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    Paper to be presented in Asian Conference on Education 2009October 24-25 2009, at the Ramada Hotel, Osaka Japan

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    Getting Feedback from the

    Unresponsives:

    When Students Cant Tell If They Do(Not) Understand

    Florita Diana Sari1, Danang Mursita2 and Jondri3

    1,2,3Faculty of Science, Telkom Institute of Technology (ITTelkom), Indonesia

    [email protected],

    [email protected],

    [email protected]

    Abstract

    Feedback is key factor in learning without which learning will be meaningless. Instead of

    asking students feedback conventionally like Do you understand?, one best practice offers

    three sub-methods to maximize feedback communication in large classes, i.e. seating

    adjustment, tardiness management, and traffic-light cards. This paper reports that students

    and lecturers responded positively toward F2M; students achieving A and B grades increased

    from 45% to 58%, while those achieving D and E decreased from 35% to 21%.

    Keywords: feedback communication, material comprehension, studentsachievement

    A. Introduction

    Do you understand? and Any questions? are possibly two of mostly asked questions that

    mostly remained unanswered when university teachers try to communicate with students in

    classroom. It seems that many of university teachers do not really realize that the two

    expressions may not quite the successful ways of obtaining proper feedback on material

    comprehension. If lecturers are lucky enough to teach high-achievers or highly curious

    students, they may respond well to Any questions?. However, in all levels of education, theDo you understand? seems to be must-be-avoided type of question due to its potential

    failure to engage students in responding to materials comprehension. Especially in large

    classes, students may have various responses in mind, none of which is likely to be

    communicated to the lecturer. Such responses may be well represented in the following

    excerpt, showing what comes to students mind when lecturers ask whether students

    understand.

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    .

    Burning issues thus arise as how to help classroom communication successful and mutually

    useful? What is to be communicated, instead of asking Do you understand, when university

    teachers want to know if their students really understand? What are possible ways of knowing

    students comprehension without test, and even without asking?

    To begin with all this issue, among matters and manners of communication that may take

    place in class, communicating feedback can be the most useful for learning. Feedback is said

    to be the most influential factor in learning (Black and William in Harmer 2007), without

    which teaching/learning process will be meaningless (Taylor 2006, Mink et al 1993). Such

    important is constructive feedback that William and Black (1998) believe it as at the heart of

    teaching (Harmer 2007 p. 137).

    Therefore, in attempts to respond the above three issues, we focus to design one method of

    obtaining student feedback and manage it to be used right away as feedforward for lecturers.

    Do You Understand?

    Do you understand? lecturer asks student.

    Understand what? thinks student.What am I supposed to understand?

    What will my lecturer think of me if I say no?

    If I say yes will my lecturer ask me a difficult question to catch

    me out?

    Why am I being asked this anyway?

    Is it going to be important for me to understand this?.

    How will I know when I understand it?.

    What will I be able to do when I understand it?.

    How will I be able to demonstrate my understanding of it?.

    Do I actually have to understand it, or will it be enough simply to

    demonstrate my understanding of it, by doing something I can do,

    even when I dont understand it?.

    Does my lecturer understand it, anyway?.

    Mmmm replies student (as soon as possible after all that thinking).

    So you dont understand it then? alleges lecturer.

    Well, replies student.

    So you understand it well? smiles lecturer.

    Just about replies student.

    Ah, good says lecturer. I made myself clear then?

    Of course replies student.

    [Because of things like this, the word is best avoided in intended learning

    outcomes and in life in general, except to get people thinking]

    (from Race, 2000; with minor editing )

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    We call the method Feedback-Feedforward Mechanism (F2M). This way, after learning or

    doing some materials, students will give feedback on their material comprehension and

    lecturers will immediately use the information to adjust the teaching techniques for the same

    session. The expected outcome of this method is that not only communication will take place

    successfully but also it will be used to increase the quality and achievement of learning

    process.

    Although F2M can potentially be applied in large classes in general, but as initial

    implementation we select two Calculus-I classes in one engineering institute in Indonesia.

