Looking for ways to make your instruction more relevant to students and to address students’ questions more specifically? Just in Time Teaching (JiTT) is an approach that provides a structure to make it easier to do just that.
By designing short online assignments, due shortly before class time, instructors can gather feedback on specific questions, misconceptions, and areas of interest for students. Short online assignments can include conceptual questions, reflective feedback questions, areas of confusion, areas of interest for more coverage, or real world application interests. The instructor reviews student responses “just in time” to be able to address problems or interests students have. Many learning management systems allow you to run reports to make it possible to skim answers in a shorter amount of time. In D2L, reports can be created from both the quiz or survey tool. See the figure to the right for a guide to help you implement this approach.
Source: Peer Instruction Network Blog
Conceptual questions should be sufficiently challenging, pushing students beyond basic understanding. Feedback questions can probe for confidence in their responses, level of perceived difficulty, or what was confusing for them in determining their responses. Alternatively, feedback questions can help you get a sense for what students would be most interested in focusing on such as a how the concept relates to a specific application in politics, social media, in our state, in other countries, etc. An added bonus is that these short online assignments can motivate students to come prepared for class, especially once they see you giving feedback based on their responses to the questions.
ASSETT’s Teaching and Learning Consultants are available to help you design JiTT activities. Read more about JiTT on the Peer Instruction Network Blog and the JiTT website.
