Perusall Exchange® 2024

Education in the Age of Generative AI
June 9 - 15, 2024

2023
Whose Work Is It Anyway? Navigating the Emotional, Ethical, and Educational Implications of AI-Generated Writing
Clay Chiarelott
,
Ashland University, USA
Katy Major
,
Ashland University, USA
Faculty teaching classes with an emphasis on writing have responded to ChatGPT’s emergence in education with valid ethical questions and concern regarding the devaluation of writing. Two writing instructors, one of whom is also an instructional designer, explore these responses as well as the importance of helping students to define genre and purpose and use them to determine whether AI can be appropriately applied. Ultimately, the increasing accessibility of AI chatbots compels instructors and instructional designers to hold themselves to a higher standard, crafting specific and relevant writing prompts that motivate students to craft original writing.
Short Paper
AI and Deep Learning Technologies in Education
2023
Perusing AI's Attempts to Write Reflectively
Courtney Fowler
,
Arizona State University, USA
As writing teachers grapple with the arrival of intelligence-assisted essay writing, Perusal offers writing classes a workspace to look closely at the syntactic decisions that AI writing applications make when attempting to write reflective essays about the human experience. In this demonstration of a teaching practice, we'll use Perusal to workshop an AI-generated essay to determine where AI falls short of capturing what it means to be human.
Video Presentation
AI and Deep Learning Technologies in Education
2023
The Bot Wrote My Essay: Creating Assignments to Avoid AI Plagiarism in the Age of ChatGPT
Danielle Steele
,
Georgia Highlands College, USA
With the introduction of OpenAI's ChatGPT tool, educators face a new challenge in student writing: avoiding having a robot do students' homework for them. This presentation looks at how ChatGPT can be used to in essay writing and how to create assignments that prohibit students from being able to use the AI source to complete their homework assignment. In addition, the presentation considers how elements of good pedagogy, such as scaffolding assignments, can not only help to limit use of AI writing but also purchasing essays from online sources and other forms of cheating.
Video Presentation
AI and Deep Learning Technologies in Education
2023
Integrating ChatGPT into Language Education - Personalized and Interactive Language Practice for Students
Shiva Rahmani
,
University of Chicago, USA
This presentation explores the potential of using ChatGPT, a large language model developed by OpenAI, in language education and how it can engage the audience and improve their language proficiency. ChatGPT is a powerful tool that can provide personalized & interactive language practice for students, as well as understand & respond to natural language inputs. Participants will learn about the basics of ChatGPT, its practical usage, its limitations, and how it can be useful for both instructors & students. It also provides examples of how ChatGPT can be integrated into existing language courses and activities, and how it can supplement traditional language teaching methods.
Video Presentation
AI and Deep Learning Technologies in Education
2023
Balancing Instructor and Student Workloads: Choices That Matter in Perusall
Nazim Karaca
,
University of Delaware, USA
Lauren Kelley
,
University of Delaware, USA
The artful balance between encouraging students’ motivation to learn and simultaneously discouraging gaming our heuristics is tricky. Studies have helped us “understand the factors that may explain students’ enhanced motivation and affect with collaborative digital learning using social annotative tools (SA)” (Li and Li, 2021, p. 1). Perusall’s synchronization with learning management systems (LMS) and its ability to customize scoring might offer promise for achieving balance. Perusall can offset rewards for heuristics and customize scoring for assignments. This paper includes helpful resources for customizing scoring settings, steps for exporting data from Perusall, and a customizable template for semester data management to help inform your data-driven decisions for determining assignment weights.
Short Paper
Alternative Grading and Assessment Approaches
2023
Driving Retention with Mastery Grading with a little help from Perusall
Steve Yalisove
,
University of Michigan, USA
Driving retention with active learning sounds easy. It isn’t. I have been working on replacing large lecture with a team based/project based approach for 10 years now but total sucess is elusive. Removing exams and replacing assessment with mastery grading has become one of the cornerstones of this approach. This presentation will provide an example of one way to approach mastery grading of a team based project based course with about 80 engineering students. Parallel efforts to take advantage of the diversity in the class and use undergrads as Inclusion Ambassadors to drive inclusion is also discussed.
Video Presentation
Alternative Grading and Assessment Approaches
2023
Fostering Inclusive Classrooms Through Alternative Grading
Solsiree Skarlinsky
,
University of Miami, USA
Jessica Gonzalez
,
University of Miami, USA
Amanda Valdespino
,
University of Miami, USA
Unlike traditional grading systems rooted in systemic inequalities like norm-referenced and criterion-referenced grading, alternative grading favors holistic and continuous forms of assessment and feedback. Studies show that traditional grading systems often play on students’ fear of punishment, lessens their intrinsic motivation and performance, and increases their desire to outcompete peers (Schinske & Tanner, 2017). The Fostering Inclusive Classrooms Through Alternative Grading session will focus on how alternative grading methods such as specifications grading, contract grading, and ungrading encourages students to think critically about their own learning, creates collaborative partnerships between student and instructor, and complements equitable teaching practices.
Video Presentation
Alternative Grading and Assessment Approaches
2023
A/B tests for social annotation: platform and assessment comparisons
Gavin Porter
,
Harvard Medical School, USA
Social annotation capitalizes on a natural inclination to annotate, and then it makes insights shareable. Assessment of reading comprehension can take many different forms (templates, quizzes, reports), but those tend to be isolated products. Qualitative feedback from students on both traditional reading assessment and annotation approaches could help inform future teaching strategies. Quantitative measurement of annotation can establish baselines for a given course routine. In this brief video presentation, social annotation is compared to a traditional reading assessment template as a content learning tool, and two social annotation platforms (Perusall and hypothes.is) are contrasted on multiple output measures.
Video Presentation
Alternative Grading and Assessment Approaches
2023
Towards a Re-Foundation of the Humanities: Ungrading and Re-Thinking Assessment with Perusall under the context of the UNESCO Knowledge-Driven Actions
Pablo Valdivia
,
University of Grongingen, NL
In this presentation, I present the example of my course Introduction to Culture and Literature, in which I replaced traditional grading and assessment with social active learning methodologies. While the real-world demands students' highly functional competences in digital, transdisciplinarity, critical thinking and UN Sustainable Development Goals literacy, our Humanities curriculums are still oriented toward regurgitating memorized information and meta-referentiality out of actual-world contexts. Thanks to Perusall, I managed to create a different learning experience in which the final goal is not to obtain a grade but to gain meta-cognitive skills critical to real-world problem-solving and professional development.
Video Presentation
Alternative Grading and Assessment Approaches
2023
Engineering Formative Feedback Practices and Developing Assessment Literacy in Teacher Education via Instructor Modelling on Perusall
Nicole Tavares
,
The University of Hong Kong, HK
Situated within the context of teacher education, this presentation examines the role and strategy use of an instructor adopting a ‘feedback as dialogue’ approach on Perusall. Using Perusall as a pedagogic tool to model feedback practices, it discusses how student-teachers are engaged in different phases of a course: in pre-course co-construction of a negotiated curriculum, in critical peer-reviewing of analyses of textbook materials and classroom excerpts during the course, and in assessment and feedback literacy development in the post-course stage. It highlights the impact of collaboration annotation in engendering formative assessment through making thinking processes visible and feedback timely.
Video Presentation
Alternative Grading and Assessment Approaches
2023
Using Social Reading to Prepare for the Laboratory
Susan Walsh
,
Soka University of America, USA
Kasandra Riley
,
Rollins College, USA
Adequately preparing students for hands-on laboratory work is a challenge. To increase preparation, we have employed assignments to annotate the protocol on Perusall. This helps identify technical language that is obvious to the instructor, but confusing to the students. They can also annotate a generic procedure with specifics to their experiment. Importantly, students answer questions about why particular steps are used. Finally, they may feel more comfortable asking questions in a written format and have more time to process complex information. Taken altogether, we suggest this may be an effective tool in the laboratory, as well as the classroom.
Short Paper
Learning Communities
2023
Perusall Facilitates Constructive Peer-to-Peer Feedback on Student Projects in an Online Asynchronous Upper-Level Undergraduate Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Course
Geneva DeMars
,
Georgia Southern University, USA
In an upper-level course delivered in an asynchronous online environment, students generated unique projects about the biochemistry and molecular biology of human diseases. They uploaded recordings of ~15-minute oral presentations to the course Perusall website. Each .mp4 file was separately evaluated by two students and the instructor using a complementary rubric and Perusall tools in parallel. This process was repeated four times to encourage practice in and synergy between the creating, evaluating, and analyzing skill areas of Bloom’s taxonomy. This presentation provides evidence that the use of the Perusall platform was critical to the success of the course design.
Video Presentation
Learning Communities
2023
Bridging the theory-practice divide for pre-service teachers using Perusall
Carisma Nel
,
North-West University, ZAF
Elma Marais
,
North-West University, ZAF
Bridging or narrowing the gap between actual and desired reading instruction is not achieved by practice as usual; game changers are needed. The purpose of this case study presentation is to report on how we use Perusall to ensure that students comply with reading requirements, how we use the video function to provide discussion and feedback on practical tasks, and how we facilitate a professional learning community among teacher educators, pre-service teachers and mentor teachers situated across the country.
Video Presentation
Learning Communities
2023
Perusall as a key tool for community learning building The Process Coordinator role in an virtual master degree
Núria Hernandez Nanclares
,
Universidad de Oviedo, ES.
Sandra Sanchez-Sanchez
,
Universidad de Oviedo, ES.
Cecilia Diaz-Mendez
,
Universidad de Oviedo, ES.
The main aim of this video presentation is to lay out the challenges that designing a virtual "Food, Consumption, and Health" university Master degree poses to professors, researchers and designers from University of Oviedo's Food Sociology Research Group in Spain. The core of the presentation focuses on how the design team face these challenges and discuss to what extent the creation of a Process Coordinator helps facilitate engagement and networking in the online learning environment supported by the use of Perusall.
Video Presentation
Learning Communities
2023
It's Not Just for Students! Perusall-Based Social Learning for Faculty
Lauren Barbeau
,
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Claudia Cornejo Happel
,
Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, USA
If the Perusall Exchange has taught us anything, it's that social learning isn't just for students! We as faculty grow professionally and improve our teaching when we engage in social learning with each other. Perusall-based faculty learning communities allow us to extend the social learning experience beyond the annual Exchange. This session introduces strategies for facilitating faculty learning communities, reading groups, and communities of practice through Perusall. We outline a structure and offer strategies to encourage participant engagement throughout the social learning experience. Finally, we invite attendees to experiment with us by participating in a Perusall-based interdisciplinary, inter-institutional learning community.
Video Presentation
Learning Communities
2023
Exploring the Effectiveness of Online and In-Person Learning Communities: A Comparative Study
Fred Chan
,
Global Banking School, UK.
The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of learning communities on student engagement and academic achievement. A mixed-methods research design will be used, including surveys, interviews, and observation. The sample will consist of 50 students enrolled in 10 learning communities at a large, urban university. Quantitative data will be analyzed using descriptive statistics and regression analysis, while qualitative data will be analyzed using a thematic analysis approach. The study is expected to contribute to the understanding of effective learning communities and inform the design of technology-mediated learning environments.
Video Presentation
Learning Communities
2023
Facilitating a Learning Community in a Large Introductory Physics Course
Carolyn Sealfon
,
Ronin Institute, USA. University of Toronto, CA.
Garrick Burron
,
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), CA. University of Toronto, CA.
How can course design and assessment support collaborative learning and transferable skills, especially in large “lecture” classes? We discuss preliminary results from a collaborative research-practice self-study partnership focusing on Sealfon’s implementation of learner-centered approaches in a 200-student first-semester algebra-based physics course with labs. The course design followed the two intentionalities of the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) approach (Brookes, Etkina, and Planinsic 2020): (1) We want students to learn physics by thinking like physicists, through engaging in knowledge-generating activities and using physics reasoning tools. (2) Learning physics should enhance students’ well-being.
Video Presentation
Learning Communities
2023
Teaching Introductory Statistics for Economics using Perusall
Tommaso Tempesti
,
University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA
According to the American Statistical Association, students in introductory statistics courses should become critical consumers of statistically-based results reported in popular media. At the same time, the ability to critically understand empirical papers is crucial for economics majors as economics has become increasingly empirical in recent decades. In my Statistics I course, I use Perusall to assign both the readings of the relevant chapters of a free statistics textbook and the reading of empirical papers. When assigning the reading of academic papers, I provide reading prompts aligned to the learning outcomes of the textbook.