    There are at least three reasons for the selection. First is that Calculus-I is one of the four

    compulsory subjects in the Preparatory Year that usually has low level of achievement. Data

    from three previous years shows that 51% Calculus-I students in average got C or lower. The

    three others subjects are Calculus-II, Physics-I, and Physics-II, with achievement of C are

    58%, 69%, and 79% respectively (www.itttelkom.ac.id/intranet). These students whose

    grade C or less will very likely repeat the subjects in the following semesters, including in

    the 6-week Short Semester inserted between academic years as remedial semester for

    repeaters. Some of them even take it for the third or fourth time in order to escape the Drop-Out at the end of the 4th semester for those with GPA less than 2.0 (at the scale of 4).

    The second is that Calculus-I, to be taken in first semester, trains mathematic-analytical skills

    that is crucial for most engineering and science subjects in the following semesters. Its load

    of 4 credit hours per week also adds importance to this Calculus subject, compared with

    Physics I and II which only worth 3 credit hours. Increasing students achievement in

    Claculus will more significantly improve students Grade Point Average (GPA).

    The last reason is obtained from preliminary questionnaire about learning math. Students

    response to the questionnaire shows that 32% students have anxiety when learning math.

    Some 28% students think that learning math is dull and boring. These findings help lecturers

    to introspectively examine the existing practices in math classes, motivating the lecturers to

    think of ways in improving achievement and learning satisfaction. Added with the perceived

    needs to obtain information on students level of understanding before tests, a mechanism on

    how to get students feedback is needed. This mechanism is expected to get feedback from all

    students rather than just from the active ones, so that even the most unresponsive in class will

    participate and benefit from it.

    B. The Existing Condition

    Observation in three different Calculus-I classes provides information on the existing

    condition of typical Calculus class. Such information is necessary prior to any design of

    mechanism. Three main characteristics on classroom, leacturer, and students are observed

    and examined as follows.

    The typical classroom in the campus site of study is 9m x 18m room equipped with

    white&blackboard at the center of the front walls, LCD-projector, OverHead Projector, and

    100 seats. It usually provides room for 70-85 students. The seatings are 7-aisle-7, with all

    seats facing the front wall. This setting does not quite help students nor lecturers. Students

    sitting next to side walls will have less clear and comfortable views toward the whiteboard.

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    Lecturers will also not be able to reach students sitting next to side walls, areas where

    students will easily find a refuge to escape lecturers attention. At the same time, the rear of

    the classroom is usually left empty.

    Fig 1. Floor of typical class (7-A-7)

    Lecturers mostly use conventional teaching method, resulting in board-to-projector oriented

    lecturing. The flow of teaching is generally in one-size-fits-all approach, thus lecturer will

    very likely aim to teach the middle students, i.e. those who are not very strong nor very

    weak in learning. This approach is taken since these lecturers think that normally middle

    students will constitute the greater number of students in the class. This way will very likelybore the stronger students while at the same time is less helpful for weaker ones. Combined

    with the seating explained above, this approach will increase the possibility of undetected

    failure of learning during the process.

    Students are less responsive in terms of voluntarily doing problems on board, asking

    questions, and responding to lecturers prompts. The seating may also influence this

    condition since not only the lecturer find it difficult to reach all students, but also it is difficult

    for students to get themselves out of their seats to go to the board. Further, students rarely

    communicate their difficulty in understanding the material. As mentioned at the beginning of

    this report, students will unlikely respond well to questions like do you understand? or any

    question. Lecturers may then come up with tests and quizzes to measure studentscomprehension, ways which may adversely increase students anxiety in learning math. Such

    anxiety may even be greater in classes with very discipline lecturers, resulting in lower

    attendance or even complete withdraw of weaker students.

    Having observed the existing condition, four problems are identified and thus formulated as

    follow:

    1. seating in the class is not optimal for mutual engangement and feedback

    communication.

    2. conventional lecturing leads to monotonous and repetitive learning process, mostly

    without sufficient feedback.

