Knight Jennifer K, Wise Sarah B, Sieke Scott
Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of Colorado-Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado-Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2016 winter;15(4). doi: 10.1187/cbe.16-02-0109.
Understanding how instructional techniques and classroom norms influence in-class student interactions has the potential to positively impact student learning. Many previous studies have shown that students benefit from discussing their ideas with one another in class. In this study of introductory biology students, we explored how using an in-class accountability system might affect the nature of clicker-question discussions. Clicker-question discussions in which student groups were asked to report their ideas voluntarily (volunteer call) were compared with discussions in which student groups were randomly selected to report their ideas (random call). We hypothesized that the higher-accountability condition (random call) would impress upon students the importance of their discussions and thus positively influence how they interacted. Our results suggest that a higher proportion of discussions in the random call condition contained exchanges of reasoning, some forms of questioning, and both on- and off-topic comments compared with discussion in the volunteer call condition. Although group random call does not impact student performance on clicker questions, the positive impact of this instructional approach on exchanges of reasoning and other features suggests it may encourage some types of student interactions that support learning.
了解教学技巧和课堂规范如何影响课堂上的学生互动，有可能对学生学习产生积极影响。许多先前的研究表明，学生在课堂上相互讨论想法会有所收获。在这项针对生物学入门课程学生的研究中，我们探讨了使用课堂问责制可能如何影响课堂提问讨论的性质。将要求学生小组自愿汇报想法的课堂提问讨论（自愿汇报）与随机选择学生小组汇报想法的讨论（随机汇报）进行了比较。我们假设，更高问责制的情况（随机汇报）会让学生深刻认识到讨论的重要性，从而对他们的互动方式产生积极影响。我们的结果表明，与自愿汇报情况下的讨论相比，随机汇报情况下更高比例的讨论包含推理交流、某些形式的提问以及与主题相关和不相关的评论。虽然小组随机汇报不会影响学生在课堂提问上的表现，但这种教学方法对推理交流和其他特征的积极影响表明，它可能会鼓励一些支持学习的学生互动类型。
