4 FROM LECTURER TO FACILITATOR ‘The greatest sign of success for a teacher... is tobe able to say, "The students are now working as if | did not exist.” (Maria Montessori, 1949) tis 20 minutes before his next class, He walks into his office, opens a file drawer, pulls out a set of lecture notes on today’s topic, and walks down the hall ro class. He arrives early; greets the students waiting for lass to begin; and, exactly at noon, begins talking about life in 16th-century France, hew to recognize certain plants in the woods of northern Michigan, or about any of a thousand other tapics, Those students actually in atten- dance take some notes and try to stay awake, listening for any clues about the upcoming test. A few students ask questions, but that is the extent of the interaction between the teacher and the students, The information given is accurate and up-to-date, and parts of it are even interesting to some students, ‘The clock ticks on for 50, 75, ar 180 minutes until class comes to an end. No assignment is given and the students leave, talking about lunch. "This scenario plays out in thousands of higher education classrooms across the nation every day. It is not that the teacher in the scenario is unprepared or unconcerned about student learning or that his expertise is not up-to-date; it is simply that he missed out on an opportunity to optimize his students’ learning because much of what went on in the classroom required him to fire his own neuron networks rather than requiring the students to build their own new networks or fire networks of prior know!- edge. The difference between a traditional, lecture-based instructional model and learner-centered teaching (LCT) lies in whose neuron networks get fired and wired. To view chaprer-telated videos please po to tinyurl.com/lesrnercentersdvideo. a52 LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING The Power of Planning It is not a simple task to move away from a traditional, lecture-centered model of instruction. It requires learning, new skills and spending more time in planning each class. It requires locating resources that students can investi- gate on their own of in groups. It also requires new forms of assessment, both formative and summative. However, it results in most of the neuron firing and wiring occurring in the students’ brains, and that is exactly what we want their brains to be doing. This chapter offers a plan on how to move from a teller of information to a facilitator of learning, The plan is not complicated to follow, bus it does require more time, planning, and effort than just reaching for a set of lecture notes. ‘What Is a Facilitator? We hear the term facilitator used all the time in numerous professional and educational contests, In business and industry, the term often refers to a person who runs meetings, oversees committees, or gets others to complete a task or reach a goal. In education, it most often means supporting students in learning their course material by providing an environment for engage- ment; a set of resources such as questions, articles, research findings, prob- lems, and/or cases to engage with; and using assessment tools that provide the learner with meaningful feedback. If you take a few minutes to search the Internet using the terms facilita- tor, effective facilitation, andlor facilitating learning, the suggested sites have one commonality: They offer specific instructions on becoming an effective facilitator in specific content areas. The sites do not assume that you were born to facilitate or that you know how to facilitate the learning of a group of people. They all acknowledge that facilitation is a learned skill. A Definition ‘The idea that educators are facilitators of learning and change has been around for at least half a century. It was the work of Carl Rogers in the United States and Josephine Klein in Britain in the early 1960s that brought the idea to the fore (Smith, 2001). Many of us have been trying to facilitate some aspects of our students’ learning ever since we first heard the term active learning. Unfortunately, our efforts, rather than being encouraged, were often met with pressure from administrators or colleagues to maintainFROM LECTURER TO FACILITATOR 53 the traditional lecture approach (a pressure I still hear faculty members speak about even today) or research demands, which make it di time to plan more learning activities. Or sometimes we fortable with the role of being a facilitator. ‘The facilitator's job is to support everyone in doing his or her best thinking and practice. To do this, the facilitator encourages full participa- tion, promotes mutual understanding, and cultivates shared responsibility By supporting everyone to do their best thinking, the facilitator enables group members to search for inclusive solutions and build sustainable agree ments (Kaner et al., 2007). Effective facilitation also involves thorough knowledge about the partic~ ular topic or content that the group is addressing, This role of teacher as expert does not change when moving froma teller of knowledge to a faciita- tor of learning. What changes is how this expert of scaffolding in chapter 2 is one example of this. ¢ is used. The discussion The Plan Step One: Writing Daily Learning Outcomes I began my educational career teaching Grades 3 through 6. Although | lasted only a very short time as an elementary teacher, I did learn the value of preparing lesson plans. I have carried this practice to my college teaching, and it has served me well for the past 34 years, especially when I moved ro an LCT approach, My lesson planning always begins with learning outcomes. Defining what we want our students to know or be able to do as a result of engaging in 50, 75, or 180 minutes of course activity is the first step toward effective teaching, whether you are a teller or a facilitator. You cannot know iF your time and efforts were well spent if you don’t know what you wanted the students to learn. As my son often says to me on the golf practice range, when [ask him if he thought my shot was good, “That depends. Where were you aiming?” Most of us teaching in higher education today have learning outcomes in our syllabi, To be a learner-centered facilitator, however, daily outcomes that drive the planning process. A learning outcome involves four simple but important questions: ‘ou need to have 1, Who will be doing the learning? 