more reticent students a chance to weigh in (students present from their groups).  Our reviews end up with a report that is anything from a brief conversation to a formal document (usable in promotion files), and comes along with some tools for making adjustments.

So, a colleague from the teaching center reviewed my course the other day, and I received some helpful ideas for improvement in the next weeks.  I think my students also got the feeling that they were respected, serious members of the class and that I rely on them to take some ownership in their own success.  It's hard to undress your course and instruction in front of others, but I highly recommend it.