Execution over resources: Two ways to use the same slide.

Recently I ran a whole school CPD session about the concept of checking for listening (CfL) as a way of helping students pay attention to key areas.

Looking forward to running my whole school CPD session in today's inset.

I've given it the pithy title:

TLAC: Teach Like an Attention Controlfreak

But it's more than just a brilliant bit of word play.

A quick thread on the main points and mechanisms. 👇1/14

— Adam Robbins (same username on threads) (@MrARobbins) October 30, 2023

During the planning section staff were asked to look at a resource they currently have and plan their CfL questions for the explanation. A psychology teacher was working on the following resource. This is just a single slide looking at the concept of heteronomous morality. Here is the slide. Each bullet point is animated to appear on click.

This blog is not about the slides’ design. In fact it’s specific purpose is to look at the use of the slide and not the design of it. When discussing the work we identified two possible ways of using the slide to explain the concept to the students.

1. The teacher displays the slide and explains each point in turn as they come up via animations. The teacher then quizzes the students by asking them some simple questions about the content using cold calls e.g.

Question: “What age does heteronomous morality develop?” 

Expected answer: “Heteronomous morality develops between 5 and 10 years old.”

2. The teacher explains the first point verbally, then asks a CfL question, gaining the response via cold call. The example question above will do the job perfectly. When that answer is given the teacher praises the students use of a full sentence and clicks the slide to reveal the information.

At first glance there is not much difference between the two versions. They have the same information and the same question, it’s just the order that has changed.

If we look at those two possibilities in detail I think there is a strong case that version 2 is more likely to support student learning than version 1. Looking through a ‘ratio lens’ we can consider both how many students are thinking about the question (the participation ratio) and how hard they are having to think (the think ratio). 

The participation ratio

Both techniques are using cold call so the participation ratio is the same. There are higher participation ratio techniques that could be used, like miniwhiteboards (MWBs), but given these questions are within the flow of an explanation there are potential downsides to MWBs in terms of pace and distraction. I think cold call here is a decent compromise between the ratio and pace issues. We can use MWBs to check for understanding later on.

The think ratio

However when we consider the think ratio the two options significantly diverge. In 1 the think ratio is low. The teacher is asking the question at the end and all the information is on the slide. Even students that were not paying attention will be able to read out a bullet point and have a good chance of being correct. This will probably undermine the participation ratio of the cold call as there is an easy way to cheat. If we assume all the students are perfect there is still the issue of redundancy. Cognitive load theory suggests that the fact that reading written words and listening to speech are processed through similar channels of the working memory. This may lead to a reduction in the students capacity to think about the information. It is recommended that where possible either words or text are used in isolation. 

When we consider option 2 we see that the students now are required to pay attention to the words being spoken because they will be asked a CfL question before the information is available on the board. This accountability or ‘threat of inference’ helps motivate them to pay attention. When the CfL question is asked they have to reflect on the words just spoken and rehearse their answer in their head. This increases the level of thought they are using on the information and therefore increases the chance of remembering it. The rest of the class hear the information for a second time so also benefit from repeat exposure. 

Summary

Resource design is important, but it’s not the only important thing. It’s easy to focus on because it has an artifact that we can evaluate at the end. How a resource is used is in some ways more important, a skilled teacher can create a strong learning experience from even the most simple slide, if they choose the correct techniques to apply in the right situations.