Short Paper
Social Learning
2023
Service-Learning as a Mechanism for Social Learning
Candace Lapan
,
Wingate University, USA
Service-Learning is a pedagogical approach which integrates meaningful service with academic content (National Youth Leadership Council, 2021). While the academic benefits of this approach to teaching have often been documented and emphasized (Billig et al., 2005), it is also important to note the vast social benefits. Indeed, the development of beneficial social learning communities in service-learning courses likely contributes to students’ academic achievement. This paper briefly reviews the evidence regarding the benefits of service-learning for building social learning communities and then explicates the theoretical, empirical, and practical links between these social learning benefits and academic outcomes.
Short Paper
Social Learning
2023
Introducing Aspiring and New Higher Education Instructors to Social Annotation with Perusall
Liz Melleby Welch
,
New York University, USA.
This video presentation explores how the A&S Office of EdTech introduced social annotation exercises in Perusall to aspiring and new higher education instructors, current graduate and Ph.D. students, with the ultimate goal of encouraging them to leverage active learning technologies in pedagogically informed ways. By create exercises in Perusall and enrolling aspiring/new instructors as students, they were able to experience the social annotation experience from the student perspective and were subsequently able to grasp the potential application for these types of exercises in their own instruction.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2023
Engaging Students Through Choice
Misty Smith
,
Tarleton State University
This session explores the use of ‘choice’ and social interaction to promote and sustain student engagement in hybrid learning environment. In particular, we discuss our innovative technique designed to offer choice in learning through various content delivery methods, supported by opportunities for social interactions (formal or informal) and collaborative learning. During our session, we explore the implementation of this innovative technique in a graduate-level course, share students’ responses to this learning experience, and consider lessons learned for future teaching delivery in graduate courses.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2023
Perusall for Inclusive Pedagogy in the Classroom
Comfort Ateh
,
Providence College, USA.
Although the extant literature is replete on the essence of inclusivity in higher education it is sparse on how instructors can be intentional in inclusivity through platforms like Perusall that aim at engaging diverse students in the classroom. This presentation focuses on features in Perusall that enhance the engagement of every learner, irrespective of their identity. The features are discussed within the three criteria of the Universal Design for Learning (multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representations, and c) multiple means of actions and expressions), which embody cultural competence to ensure diverse learners have access to knowledge through meaningful, challenging learning opportunities. Participants will identify other features in Perusall that can enhance inclusivity in the classroom.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2023
Tying together- Using Perusall to promote non-formal pedagogy in higher education
Maya Wizel
,
Bar-Ilan University, Israel.
This presentation focuses on the use of Perusall in higher education as a means of promoting self-directed learning, engagement, and 21st-century skill development. In exploring non-formal pedagogy, the emphasis is on choice, flexibility, group learning, and dialog. This video session is an active and interactive experience designed to provide participants with new perspectives on the benefits of collaborative tools and to broaden their understanding of the potential gains for the learning process. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of how Perusall can facilitate student engagement, enhance self-directed learning, and support the development of 21st-century skills.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2023
Perusall is an Effective Social Learning Tool to Improve Student Engagement and Academic Performance in Undergraduate Medical Education
Jessica Campusano
,
Florida International University, USA.
Catarina Vale
,
Florida International University, USA.
Diego Nińo
,
Florida International University, USA.
Despite the call for change, passive teaching methods are common in medical education. Active learning can decrease cognitive load and positively impact long-term retention. Perusall was selected to support active learning activities and deliver preparatory materials to first-year medical students (n=125) in a basic science course. This strategy was compared to providing students with a pre-recorded lecture. The findings demonstrated that Perusall was effective in increasing engagement, motivating reading through social annotation and shared understanding, and ultimately enhancing academic performance in midterm and final exams.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2023
Social Annotation of Visual Materials with Perusall as Active Learning Activities for Art History Courses
Wei Zhao
,
New York University
This session explores the use of ‘choice’ and social interaction to promote and sustain student engagement in hybrid learning environment. In particular, we discuss our innovative technique designed to offer choice in learning through various content delivery methods, supported by opportunities for social interactions (formal or informal) and collaborative learning. During our session, we explore the implementation of this innovative technique in a graduate-level course, share students’ responses to this learning experience, and consider lessons learned for future teaching delivery in graduate courses.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2023
Using Perusall to design a neuroinclusive virtual classroom
Kristen Munyan
,
New Mexico Highlands University, USA.
Kelly Shakoor
,
University of Michigan, USA.
The term neuroinclusive refers to deliberately designing somethings so that neurodivergent (people with ADHD, ASD and other conditions) and neurotypical people can benefit equally. In higher education, there is a recent increased interest in supporting neurodivergent learners as more people seek out diagnosis, treatment and accommodations. An understanding of neurodiversity, neurodivergence and the pedagogical implications of neuroinclusiveness is needed to create optimal virtual classrooms and learning experiences for all learners. Perusall offers a unique platform and a number of desirable features to design such a space.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Learning with Others: The Mechanisms and Long Term Learning Benefits of Peer Instruction
Jonathan Tullis
,
University of Arizona, USA
In peer instruction, students first answer a challenging problem individually, students then discuss their answer with a partner in the class, and finally students answer the question again. A large body of evidence shows that peer instruction supports student learning. We first examined the cognitive mechanisms underlying the benefits of peer instruction. To determine the mechanism for these benefits, we collected data across the entire semester from six classes, including 208 undergraduate students and 86 different questions related to their course content. For each question, students chose their answer individually, reported their confidence, discussed their answers with their partner, and then indicated their possibly revised answer and confidence again. Students were consistently more accurate and more confident after discussion than before. Initially-correct students were more likely to keep their answers than initially-incorrect students, and confidence in one’s answers partially (but not completely) explained the differences in answer switching. We suggest that the greater accuracy following discussion results from the coherence of explanations during discussion. We also examined whether the benefits of peer instruction persist over long retention intervals compared to social learning in different group sizes. Students answered questions on their own, discussed their answer with a partner, a small group, or the class, and answered the questions again on their own. Peer instruction yielded smaller immediate gains in accuracy than small groups or class wide discussions, indicating that, as the groups grow larger, someone in the group is more likely to have the accurate response and will share it with others. However, when students’ ability to answer is assessed after long retention intervals, questions answered with peer instruction show better accuracy than those answered in small groups or class discussions. These results suggest that students may feel greater personal responsibility for answering and convincing others of their answers when working in pairs;as the groups grow larger, students may engage in greater cognitive loafing and process the material more shallowly. Larger groups may allow students to accept others’ answers without contributing their own reasoning or justification. Peer instruction can benefit long term learning because partner discussions require personal and active engagement with the learning material.
Video Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
Exploring an Interdisciplinary, Intergenerational and Peer Instructional Use of Perusall as the Best Way to Engage Students in Socratic Dialog and "The Great Conversation"
Thomas Culhane
,
University of South Florida, Patel College of Global Sustainability, USA
I use Perusall in an unorthodox fashion that has revealed the platform’s unique ability to recreate the most treasured experiences I enjoyed as a Harvard student in the mid 1980s – the ability to wander with my friends through the stacks at Widener and Lamont libraries, amass stacks of books, lug them back to a study room and then spend hours pouring through texts together, taking and sharing notes and having stimulating thought provoking conversations about the juxtaposition of so many often cognitively dissonant ideas. Perusall has become the perfect 21st-century (oxymoron alert!) “digital analog” for that formative period of intellectual ferment and Socratic Dialog. Our use of Perusall at both Mercy College in NY, where I teach undergraduate Cultural Anthropology, Environmental Sustainability, and Justice and Environmental Psychology, and at the University of South Florida’s Patel College of Global Sustainability where I teach graduate courses in Climate Mitigation and Adaptation, Navigating the Food/Energy/Water Nexus, Zero-Waste Concepts for a Circular Economy and Envisioning and Communicating Sustainability, has enabled us to successfully replicate on-line, for distance learning, what I enjoyed most about social learning in the real world. In my oral presentation I shall explore why we DON’T anymore connect our Perusall classes through the LMS to discrete courses in Blackboard and Canvas, why we DON’T use the “Assignments” tab and why INSTEAD we have created one massive MASTER CLASS with a comprehensive and growing Library of primary texts and articles, instructor created video lectures and auxiliary materials and student writings and projects organized into folders representing each of the courses I teach. We simulate the joy and effectiveness of the chance encounters we would have in Lamont library pulling an all-nighter, stumbling upon friends who were enrolled in different classes and were at different stages of their studies but were universally eager to get into cross-disciplinary conversations, trying out the new ideas they were engaged with on an audience with a different perspective or lens from another course. The peer instruction that occurred was endlessly enriched and informed by the diversity of budding intellectuals wandering through the libraries at all hours of the day and night. In that spirit, our use of Perusall as a Master Class Library is intergenerational, interdisciplinary and peer instruction oriented. We use it to carry on what historians have called “The Great Conversation”, a Socratic Dialectic that continues long past the semester’s end.
Video Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
Guidance for implementing Peer Instruction based on Learning Science
Julie Schell
,
The University of Texas at Austin, USA
Andy Butler
,
Washington University, USA
One of the most compelling aspects of the social learning pedagogy, Peer Instruction, is its flexibility. Over the past thirty years, educators have experimented with modifying Peer Instruction in several ways. In this presentation, Peer Instruction and learning science experts explore the six most common modifications to Peer Instruction to date. Participants will collaborate with us to analyze the following questions: Which modifications are neutral? Which modifications may be beneficial? And, which modifications to Peer Instruction might harm or inhibit learning? To answer these questions, we will use a cognitive science framework drawn from our paper: Insights from the Science of Learning can Inform Evidence-Based Implementation of Peer Instruction. We endorse the spirit of experimentation that coincides with Peer Instruction implementation, and we encourage educators to evaluate evidence from the science of learning as part of that experimentation.
Video Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
Positive Psychology in the Physics Classroom: Facilitating High-Performance Teams
James Fraser
,
Queen's University, CA
Lisa V Sansom
,
Queen's University, CA
The benefits of interactive engagement to learning are well documented (Hake 1998, Freeman et al. 2014). We want every student constructing their knowledge model and receiving timely feedback in every class (Fraser et al., 2014). But there is a major problem: time. How can you possibly give individualized feedback to every student in every class when you have 200 students? Or even just 20? Peer instruction (Mazur, 1999) overcomes this challenge by inviting students to take on the dual role of learner and peer teacher. Why does it work? As Smith et al. concluded “…these students are arriving at conceptual understanding on their own, through the process of group discussion and debate.” (Science 2009). In peer instruction and other team-based learning strategies, the social construct of the course changes dramatically and student success depends strongly on successful interactions within the group. Since the instructor is not immediately present, great care needs to be made to design activities, practices and interpersonal dynamics that facilitate high group performance so that all students flourish and perform. Positive psychology, initiated just over 20 years ago in a landmark speech by Seligman (1998) and discussed further by Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000), aims to empirically determine best practices for individuals and organizations to flourish. By applying these positive psychology principles and research, we are able to help teams create their own positive connections and start from positivity and mutual positive regard. We provide a strong structure for team operations but trust teams with considerable autonomy. Intrinsic motivation is key to sustained engagement by all team members and we apply ideas from self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) to encourage it. Every step of the team process is made transparent to the learners, including the overall goal - to help them become an effective and supportive group member (as per Dutton’s high-quality connections). Examples will be pulled from courses ranging from a general interest first-year to a graduate-level course. After this session, participants will be able to i) describe principles from positive psychology relevant for teaching ii) adapt and design course activities to help students form high-quality connections in their groups iii) design an organizational structure appropriate to their course to allow groups to develop into high-performing teams
Video Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
Scalable, Written Homework with Metacognitive Student Outcomes and Minimal Instructor Time
Laura Tucker
,
University of California, Irvine, USA
Homework lets students practice the problem-solving process. The focus on process, rather than final answer, is particularly important. Unfortunately, many online homework systems, and some traditional pencil-and-paper strategies, grade only on the correct answer. This can shift student focus away from the thought process. Metacognitive homework, developed previously, uses a Peer Instruction-like model to deploy homework in two phases, similar to students answering ConcepTests before and after peer discussion. In this talk, we discuss our work scaling metacognitive homework to class of enrollment over 300 students. Our method requires no paid software, takes minimal instructor time to administer, and has yielded positive student response by the end of the term. We will also discuss how metacognitive homework extends the well-established learning strategies of Peer Instruction into the domain of homework.
Video Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
A New Approach to Peer Instruction: Less time, more Learning
Eric Mazur
,
Harvard University, USA
Deniz Marti
,
Harvard University, USA
Over the past 30 years an abundance of research has demonstrated the benefits of Peer Instruction. The transition to remote teaching during the pandemic necessitated a re-evaluation of synchronous and asynchronous instructional activities. While Peer Instruction is readily adapted to a synchronous remote environment and beneficial to helping engage students at a distance, we began exploring making Peer Instruction more asynchronous. As we will show, our new approach to Peer Instruction offers many benefits, including an immediate reinforcement of asynchronous information transfer as well as more efficient and richer social learning for students. Most importantly, it permits using synchronous time with students — regardless of whether this time is spent remotely or in person — on activities that further scaffold understanding.