2. When will the learning be completed?54 LEARNER.CENTERED TEACHING 3. What will the students be able to do or know? 4. How will you know they learned it? Ie is especially vital that questions 3 and 4 have clearly defined answers, For example, a learning outcome for my reading course for the second day of class is, “Students will, by che end of class, demonstrate their ability co annotate college textbook material by annotating two pages from a psychol- ogy textboole and submitting it for teacher review By taking the time to define my learning outcomes for each class, | am in a position to indentify several important questions that need to be answered to make the class successful and to ensure that [act as a facilitator of my students’ learning. The following are questions that you should ask yourself when defining your learning outcomes: 1. What is the best use of my time during class to help students reach this outcome? 2. What will my students do both in and out of class to reach this outcome? 3. What resources will I need to provide my students so they can accomplish this learning? 4. What resources will my students need to provide themselves so they can accomplish this learning? 5. How much time do I need to allocate to the various parts of the instruction, practice, and feedback of this lesson? 6. Will the students work alone, in pairs, or in groups? 7. How will I assess this learning? ‘These questions represent the outline of my lesson plan. The answers to each question give me my action plan. Step Two: Action Plan Because my learning outcome is to have students learn how to annotate college text material, my actions, which are the answers to the seven ques- tions (repeated in abbreviated form), are as follows: 1. Whae is the best use of my time? My time is best used explaining why annotation is such an important reading skill. will demonstrate how to annotate text and answer any questions students have about how to annotate a college text.FROM LECTURER TO FACILITATOR 55. 2. What will students do? My students will be expected to listen and take appropriate notes from the explanation and demonstration on annotation. They will then work on applying what they have learned to two pages of college-level text. Finally, they will be asked to pre~ sent to the class (using the document camera) a few examples of their annotations, Finally, they will hand in their annotations for my review and feedback. 3. Whas resources will [ need? 1 will need a sample handout of a com- pleted annotation of college text that students can use as a model and a handout of two pages of college text that students will annotate in class, I will need a few PowerPoint slides providing images of annota- tion to use during my explanation. I will also need to have a page of college text that I can annotate as demonstration using the document 4. What resources will students need? Students will need a writing utensil and notebook paper. 5. Allocation of class time? In a 75-minute class period, I will need 15 minutes for my explanatory presentation. Students will use 45 min- utes to annotate text. Then there will be 10 minutes for annotation presentations. The last § minutes are for wrap-up. (Note: Because I have taught reading for many years, | am familiar with how long my explanation and demonstration will take. If you are new to teaching or teaching.a lesson for the first time, you can only make a best guess and adapt as needed when estimating time.) 6. Wall the students work alone or in pairs? In this case, students will be working alone because I want to assess their individual annotation skills, 7. How will I assess the learning? L will have two pages of text from each student to review, which will allow me to determine what they have learned. I will be grading each paper according ta the following crite- ria questions: (a) Did the student identify the key information? (b) Did the student use his or her own words? (c) Did the student iden- tify the terms and definitions? (d) Did the student use abbreviations correctly? I realize that many teachers often do similar steps in their head. How- ever, taking the time to think through each question and make lesson plan notes will ensure that you have made every effort not only’ to optimize your students’ learning (the heart of an LCT practice), but to move from your role of a teller to that of a facilitator.56 LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING Step Three: Additional Practice ‘The next step in planning a facilitation of learning is to decide on the addi- tional activities and practice students need to further their understanding of the new knowledge or improve their use of a new skill, We all know this step as “homework.” In a learner-centered model, this step is crucial to our goals of promoting long-term learning and engaging students in authentic and meaningful practice. The activities students engage in outside class are just as important as the activites in class. Consider the following when devel- oping learning experiences to be completed outside the class period: 1, What additional help do students need to better understand the new material or become more proficient in the skill? 2, What is the best way co deliver this help? 3. What resources do students need to continue their learning? 