When Student Confidence Clicks Academic Self-Efficacy and Learning in HE Fabio R. Aricò

When Student Confidence Clicks
Academic Self-Efficacy
and Learning in HE
Fabio R. Aricò
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
UEA-HEFCE Widening Participation Teaching Fellowship
HEA – Teaching Development Grant Scheme
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ETHICAL REMARK
You will be presented with data collected during teaching sessions.
Students involved have given informed consent for me to analyse
their responses and present the results of this analysis.
I can assist with ethical queries as well, please ask me.
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OUTLINE
1. Introduction to Student Response Systems (SRS)
2. The role of Academic Self-Efficacy in Learning
3. Using SRS to increase Academic Self-Efficacy
Other methods to increase Academic Self-Efficacy
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1. Introduction to Student
Response Systems (SRS)
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6
Have you ever heard of or used clickers before?
A. I used clickers before.
B. I heard of clickers but I
never used them.
C. I never heard of clickers
before.
0%
A.
0%
B.
0%
C.
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Choose the most accurate definition of inflation:
A. Inflation is defined as the
global increase in price
levels.
B. Inflation is defined as the
rate of change of the price
level.
C. Inflation is defined as the
difference between price
levels in 2 consecutive
years.
0%
A.
0%
B.
0%
C.
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If the bargaining power of trade unions increases…
A. Unemployment will
increase.
B. Unemployment will
decrease.
C. Unemployment will stay
the same.
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How confident do you feel about your answer?
A. Very confident.
B. Confident.
C. Somewhat Confident.
D. Not Confident.
0%
A.
0%
B.
0%
C.
0%
D.
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Consult with each other for a few minutes and then
we will try to re-poll the question.
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If the bargaining power of trade unions increases…
A. Unemployment will
increase.
B. Unemployment will
decrease.
C. Unemployment will stay
the same.
0%
A.
0%
B.
0%
C.
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ACTIVITY
• Assuming that time and resources were available,
would you be keen on using SRS technology?
• Can you think about applications of SRS in your
teaching practice?
• How would you use them? How frequently? In which
teaching context (lecture/workshop…)
• Which questions would you ask?
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2. The role of Academic
Self-Efficacy in Learning
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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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ACTIVITY
• What is your opinion about the relevance of Academic
Self-Efficacy in learning and teaching?
• Have you experienced issues in your teaching that can
be related to lack of students’ confidence in their own
abilities?
• Did you try to address this problem with the students?
How? Can you share your experience?
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3. Using SRS to increase
Academic Self-Efficacy
Other methods to increase
Academic Self-Efficacy
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TEACHING PROTOCOL – the module
Introductory
Macroeconomics  Level 1 – compulsory year-long module - 170 students
Lectures
 traditional frontal-teaching
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
(10 per sem.)
(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 learning
3. Quiz questions + solutions
4. Problem-set questions
4. 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 responses
Seminars
 matched demographics from student records
 uncover correlation patterns
Qualitative data
Sessions
 focus group and individual interviews
 feedback from students
Support Sessions  provide the narrative to interpret the analytics
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An example using
data from the
2012-13
cohort
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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
Q1
Q2
Q3
1
0
1
1
2
1
0
0
3
1
1
…
…
…


performance per student
Student
performance per question
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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 2nd round
% correct responses 1st 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 5
Week 9
 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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Tweet from a student:
Time to play who wants to be a
millionaire in my economics lecture
#FunLearning.
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