Video Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
Extensive Reform of a Genetics Course Integrating Multiple Evidence-Based Practices
Dina Newman
,
Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
Genetics is a required course for biology majors that has a reputation for being difficult. Students are particularly intimidated by the math, but other deep issues exist, including a failure to connect the molecular processes to macro-level observations, and a reliance on overly simplistic models that can lead to genetic determinism rather than an appreciation of biological complexity. To overcome these issues I emphasize molecular mechanisms and complex phenotypes in my course. I was also inspired by the C.R.E.A.T.E. method to have students learn genetic concepts through deep analysis of primary literature. Over time I have redesigned my Genetics course to follow these principles: 1) incorporating a high level of social learning, 2) leading students to construct knowledge, 3) focusing on authentic research with an engaging theme, 4) providing lots of feedback and support, and 5) fostering a growth mindset. My syllabus now includes 14 articles on the theme of canine genetics, which has the advantages of being relatable to students and having a wealth of fascinating research with a wide range of genetic topics to draw on. Students are given the Learning Objectives (LOs) for each activity, which map to traditional Genetics topics (e.g., dominance, transposons, epigenetics). During class, students work in groups to answer carefully designed questions based on the articles, which draw on their foundational knowledge, lead them to discovery of genetic principles, and help make connections between ideas they learned in different contexts. These worksheets are provided as Google docs that the instructor and learning assistant (LA) monitor. The instructor and LA circulate during class to provide help, hints and clarification. After class students receive written feedback on their work before turning it in for a grade. Thus, they are encouraged to revisit and revise material. Each open-ended exam question is mapped to the LOs that students were given, and answers are initially evaluated simply as “met” or “unmet” for each LO. Then students have the chance to revise and resubmit their answers before the final grade is assigned. Most students loved having the opportunity to rethink their work and get a better grade. While grades were higher on average, the questions were difficult and no partial credit was given;thus few students earned a perfect score, even after revision. However, the grading was easier and clearly tied to achieving LOs, unlike traditional grading that assigns somewhat arbitrary amounts of partial credit for imperfect answers.
Video Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
Tips and Tricks for Implementing Peer Instruction Online Based on Learning Science
Andy Butler
,
Washington University, USA
Julie Schell
,
The University of Texas at Austin, USA
Eric Mazur initially developed Peer Instruction as a social learning method for face-to-face classrooms. The bulk of applied scholarship on Peer Instruction spanning three decades addresses recommendations and guidelines for in-person implementation. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for evidence-based pedagogies that facilitate learning in online and virtual environments skyrocketed. In this session, the authors draw on recent scholarship to explore options for deploying Peer Instruction in synchronous online, hybrid, and asynchronous modalities in ways that align with the science of learning.
Video Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
OPI: a Synchronous Way to Apply Peer Instruction Online
Mario Vallarino
,
University of Genoa, ITLY
The Peer Instruction method, developed by Eric Mazur, today has spread all over the world and is applied not only in STEM subjects, but also in the humanities. Over time this method has also been applied online, with asynchronous tools such as DALITE (Distributed Active Learning Integrated Technology Environment) or PeerWise. With the global shift to online teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic, several authors applied Peer Instruction in the online context, with the aim to engage students in the learning process. The 3D Lab Factory of the University of Genoa applied its own online version of Peer Instruction (called OPI - Online Peer Instruction) in the Course of Digital Communication, for students in the second year of the bachelor’s degree in Communication Sciences, with the aim to improve both the engagement of students in online lectures and the understanding of the topics covered. OPI was applied synchronously during the online lectures, using the Microsoft Teams videoconferencing tool together with the learning platform Moodle, in which the phases of the OPI process were performed in real time. At the first poll, the questions posed by the teacher were answered by the students through the Choice activity in Moodle. After the answer they were required to write a few lines of feedback to the answer given by a classmate, randomly extracted by Moodle’s Workshop activity. Next, the students could read the feedback left by a classmate and evaluate which was the best reasoning to answer the question. Finally, the students were required to enter their final answer through a subsequent instance of the Choice activity (final poll). If the rate of correct answers was below 90%, the teacher briefly interviewed a student for each of the incorrect answers, and calibrated an in-depth explanation accordingly. If the response rate was above 90%, the teacher provided a short explanation of the answers, leaving room for any student questions. The results were encouraging: first of all, OPI engaged all the students following the lectures from home in carrying out a learning activity of a social nature. Secondly, the peer feedback process of OPI improved the understanding of the topics significantly: over the whole semester, the correct answer rate increased from 49.9% at the first poll to 71.2% at the final poll. Finally, no additional software was installed: the appropriate setup of Moodle’s Choice and Workshop activities made the OPI process ready to run.
Video Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
Didactic Innovation in Physics Education: A Study on the Adoption of the Peer Instruction Method in the Context of Brazilian Programs of Professional Master in Teaching
Tobias Espinosa
,
Federal University of Rio Grande, BRZL
Ana Amélia Petter
,
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, BRZL
In this session, we will present original research on Peer Instruction that we published in 2021. For that research, we analyzed 45 master’s degree theses among students training to be physics teachers from the period of 2004 to 2020. We also surveyed a sample of these teachers to investigate the most frequent changes they made to the Peer Instruction method, and why these changes were made. We discovered that the most recurrent changes to Peer Instruction among students training to be physics teachers are related to the preparation assignments and the application of ConcepTests in classroom. In addition, we will share explanatory hypotheses that we developed as a starting point for future studies on the topic of Peer Instruction in teacher training. Likewise, we will highlight the results achieved in the Brazilian educational context with the results of North American studies.
Video Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
Implementing Perusall to Address Unique Educational Challenges With Diverse Learners: From Learning Designer Perspective
Caylen Holmes
,
University of South Florida, USA
Janine Diaz-Cotto
,
University of South Florida, USA
The formation of learning networks and peer to peer interactions are key elements in optimizing learning outcomes in online learning communities. Concerns about how teaching online will affect the learner’s experiences, due to the lack of social learning have been expressed by educators in higher education across the board. From our experiences as Learning Designers at the University of South Florida, we propose a comprehensive approach to preserving the vital social learning elements, focused on providing a flexible and accessible online learning environment to meet the needs of diverse learners. Through the combination of course design, motivational strategies, and integration of social learning platforms like Perusall, we have created a promising approach to fostering social learning and the formation of learning networks in the online and asynchronous environment. With diverse learners, the need to provide an open platform to connect with their peers, to lean on each other, and achieve the learning goals for the course on their own unique schedules is crucial. In other words, they need a means of connecting with their peers to create a learning network that fits their own unique characteristics of learning behaviors. We utilize lecture note images as a document for students to collectively annotate, ask questions, make connections between concepts, and connect with their peers. Our goal is to meet the students where they are by taking into consideration the culture of diverse adult learners, who have various obligations and often take online courses for the flexibility it provides. By leaving the Perusall activities open across a prolonged period, we allow for a flexible online learning experience. Fostering a sense of community by establishing a vibrant learning network that brings new possibilities and helps connect learners that might not have otherwise felt connected. In summary, when done with consideration of learning design strategies, Perusall annotations can be the informal scaffolding of learning instructors have been looking for that meets students where they are at. Together in this presentation, we will look at how several online courses that span a variety of disciplines at USF used Perusall to connect students, create a space for informal community building in an asynchronous online class by reimagining how to connect students and preserving those social learning benefits.
Video Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
The Effect of Peer Instruction Method on University Students' Perceptions of Force and Motion Conceptions
Semra Demircali
,
Ministry of National Education- Rasit Ozkardes Secondary School, TRKY
Mesut Özel
,
Pamukkale University, TRKY
The aim of this study was to reveal the views of university students about force, motion and the relationship between force and motion and to reveal the effectiveness of the Peer Instruction method on student achievement. The research has an quasi-experimental design with unequal experimental and control groups. The sample of the research population consists of first-year students attending Pamukkale University Faculty of Education Science Education Department in the fall semester of 2005-2006 academic year. In order to determine the alternative concepts of the students about force and motion, a 4-question questionnaire consisting of open-ended questions was applied. The three questions in this questionnaire were developed by Jimoyiannis and Komis (2003) and applied in a study in Greece. The fourth question was taken from the textbook. This question has been added to reveal students' ideas about the application of Newton's Laws to Circular Motion. The answers given by the students to these four questions were analyzed and the students were grouped according to their mental models. To assess students' understanding of force and motion;The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) consisting of 30 questions created and developed by Halloun and Hestenes (1985) was applied as an achievement test. Before the application, the reliability of the test was measured as 0.70. The materials used in this study;concept tests, pre-reading assignments and study questions. Reading assignments from the textbook were given in order to enable students to try to learn the subject by reading themselves before the lesson and to increase student participation in the discussion sections, thus helping them to improve their understanding. In addition, students were responsible for end-unit questions, conceptual questions, and complex questions that require explanation in the textbook. Our analysis has identified three discernible groups of students 1) An extended group of students having common misconceptions, 2) a second group of students, which generally responded correctly to the tasks, 3) a third group of students, which ignored the presence of the gravitational force and believe that the action-reaction forces were both exerted to the ball during its motion. According to the t-test results performed to determine whether the difference between the post-test scores of the experimental and control groups is significant, the difference between the post-test scores is significant at the 0.05 level (t: 6.95;P < 0.05). It was found that;Peer Instruction method is much more effective about students’ progression academic achievement than traditional methods.
Video Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
Elaastic - A Web Platform for Orchestrating 2-votes Based Processes Promoting Written Argumentation and Peer Review
Jean-François Parmentier
,
University of Toulouse, FRAN
Rialy Andriamiseza
,
University of Toulouse, FRAN
Elaastic is a web-based application that allows teachers to implement formative assessment sequences with large groups of students, during face to face or distance courses. The application implements different workflows depending on the learning context. These workflows are all composed of five steps : (1) The teacher asks a choice or open-ended question to his/her group of students. (2) The students answer the question by providing a written justification. (3) The system then organises a peer review of the various contributions. (4) The students answer the question a second time. (5) The results are published after Elaastic processed all the collected data so that each student receives feedback on his/her answer. The sequence then usually ends with a discussion between teacher and students. Elaastic can be considered as an extended version of peer Instruction promoving written argumentation and anonymity in order to (1) limit cognitive bias and (2) provide the teacher with the opportunity to access students rational, misconceptions with a kind of popularity index. During our presentation we'll present the tool and the main benefits its provide to learners and teachers. We will share recent research results issued from works around Elaastic.
