Workshop Materials

This page contains materials, such as worksheets and activities, developed for our workshops, available for use by other institutions. Please give credit to the Science Education Initatiave of the University of Colorado. Want to have us speak at your conference or school? Email us at stephanie.chasteen@colorado.edu.

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Learning Goal Workshop Materials

Abstract: Students don’t always learn what it is that we intend to teach them. In several science departments, faculty are addressing this gap by collaboratively deciding on just what it is that they want students to take away from a particular course or lecture. These learning goals have been valuable as a communication tool among faculty and between faculty and students so that everybody knows what the outcomes of the course are meant to be. Once these goals are written, it’s also much easier to write exams and other assessments. But writing clear learning goals takes some practice. In this interactive workshop, you’ll get that practice – in defining goals and designing assessments that address those goals. You will work in groups with faculty from similar disciplines to generate and analyze goals and questions, and will discus how to put ongoing assessment of your students into practice. You are encouraged to work on a class you are currently teaching, so you can apply the techniques immediately.

Full Day Workshop. A one-day workshop on the creation and use of learning goals, with Carl Wieman.

Two-hour Faculty Development workshops.Short professional development workshops by Kathy Perkins and Stephanie Chasteen, based on the Wieman workshop, through the Faculty Teaching Excellence Program (FTEP).

New Science Faculty Workshops. See also materials on The Science of Learning and Implementing Principles of Learning from the September 2008 New Science Faculty Workshops here (see bottom of page).

 

Clicker / Peer Instruction Workshop Materials

We have given a wide variety of workshops on how to use clickers effectively. Here we provide those materials organized so that you may easily find the sections of our materials that are most relevant to your needs. Towards the bottom are materials from specific workshops. More about peer instruction and clickers.

Find materials from our past clicker workshops here.

Specifications for all workshops, except as noted otherwise:

  • Time: 2-3 hours.
  • Audience: Mixed discipline faculty. (Single discipline can be more successful)
  • Materials: Digital projector, printed handouts, audio speakers (preferred), set of clickers (any brand) or ABC voting cards (see below), whiteboard or large post-its and markers for group reporting.
  • Format: Audience arranged by discipline, and in small groups or a circle, is preferred.
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All Materials

Download a zip of all materials.

Includes slides, activities, handouts, organized by topic and by type of material.
Topics include (1) Introduction / About Questioning (2) About Peer Instruction (3) Research, (4) Challenges and Facilitation, and (5) Question Writing, as well as a set of example questions for use in workshops.

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All Activities and handouts

Download a zip file of all Activities + Handouts

Includes the following (not every activity used in every workshop):

  1. Warm Ups. Participants discuss the benefits of using questioning in the class
  2. Practice Questions. Peer Instruction questions that are useful as practice questions for multidisciplinary audiences.
  3. Browsing Questions. A set of activities allowing participants to explore the breadth of questions useable in Peer Instruction.
  4. Pedagogical Philosophies. Participants brainstorm what beliefs an instructor and students must hold for Peer Instruction to work well
  5. Facilitation. Participants discuss clicker questions about different reactions after the results of the first vote are in, and practice facilitating a question themselves.
  6. Challenges. A set of activities where participants consider what challenges they might face in facilitating Peer Instruction, and how to overcome them.
  7. Writing Questions. A set of activities where participants get a chance to write questions for use with Peer Instruction, consider various aspects of those questions, and get feedback.
  8. Wrap Up. Participants write an Action Plan for using ideas from the workshop.
  9. Plus many example questions, a printable clicker "flash" card, and more
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Materials by topic

Just looking for workshop materials on teaching a particular topic in Peer Instruction? Here are the materials organized by topic. Includes slides, activities, and handouts. Zip files.

  1. Introduction: About Questioning
  2. About Peer Instruction
  3. Research
  4. Facilitation and Challenges
  5. Question Writing
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Facilitating Peer Instruction (complete workshop)

Make Clickers Work for You: Effective Facilitation Techniques: Questioning is a central part of student assessment and quizzing, but it can also be a powerful learning tool. In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore research-based tips and ideas for achieving the full benefit of questioning. Effective use of clickers will be discussed as a means to achieve student engagement and deep learning. How does a teacher use questioning effectively?  What is the right number of questions to ask?  How do we avoid just giving students the answer?  How do we avoid embarrassing our students, or confusing the class, if they give me the wrong answer?  In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore research-based tips and ideas for questioning in a way that allow us to achieve the full benefit of questioning –student engagement and deep learning. We will focus on the use of “peer instruction” – the practice of requiring students to discuss their answers to challenging questions with one another.

Download a zip package of all materials below (ZIP)

A video of a version of this workshop is available on iTunes U

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writing clicker questions (complete workshop)

Writing Great Clicker Questions: Questioning is a central part of assessment and quizzing, but it can also be a powerful learning tool. How does a teacher use questioning effectively?  How do we avoid asking questions that are too simple, too hard, too similar, or just not focused on the right thing?  This workshop will focus on writing those questions that engage students, spark their curiosity, help recap material, give you insight into their thinking, or help them learn critical ideas from the discipline.  Learn about different types of questions for different parts of the learning cycle, as well as the surprising power of multiple-choice questions to achieve critical thinking skills.

Download a zip package of all materials below (ZIP)

A video of a version of this workshop is available on iTunes U

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combination: Writing questions + Effective Facilitation (complete workshop)

This workshop is a compressed combination of the previous two workshops, to meet popular demand to provide more content in a shorter time. It is difficult to provide this level of material in two hours or less without minimizing the participatory aspects of the workshops.

Make Clickers Work for You: Writing Questions & Effective Facilitation. Clickers can be a powerful tool for questioning your students, to increase student engagement and learning, and give you valuable insight into their thinking.   Clickers can make teaching more effective and fun, but   how does a teacher best use clickers in the class?  What is a “good” clicker question?  What is the right number of questions to ask?  How do we avoid confusing the class if they give me the wrong answer?  In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore research-based tips and ideas for questioning in a way that allow us to achieve student engagement and deep learning. We will focus on the use of “peer instruction” – the practice of requiring students to discuss their answers to challenging questions with one another. We’ll compare example questions, practice writing some of our own questions, discuss common challenges, and share tips on getting students to productively argue and reason through the questions, and ways to encourage all students to speak up in response to questions. 

Download a zip package of all materials below (ZIP)
[Does not include sample questions]

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Teaching Faculty about Effective clicker use (complete workshop)

Teaching Faculty about Effective Clicker Use: What are the proven techniques for effective use of clickers and how do you, as a faculty professional development facilitator, help faculty to achieve those best-practices? This workshop uses research on effective use of clickers, as well as research on common faculty questions and challenges, to suggest helpful approaches to planning faculty professional development for clicker use.

This workshop outlines our techniques and approaches to teaching faculty about the use of clickers. Thus, this is a good overview of our approaches.

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Clicker Choreography (complete workshop)

Clicker Choreography (by Cynthia Heiner and Peter Newbury, CWSEI): How does an instructor use the results of student voting distributions to skillfully guide instruction? This workshop provides helpful tips on facilitating clicker questions, with particular attentions to instructor choices upon seeing the results of student voting. Slides from an optional second workshop on writing clicker questions are included below.

  • Outline (PDF)
  • Clicker Choreography Slides (PPT and PDF)
  • Creating Good Clicker Questions in Physics and Astronomy (PPT and PDF)
  • Example Questions (PPT and PDF)
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