Minute Papers: Evidence-based teaching

Below I have included a reflection of my use of one particular method of evidence-based teaching. Evidence-based teaching in its simplest form implies that teaching practices are informed by qualitative or quantitative data.

Minute papers: mini windows to learning

1. Student name
2. What are the clearest concepts from lecture this past week?
3. What are the most unclear concepts from lecture this past week?

A few times during the semester, as a teaching assistant, I’ve added a fourth question that allows students to give anonymous feedback to the professor.

The first few times I used minute papers, I was amazed at how consistent the answers were. Most students found the same concepts confusing. And, they weren’t always the concepts I thought would be the most difficult. By skimming the minute papers at the beginning of the discussion while I had students review notes in small groups, I’ve been able to focus discussion on what is most useful to the students. For example, by analyzing student minute papers over the course of the first few weeks, I was able to identify that students had a difficult time connecting experiments described in class to the concepts the experiments demonstrated. This allowed me to create a study guide and sample note taking templates to change how students were approaching the course material.

Other times, the results of the minute papers were less cohesive. People seemed to be confused about topics that were all over the place. This 'negative finding' on its own may still provide insight into the classroom dynamic -- there may not be any trouble topics, and I can design group activities that leverage students' non-overlapping knowledge of course material. In this way, it's possible that minute papers may let me predict when I should use group exercises. This is a possibility that would be exciting to test in future classrooms through mismatching minute paper results to the use of a group activity or not (and collection of student responses to the utility of the group activity).

This all felt similar to when I analyzed my own experimental data in terms of looking for patterns in the data. By learning some basic qualitative coding, I’m attempting to interpret patterns in what my students were writing, and using the patterns I identified to make immediate changes.

I’ve also become comfortable with education literature by implementing small changes to my classroom such as minute papers. For example, to learn more about minute papers, I’ve learned to use the ERIC database to search and read papers written in an entirely different style from my discipline research of behavioral neuroscience, which was more challenging than I had expected. I still have not had much experience reading about and interpreting qualitative data from surveys and interviews. Furthermore, I've found that advances in pedagogical theory are often found in books rather than journal articles. Now, I look forward to continue using education literature to identify and evaluate the efficacy of other pedagogical methods.