Video Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
Teaching through Social, Cognitive and Social Presence: Perusall and the Community of Inquiry Model
Manuel Fernandez Tomasetti
,
University of St. Thomas, USA
Bridget Mueller
,
University of Houston-Downtown
A community of inquiry and its educational experience is made up of three components: social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence. Professor Bridget Mueller, Dr. Dagmar Scharold, and Manuel Fernandez discuss the way Perusall serves the community of inquiry model by providing instructional design examples, their experience in the classroom, and discussing what gaps if any, exist when analyzing Perusall activities through this model/framework.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Studying Student Reading Behaviors: Using Perusall Analytics to Conduct SoTL Projects
Lauren Barbeau
,
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Perusall users can attest that the platform has changed the way students interact with readings and with each other, but how specifically? Has it changed the way students read? Do students leverage Perusall’s features to develop new reading strategies? Does the social nature of the platform alter typical reading behaviors? Is there an “ideal” time to release a new reading to promote maximum engagement? Rather than offering answers to these and other questions, this presentation serves as a call to action, an encouragement to use Perusall analytics to study student reading behaviors. Perusall analytics make it possible for us to gain insight into aspects of student reading behaviors that were previously invisible, allowing us to study questions we might have about this type of student learning from new perspectives. However, the platform also makes new types of reading behaviors possible and opens up a world of new opportunities for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) projects. Perusall users face the exciting possibilities of exploring a new research frontier! The proposed oral presentation would include an overview and examples of the analytics reports Perusall can provide with prompts for participants to review their own data reports. For participants new to SoTL, the presentation would include a very brief introduction to what SoTL is and how it applies to Perusall. Participants would then be prompted to apply their inductive reasoning skills to consider the kinds of questions Perusall data can help us ask or answer about student reading behaviors. Ideally, this presentation will foster a growing body of scholarship not just about Perusall as a tool but about student reading practices in the digital age more broadly.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Collaborative Annotation through a Comparative Lens
Gavin Porter
,
Harvard Medical School, USA
Collaborative annotation takes advantage of one’s natural tendency to mark up a text, to then bring those thoughts out in the open. This creates a natural formative assessment environment for document critique where student thoughts, instructor thoughts, peer-to-peer corrections, and instructor-to-student corrections can all play out in a collaborative critique and subsequent refinement of that critique. The instructor’s input can serve as a model for critique in a given discipline, and peer-to-peer commentary can lighten the feedback provision load of the instructor. Studies on collaborative annotation as assessment should benefit from clear comparator conditions within the same student population. In the current study, collaborative annotation was compared to a traditional reading assessment template, and two annotation platforms (Perusall and hypothes.is) were also compared, in the same student population, annotating the same type of content. Results indicate that students preferred collaborative annotation over a traditional templated reading assessment by a roughly 4:1 ratio. The vast majority of students exceeded the minimum annotation requirement given by the instructor. Further supporting annotation as a process, the students improved in annotation quality over time, regardless of the order in which students used each of the annotation platforms. Students also showed either a steady or an increasing percentage of threaded annotations over time, indicative of collaboration. All of these points should be encouraging for the annotation platform designers, or instructors considering the use of an annotation platform for their classes, as it suggests that students develop some natural fluency with collaborative annotation. The study also indicates higher annotation output with Perusall in one of the student cohorts, and annotation outputs are discussed in regards to pedagogical significance, alongside student commentary. The data analysis routine in this study can serve as a practical template for student output, where baselines are still being established with various student populations. The educational technology, peer learning, and assessment fields have much to gain in the future from analysing student responses to dynamically annotated text.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Teaching and Learning in an Unequal World
Eiichiro Kazumori
,
University of Massachusetts, USA
For the past few decades, one of the most significant developments in the US has been the worsened economic inequality due to skill-biased technological progress and import competition that affects every facet of our lives. The proposed scholarship and teaching development study the effect of economic inequality on instructional design and student learning and skill acquisition and study policies to mitigate the adverse effects of inequality. The project's crucial novelty is to analyze an instructor's instructional design to maximize students' satisfaction (via the course evaluation) subject to students' choosing their effort level to maximize their utilities following the framework of the principal-agent model. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first paper that applies the principal-agent model to instructional design that explicitly studies the effect of instructor grading schemes and student teaching evaluation schemes on student efforts, skill acquisition, and instructor evaluation. Then the analysis will allow us to evaluate policies designed to alleviate adverse effects due to inequality, such as the 'one-to-one' laptop program in the state of Connecticut that provides a learning device to every PK-12 student in need.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Social Annotation to Speed Experimenting: Using Perusall to Scaffold Experimental Skills
Kristine Peace
,
MacEwan University, CA
The goal of this presentation is to discuss the use of social annotation as a pedagogical tool to support student growth. Use of Perusall was combined with unique methods to promote comprehension, application, generation, and dissemination of experimental ideas as applied to topics within forensic psychology. Typically, undergraduate students vary in their level of exposure and ability to understand and develop good experimental design. From a program curriculum perspective, this is one of the tangible skills we want our students to have throughout the course of their degree. As such, in a senior level seminar class, I developed a three-pronged scaffolded learning approach to accomplish this aim. To foster skill development, I utilized social annotation as a critical step one in improving student understanding of psychological experiments. Not only did social annotation expose students to relevant concepts and examples of experimental design, it prompted them to engage with the material beyond a surface level. Students provided commentary about conceptual and methodological issues pertaining to the how and why of experiments, which aided them in developing their own experimental ideas. Step two in the scaffolded approach was use of the content of annotated empirical articles to springboard the development of individual experimental design ideas. From there, I employed a new approach that I developed from combining the “3MT” (3-minute-thesis) model with speed dating. In essence, students expanded upon the knowledge gained from social annotations and developed their own ‘experimental pitch’ that they were required to give in 3 minutes to a small group of classmates. Each group then had to select the most successful pitch weekly to bring forward to a larger class discussion, where we analyzed several designs in more detail. Ultimately, all of this was designed to lead to step three in which students prepared their own written experimental design proposal on the topic, aided by the multi-layered reinforcement of these skills throughout the course. The approach discussed here provides a useful model for scaffolding skills that an instructor wishes to develop or support in their students and could be applied to an assortment of course structures and topics.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Prevention is the Best Intervention: 3 Ways to Promote Effective Social Learning in Teams
Audrey Stein Wright
,
The University of Texas at Austin, USA
Julie Schell
,
The University of Texas at Austin, USA
How do you form effective student teams? Among educators, this question is enduring and continues to be studied (Forrest & Miller, 2003;Longmore et al., 1996). Instructors struggle to (a) distinguish between groups and teams and (b) create teams that actually work well together. Additionally, students consistently report negative experiences with peer work (Monson, 2018), leaving their educational experiences with multiple stories of group projects marred by miscommunication, lack of accountability, unmanaged conflict, and poor participation from one or more teammates. Faculty also often find themselves in the sticky position of mediating these issues once it is too late. Effective teamwork requires guidance and facilitation from faculty. For students, it also requires knowledge and skills that– like content-specific knowledge and skills– educators can develop through carefully designed, scaffolded social learning experiences. By creating intentional space, time, and support for students to explore what it means to work and learn well in teams, educators can effectively equip students to build skills that will aid them in future academic and professional pursuits, in addition to providing a valuable foundation for use in their personal lives negotiating complex and contextual social problems. In this session, we will offer a model for developing classroom-based teams that promote effective social learning. Drawing on our instructional design data from our graduate and undergraduate courses, we will highlight three ways to facilitate effective social learning in teams: encourage identity exploration, center empathy, and provide tools for structured team interactions. A fruitful first step in setting students up for successful social learning begins with individual exploration of personal identity and critical reflection on how our identities show up in team project spaces. We add a social science intervention to this step to help elicit self-transcendent purposes for social learning in teams (Yeager et al., 2014). Second, equipping students to center empathy when (a) interacting with their team members and (b) advocating for themselves sets the stage for compassionate problem solving to be the ensuing response when team conflict arises. Finally, it is essential to provide structural tools for students engaging in team-based social learning. Such tools can be norms, scripts, and project frameworks like scrum and Kanban, all used to reduce the management burden of creating a system that delegates tasks, balances demands, tracks progress, and provides insights. By implementing this tested, three-part model, educators can confidently set their students up for success in team-based social learning environments.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
I Do or I Don’t? Restructuring Students’ Preconceived Notions about Marriage through Story.
Nikki Rodelas Morris
,
The University of Texas at Austin, USA
How we form our belief systems, morals, and expectations about life in our adolescence and early adulthood is driven by social learning- what we observed and copied from our parents or guardians. Those observations had and continue to have an influence on how we make decisions and behave well into our adult lives. Without more than one perspective, our development of our belief system is narrow and ill-informed. This narrowed perspective is likely to be a contributor to concepts of marriage. Traditional schooling achieves broadening the understanding of skills like math, history, and science, but lacks the mention of eventual real-life decisions, including whether to get married or not and how to come about making an informed decision. From experience, it seems that most people formed their idea of marriage from observing those around them as they grew up. This mere observation, without in-depth understanding of the intricacies about marriage may have left a “bad-taste” or even set impracticable standards. I believe an in-depth and multi-perspective look at marriage could mitigate this. Using this platform, I would like to propose a new type of class, centered on social learning from married, divorced, widowed, and engaged adults, that would better inform students about the realities of marriage. While not a viable course at this time, I believe using social learning, students could garner valuable perspective and develop a well-rounded opinion on marriage using the lessons learned in the class.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Integrating Learning Spaces: Engaging Students In-Person and Online
Naomi Levy-strumpf
,
University of Toronto, CA
I implement an active learning cycle in an online 4th year undergraduate seminar-based course, integrating the in-class and out of class learning spaces. This course is focused on the recent innovations in gene and genome engineering and regenerative medicine. The students were assigned three scientific publications each week and were required to annotate the assigned literature and discuss the data with their peers using the Perusall social annotation platform. The work was assigned to groups of 4-5 students. The students were encouraged to ask questions, reflect on the data, and share their thoughts. It prompted peer-to-peer learning and I had the opportunity to use the students' responses to inform my instruction. It allowed me to adapt my teaching, I designed the synchronous discussion-based sessions based on the students’ questions and reflection, that occurred outside of class. It allowed me to address misconceptions and gaps in knowledge and helped “tailor” the knowledge transfer to suit that cohort of students. The insights I glean from “peering into the minds” of my students, impacts my teaching not only in this 4th year course, but also in the 2nd and 3rd year courses that establish the foundational knowledge leading to this course. It goes beyond “backwards course design” and in fact enables “backwards curricular design”. The asynchronous group interaction created a sense of community and facilitated social interactions in and outside of class. The students were engaged in conversation and as the semester progressed, more and more students were drawn in, and participated in a meaningful and engaged way. It inspired motivation and engagement, and greatly enhanced their ability to apply the knowledge and get a firm grasp of complex concepts.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Engaging Secondary School Students Online with Perusall
Hassan Wilson
,
Constellation Learning Institute, USA
The COVID pandemic has demonstrated just how difficult it is to engage students with online learning, especially those in primary and secondary schools. High School students missed the in-person connections, social interactions and collaborative learning. While many schools are dismantling their remote classes, we at the Constellation Learning Institute, will continue to offer high quality online courses because of the flexibility it gives students. Software like Perusall have been fundamental to engaging our students. During our session, several teachers of high school online courses will demonstrate the various ways they have used Perusall to interact with each other and course content.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Collaborative learning among the teaching practicum triad on Perusall
Carisma Nel
,
North-West University, ZAF
The success of the teaching practicum is a key indicator of the success and quality of an initial teacher education programme. There are specific elements that play a significant role in determining the quality of the practicum experience, namely the nature of relationships among the triad of student teacher, mentor teacher and teacher educator, opportunities for supportive reflection, formative assessment and feedback (Aspden, 2014). The teaching practicum is a social and relational act (Haigh & Ell, 2014). It may be argued that for a given period of time, a set of participants come together to form a temporary community (Goodnough et al., 2009), in which the student teacher works closely with others to negotiate a shared understanding and shared repertoire of practice. Caires, Almeida and Vieira (2012) suggest that attention has shifted in research from considering the individual roles and responsibilities of the triad members, to greater consideration of the affective-relational elements of the student teacher-mentor teacher and/or teacher educator relationships. Wenger (2000) has argued that although individuals learn through participation in a community of practice, more important is the generation of newer or deeper levels of knowledge through the sum of the group activity. Processes aimed at improving collaboration between universities and schools, and specifically between the triad are few and far between. This lack of collaboration, the emphasis placed on and prevalent use of technology during the COVID-19 pandemic and comments made by the triad triggered the consideration of a social annotation platform, Perusall, to enhance collaboration between schools and universities for the benefit of the practicum triad. In this study, the Perusall platform will be utilised in an innovative way to allow student teachers, mentor teachers as well as the teacher educators to engage in a learning cycle focused on core teaching practices (e.g., explaining/modelling content) by utilising the platform not only for reading of texts, related to core teaching practices, but also for video analysis. The purpose of the presentation will be to report on the extent to which the usage of the Perusall platform enhances the teaching practicum triad’s dialogic engagement on teaching practices as well as the student teachers’ reflective practices.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
"What Questions Do You Have?": Transparent Teaching Through Social Annotation of Syllabus and Assignment Prompts
Elizabeth Leininger
,
New College of Florida, USA
Questions are a key way of clarifying not only course material, but also course policies and assignment prompts. However, not all students may feel equally comfortable asking questions, especially at the start of a course. I used Perusall syllabus and assignment annotation in an intermediate level biology course to ensure that all students were invited into conversation about my course and assignment design, and have their questions answered. Annotating the syllabus was an effective in-class practice exercise for future social annotation assignments, and assignment annotations were useful formative check-ins for students to monitor their progress towards their goals.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Institutionalizing Perusall Under the Context of the European Commission Erasmus+ Innovalab Project
Pablo Valdivia
,
University of Grongingen, NL
Vanesa Valero
,
University of Murcia, SPN
In this presentation, we explore how we innovated in the process of institutionalizing Perusall at the University of Murcia (Spain). From a multidisciplinary perspective, the authors have collaborated in the integration of Perusall at both institutional and educational levels under the context of the Covid-19 pandemic which contributed to the acceleration of active and social blended learning models. More specifically, the authors will offer a qualitative-quantitative analysis on the findings obtained from course surveys related to the use of Perusall which shed light on students’ views of actual learning vs perceived learning. Finally, the authors will elaborate on how the institutional implementation of Perusall was key in the problematization of the research principles that inform their recently awarded European Commission Erasmus+ project Innovalab. The main goal of this Erasmus+ project is to create a new tool, which can be integrated/connected with Perusall and that will help and support facilitators in their constructive alignment course designs.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Do Perusall’s Grades Agree with those Awarded by Instructors?