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    3. ratio on lecturer-students does not help lecturer to respond to heterogenous level of

    understanding, particularly in the absence of students feedback

    4. anxieties hinders students from communicating difficulties or feedback to lecturers,

    decreases class attendance, and may lead to complete withdraw from class activities.

    In attempts to solve these problems, F2M is designed and implemented on two classes ofCalculus-I during one semester. Thus the F2M aims at general improvement of feedback

    communication take place in class, with particular goals to cope with classroom problems

    mentioned earlier. Thus, more specifically the aims of designing F2M are:

    1. to condition classroom physical environment as to help students-lecturer to

    communicate better,

    2. to offer inexpensive, quick-and-easy method to encourage feedback communication

    in classroom,

    3. to respond to students with greater difficulty in understanding material without

    reducing the size of class,

    4. to deal with students anxiety in attending learning and in communicating difficulties.

    The ultimate goal of this method is thus increasing students achievement as a result of better

    feedback communication happening in class.

    C. The F2M

    We design an alternative method to promote feedback communication which in turn is

    intended to increase overall studentss achievement. This method, called Feedback-

    Feedforward Mechanism (F2M) consists of three sub-methods, i.e. seating adjustment,

    tardiness management, and traffic-light cards.

    1. Seating adjustment (3-6-3 setting)Seating adjustment is perhaps one of fundamental modifications in daily classroom practices

    in the site institution. For about seventeen years, the 7-aisle-7 (7A7) seat arrangement (see

    Fig. 1) has been used with no complains nor retrospective examination. One among reasons

    why seating arrangement deserves better attention is that the current arrangement does not

    provide equally clear views to whiteboard nor give sufficient room for lining up and exiting

    the room as two of main criterias of good classroom arrangement (Pitner, 2009). The 7-aisle-

    7 seat arrangement practically has given up the center space of classroom, that with best

    views, to the aisle. With only one aisle, lecturer may not find it inviting to come to reach all

    students up to those at the back of the class. This single aisle may in many cases evendisappear due to students moving their chairs to fill in all front row spaces available.

    Therefore, F2M requires readjustment of seating first by dedicating the best center column

    for students. Secondly, adding more aisles will likely ease lecturer to move around the class

    to get 100% coverage on students. The last, the rear space of the class should be utilized to

    allow greater amount of movement and circulation within classroom. Thus the new

    arrangement will be best illustrated in the following figure.

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    Fig. 2. The floor of 3-6-3 arrangement

    In this new setting, seats are arranged in 3 seats aisle 6 seats aisle 3 seats. Such setting

    dedicates the central column of the class, the area with best view toward board/screen, to

    50% of total students. The remaining half of students seatings are divided into two on each

    sides, facing 45o toward board/screen. This way, all students will get the best available views

    with less muscular strain. Besides, if lecturer can only reach and distribute attention to 3

    students at each sides of the aisle, this new setting with two aisles will naturaly provide 100%

    coverage to all students. Although having 70-85 students in one classroom may not the best

    practice for teaching math, this 3-6-3 setting allows better sirculation of people and air. Thus,

    within all the limitations at hand, this setting may help creating a better learning environment.

    In short, compared with the previous 7A7 seating, there are at least three advantages of the

    proposed 3-6-3 setting, i.e. (a) providing better and more confortable view, (b) allowing

    100% coverage of lecturer toward the students, and (c) allowing better air and people

    sisculation. This setting is not complicated and thus can be well prepared by the cleaning

    service and become the default setting in the site campus.

    Pic 1. 100% lecturer-coverage on students

    This 3-6-3 setting has also been implemented as pre-condition for the last sub-method of

    F2M, namely the traffic-light cards. Later the rear space of the class is used for grouping and

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    regrouping students for different instruction based on the traffic-light card that students

    acknowledge. Further about traffic-light card will be explained later. At this point, below in

    Fig. 3 is the complete setting of 3-6-3 with view of the rear side of classroom.

