1. CONSIDER Neelam Soundarajan Swaroop Joshi Jeremy Morris
Computer Sc. and Engineering Department Ohio State University

2. Motivation
Fact: People learn best when they discuss their ideas rather than hear a presentation
Fact: The most effective discussions are those among peers, not between students and instructors!
Fact: The most effective discussions are among small groups of peers who disagree with each other (about the topic)
Fact: Even if all the peers in the group start out with misconceptions, by the end of the discussion, many have them may have the correct conception!
CONSIDER

3. But …
Classtime is limited so it is difficult to have serious, extended discussions in small groups in class; discussions outside class are difficult to organize …
Some students may dominate face-to-face discussions; other students, possibly ones with good ideas, may remain silent …
The discussions are ephemeral with no long- term record of how they evolved …
CONSIDER

4. CONSIDER ... a web app in which
Conflicting Student Ideas are Discussed, Evaluated, and Resolved (or Refuted!)
Phase 1: Individual students answer a question on the app
Phase 2: The instructor/app assigns students to anonymous groups of 4-5 students each, ensuring that each group is made up of students with conflicting ideas
Anonymity: Students in each group will be named S1, S2, S3, S4, …
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5. Phase 3: Heart of CONSIDER …
Phase 3: Students in each group, via anonymous posts, discuss their positions, trying to persuade the others in the group of the correctness of their own positions and pointing out relations between their own position and that of others
Phase 3 is organized as a series of rounds
Each round lasts 24 hours
CONSIDER

6. Phase 3 Rounds
During each round, each student can only see the posts from the previous (and earlier) rounds … posts from the current round, even if they have already been made, will not be visible until the round ends
In each round, each student is required to make one post in which he/she responds to the posts of each student from the previous round
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7. Phase 3 Rounds (contd)
In the response, the student must not only state his/her current position but also state whether he/he agrees with, disagrees with, or is neutral (or unsure) about each of the previous round's posts, and why
The student may freely edit his/her post until the end of the round (since no one else will see it until that point)
CONSIDER

8. Phase 3 Rounds (contd.)
Does the student have to respond to his/her own post from the previous round?
Yes! …
That is the whole point of the discussion! … when the student realizes why his/her previous position was flawed and accepts the position presented by one (or more) of the other students or arrives at a position that is a combination of his/her previous position and the other students' positions, chances are deep learning is taking place …
But won’t I lose points if I change my position? No! Really!
CONSIDER

9. Phase 4: Summary Round
In the final round, each student makes a final submission consisting of:
His/her final answer to the original problem
A summary of the discussion in the group and how it helped him/her arrive at the final answer
The student's grade depends only on the correctness of the final answer & the quality of the discussion summary
No penalty for changing your answer! … indeed, that is the whole point of the activity: developing deep understanding by discussing your idea with others who have different conceptions
CONSIDER

10. After the discussion
After the final round, students will/should have access to all of the posts in the group including from the final (summary) round
Important: Arriving at a common, group answer is not a goal. That may happen but the goal is for each student to arrive at the best answer based on that student’s understanding
In other words, this is not a “team activity” in the normal sense …
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11. More Information
CONSIDER tutorial:
More details:
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12. More broadly … But does it really work?
That is, do students who use CONSIDER really develop deeper understanding?
We are studying this question; and want to use data from our course. So you will get a "consent form" on your Carmen/Canvas account to allow us to use data from your classwork in this research
Important: The data will be completely anonymized before we use it in our research
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13. Logistics
We will have a practice activity worth 10 points to familiarize you with the CONSIDER app
The practice activity will be a (hopefully) interesting question unrelated to our class
Send me your Google id before 11:59 pm on Friday, 10/27 (so you can be added a user for the app) (If you don’t do so, you will not be able to participate in the activity and will receive a zero)
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14. Timeline for CONSIDER practice activity
Practice activity assigned (on CONSIDER app): Monday, 10/30, by 10:00 am
Individual submissions due: Tuesday, 10/31, by 10:00 am
First round discussion starts: Tuesday, 10/31, at 6:00 pm
First round discussion ends: Wed., 11/1, 6:00 pm
2nd round discussion ends: Thu.,11/2, 6:00 pm
Final submission due: Fri., 11/2, 6:00 pm
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