Raoul Mulder
,
University of Melbourne, ASTL
Mark Elgar
,
University of Melbourne, ASTL
Amanda Franklin
,
University of Melbourne, ASTL
Therésa Jones
,
University of Melbourne, ASTL
Devi Stuart-Fox
,
University of Melbourne, ASTL
The online social annotation platform Perusall can be configured to award scores to students for the ‘quality’ or ‘insightfulness’ of their annotations of reading assignments. Using a sample of student annotations from an upper-level undergraduate course on Animal Behaviour, we evaluated inter-rater agreement between the scores awarded by the Perusall algorithm and five expert human raters (teachers in the course). Each human rater independently scored 500 annotations from diverse readings across the course content, using the same 3-step scoring rubric as Perusall (0=below expectations, 1=meets expectations, 3=exceeds expectations) and blind to the score awarded by the other human assessors. We assessed agreement across all six raters and for each pair of raters using Fleiss’ Kappa. Across the six raters, there was only slight inter-rater agreement overall (kappa=0.147). There was most agreement on ratings of 2 (k=0.234) and least agreement on ratings of 1 (k=0.050). Agreement between the Perusall ratings and those awarded by each of the human assessors ranged from k=0.155 (slight) to 0.366 (fair). Agreement between pairs of individual human raters ranged from k=0.196 (slight) to 0.476 (moderate). Thus, both the lowest and highest levels of agreement between human raters exceeded comparable values for Perusall-human agreement. The mean paired kappa between Perusall and the five human raters was k=0.285, which was at the lower end of the range of mean paired kappa values between each human rater and the other four human raters (min. k=0.293, max. k=0.402). The average rating awarded by Perusall (1.69) was higher than the average across human raters (1.31) or that for any individual rater (0.80-1.65). Our analysis suggests that although agreement between Perusall and individual human raters is generally slightly lower than between human raters, there is surprisingly large variation in agreement between human raters. As a result, ratings awarded by the Perusall algorithm do not show noticeably less agreement with human raters than these raters show among themselves.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
We Can Build It: Using Seminal Readings to create Cybersecurity Capture the Flag Games
Ann-Marie Horcher
,
Kozminski University, POL
One way to teach difficult content is to use games and stories. People more often remember a story someone tells them (social interaction). But to understand the game or story, students need to have background in the field. Cybersecurity is a field on the cutting edge and constantly changing. Traditional textbooks do not match the most current content, and the newest topics. In Perusall it is possible to bring together the seminal works on cybersecurity and usable design and the latest research. The commentary the students add relates older content to the real-world events they predict. These comments become the building blocks for a game which in turn reinforces the content. The students tell each other stories to teach each other.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Perusall in Legal Education
Amos Israel-Vleeschhouwer
,
Sapir Academic College, ISRL
Legal education requires extensive reading, not only of textbooks but of legal cases and materials. Teaching property law and international law in an Israeli college, I’ve been trying out perusal as a tool to improve legal reading practices and encourage active reading habits. I want to share three ideas, some of which can be implemented across other disciplines. 1. Engage students in preparing the reading materials. Most of my reading assignments are case-law and legal articles which are in the public domain. Students read about 60 cases during the course. I added an assignment in which students prepare the reading materials for the class. Last year each group created a “ready” PDF of the cases, annotated and with important passages (according to the students) highlighted – distinguishing between facts, arguments and legal precedents. This year I assigned one case to each student. In addition to preparing the case – the students are “in charge” of the article – they submit a summary and critique and record a short video presenting the case (as this feature is missing on perusal, I use flipgrid.com). Thus, the materials are “owned up” by students, and each assigned file includes credit to the students who prepared the weekly reading. Note: this practice contradicts perusall’s business model. Wide usage of open source/public reading materials might cause a change in terms of usage, and complicate this practice. 2. Specific Legal reading/writing skills. In some weeks I require students to focus on certain aspects of legal reading/writing: e.g., “what argument, do you think, won the case? – identify and argue for your ientification”;“Are the arguments well proved by law and precedent? point out on one well proved argument and one argument whose proof is weak – comment beginning with characterization – strong/weak”;“why did a judge cite from a precedent – comment on the choice to cite, check the citation and explain why these words were cited”;“identify at least three rhetorically strong/weak sentences/arguments – explain why they are effective/suggest a better formulation”. “Comment (only) on explicit and implicit communications between the judges – identify the reason for (dis)agreement”. 3. Perusal as a “legal pad” – purposeful annotation I assign the class a case and ask them to highlight and comment on passages and sentences to use for writing a legal brief and highlight and comment on issues that should be raised and analyzed (without knowing what side they will argue). I ask them to explain each choice in their comment – what will you use this text for? I tell them that in class – I’ll let two perusal reading “groups” compete as legal teams, to encourage them to find the best arguments from the assigned cases. note: The use of perusal for legal textbooks has been discussed by T. Mcfarlin, Using Open-Source, Collaborative Online Reading to Teach Property 64(3) Saint Louis University Law Journal (2020)
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
The Meaning of Social Learning; 3 Million Years of People and Things
Steve Yalisove
,
University of Michigan, USA
Robin Beck
,
University of Michigan, USA
Social learning is part of our hominid heritage, from the oldest stone chopper tools made by Homo habilis to modern technologies like smartphones, blockchains, and weapons of ever increasing mass destruction. But how do we teach this to students? We teach it through the process of social learning, just as we have from the dawn of our species and even our genus. As our capacity for social learning has increased, so too has our entanglement with technology. And as the operational chains that underwrite technology grow more and more complex, they become the source of bottlenecks that limit access to knowledge. What better way to teach these ideas than to work in teams and discover how entanglements, operational chains, and bottlenecks operate at all scales of social learning. As instructors we provide key information to overcome learning bottlenecks that are not so different from those that gave rise to durable inequalities during the Bronze Age. In fact, since our course is about the impact of materials on society, these bottlenecks in manufacturing and scientific knowledge--as well as the physical control of raw materials--continue to define the world economy today. We will present a team- and project-based pedagogical approach developed for our co-taught course, “Making Things: Three Million Years of Materials and Culture,” which draws on our fields of Materials Science and Engineering and Archaeology. In addition, we will discuss the use of self-assessment and reflection that incorporates a team based component. We will also touch on how Perusall’s new feature of student uploaded documents can enhance this kind of social learning.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Speed to Engagement - Reducing Student Friction in Choosing a Point of Reading Assignment Discussion Engagement
David Stehlik
,
University of Saint Francis, USA
Help students with their "speed to engagement" and contextual awareness with a new starter exercise wherein students receive a structured, random location for annotations. Why is that valuable? Students sometimes struggle to engage because they struggle to find their insertion point in the engagement activities presented. The suggested exercise maintains the learning challenge (content agnostic) while significantly reducing the insertion opportunity challenge. And, it can meaningfully increase total class engagement in a greater surface area of the assigned content by randomly dispersing ownership of discussion. Instead of students hovering around areas of personal familiarity or areas where the most "action is happening," or even [positively] areas of great interest, this approach permits students to grow by design. It intentionally creates the regular requirement to lead off in topics of discussion. This exercise also supports fairness through the use of a randomization process (rather than overly prioritizing those first to post, anchored to areas of expertise, or motivated by hot button issues).
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Building a community of inquiry on Perusall: Using a social constructivist approach to empower teachers as ‘TLA experts’
Nicole Tavares
,
The University of Hong Kong, HK
Ada Fong Kin Yu
,
The University of Hong Kong, HK
Situated within the context of teacher education, this paper examines how a group of 30 pre- and in-service teachers (T) of English on a Master of Education Language Awareness (LA) course at the University in Hong Kong are empowered as ‘TLA experts’ on Perusall, take part in a series of synergized asynchronous and synchronous activities via Perusall designed by their instructor and experience significant TLA gains. Adopting the Community of Inquiry (COI) framework developed by Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000), the paper analyzes teacher learning in the three interrelated domains of social presence, instructor presence and cognitive presence. Guided by the social constructivist approach to teaching and learning and building on the ‘Perusall Managers’ model introduced by Tavares (2021), the teachers on the LA course are assigned by their instructor to be ‘TLA experts’ of designated areas. With a clearly defined focus and from different angles, these ‘experts’ initiate and facilitate exchanges on Perusall as they take charge of the analysis of texts in the form of authentic textbook and classroom-discourse excerpts. Acknowledging one another’s visible social presence on the platform by their leadership and management of discussions, the ‘experts’ report enjoying their collaborative inquiry and working closely as a COI to “complete a puzzle to form a whole picture together” which challenges them to think from multiple perspectives and deepens their theoretical understanding. The paper discusses how the instructor makes use of the functionalities on Perusall to amplify instructor presence, boost the experts’ confidence, and promote timely and ongoing professional dialogues, thereby tightening their bonding as a COI in their journey of knowledge co-construction. It highlights how social presence and instructor presence impact positively on the experts’ motivation to interact and engage with the course content and texts, which in turn strengthens their cognitive presence. Specifically, emphasis is placed on how the instructor pedagogically organizes the interactive learning environment, tasks and activities in the synchronous virtual LA classroom amid the COVID-19 pandemic to further sharpen the experts’ critical thinking skills, and foster a climate conducive to their re-evaluation and re-interpretation of their analyses of more complex topics via Perusall. The design of the end-of-the-LA-course assessment to reinforce their TLA is also explored. The paper concludes with pedagogical implications for the teachers-as-TLA-experts initiative and makes recommendations on ways of maximizing the affordances of Perusall in teacher learning and empowerment.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
On the Average Perception of Perceived Averages
Jason R. Tavares
,
Polytechnique Montreal, CA
Unit Operations has been taught using an outcomes-based approach at Polytechnique Montréal for nearly ten years. In that time, a certain debate has raged amongst the teaching team: is it really necessary to divulge the average to students following exams and quizzes? Those from a more industrial background see the average as an unnecessary crutch for students, especially in the more authentic setting of an outcomes-based class where one’s position with respect to the average plays no role in determining the final grade. Those with a more academic perspective see divulging the average as a useful pedagogical tool that provides feedback to students and helps them determine if they have attained their learning objectives. To settle this debate, we set into motion a yearlong study during which the average results to tests were withheld, and students were asked to fill in a questionnaire before and after the exam to predict their grade and the class average. The results show that students, especially immediately after a test, are able to adequately predict the class performance, and position themselves with respect to this average. In other words, it may not be necessary to divulge the average to a test. However, this conclusion may be tainted by the fact that Unit Operations is a 3rd year class – students know each other and have a clear frame of reference. It may be pertinent to continue to use the average as a pedagogical tool in the first years of training.
Video Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Confessions of a Peer Instruction Rookie: How I Learned to Love No Correct Answers
Cassandre Giguere Alvarado
,
The University of Texas at Austin, USA
Join former Peer Instruction rookie, now proudly self-proclaimed amateur, Dr. Cassandre Giguere Alvarado discuss her journey to the “big leagues” of teaching: using Peer Instruction. In this podcast, Alvarado, a Professor in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin and baseball enthusiast, discusses the challenges of adapting PI to courses in the fields of communication and education. Listen as she tackles the challenge of working with peer instruction in disciplines where there are few, if any, correct answers, and how she grew to love and help her students love using peer instruction where ambiguity reigns. Her journey includes examples of learning with a spectrum of classroom experiences, from graduate students to first-year students, in two different, yet similar disciplines.
Podcast
Peer Instruction
2022
Group Work: What Could Go Wrong (And How to Make It Right)
Steven Robinow
,
Teaching for Student Success Media, USA
Marguerite Brickman
,
University of Georgia, USA
If you are interested in using group work in your courses but might be a bit intimidated, if you are using group work but are frustrated by it, if you have used group work but have sworn it off, I encourage any and all to listen to this two part series on the problems of group work and possible solutions. In this episode I have a conversation with Dr. Peggy Brickman of the University of Georgia about group work but from an unusual perspective. Instead of discussing the evidence demonstrating the positive impacts of well-designed group work on student success, we discuss the problems of group work. These discussions may provide the encouragement you need to finally implement group work, or may provide a solution to reduce your frustration with group work, or may convince you that group work is worth another try.
