Kevin Leung
Contract Lecturer
Course: PSY 209 – Industrial Psychology
Strategy: low-stakes knowledge checks with frequent feedback
Kevin Leung mixed peer activities, debriefs, interactive readings and low-stakes testing each week in his class, during and outside class time.
By focusing on student engagement and low-stakes assessments, not only did his students get to test their knowledge, he could see how they were doing, which students needed more support, and what concepts required further explanation. He also found that this teaching strategy motivated students to participate in class discussions.
For example, to teach his students about decision making and group dynamics, he provided them with a scenario. They had survived a plane crash and were given a list of things to prioritize in this setting. Students were given the time to evaluate their decisions individually and in groups. After that, they had to score their answers based on expert opinion. They found that the results of group answers scored lower than individual answers because of group dynamics in decision making. That opened discussion for group dynamics.
He found the combination of in-class and between class learning was so effective, he plans on continuing this approach in the future.