by – Kelly Stockstad

Like many professors, I felt aggravated this semester because my students were coming to class completely unprepared. Not only had most of them not read, many of them didn’t bring anything to class – not their text, not materials to take notes, and, in one case, not even a cell phone. I am accustomed to having some students who don’t prepare for class, but my usual experience was that 10-20% of the students in the class would come unprepared. This semester, only 5-10% of the class members seemed to be prepared for each class meeting.

As I wracked my brain to try to figure out what was going on, I had a thought: Why not ask my students directly? In Communication Studies, my students learn about group work and brainstorming as part of the course. I decided to have students brainstorm about two questions to help them practice the group decision-making process:

1. What factors contribute to students coming to class unprepared?
2. What would motivate you personally to complete the reading before coming to class?

First, we reviewed the rules of brainstorming as a class. Then, I asked students to brainstorm as a group to answer the first question. After a discussion of each group’s list of factors, we had the answer, which shocked me. Students thought that the reading was optional because there was no accountability factor. Earlier in the semester, I had asked my students to decide how they wanted to complete chapter quizzes. The choices were to complete each quiz by the day that the chapter was discussed in class or to have all chapter quizzes due at the end of the unit of study. Students chose the latter option, so I updated our Blackboard site and our course schedule to reflect that completing the chapter quiz was optional. Students assumed that the reading was, too.

This answer moved our discussion naturally into the second question. I asked students to use the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) to tackle this question. (NGT involves group members brainstorming individually, then sharing their answers with their small group. The group uses the individual members’ brainstormed ideas to make a decision.) After students had brainstormed their individual lists and shared them with the group, I asked groups to select their top three ideas, using the following criteria:

• The solution should motivate most students to read the assigned chapter before coming to class.
• The solution must not involve much extra work for the professor.
• The solution should be quick to implement, taking no more than 10 minutes of a class meeting.
• The solution cannot change the requirements of the class.

Once I shared the criteria with the class, we discussed how to use criteria to make decisions, then groups discussed their ideas until each group had their list. I was amazed at the creative suggestions that came from this discussion. These included:

• Student-created Quizlet for reviews.
• Textbook scavenger hunts for answers to discussion questions.
• Optional class notes for points.
• Students who answer discussion questions earn points.
• Limit the number of attempts for chapter quizzes (2-3 attempts instead of unlimited)
• Complete interactive quizzes in class.
• Grades for daily participation assigned by a peer.
• Earn points on exams through participation in class.

Before we made a decision, I shared my top three ideas that I’d generated prior to our discussion:

• Interactive quizzes in class using Kahoot* (https://kahoot.com/).
• Classroom Preparation Assignments (CPAs) used as entry tickets to attend class – read more about CPAs here – https://www.scholarlyteacher.com/blog/studentpreparedness
• Blog posting or journal about videos associated with each chapter.

Our decision was to incorporate 5-question interactive quizzes. After I investigated Kahoot, I determined that my questions were too long to fit in the space available. I moved to Socrative (https://www.socrative.com/ ) to implement the quizzes.

To motivate students, a perfect score on a Socrative quiz earns 1 point to add to any of the three exams. I have noticed an increase in preparation and the quizzes engage students in course material right away. I plan to keep the daily interactive quizzes as part of my course design.