Podcast
Social Learning
2022
Dementors Got You Down? Alohomora, Perusall, and Other Magical Solutions For Dispelling Student Disengagement
T. Adam Baldry
,
Pima Community College, USA
Brad Butler
,
Pima Community College
The Experts of Magical EdTech at Pima Community College continue to face an onslaught of the dementors of the online space–learner disengagement and boredom. Despite their prolific use of Expecto Patoronum the dementors continue to persist. In an effort to dispel the horrors of disengagement once and for all, they are exploring the magic of Perusall in their battle for the attention of the learners. To fully understand the impact of Perusall our experts have conducted learner surveys and interviews with the hope of understanding what learners want from peer-to-peer interactions. Grab your Extendable Ears and join in on this discussion overviewing the qualitative and quantitative data on peer-to-peer engagement through Perusall collected at Pima Community College. Survey findings revealed learners reporting peer-to-peer interactions as a top benefit of using Perusall. Be sure to bring your Quick-Quotes Quill as highlights from interviews with instructors and learners about their experiences with online discussion will also be shared. These insights emphasize how the implementation of Perusall has improved peer-to-peer engagement and become an effective tool for dispelling disengagement at Pima Community College. Please note this content is for all, including muggles (non-magic folk) and magic folk alike.
Podcast
Social Learning
2022
Metacognitive Social Annotation: Perusall and Best Practices in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Travis Martin
,
Eastern Kentucky University, USA
Matthew Winslow
,
Eastern Kentucky University, USA
Samuel Lewis
,
Eastern Kentucky University, USA
The Perusall platform is an easy and effective way to help students tap into their desire to engage socially with course content. It is revolutionizing not only access to content, but the ways in which educators teach. Join Dr. Matthew Winslow, Dr. Travis Martin, and Samuel Lewis, two professors and a student at Eastern Kentucky University. Drs. Martin and Winslow will discuss how Perusall aligns with best practices in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), and Mr. Lewis will provide insights from the nearly half-dozen courses he has taken over the years featuring Perusall. Innovative practices such as ungrading (Blum, 2020), relationship-rich education (Felten & Lambert, 2021), transparency in learning and teaching (Winkelmes, 2016), as well as critical reading strategies (Elder & Paul, 2004) are surprisingly effective when deployed within the context of a Perusall-based course. The discussion will also consider ways in which Perusall reduces anxiety, promotes student-centered learning, subverts unequal access to classroom materials, and facilitates greater faculty-student interactions in both online and in-person courses.
Podcast
Social Learning
2022
Opening the Gates to Student Readers: Reflections on Using Perusall to Host a Multi-Discipline, Discipline-Specific Reading Strategy Workshop
Nicole Nicholson
,
University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley, USA
University-level reading can be a challenge and even a shock to many of our students. Of course proficient reading skills are necessary across the curriculum, but as students begin focusing on courses in their majors, they also need the reading skills specific to their particular disciplines (Falk-Ross 2002;Cox, Friesner, & Khayum 2003). We understand this to be one of the hallmarks of being a member of that particular academic discourse community. We also know that students rarely receive any post-K12 reading instruction at all, let alone reading strategies useful for their specific major (Van Camp & Van Camp 2013). Indeed, many of us had to muddle through our undergraduate and graduate careers learning to read effectively and annotated on our own. We see this as a fault of transparency and a needless narrowing of the gate to participating as a member of their academic communities with confidence and authority (Baker, Bangeni, Burke, & Hunma 2019). To bridge this gap at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, we (Inqspot, an initiative designed to create a stronger campus culture of reading;and the CTE, the Center for Teaching Excellence) developed a workshop in which professors and instructors from across the university were invited to share their own discipline-specific reading strategies, model them for students, and then collaborate together with students to practice those reading strategies on a sample text. The workshop was synchronous online and used Perusall and Zoom as the primary platforms, with the hands-on discipline-specific portions taking place concurrently in Zoom breakout rooms. The proposed podcast will include practical explanations of how to use Perusall to facilitate such a workshop at other universities, but it will also include reflections about our successes, challenges, and failures (read: plans to do better next year!). We will include the voices of Inqspot and CTE facilitators, the workshop’s keynote speaker, faculty leads, and student participants. It is our hope that listeners will benefit from our collective learning experience and be motivated to initiate similar cross-discipline collaborative learning workshops and projects.
Podcast
Social Learning
2022
Theoretical and Practical Explorations of Cross-boundary Learning
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There is a great need for cross-boundary interaction in education. The cross-boundary learning is becoming a universal social learning model. However, cross-boundary learning activities do not happen automatically and need to be triggered, maintained and promoted by specific mechanisms. Based on theoretical and practical exploration of a case carried out by the author involving calligraphers, painters, musician, linguists, government officials and students from different disciplines and different countries, this paper illustrates the “NO WAR” strategy in cross-boundary learning. N: Network O: Organize W: Work A: Attract R: Reflect With the rapid development of new technologies, the rules and problems of cross-boundary learning under the Internet environment are further explored in this case establishing clear themes, providing organized, meaningful, responsible and attractive communication scenarios, promoting participants in different activity systems to cross the boundaries of their fields and interact with participants in other activity systems, then to form a new collective concept.
Poster Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
Learner Interaction to Interact with Each Other, in Many-to-Many Fashion
Akinori Oyama
,
OSS Designer and Developer
Capturing text in every social and individual interaction fuels mechanism to drive learning. Like Perusall services, the method manifested in the proposed tool of the project will integrate the full interactions from reading to voice conversation or discussion. The tool captures all the utterances of every single learner that will help us learn together. "Own voice" democratizes learning opportunities and protects the learner's ownership of oral interaction texts. It promotes a fair share of online word-by-word activity records that ought to belong to each learner, whose data are usually solely held by service providers. Firstly, the browser plug-in-extension retains live captions generated by browser or conference services within the learner's preferred, private storage. Secondly, it ensures all the accumulated assets can, upon permission, fuel learning services, and openness can invite any novel, independent vendors. The example applications merely illustrate real-time learning possibilities. Being OSS promises the unconventional notion that none but learners "own voice."
Poster Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
Learning by Doing
Christie Shealy
,
Anderson School District One, USA
Brad Moore
,
Anderson School District One, USA
Anderson School District One experienced district leadership changes, ushering in a team focused on advancing student and teacher learning. The learning team tackled traditional methods of district leadership to focus on transformative practices through social learning opportunities. Within the educational field, best practice centers around the ability of classroom educators to collaborate around essential learnings and make instructional adjustments based on formative learning within the classroom. Many of the school administrators worked as classroom teachers before the emergence of instructional technology. To equip school administrators, the learning team used monthly learning opportunities on best practices from the field utilizing social learning tools to broaden the depth of administrative skills. Traditionally, the monthly meetings focused on presentations about important topics to advance school operations. The learning team redesigned the monthly learning opportunities provided a vehicle for transformative learning of school-level administrators for continuous learning within professional learning communities. Rather than utilize a traditional book study to redesign the monthly meetings, the district learning team uses Persuall and other instructional technology tools to advance the learning from a standard text in a collaborative online space. Administrators engaged in the social learning of transformative practices to promote student learning for all students. The administrators interacted with critical selections from a shared text before the meetings, thus, laying the groundwork for the instruction on best practices to advance student learning within the schools. Tools like Perusall allowed overworked administrators to focus on specific professional texts in an interactive formative by sharing ideas and perspectives from administrators across the district. Often, the traditional monthly meeting provided limited opportunities for administrators to discuss professional learning. Perusuall serves as a means for our district to challenge the teaching of administrators charged with advancing and leading the schools to provide a quality educational experience to every student and prepare them for life beyond the classroom.
Poster Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
Discovering and Discussing the Equivalence Principle – in Lectures, Playground Visits and Amusement Park Projects
Ann-Marie Mårtensson-Pendrill
,
Lund University, SWDN
The equivalence between inertial and gravitational mass has many surprising consequences, beyond feather and baseball falling together in vacuum . The angles in a chain flyer ride are independent of the mass of the rider [1] and you can twin swing with an empty swing. Single and double blocks slide together on an inclined plane, and small or large balls can roll side by side down a playground slide [3]. The equivalence lets you feel weightless during free fall - but also at the top of roller coaster hills and loops [4], which can be used to entice students to many challenging discussions. The experience of the body, feeling heavier at the bottom of a swing or roller coaster valley, can help students realize that the acceleration is not zero at the lowest point [4], which is a common misconception [5]. The expectation that mass always influences acceleration is quite persistent. Even students who have observed that the density has no (i.e. very small) effect on balls with the same radius roilling down a slide are often tempted to use mass as an explanation when they see a compact ball rolling faster than a hollow one [3]. Small group discussions let students discuss the different observations and help them discern how different physics principles interplay. For many years, I have been involved in courses where peer instruction in lectures has been combined with supervised extended group projects, including written and oral reports with "opposition" from another group [6]. The scaffolded discussions throughout the project work give rich opportunities for students to discover inconsistencies in their conceptions. As always, teacher interactions and interventions during preparation, visits and follow-up is essential for student learning. [7]. [1] Pendrill (2018), Rotating swings - a theme with variations, Physics Education 51 15014 [2] Pendrill (2014) The equivalence principle comes to school - falling objects and other middle school investigations, Physics Education 49 425 [3] Pendrill (2021) Balls rolling down a playground slide: What factors influence their motion?, Physics Education 56 015005 [4] Pendrill et al (2019) Students making sense of motion in a vertical roller coaster loop, Physics Education 54 065017 [5] Reif (1995) Millikan lecture 1994: Understanding and teaching important scientific thought processes, American Journal of Physics 63, 17 [6] Wistedt (2001) Five Gender-Inclusive Projects Revisited, https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/18171 [7] Pendrill, Kozma and Theve (2013) Teacher Roles in amusement parks, Proceedings ICPE-GIREP, p 591-599
Poster Presentation
Peer Instruction
2022
Perusall Enables Social Learning in a Remote Flipped Classroom
Edie Wakevainen
,
Roosevelt University, USA
This presentation will focus on using Perusall to support a masters’-level flipped-style remote class, “Biological Bases of Behavior for Counseling.” The content for this class is dense and detailed, and mastery requires much time and effort. A complicating factor is that the time and effort vary greatly from student to student, based on their background in and comfort with anatomy and physiology. One lecture during the Zoom-based remote session would promote frustration rather than learning—thus the choice of a flipped classroom format. But flipped alone is not sufficient. As Eric Mazur (2020) stated, “learning is a social experience—it requires interactions and interactivity. This is true not only in the physical classroom, but even more so now that education has moved online.” Having access to Zoom recordings of my lectures (voice over PowerPoint) in Perusall gives students much more time and space to work with the material, and the interactions there have formed us into a vibrant learning community. Students’ posts (questions, shared resources, wonderings, etc.) provide many opportunities for building connections. Each week, I choose content for our Zoom-based remote class discussions based on their interests;as a result, they are engaged every minute. Students have responded very positively to the format of this class. They appreciate being able to work at their own pace and being able to share information with each other. Their interactions on Perusall and during the remote Zoom sessions indicate that they are a close community. I believe it is social learning at its best.
Poster Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Innovative Approaches to Traditional Discussion Forums in Online Learning
Aubrey Statti
,
The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, USA
This poster session proposes to provide viewers with innovative approaches to online discussion forums. Faculty and instructional designers will specifically benefit from this poster presentation as there will be a focus on application and examples from the classroom setting. The session will highlight the engaging learning options provided by the Perusall platform and discuss methods in which Perusall can be used to engage learners outside of the traditional format of discussions, such as through asynchronous discussions of course readings. Outside of Perusall, other ideas will include interviews, mind mapping, and online scavenger hunts The session will focus on the power of creativity, engagement, and innovative design in creating a community of learners in the online setting. Conference attendees will walk away from this poster session with specific new ideas that can be incorporated directly into their online classes and engage learners of various levels, interests, and abilities.
Poster Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Designing a Question-Based Online Cosmology Course
Manju Prakash
,
Stony Brook University, USA
Syllabus is a contract that binds students with an instructor. It regulates the flow of the content of the lectures and their effectiveness in enhancing students' knowledge and skills. Its design and implementation should take into account the diversity and variability in learning styles of the students. One of the ways to reach these objectives is to list and pose Essential Questions every week instead of listing topics under Week 1, Week 2 etc. These questions should be specific, insightful, and inspire students to make connections and get an integrated picture of the course. Students will explore and develop their passions resonating with one and more questions and the topics that questions represent. Different questions will interest different students and thus providing a fulfilling experience to diverse set of learners. It will add depth and thoughtfulness to the learning. In regard to making learning outcomes specific and measurable, I would like to follow the CABD framework.Here C stands for Conditions, A for Actor, B for Behavior, and D for Degree. If I am teaching a Physics/Astronomy class my learning outcome will be structured as follows: Given the concept of expanding Universe, introductory physics/astronomy students will create PowerPoint presentations explaining and calculating the expansion rate of the Universe that agrees with Cosmic Microwave Background Observational Data within 10%. This assignment will use Bloom's Taxonomy component Create. This effort will engage students to explore, investigate, construct, design, and create knowledge. In regard to making learning outcomes specific and measurable, I would like to follow the CABD framework.Here C stands for Conditions, A for Actor, B for Behavior, and D for Degree. If I am teaching a Physics/Astronomy class my learning outcome will be structured as follows: Given the concept of expanding Universe, introductory physics/astronomy students will create PowerPoint presentations explaining and calculating the expansion rate of the Universe that agrees with Cosmic Microwave Background Observational Data within 10%. This assignment will use Bloom's Taxonomy component Create. This effort will engage students to explore, investigate, construct, design, and create knowledge.