4. Do students need feedback on what they did in class before trying additional activitiest ‘These questions can help us decide what homework assignments are most effective and keep out-of-class learning from becoming busy work. | address these questions to any homework | assign. The following are examples of how I would answer the questions (some repeated in abbreviated form) for the lesson on annotation: 1. Whar additional Belp do students need? Knowing that annotation is the most important comprehension and recall skill we teach in our reading course, I know that students need a great deal of practice to master it. I will not be assigning any annotation homework until 1 have given my students feedback on their in-class annotations. I don't want my students practicing bad habits, and I want them to understand what effective annotation looks like. ‘Then I will assign out-of-class practice on a regular basis. In your course, it is integral to decide how important each new chunk of information or new skill is to the outcomes of the course. This allows you to decide how much additional practice is needed to help students reach their learn- ing goal. 2. What is the best way to deliver this help? My students have a course textbook full of chapters reprinted from other college textbooks, and T regularly ask them to work on material from these chapters. With the enormous amount of resources available online, excellent practiceFROM LECTURER TO FACILITATOR 57 materials can be found in a thoughtful perusal of sites. The major advantage in using the Intemet is the almost limitless amount of practice that can be provided if we develop activities and store them electronically. Feedback can also be given electronically, either by the software program being used or by the instructor. For example, providing students with a large pool of practice questions or prob- Jems where they receive instant feedback on their accuracy has been shown to improve learning and recall (Rawson, 2010). 3. What resources do students need? In my course, students need only their course textbook; however, itis likely chat students will need additional materials in your course. Resources for course practice are crucial to providing an effective learning experience. Practice of authentic work over time is a pillar of LCT. There is no doube that a lot of time and work will go into providing practice materials that support course understanding and skill development. This kind of development is one of the real differences between LCT and a tradi- tional classroom experience where students might read the textbook outside class and study for a test every four weeks. 4. Do students need feedback before practicing? In the specific case of my reading class, I believe they do. I don’t want students repeating the same errors they may have made in class doing work outside class, However, this is a question that each of us must answer individually for each teaching situation. | pose the question here because the spe- cific issue of practicing bad habits was a point that was stressed when I was working with our dental hygiene faculty members. They do not allow students to practice their instrument skills at home because they have found that the skills are so intricate and subtle that itis easy for students to develop bad habits quickly unless professional feedback is available. I suspect this is true in many other subjects, too. The goal is always to optimize learning, and so the decision regarding the use of feedback before practice must be tailored to each situation, Step Four: Giving Feedback Students often complain that feedback on assessment is unhelpful or unclear, and sometimes even demoralizing. Students also sometimes report that chey are not given guidance in how to use the feedback to improve subsequent performance. Worse still, students sometimes note that the feedback is pro- vided too late to be of any use at all.58 LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING On the other hand, faculty members frequently comment that students are not interested in feedback comments and are only concerned with the grade, They express frustration that students do not incorporate feedback advice into subsequent tasks (Spiller, 2009). ‘To illustrate this dilemma, I want to relate the following conversation. I was having lunch at a conference a few years ago when the person next to me began sharing what he and his colleagues had discovered their composition students were doing with all the feedback they received on their writing assignments. If you are a composition teacher, and/or you've ever graded written assignments, you know the amount of time and effort it takes to read and give feedback to students on their writing, He said that in a study conducted with the students in his department, it was found that 50% of the students did not even read the feedback comments, and the other 50% read them but made no effort to incorporate the suggestions into their next writing assignment. The composi- tion teacher I was speaking with had a valid point. Neil Duncan and his colleagues at the University of Woverhampton in the United Kingdom com- pleted a study in 2007 that proved this very point (Duncan, Prowse, Hughes, & Burke, 2007). Tam sure the man I was speaking with at the conference could read the frustration on my face as | thought of the thousands of hours I had spent giving feedback to my students on their writing skills, only to have them ignore icall. I went on to ask him, “Well, what did the department do about these findings?” He explained that they implemented changes that required the students to write a brief summary of all suggested improvements and teacher comments to be submitted co the teacher, thus ensuring the com- ments had been read. They also suggested that faculty members require stu- dents to demonstrate the suggested improvements in future writings or the writing assignments should not be accepted. This story provides an excellent example of educators not only giving feedback but, more important, expect- ing that the feedback be used. This is a necessary undertaking, in an LCT classroom. Giving meaningful feedback that promotes improved learning is one of the greatest skills of an effective facilitator of education. It is also a skill area where few faculty members have ever had any training, Figure 4.1 lists good feedback principles, developed