Teaching with Structure:
A compilation on the importance of
structured information in teaching
and assessing student learning

John Rueter

April 10, 2002

Introduction

Information has a structure; the concepts, the relationships between those concepts, the tools that are used in the discipline and how those tools are used to analyze the concepts. The structure of this information in a discipline is important for teaching for several reasons. First, the design of a course can impose a structure through presentation sequence, assignments, assessments and quizzes or graded work. As teachers we can work with these concepts and relationships through scaffolding support for difficult concepts or progressions. Second, each discipline has its own unique structure; how the information in the discipline is organized and what metaphors experts use to explain the discipline. For example, chemistry organizes information about the elements with the periodic table and American history would organize around several key periods. These examples are so obvious they seem trivial until you try to explain the structure of other disciplines, are they organized around several key concepts or is there a dominant time line, hierarchy, or other order which pervades the entire discipline? If so, are all courses in that discipline taught only on that structure, or are there multiple structures that represent different points of views in the discipline? These are important questions in each discipline and how each course is constructed to contribute to the curriculum. Finally, given that the information in a course has a particular structure, is it good for student learning to explain that structure to the students? Do they need to understand the structure and have an explicit mental map that helps them find and use information? These questions are addressed in this compilation of short papers that range in topics from specific examples of course assessments to a design for a text book in environmental science.

Table of Contents:

Teaching with Structured Information

• manuscript
• June 27, 2000
• This paper presents ideas on how to design a course to present information in a particular sequence in which new concepts build on previous concepts. Database technology is used to track every answer on every assignment and quiz question and this data is used in causal analysis to determine how students are learning.

Teaching with Structured Information. Part 2: Example Course

• manuscript
• December 27, 2000
• This paper presents a specific example of the ideas presented in the previous paper. Student progress was followed on multiple pairs of assignment and quiz questions. Their progress is presented in a chart form that shows how many students did worse, did the same or improved from the first to the second instance of a particular concept.

A simulation model for student learning that depends on the structure and sequence of the scaffolding of teaching and learning resources.

• draft stage
• March 14, 2001
• The previous two papers examined student learning with causal analysis. This paper presents a simulation model to study student learning on intentionally sequenced concepts. The model is based on a network of concepts that are best if learned in a particular order. The simulation demonstrates (theoretically) that concepts taught in a non-optimal order can lead to trapping students in an incomplete understanding of the material. Only one example is given, but the paper addresses the question of whether misconceptions might result from the sequence and synchronicity of instruction.

Assessment

• April 12, 2002
  draft
• Abstract: There are two major purposes for using technology in assessment; changing the way we communicate with students or providing an interface to the information. Communication with students can be facilitated with a structured response mechanism, such as the use of Multemail. Viewing student performance data can be very useful but also be time intensive. A system of applications that allows the instructor to follow every student on every question is described with examples from courses. Student learning data is different than other types of data that our desktop applications and metaphors were created to follow, we may need new applications that allow us to interface with this type of information. An example of this type application is described for looking at students' ability to associate concepts. The ultimate goal of this project is to embed assessment into the students' and facultys' course transactions in such a way that data could be collected once and that data would be useful for all levels of assessment, up to program assessment by the university. In order to reach this goal our interim projects must support faculty development and creation of new interfaces that serve our assessment purposes.

Multemail: A process and program for simultaneously responding to multiple students and collecting assessment information.

• manuscript
• date??
• Multemail is a short PERL script that allows you to send individualized emails to all students listed in a text file. The proscribed process for constructing the text file includes collecting data on students that is useful for course and program assessment. This process also encouraging optimizing the considered response by faculty.

The structure of information on algae

• manuscript
• date?
• This paper is used in a senior and graduate level course on phytoplankton physiological ecology. Almost all of the papers published on algae are contained in a search domain that joins "alga$" + "phytoplank$" + "cyanobact$". The top X journals contain Y% of all of these papers. There is a difference between the human indexing used by the journals and the search of key words. Authors need to understand search strategies, key words and indexing inorder to make sure their papers are accessible to their intended audience.

Teaching with Structured Information, Part 3: Teaching strategies that match the structure of information

• draft manuscript
• March 18, 2002
• This paper examines the structure of the information in the discipline and the relationship of that structure to teaching. The discussion is limited to three levels of learning ; association, representation and abstraction. Each of these levels relates to the structure of the discipline differently and needs its own teaching strategies.

Understanding and Learning

• current project
• April 11, 2002
• "Understanding" is the ability to be fluent with concepts and tools in a discipline. This requires self-motivation and self-monitoring by students. The conditions that lead to understanding can be facilitated by faculty and institutions.

Environmental Science Text: An outline for an introductory text in Environmental Science
based on the "understanding and learning" model

• current project
• no date yet
• This is an outline for a textbook in environmental sciences that is based on the learning principles presented above. One major departure from current textbooks is the assumption that faculty come to the course with particular (scientific) strengths and (pedagogical) limitations. The text is designed to be the commons between the student and faculty. This text outline explores whether a course can serve as instruction for faculty in teaching strategies and assessment principles.

Learning through association: Term frequency and association study in ESR355, Summer 2002

Draft 1 - incomplete

July 29, 2002

This study examined the frequency and sequence of the usage of major vocabulary terms in both the text reading assignments and lecture for one unit of ESR355. The hypothesis is that students build learning by attaching new concepts to central concepts that they already hold. Comparison of the frequency vs. rank relationships for the text and the lecture, showed that the lecture followed the Zipf's law relationship very closely whereas there was a plateau of common terms in the text. Analysis of the page-by-page term use in the text showed three major patterns, pages that followed Zipf's law for 4 or 5 terms, "burst" pages that had one dominant term related to many terms (up to 10 different terms), and repetitive pages (one page used the same vocabualry term 22 times). Student associations were probed using thee types of assessments. These type of assessments should be studied more and developed because they probe the structure of student learning rather than their recall of particular topics.

Improvisation as part of teaching

Draft - incomplete

September 5, 2002

Improvisation, using existing ideas in novel way or in a creative way, is an important part of teaching and learning. Teachers should have a solid understanding of the structure of the information that they want students to learn and the current knowledge status of the students. With this understanding, the teacher can improvise in class design to help students build on their knowledge and yet still have a clear idea of where students should be headed. Structure in the class information also allows the teacher to improvise during the lectures or discussions. Whether you view teaching as a performance or as a creative conversation, both forms rely on improvisation. Finally, one view of student learning is as improvisation, and we need to create environments for students to take known material and skills and apply these in novel and creative ways to problems.