Poster Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Collaborative Problem Solving in General Chemistry using Perusall
Shuai Sun
,
University of Kansas, USA
General Chemistry is typically viewed as a challenging course for students. Most students can develop a good understanding of basic concepts and use essential algebraic skills after the class, but they are utterly lost when facing complicated concepts and comprehensive problems. In addition, with the large class sizes (typically hundreds of students in each class) at research universities, instructors often are not given chances to explain details to each student individually. Collaborative problem solving is introduced in the classes to address the issues mentioned above and promote students' ability to untangle complicated questions. After each lecture, a set of questions that are known to be confusing and challenging to students are carefully selected and assigned to students in Perusall. Then, students are asked to collaboratively work out the possible solutions and evaluate each other's solutions through comments and upvotes. Misconceptions disclosed in the collaborations are clarified in class the next day. Preliminary results from students' performance after collaborative problem-solving implementation are collected, and overall collaborative problem-solving strategies positively improve students' learning.
Poster Presentation
Social Learning
2022
Habilidades para la Autonomía de la Persona con Discapacidad (Skills for the Autonomy of Persons with Disabilities)
David Villalobos-Betancourt
,
Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica, CSTR
Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica has different Programs, Projects and Academic Activities (PPAA from Spanish Programas Proyectos y Actividades Académicas). One of those academic activities is Habilidades para la Autonomía de la Persona con Discapacidad (Skills for the Autonomy of Persons with Disabilities). This activity is done from the context of the major Teaching English as a Foreign Language on the campus in Liberia, Costa Rica, and one of its main goals is to provide opportunities for learning, participation, and socialization that contribute to the development of autonomy of persons with disabilities. Another main objective is that the students of the English Teaching major that work in this academic activity, develop both the academic and practical skills necessary to develop an inclusive classroom for every student. The activities of this PPAA include English workshops designed according to the special educational needs of the participants, a festival of the arts to provide spaces so that people with disabilities can socialize and express their talents, in various artistic areas such as singing, dancing, painting, and drawing, among others. In addition, the program will work on the development of technical aids or assistive devices that can contribute to autonomy. It is also our purpose to provide learning spaces for the parents of the students with disabilities who participate in the program. At present, we have 16 students in the English program. The English workshops are taught by the university students once they have sufficient knowledge of both the English language and the pedagogical skills to be able to work as tutors. The tutors are assigned the students with whom they must work, and they plan lessons and prepare teaching materials to meet the special needs of the persons they are working with.
Short Paper
Peer Instruction
2022
Situated Cognition, Expansive Framing, and Social Annotation
Daniel Hickey
,
Indiana University, USA
This paper/presentation summarized design principles that emerged from an extended program of research applying situative theories of learning to social annotation (SA) and formative assessment in multiple online courses contexts. Expansive framing emerged in the research of Randi Engle (1965-2012) and is one of the most practical instruction frameworks using situative theories of knowing. Engle and colleagues convinced many that the following principles could ensure "generative" learning that transfers readily and widely: • Help learners problematize content from their own perspectives. • Push learners to connect course concepts with outside people, places, topics, and times. • Position learners as accountable authors who are participating in a larger disciplinary conversation. As will be articulated in the full paper, Engle articulated five explanations of why these principles will help students (a) "transfer-in" and use their relevant prior knowledge and experience, (b) adapt more effective learning strategies, (c) envision likely transfer contexts, (d) use their new knowledge with authority in transfer contexts, (e) author new knowledge in new contexts. In 2008, we began embedding expansive framing within a situative "multi-level" framework for formative and summative assessment. We introduced SA to support a situative engagement strategy called personalized resource ranking. Once students have personally problematized course content, they can rank learning resources or ideas in learning resources in order of personal relevance. For example: • Introduce SA by having students rank the relevance of the course objectives in the syllabus, providing justification that says something about them as learners. Also, introduce platform-specific strategies (upvoting, commenting on comments). • SA assignments have students identify the most relevant and least relevant resource or idea among curated sets of resources or ideas. Learners are instructed to compare and comment on nuanced differences in peer rankings. • Instructors upvote and comment on expansively framed rationale and other particularly productive forms of engagement. Other features of this approach minimize inefficient private instructor-student interaction, freeing up time for more efficient instructor SA: • Reflections that summatively assess this engagement (facilitating grading) while formatively assessing understanding and future engagement. • Formative self-assessments efficiently enhance achievement. • The LMS automatically grades time-limited summative multiple-choice exams that include unsearchable "best answer" items. Starting in 2019, these and other features have been further refined to help minoritized students transfer-in their diverse funds of knowledge and identity and use it to learn. These features support generative learning for all students.
Short Paper
Peer Instruction
2022
Peer Examination in a Real Contextual Environment
Guillermo Nieto
,
Instituto Universitario Franco Ingles de Mexico, MX
Peer examination in a real contextual environment. We had obtained (at Instituto Universitario Franco Ingles de México) a really good results with peer examination in a real (laboratory / life) environment. The main idea is to focus the learning process in a common source of data, a peer analysis of information and a disscusion of real variation respect a theoretical model. We choose a specific concept to show in laboratory, like a constant velocity movement, through a simultaneus movement controled by the students and then ask them about a prediction (a collision, for example). After the realization of the experiment they noted that calcultion failed and they start to looking for explanations about what variables they were not take in count and how to include them in the calculation. Another case of successful peer examination was about the measurement process (volume, for example) and the prediction of displacement of a fluid in a container, by a solid object. After the experiment failed they disscused the effect of surface tensión, they didn’t they in count in the calculation and how incluide it for improve the results.We correlated and draw the data time to find the failure in the experiment in two 50 students groups: a) peer’s decisión group;b) instructor’s guided group. Is important to show two common characteristics in students actitud: a) they tried to make adjusts empirically;and, b) manifest a great spectaction and emotion after each recalculation and develop of experiment. In conclusión, the peer examination is a valuable method for solving real life problems.
Short Paper
Peer Instruction
2022
How Free is OER, really?: Using Perusall to Provide Annotated Content and "Points of Entry" for Students in Early English Literature Survey Courses
Katharine Jager
,
The University of Houston-Downtown, USA
This paper argues that OER resources, while serving the economic and accessibility needs for students, are not “free” resources but instead depend on considerable amounts of uncompensated faculty labor. Perusall offers a vital opportunity for using social learning to improve OER content, particularly in early English literature courses, the bedrock of English major degree plans and general education requirements across North American universities. While the canonical texts associated with these survey courses pre-date copyright and are readily available in the public domain, thus appearing to be ideal for OER use, they are not accessible in terms of meaning or historical context to 21st century students because OER texts frequently contain no editorial apparatus. Covering literature from approximately 800 C.E. to 1800 C.E. the texts associated with the early English survey cover a broad range of content in linguistic and dialect forms, i.e., Old English, Anglo-Norman, Middle English, and Early Modern English, that are profoundly opaque to students. In addition to these complexities, students must also grapple with questions of historical difference, nuance, and context in order to fully understand the milieu in which course texts were produced and received. Notes, glosses, and annotations in OER course texts, created via Perusall, serve as necessary points of entry for undergraduate students in asynchronous online courses. Perusall thus serves as a vital adjunct for instructors in such courses, as it offers a social learning method for providing editorial comments on course texts. I argue that my own early English survey course, offered asynchronously online and heavily dependent on Perusall, was only possible due to grant funding which allowed my to locate, upload, and then rigorously annotate course texts.
Short Paper
Peer Instruction
2022
Teaching Social Studies with Peer Teaching Method
Birol Bulut
,
Firat University, TRKY
The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the peer teaching method from a social studies perspective on the basis of the researcher's experiences. Peer teaching, an interaction-oriented method, is a student-centered method that guides democratic approaches, and has both cognitive and affective aspects. Thus, the application of this method in social studies lead to important advantages in that it enables communication in the classroom. The content of the social studies covers a wide range of topics selected from social sciences in order to raise good, responsible and effective citizens and the social studies aims at transferring knowledge, skills and attitudes about social life. Since its content is verbal and needs to be interpreted more than other fields, the methods and techniques used in social studies should also be of this nature, provide a discussion environment by putting the student in the center, and enable the individual to think more critically and to be creative. Peer teaching method, which was developed by a physicist, Eric Mazur, has been tried and implemented in the social studies course as well. In the literature, studied on the peer teaching method was carried out with different samples in different periods. The academic achievement of secondary school students, their attitudes towards the course, their critical thinking skills and their effects on the permanence of their learning have been examined. In addition, the effectiveness of its use in teacher education on pre-service social studies teachers’ academic success and creative thinking skills was investigated. It is concluded in these studies that peer teaching is effective not only in science courses but also in verbal courses such as social studies.
Short Paper
Peer Instruction
2022
A Modified Peer Instruction Versus Teacher’s Instruction
Boon Leong Lan
,
Monash University, ASTL
Pooi Mee Lim
,
Monash University, ASTL
Patrick W. C. Ho
,
Monash University, ASTL
Peer Instruction (PI) was introduced by Mazur to help students learn physics concepts during lectures. Besides physics, PI has also been adopted in other STEM fields. In this approach, students answer a related question individually after a concept has been presented. Before they revote on the same question individually, they are asked to convince others their answer is correct during peer discussion. The percentage of correct answer typically increased after peer discussion. However, Smith et al. highlighted that the improvement may be due to copying, not because students actually learned how to reason correctly. To exclude copying, Smith et al. modified Mazur’s PI protocol by adding a second question Q2 after the students revote on the first question Q1. Q2 is ‘isomorphic’ to Q1, meaning that it requires the application of the same concept but the ‘cover story’ is different. Here, we simplify Smith et al.’s PI protocol by removing the revote on Q1. Moreover, our Q1 and Q2 are similar, i.e. the same but some information given is different. Our PI protocol is thus the same as Mazur’s, except the pre and post discussion questions are not exactly the same. We replace PI in our protocol by teacher’s instruction (TI) to compare the effectiveness of PI with TI for a pair of similar questions involving Lenz’s law, using Hake’s normalized gain and a statistical test. Our results show that TI is more effective than PI, in our protocol, for the highly challenging pair of similar questions involving Lenz’s law.
Short Paper
Peer Instruction
2022
Peer Instruction during a Physics Laboratory in a French Junior High School
Jean-François Parmentier
,
University of Toulouse, FRAN
Nabil Lamrani
,
Collège Claude Nougaro de Toulouse, FRAN
Peer Instruction has spread in France mainly in higher education and in lectures. In this article, we present a case of application in a French Junior High School with 8th grade students (4e) from a low socioeconomic background, and in the context of a physics laboratory. The multiple choice questions asked the students to provide an explanation to an observed phenomenon in electricity. After the first voting phase, the students were given access to experimental equipment to feed the debate by evaluating the different suggested answers. The use of this double voting process with the MCQs strongly engaged the students in the experimental activity.
Short Paper
Peer Instruction
2022
Multiplex Synchronous and Asynchronous Activities to Foster Co-Learning
Yannis Karamanos
,
Université d'Artois, FRAN
Almost ten years ago, in order to improve the student’s interest and performance, I decided to introduce interaction/interactivity to the biochemistry course at the beginning of the biology curriculum at Université d’Artois, Lens, France. With the members of my team and with the help of the University Service of Pedagogy we used the constructive alignment principle, refined the intended learning targets and re-drafted the teaching program to introduce active learning and an organization of the activities that promotes the participation of all the students and help their understanding. We noticed quite quickly a saturation phenomenon, the success rate did not evolve anymore. Assuming that at least part of the public was still not engaged in a learning process, we decided to introduce specific methods of cooperation between students, which promote “co-learning” (learn-pooling) that I called ‘Bla-Bla Cours’ in the image of ‘Bla-Bla Car’ for carpooling. We gradually adapted the contents of the courses and included interaction, in particular by the use of clicker-questions for formative assessment for large student groups. We also created teaching resources available through the LMS in order to complete the classroom-based work using interactivity. We thought a lot how to implement an innovative way that makes the students learn threshold concepts. The Klaxoon platform we use maximises collaboration within a group, encourages the sharing of experiences and promotes continuous improvement. Thus, ‘Bla-Bla Cours’ is an assembly of asynchronous activities. Each activity is dedicated to one subject/concept and students can engage and contribute according to their inspiration and needs. Klaxoon also turned out very helpful for face-to-face synchronous activities. The students use their device - smartphones, tactile tablets and laptops - to visualise what the teacher presents. For example, the app ‘Meeting’ help to manage lectures. All the activities are displayed in the ‘Flux’ and students can take notes directly on the displayed documents. They can interact and ask questions using instant messages, answer to questions, send complementary information, contribute to word clouds, to brainstorms etc. The global approach was favourably received by the students whose perception has been improved along with their academic results.