    _______

    Fig 3. Complete setting of 3-6-3 with rear space for on-carpet activities

    2. Tardiness management (MMS rule)

    Preliminary study and observation show that lower achievment in Calculus-I classes (very

    likely in other classes as well) is partly due to lower attendance. Most of lower attendances

    are caused by tardiness, in which lecturers decline students coming into class if they are late.

    It will be unlikely for such students to keep up their pace with other fellow students, at least

    for the days they come late. In the long run, it will disadvantage these students as they will

    become illegible to sit for exam when their atendance is less than 80%. If late students do not

    have access to learning in classroom then they will also have no access to any feedbacktaking place in classroom. The number of late students, however, tend to be increasing as

    students may become busier with all intra and extra academic activities including the process

    of adjusting to new life as university student.

    Hence a mechanism to teach discipline to students with greater access for them to attend class

    is necessary. F2M comes up with a rule for students to wait outside for a while if they come

    late. This rule is dubbed MMS (in Indonesian/Malay: Mohon Menunggu Sebentar, which

    means please wait a while). Applying MMS, lecturer in the course introduction will

    explicitly ask that late students should not knock on the door nor enter the classroom until the

    lecturer lets them in. Late students must wait outside in order, without distracting attention.

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    This way, lecturer will be able to finish explaining parts of material and to find pause to open

    the door and allow late students to attend the rest of materials for the day.

    Variations to this rule can be numerous. For lecturers who wish to promote discipline, the

    attendance of late students may not be taken despite the rights given to follow classrooms.

    For lecturers with greater interest to train students through exercise drills, they may giveadditional assignement for late students while suspending the attendance for the day until the

    assignement is turned in. Still some other variation may apply to this rule.

    There are at least three advantages from applying this rule. First is that all students will

    maximally be exposed to classroom learning and feedback. This will help them keep up with

    learning materials and get direct assistance from lecturer when they find difficulties.

    Secondly, this MMS rule will allow lecturer to treat students tardiness porpotionaly with the

    amount of their tardiness. The rigid regimen of discipline will not be able to respond

    differently to students 1-minute or 1-hour lateness, that like on/off button the class is started

    and ended. MMS will naturally treat students who are 2-minute late differently from those

    who are 20-minute late, that they will likely have different waiting time. The last is that thisrule cater all interests playing in classroom: teacher can still promote discipline and order, on-

    time students will not be much interrupted by the late-comers, and still late students will hve

    access to classroom learning and feedback.

    3. Traffic-light cards (TLC)One crucial part in obtaining feedback during the learning process is when materials have

    been delivered and there comes the time to know whether students understand it or not. As an

    alternative to replace the conventional way of Do you understand?, F2M uses three

    colored-cards as a means of assessing students comprehension (Pic 2). Although such cards

    can appear in any colors, they are usually in red-yelow-green similar to those of traffic light

    and therefore are conveniently called Traffic-Light Cards (TLC).

    Pic 2. Trafic-Light Cards (TLC)

    Traffic-light cards (TLC) are not new idea in learning method, especially in K-9 education.

    They are flexible and can be used in various subjects from English to Chemistry. Among

    ways of using it is when teachers ask questions with A-B-C of answers, students may respond

    by raising red card for A, yellow for B, and green for C (Traffic card as Starter,

    www.lancsngfl.ac.uk). Another example is using the cards for ordering class, i.e. teacher may

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    lift red card to stop all activities, yellow card to prepare starting activities, and green card

    to start activities (www.ehow.com). Also, TLC can be used similar to its purpose in soccer:

    as punishment and reward for students.

    In university Calculus class, one application of TLC is to help students communicating their

    level of material comprehension. Each color represents certain percentage of comprehension,e.g. red card for up to 50%, yellow card for 50-75%, and green card for 75-100%

    comprehension. This way, after a portion of material delivery, lecturer will ask students to

    assess themselves as to measure how many percent they think they understand the material. It

    is important to notice that TLC will be useless if lecturer does not quantify the worth of each

    card. If each card simply represents understand, half understand, and not-understand,

    TLC will only confuse students. In turn the result will confuse the lecturer since students may

    have misunderstood their level of comprehension, or the way students interpret the level of

    understand, half understand, and not-understand may be different from that of lecturers.