by Dorothy Spiller in her worke Absessment: Feedback to Promote Student Learning (Spiller, 2009). The research on how best to give feedback to students is helpful in designing our own feedback to students, It suggests the following key points:FROM LECTURER TO FACILITATOR 59 FIGURE 4.1 Good Feedback Principles Promote dialogue and conversation around the goals of the assessment task. Emphasize the instructional aspects of feedback and not only the correctional dimensions. Remember to provide feedforward: indicate what students need to think about in order to bring their task performance closer to the goals. Specify the goals of che assessment task and use feedback to link student perform- ance to the specified assessment goals. Engage the students in practical exercises and dialogue to help them understand the task criteria. Involve the students in conversation about the purposes of feedback and feedforwacd. Design feedback comments that invite self-evaluation and future self-learning management. Enlarge the range of pasticipants in the feedback conversation to incorporate se- evaluation and peer feedback, Source: Adapted from Spiller, 2009. 1. The feedback process is most effective when both students and reach- ers are actively involved in the process. Students often see feedback as the sole domain of the teacher (Taras, 2003). 2. Assessments should be designed so that students can see the direct benefits of attending to the feedback. For example, divide assign- ‘ments into stages and provide feedback that is essential to completing the next stage. Or give students a provisional grade with opportunity to visit, discuss their work, and potentially earn a higher grade using the feedback 3. Give feedback that focuses more on instruction rather than correc- tion (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). The message is how to improve. 4. Link feedback to the specific assessment criteria, A rubric is helpful for this step (Nicol & Draper, 2008). . Give feedback as soon as possible once students have made every effort to complete the task on their own (Hattie &Timperley, 2007). 6. Use language that the students can understand and that relates directly to the task and its improvement (Duncan, Prowse, Hughes, & Burke, 2007). For example, saying “Expand your synthesis of the issues most pertinent to the outcome of the study” might make sense60 LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING to us, but this comment is likely to confuse students. Just as we want them to consider the reader when they are writing, we must think of the receiver of the feedback when we are delivering it 7. The feedback needs to be very specific to the taske and how the task can be improved. Research shows that this type of feedback can have a significant effect on learning enhancement. However, praise, re- ward, and punishment have litte effect on improving learning (Hat- tie & Timperley, 2007). 8. Feedback should be related to the learning goals. The feedback should reduce the gap between current levels of understanding and performance, and the ultimate learning goal (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Hattie and Timperley suggest three questions: a. Where am I going? Whar is my goal for chis work? b. How am I going? Whar is my progress? c. Where to next? How do I improve? 9. A lot of feedback is nat always good (Crisp, 2007). Giving feedback and asking that students incorporate it can be more worthwhile if you ask students to choose one part of their work (rather than the whole work) for receiving feedback. This also is a very learner-cen- tered action because it invites more ownership of the feedback process. Feedback is the key to improved learning, It is the difference between all of the hard work and planning that went into a great teaching, activity paying learning dividends and the teaching activity being just a great show. My students cannot know if their annotations are accurate and designed well enough to help their recall unless I tell them or, in some cases, other students tell them. In my class, at least early on, peer feedback is problematic because almost no one knows how to annotate well. My feedback and their applica- tion of it is the key to improving their performance. How Often Should We Give Feedback? Recall that, in the definition of LCT, | make a specific reference to the context of your teaching situation. That applies here, too. The greater your ability to give well-designed and helpful feedback, the better, but only to the extent that you have the time to assess performance. I give feedback almost daily because my students are in a constant process of building reading skillsFROM LECTURER TO FACILITATOR — 6F that are vital to their college success. I suggest you outline a feedback sched- ule, recognizing that once a month is inadequate but every day may be unmanageable. Students should not have to operate under the illusion that they are “getting it,” only to discover after 4 weeks that they were wrong, Regular feedback and the expectation of its use for improvement promote long-term learning. And while promoting long-term learning may not be an essential skill of a teller, it's a fundamental element of an effective fucilitator of learning. It’s Not So Hard For many years I taught a course to fitture teachers, and I would tell them on the fist day that one of the important details that separate highly effective teachers from not-so-effective teachers can be described in one word: files. I would explain that highly effective teachers have hundreds of well-developed lessons that have been tested and work very well to facilitate scudents’ learn- ing; ineffective teachers have none. As you work toward moving your teach- ing from telling to facilitating, accept that it will take time to develop the files you will need so that students no longer listen passively to a lecture but rather engage in authentic and meaningful work. It can be an enjoyable and creative journey, but it will take some planning, time, and effort to complete.