Short Paper
Peer Instruction
2022
Theoretical and Practical Exploration of NO WAR Strategy
Chunghong Liu
,
Beijing Language and Culture University, CHNA
There is a great need for cross-boundary interaction in education. The cross-boundary learning is becoming a universal social learning model. However, cross-boundary learning activities do not happen automatically and need to be triggered, maintained and promoted by specific mechanisms. Based on theoretical and practical exploration of a case carried out by the author involving calligraphers, painters, musician, linguists, government officials and students from different disciplines and different countries, this paper illustrates the “NO WAR” strategy in cross-boundary learning. N: Network O: Organize W: Work A: Attract R: Reflect With the rapid development of new technologies, the rules and problems of cross-boundary learning under the Internet environment are further explored in this case establishing clear themes, providing organized, meaningful, responsible and attractive communication scenarios, promoting participants in different activity systems to cross the boundaries of their fields and interact with participants in other activity systems, then to form a new collective concept.
Short Paper
Social Learning
2022
Reading with and Against the Grain: Teaching Digital Reading Strategies with Perusall
Deanna McGaughey-Summers
,
Kentucky State University, USA
Electronic books and other digital materials are popular among college students for several reasons: they are accessible, easy to carry, engaging, and cost-effective. However, digital resources do not come without a cost for students and their instructors. One such concern has been raised by Maryanne Wolf who, in "Reader Come Home," argues that the fast nature of digital reading may hinder the slow processes of critical thinking, reflection, imagination, and empathy. Similarly, Janae Cohn in "Skim, Dive, and Surface: Teaching Digital Reading" has noted that students are not reading digital sources with proper techniques. Therefore, in order to truly benefit from digital resources, students need effective targeted strategies for engaging those resources. This paper will describe a set of strategies adapted from Wolf, Cohn, and others, for teaching digital reading skills to students enrolled in a first-year-writing course. Objectives - Briefly review literature on digital reading - Outline strategies for improving digital reading practices with Perusall - Evaluate a sample lesson digital reading lesson
Short Paper
Social Learning
2022
Making Sense of Primary Texts in Theology
Victoria Lorrimar
,
Trinity College Queensland, ASTL
Engagement with primary sources is an essential part of theological study but the scope for engagement by the average student is limited. Many of the historical texts that are central to the development of key Christian doctrines make for dense reading, given their unfamiliar rhetoric and style. Yet there is value in exposing students to primary sources, rather than depending solely on the interpretation of secondary scholarship. Social annotation is a useful tool for sharing this work of engaging a difficult primary text among the students of a class. Here I assigned the entire text of Gregory of Nazianzus' Third Theological Oration for social annotation among a small class of five students studying a unit on the knowledge and doctrine of God. I divided the sections evenly amongst students to summarise so that each student had the opportunity to wrestle with the unfamiliar text sufficiently but still gain a sense of the whole without investing more time than practicable. I also seeded the text with specific questions to research context and reflect on contemporary application. The paper will reflect on the learning of students through the use of social annotation in relation to this specific text, comparing it to previous more traditional uses of the text in class whereby each student read the text on their own and brought questions to class.
Short Paper
Social Learning
2022
Project Prompt: Prompting Social Learning through Three-Dimensional Design
Tamie Glass
,
The University of Texas at Austin, USA
This paper presents "Project Prompt," a research-based framework for designing three-dimensional, physical objects that prompt social learning, illustrated by several case studies of student work from a graduate-level pedagogy course. In 2018, I published a scholarly book on design titled Prompt: Socially Engaging Objects and Environments. The introduction states: "People are social beings...to expand upon the connection between individuals and their environments begins by exploring the interactions that take place between two or more people, as well as between people and their surroundings." Prompt offers psychosocial theories and a taxonomy for social engagement that educators can apply in classrooms. Specifically, one of the concepts presented in Prompt is social objects, which are objects that spark conversation, promote dialog, and help individuals achieve specific goals, including learning. Over the past two years, the Prompt book and the idea of creating social learning objects have been the center of a graduate module in a project-based learning (PBL) course at The University of Texas at Austin titled Design Pedagogy. Students learn to teach design in this course by creating three-dimensional, social learning objects. The driving question that launches the project is: "How might you prompt learning?" The module builds upon this question and the big idea that educators can use evidence-based frameworks to design classroom objects to achieve social learning. Interdisciplinary teams collaborate to create a set of three-dimensional objects that teach design content through direct human interaction. Notably, the assignment prioritizes low-tech solutions. For "Project Prompt," students first define a design concept that their object will teach. Example topics include how to draw in perspective and classroom design. Students use design research methods to identify misconceptions that new learners often experience when attempting to understand the chosen topic. Next, students use Backward Design to identify learning outcomes that they expect their three-dimensional objects to deliver through human interaction. The class also develops evaluation plans to assess the learning outcomes. Finally, students create corresponding instructional activities to drive the social learning between the object and the associated learner. Core to the student projects is the requirement to design the three-dimensional objects using the Prompt framework to ensure their designs lead to the social engagement, interactions, and learning they intended to shape. In this paper, participants will learn through three visual case studies that illustrate what a social learning object is, how to design one, and why social learning objects prompt learning so effectively.
Short Paper
Social Learning
2022
How Learning Changes with Perusall
Eric Mazur
,
Harvard University, USA
Join Eric and a panel of students to hear the student perspective on using Perusall.
Zoom Webinar
Live Events
2022
Social Learning's Influence on Student Assessment
Robert Talbert
,
Grand Valley State University, USA
Maikel Alendy
,
Florida International University, USA
Jaya Kannan
,
Amherst College, USA
Karen Huxtable-Jester
,
The University of Texas at Dallas, USA
Lauren Barbeau
,
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
How we assess student learning has become a centrally important topic, especially in the changing landscape of higher education today. How might we make assessment more authentic and engaging? How might digital technologies help make assessment more socially connected and meaningful for students and instructors? Join panelists Maikel Alendy, Lauren Barbeau, Karen Huxtable-Jester, and Jaya Kannan for an engrossing hour of conversation as we explore how social learning can influence and perhaps improve assessment.
Zoom Webinar
Live Events
2022
Preparing Students for Awe and Wonder: Internet Search, Passion and Purpose
Alan November
,
Founder, November Learning
Ozgur Akas
,
Mathematics Department Head, Robert College, Istanbul
In this two part presentation, Alan will review strategies for teaching students how to refine and question their search strategies. In Part 2 Ozgur Akas, Mathematics Department Head from Robert College, Istanbul will join Alan to share insights into how to challenge students to apply their knowledge to solve community based problems that make the world a better place.
Zoom Webinar
Live Events
2022
Learning to Think Like a Scientist
Carl Wieman
,
Professor of Physics and of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University
Live Keynote Event
Zoom Webinar
Live Events
2022
Teaching Grit
Angela Duckworth
,
Founder and CEO, Character Lab Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor, University of Pennsylvania
Live Keynote Event
Zoom Webinar
Live Events
2022
Peer Interaction in Multilingual Mathematics Classrooms in South Africa
Mamokgethi Phakeng
,
Vice-Chancellor, The University of Cape Town
Live Keynote Event
Zoom Webinar
Live Events
2022
Building Super Courses to Foster Deep Learning
Ken Bain
,
President, Best Teachers Institute
Live Keynote Event
Zoom Webinar
Live Events
2021
Roundtable Discussion with Perusall Students
Eric Mazur
,
Harvard University, USA
During a live roundtable discussion, moderated by Eric Mazur, co-founder of Perusall, five students share their experiences using Perusall in their courses. The students range from outgoing freshman to post-graduate and represent a range of experience using the social e-learning platform.
Zoom Webinar
Live Events
2021
Maximizing Student Engagement with Perusall
Lauren Barbeau
,
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Lauren Barbeau, Assistant Director for Faculty Development and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) at the University of Georgia, moderated a live discussion with instructors about how they use Perusall to increase student engagement in and outside of the classroom.
Zoom Webinar
Live Events
2021
Promoting Equity and Inclusivity with Perusall
Pablo Valdivia
,
University of Grongingen, NL
Moderated by Pablo Valdivia, Professor at the University of Groningen, Netherlands, instructors participated in a live discussion about how to promote equity and inclusivity in the classroom using the Perusall platform.
Zoom Webinar
Live Events
2021
Transitioning Back to Campus with Perusall
Eric Mazur
,
Harvard University, USA
Derek Bruff
,
Vanderbilt University, USA
Co-moderated by Derek Bruff, Assistant Provost and Executive Director of the Center for Teaching, Vanderbilt University and Eric Mazur, Co-founder of Perusall, the final live session of the Perusall Exchange 2021 focused on the return to in-person teaching and how Perusall can help with the transition.
Zoom Webinar
Live Events
2021
From Novice to Expert: Developing Students’ Metacognitive Reading Practices with Perusall
Lauren Barbeau
,
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Lauren M. W. Barbeau University of Georgia, Center for Teaching and Learning Athens, GA, United States "Critical thinking across disciplines depends on an ability to comprehend and respond to course readings, but students often lack reading strategies needed to make sense of material and avoid reading altogether. Educators forget that reading is a skill to be mastered within a discipline. This session introduces participants to the meta-reading skills they employ as expert readers in their disciplines with a focus on using Perusall to help students move from novice to expert readers. "
Video Presentation
2021
Improve the Quality of your Students’ Annotations on Perusall with an Adaptable Scaffolding Tool
Phoebe Jackson
,
John Abbott College, CA
Phoebe Jackson SALTISE (www.saltise.ca) & John Abbott College, Physics Montreal, Canada This session showcases a scaffolding tool that helps address three challenges teachers face when using Perusall: low annotation quality, the tendency to use Perusall for Q&A rather than a critical exploration of the text; and a decrease in engagement over time. This session encourages a discussion of best practices for scaffolding students’ use of Perusall and offers a free tool that attendees can download and use as is, or modify to their needs (www.saltise.ca).
Video Presentation
2021
Perusall Pedagogy for Inclusivity and Active Learning
Alison H. Melley
,
George Mason University, USA
Alison H. Melley George Mason University, Psychology Gaithersburg, VA, United States In this interactive presentation, I will describe an interteaching approach taken in large enrollment courses. Students work together to solve problems on an instructor-created pdf in Perusall, then identify their most pressing questions. They come to class to find out the answers to these questions and are then responsible for submitting their own answers to the questions posed in Perusall. This approach has been applied in face-to-face classes as well as synchronous and asynchronous online courses.
Video Presentation
2021
Setting the Stage for Student Engagement with a Syllabus Assignment in Perusall
Julie Schell
,
The University of Texas at Austin, USA
Nikki Rodelas Morris
,
The University of Texas at Austin, USA
Julie A. Schell, Nikki Rodelas, The University of Texas at Austin, College of Fine Arts, Austin, TX United States: The syllabus, an emblem of higher education, is often one of the most dreaded course artifacts for students and faculty alike. Unlike the traditional lecture, the syllabus is also a perennial document that has gone through minimal improvements in style or delivery over time. We will provide participants with a precedent for using Perusall to make their syllabus come alive and drive student engagement from day one of online or in-person courses.
Video Presentation
2021
Using PhET Sims in Perusall
Ted Clark
,
The Ohio State University, USA
Ted Clark, The Ohio State University, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Columbus, OH United States: PhET sims have been an essential part of my in-person general chemistry class for years. When forced to transition to online learning, I made sure to take PhET sims with me by including them in videos delivered with Perusall. I will discuss how Perusall provided me with insights into how students interact with instructor-led demonstrations and share suggestions for using PhET sims asynchronously.
Video Presentation
2021
Party on Perusall: How to Make Reading Together More Fun
Susan E. Hrach
,
Columbus State University, USA
Susan E. Hrach, Columbus State University, English, Columbus, Georgia United States: Setting an inviting tone through your course materials and annotations can keep students motivated to persist in dense, difficult subjects. Instructors can model enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity by using Perusall's annotation tools, making the course welcoming and fun. In this session, we'll experience the visual impact of a wide variety of learning materials, as well as the difference it makes to encourage students to connect material to their own knowledge and experiences.
Video Presentation
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Key dates

Call for Abstracts opens: January 9th, 2024

Abstract submission deadline: March 5th, 2024

Notice of acceptance: March 25th, 2024 or earlier

Conference dates: June 9 - June 15th, 2024