Use JiTT and PI for enhancing students' learning in a small class teaching on soil organic matter

Description:

Use Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) and Peer Instruction (PI) for enhancing and augmenting the small class teaching on soil organic matter (SOM) to more active, collaborative, and deep learning. The curriculum taught within our bachelor and master programs is predominated by passive learning with a strong focus on content transmission from teachers to students via lecturing. Among all challenges, the diverse background and levels of students makes it tricky for teachers to design the course with an appropriate level of the content and difficult to fulfill the expectation of all students. The aim of the present learning design is to create a more active, explorative and social learning environment, by implementing JiTT and PI models in the course design. In this context, “JiTT practices” such as surveys, quizzes and readings are provided to students online before the in-class teaching so that the teachers can get an impression of the level of the students and can adjust the teaching accordingly. Then in-class activities mainly include mini lectures from the teachers for explanation and/or clarification, and group discussions between students, or between the teacher and students. In particular, PI will be implemented in the group discussions, in order to improve the understanding of students with less background or at the relatively “low” level, and also to challenge the learning of “high” level students.