When instructors assign readings to students, they generally assume that anyone who has done the reading must know the information in it and that if they don’t, they did not do the reading. In reality, students often have a hard time determining the main
One of the most frustrating things that can happen in higher education is that we assign students a reading that is really interesting and important for an upcoming class discussion. We then go on to design the day’s activities around the reading so that students
Most academic courses require learners to do some amount of reading to provide background in core concepts, to demonstrate applications and use cases, and to elaborate intriguing new applications and directions—or maybe just to navigate the various prompts and guidelines. But reading is a skill,
A lot of professors assign readings as follows: students read a piece of text, respond to it in some way, and come prepared to discuss it in class. Yet over half of students don’t do the assigned readings, and often it’s because professors assign too
As teachers, we would like to believe that when students do the assigned reading, they will understand the content it covers and so can be tested on it or given new information that builds on that understanding. When students do not demonstrate understanding of a
Technology offers teachers new options. What about assigning podcasts to replace some course readings? So far, at least in the literature, teachers have created their own podcasts and used them instead of or as supplements to lectures. In a recent study (Oslawski-Lopez & Kordsmeier, 2021),
Students take notes on an assigned chapter—one page front and back. In addition to these notes that preview the content, students prepare reflective notes that connect the current reading with other content and generate questions about it. Both sets of notes are turned in and
A new survey documents what most teachers already know: students don’t devote much time to their course-assigned readings (Sharma, Van Hoof, & Ramsay, 2019). And that’s not counting students who are doing their very best to get through a course without reading. In this survey,
The body of evidence supporting the effectiveness of regular quizzes on assigned readings continues to grow. They’ve been shown to raise exam scores in courses from different disciplines, at two- and four-year institutions and with varying quiz logistics (online and in class, for example). It’s
Educators concerned with the quality of learning and instruction have called for a greater focus on students’ thinking to inform instruction and have offered a variety of pathways for achieving that aim (Brookfield, 2017; Robertson, Scherr, & Hammer, 2015; Simkins & Maier, 2010; Weimer, 2013).
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When instructors assign readings to students, they generally assume that anyone who has done the reading must know the information in it and that if they don’t, they did not do the reading. In reality, students often have a hard time determining the main point of a reading or what they should get out of it because they lack the background knowledge that an expert brings to bear on a text. We have heard this from our students, who tell me that they can read a paragraph over and over again without understanding it or do not know what is important when taking notes.
The instructors’ perspective is a good example of the “expert’s blind spot”—the inability of experts to understand the struggles of novices because experts do not see the world the as novices do. Experts have both knowledge and experiences that novices lack, and this is something we often forget as instructors. We build knowledge of the periphery of what we already know by connecting it to something in our current knowledge web, which includes experiences as well as facts. For this reason, it is helpful to connect course content to student experiences. That is why Carrie accompanies readings in her group fitness instructor class with two types of worksheets: text–experience and key concepts. These both guide student reading and help them make the connections to their experience needed to assimilate the information. The student completes both worksheets while they go through the reading.
The text–experience worksheet has two columns. Students use the first to write a summary sentence about each section of the text in their own words. They use the second to identify a class experience or an experience they had with their group fitness mentor that demonstrates this summary statement. Here, students connect what they are reading to their lived experience, intentionally deepening their comprehension of the readings.
After completing the worksheet, each student uploads it to the online discussion forum, where everyone in the class can enhance their learning by reading their peers’ observations and reflections. Carrie offers industry-specific insights to their lived experiences to further deepen the comprehension and application of the content at hand.
The key concepts worksheet requires students to identify important themes in their reading for the week and then map those themes to an experience they had during their experiential requirement when working with a mentor teaching group fitness. The worksheet keeps them on task as they read, essentially requiring them to take notes in an active and structured manner, then supports them in transposing the content to their lived experience. Students must identify the chapter’s key concepts and include a minimum of four key points within each concept. Once they have identified the key concepts and supporting points, they must include a story, example, or connection from their mentorship to bring those concepts to life. They then upload the worksheet to the discussion forum, where everyone can review each other’s experiential applications of the content and Carrie can respond to each, sharing her professional industry experiences to further enhance their content comprehension.
Here is feedback from one of Carrie’s students reflecting on the effectiveness of this strategy:
Working on each assignment taught me new and more efficient ways to organize the information I was learning. One example would be the key concept activity from week 2. Doing assignments like this helps me slow down and relate all the new information I am reading to real life experiences and provides a good method for remembering things.
These assignments not only improve reading comprehension but also offer instructors an assessment strategy to identify any gaps in student knowledge or additional needs students may have before progressing onward in the class. While these activities work great for classes that require an experiential learning component, they’re not exclusive to those. You can ask students to connect any content to any lived experiences they may have had, which can offer a platform to enrich discussion forums by seeing topics from different perspectives. Because of the noticeable increase in their own reading comprehension, students have also reported adopting these reading strategies for classes that don’t require them.
Please feel free to use either or both of the linked worksheets in your courses to improve student understanding.
Carrie Jarosinski, DPN, is a health and wellness promotion faculty member and Lea Ann Turner, MS, is a manager of academic and professional excellence at Mid-State Technical College.