    TLC may appear in any dimension as long as they are easy to hold. In this, study we use 10

    cm x 7,5 cm cards of green-yelow-red and blue-white-pink. We observed that both sets ofcolors worked well. Questionnaire from two classes show that none of the 109 students feel

    embarrassed in using the cards, either in sessions with green-yelow-red cards or those with

    blue-white-pink ones. However, further trial on this method show that TLC canot be replaced

    by raising hands. Most students find that raising hands when lecturer ask their level of

    comprehension is somewhat embarrassing. Therefore, TLC have helped students to eliminate

    embarrasement in communicating their level of understanding.

    Mechanism in using TLC is easy and quick. The method is also highly flexible in terms of

    time allocation, allowing lecturer to adjust TLC to respond to students need. As a model

    implemented for 100-minute session, the scenario and time allotment can be illustrated as

    follows.

    Fig. 5. Scenario of using TLC

    Time Step

    20 minutes 1. Lecturer delivers material in 20 minutes. This

    limited span of material delivery will hopefully

    encourage students to come on-time and learn the

    materials before attending class.

    10 minutes 2. Lecturer distributes TLC and quantifies them

    (writing the value of each card on whiteboard: red

    card for up to 50%, yellow card for 50-75%, and

    green card for 75-100%)

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    3. Students all at once lift the card relevant to their

    comprehension level. Lecturer counts for the reds

    and the greens.

    4. Lecturer extracts the reds from the population,

    and groups them at the rear space of classroom

    for on-carpet activity. In cases where reds do not

    appear, greens can be separated and grouped for

    on-carpet activity.

    30 minutes 5. Students with yellow cards are grouped with the

    greens, with ratio of for example 5 yellows for 1

    green. The ratio can be adjusted to class situation.

    These groups will independently (without much

    of lecturers help) discuss and do calculus

    problem given by lecturer on tranparent mica,

    using whiteboard marker as the pen and tissue

    paper as the eraser. The solution on transparent

    mica will be presented by the greens in front of

    the class after the class resumes.

    6. Students with reds will receive full assistance

    from the lecturer and do calculus problem more

    suitable with their capability.

    (In these pictures, the reds are none. Therefore the

    greens are grouped at the rear space of class, doing

    calculus problems independently with their peer-

    greens while the yellow groups are receiving

    lecturers assistance. The calculus problems done by

    the greens are still those that may appear in Calculus

    exam. This way, when the solution is presented in

    front of the yellows, there will be not much gap

    between the greens and the yellows).

    30 minutes 7. Class is resumed and the greens present the

    solution to their problems on the OHP. Lecturer

    gives feedback on their creativity and analysis.

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    10 minute 8. Lecturer distributes cek-out papers on which

    students can communicate additional difficulty

    found in the session. Written feedback will allow

    all students to communicate their ideas/problems

    at once in shorter span of time rather than

    allowing students to communicate it orally.

    D. Conclusion

    Implementing F2M, 109 students and their lecturers found it useful in communicating

    feedback about material comprehension. Students responses on Likert-scale classroom

    questionnaire revealed that 63% supported the tardiness management and 78% found traffic-light card helpful or very helpful. None of the 109 students in two classes think that F2M,

    especially the traffic-light cards, embarrassing. Assuming that calculus classes have typical

    students inputs and they learn same materials, comparison between year prior to F2M and

    that after F2M showed increase in student achievement: students achieving A and B grades

    increased from 45% to 58%, while those achieving D and E decreased from 35% to 21%.

    We believe that due to its flexibility and effectivity in obtaining feedback for quality teaching

    and learning, F2M can be well responded in other classes especially those involving problem

    solving. Classes with full lecturing, such as Civics, may not be really benefitted from F2M.

    However, application on other science classes such as Calculus-II, Physics-I, and Physics-II

    can be considered. This way, overall achievement especially for students in their Preparatory

    Year (first year) is expected to increase and will help students to achieve greater success the

    following years.

    References

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