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When Student Confidence Clicks

Academic Self-Efficacy

and Learning in HE

Fabio R. AricòChris Thomson

** Preliminary version **

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

HEA – Teaching Development Grant Scheme

UEA-HEFCE Widening Participation Teaching Fellowship

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OUTLINE

1. Motivation student experience vs. self-efficacy

2. Teaching protocol embedding self-efficacy via SRS

3. Preliminary results learning, self-efficacy, satisfaction

4. Summary feedback welcome!

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MOTIVATION

Are my answers correct? I’m so confused…

Is this going to be in the exam? Are you sure?

But what if money supply contracts rather than increasing?

Yes, we checked them together already.

Yes, we spoke about it in class and practiced.

You know how to do the reverse, you showed me. Relax.

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MOTIVATION

Typical problems analysed in recent pedagogic literature:

• Students may encounter difficulties with the course material support sessions, office hours, targeted support interventions.

• Students may display low levels of engagement revision of the curriculum, innovations in teaching, teaching technologies, partnership lecturer-students.

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MOTIVATION

Additional problem:

• Students may experience low confidence levels anxiety over preparation; peer-pressure and competition; inability to self-assess and detect problems.

• The recent changes in HE practice exacerbate this problem the ‘student experience’ model targets support and satisfaction; students run the risk of being put ‘at the heart of the system’ as passive receivers, rather than confident owners, of their learning.

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REACTION

Re-visit the concept of Academic Self-Efficacy:

students’ confidence in their ability to accomplish specific academic tasks or attain specific academic goals (Bandura, 1997).

Teach students how to become confident and independent learners® help them to self-assess and diagnose problems;® enable them to seek appropriate forms of support;® increase the rate of retention of widening access students;® enhance employability skills all along the academic journey.

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REACTION in practice

Develop a teaching protocol embedding Academic Self-Efficacy as an independent learning outcome, parallel to the curriculum.

Stage 1: Investigation and assessment of student Self-Efficacy - experiment with Student Response Systems (clickers); - explore correlation between attainment and confidence.

Stage 2: Extension of dataset (add student record data) Extension to qualitative analysis (e.g. focus groups and interview)

Targeted intervention to increase Self-Efficacy levels.

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TEACHING PROTOCOL – the module

Introductory Macroeconomics Level 1 – compulsory year-long module - 170 students

Lectures traditional frontal-teaching (10 per sem.)

Seminars small group, pre-assigned problem sets (4 per sem.)

Workshops large group, problem-solving sessions (4 per sem.)

Support Sessions non-compulsory drop-in sessions (4 per sem.)

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TEACHING PROTOCOL – clicker technology

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TEACHING PROTOCOL – the innovations

Lectures interaction via clicker technology

Seminars revision questions + understanding questions

Workshops closing questions:

was the lecture enjoyable?

was the material difficult?

Support Sessions online report of clicking session + feedback

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TEACHING PROTOCOL – the innovations

Seminars preliminary Seminar Quizzes (paper-based)

Seminars 3 revision/understanding questions

Workshops 2 confidence/self-assessment questions

Sessions open-answer comments

Support Sessions online report of Seminar Quiz- solutions and overall performance- individual performance available

- response to open-answer comments

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TEACHING PROTOCOL – the innovations

Extra-Curricular Activities to promote engagement and Self-Efficacy

Seminars Module Facebook Page + Blackboard pages

- ‘challenges’ to encourage further study- interaction and participation

Seminars Voluntary in-lecture presentations (5 minutes)- to exploit demonstration effects

Support Sessions Campus Vouchers (for engagement, not attainment)

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TEACHING PROTOCOL – the innovations

Workshops peer-instructed flipped classroom approach

Seminars standard algorithm:1. Quiz questions + Confidence questions (no

solution)2. Peer-instruction learning3. Quiz questions + solutions4. Problem-set questions4. Feedback questions: - what was the cause of mistakes/problems? - did you enjoy using clickers? - were clickers useful to your learning?

Support Sessions online report of clicking session + feedback

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TEACHING PROTOCOL – the methodology

Focus attainment, engagement, academic self-efficacy role of the SRS (clicker) technology

Learning analytics rich dataset = clicker and paper-based responsesSeminars matched demographics from student records

uncover correlation patterns

Qualitative data focus group and individual interviewsSessions feedback from students

Support Sessions provide the narrative to interpret the analytics

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An example using data from the 2012-13cohort

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EXAMPLE – workshop structure

1. Set of quiz questions – collect responses via clickers. Students can see the distribution of answers, but no solution given.

2. Ask students to rate their confidence in giving a correct answer (question by question) – collect responses via clickers.

3. Allow for 20mins discussion on quiz questions.

4. Ask the same questions – collect responses via clickers Provide a solution and a discussion to each question.

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EXAMPLE – dataset

2 workshop sessions: Week 5 and Week 9 – Autumn Semester

attainment number of correct responses per question/per student

confidence “How confident do you feel about the answer given to Question X?” [4 levels]

learning “I feel that the clickers technology has contributed to my learning experience in today’s workshop” [4 levels]

satisfaction “I enjoyed using clickers in today’s workshop” [4 levels]

Collapsed 4-level responses into dummy response [0,1].

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EXAMPLE – dataset

Student Q1 Q2 Q3 …

1 0 1 1

2 1 0 0

3 1 1 …

…

performance per question

performance per student

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EXAMPLE – attainment by question

Week 5

% correct responses■ 1st round

■ 2nd round

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EXAMPLE – attainment by student

Week 5

% correct responses 1st round

% correct responses 2nd round

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EXAMPLE – student confidence by question

Week 5

■ % 1st correct responses ■ % confident responses

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EXAMPLE – student confidence by student

Week 5

% confident responses

% correct responses 1st round

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EXAMPLE – Comparing Week 5 to Week 9

initial preparation

final learning outcome

peer-instruction effect

self-efficacy indicator

problem set difficulty indicator

student self-assessment skills

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EXAMPLE – Comparing Week 5 to Week 9

Week 9Week 5

more of a learning/preparation problem than a confidence problem!

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EXAMPLE – Student perception of SRS

Student satisfaction

91% 56% Student learning perception

88% 73%

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SUMMARY

• Teaching protocol with interventions to assess/enhance Academic Self-Efficacy and self-assessment skills.

• Mixed-methods approach to disentangle the relationship between engagement, attainment, and academic self-efficacy using student demographics.

• Assessment on the role of SRS technology (clickers) in promoting ASE.(A research question not yet covered in related literature).

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FEEDBACK NEEDED

• More effort needed to map this project into the literature on ASE.

Academic references? Resources? Interesting readings?

• Explore the role of ASE questionnaires to facilitate comparisons with related studies and validate results.

Which additional instruments could be deemed as useful?

• Further opportunities for dissemination and discussion.

I would be glad to engage with these!

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Tweet from a student:

Time to play who wants to be a millionaire in my economics lecture #FunLearning.