Educator Highlight

Every day we hear about new and innovative ways our customers are integrating response technology into their classrooms. These stories were so good we just couldn’t keep them to ourselves. That's why we developed our "Educator Highlights."

Do you have any suggestions for our next Educator Highlight or would you like to be featured for your innovative use of response technology? Contact us.

Dr. Michael Garver
Professor of Marketing
Central Michigan University

I recently had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Dr. Michael Garver, a Professor of Marketing at Central Michigan University. Having completed his Undergraduate at Michigan State University, followed by 6 years of Sales experience, Michael pursued his Masters at Wayne State University. During his time at Wayne, Michael served as a Graduate Assistant which gave him the opportunity to experience teaching for the first time - an experience that later paved the way for his career in education. After receiving his Masters, Michael continued to pursue his Ph.D. in Marketing from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He then found his educational "home" at Central Michigan University and has been there for the past 10 years.

Michael is one of those individuals that truly lives, thrives, and has a true passion for what he does. In just our short conversation, I saw a glimpse of the small spark that initially started within him and the now burning fire that drives him every day to provide the best educational experience he can to his students. When he first started out teaching, Michael admitted that he, like many educators, fell into the trap of relying heavily on traditional "talk at" lecturing. It wasn't until he was reminded of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning that he realized the error in his ways. He realized this traditional method of teaching is at the bottom of Bloom's Taxonomy ladder, he needed to push himself to climb the ladder and strive for better and more effective instruction. "If I lectured, I could cover a lot of material. But I wasn't ever really able to uncover it, I couldn’t get in-depth with it. There never was enough time to have a balance of lecturing and active learning," explained Michael.

As a means to find that balance missing from his courses and to enhance student experience and learning, Michael turned to Learning Technologist, Brian Roberts a member of FACIT (Faculty Center for Innovative Teaching) at CMU. With the support and assistance from Brian, Mike began creating short 10-15 minute podcasts of the lecture material he would have traditionally covered during class. He would then assign 2-3 of these sessions as homework for students to be reviewed prior to class. Students then arrive to class already armed with the knowledge they need for the day's activities, which includes a short quiz over the covered material. The rest of class was then free for active learning, for students to take what they were taught and really apply it and share concepts. The level of engagement, thought process and actual learning increased exponentially with this alternative approach to the traditional classroom experience. Using video podcasts significantly increased student learning and assessment scores.

Having been impressed by the success of this methodology, Michael took his story on the road and presented the concept at a Lilly Conference on College Teaching. It was after his presentation that an audience member asked what the biggest drawback of this method of teaching was, at which Michael explained, "the grading." With daily quizzes every class, it didn’t take long for Michael to become backlogged in grading quizzes and uploading student grades. The individual who posed the question then suggested the use of student response technology as a means of simplifying the grading process and to improve the already seemingly perfect new approach to instruction. It just so happened that at the same conference, Turning Technologies had a representative that Michael met with. He evaluated the technology and was practically sold on-site. "The partnership with BlackBoard was a major selling point. To be able to upload student grades right from TurningPoint AnyWhere to Blackboard with minimal effort was great. Everything could be graded and uploaded almost instantaneously," described Michael.

Again Michael turned to his "right-hand man" Brian (whom Michael insists is critical to the success he has been able to create) to assist with integrating student response into his classroom. Not only did the use of student response turn out to be a great teaching tool for Michael, but it proved to be a great learning tool for his students as well. In time, Michael came up with several uses of the technology and is continually looking for additional and unique ways of using the technology. Below is a short listing of all the ways Michael has utilized student response in the classroom.

Quizzes - Use student response to quickly gauge and assess student understanding and knowledge - easily determine where more time is needed to be spent.
Student Control - Let students help determine the direction of the course by giving them a "vote". When students are given more control over the class, they become more involved and take ownership of their personal learning experience.
Business & Market Strategies/Research Scenarios - Use clickers to evaluate individual cases, students take sides and have to support their answer with logic. A revote is taken and further debate ensues until all are in agreement.
Knowledge Gaps - Students often come into class and think they already know everything. Clickers are used to show what they do and don’t know. A week or so before an assigned topic is covered, questions are given to test student knowledge. Often times, students are surprised by how little they actually knew. This in turn forces them to focus and try to really learn the material when it comes time to view the podcasts on the respective topics.
Peer Assessment - Students create presentations and are graded by their peers based on specific criteria such as creativity, content, delivery, etc using the TurningPoint AnyWhere and clicker system. This grade is presented along with that of the instructors to create a final grade.
Student Presentations - Several students have begun integrating student response into their own projects to help guide the direction of their presentation and the discussions that follow.

Michael has truly re-imagined the traditional approach to learning and has opened the doors to a more active, personalized form of education. "The podcasts are essentially the foundation of how I teach. The clickers are what make the classes more enjoyable, engaging and are what provide me with the added information I need to best reach my students. The technology has truly been invaluable. The level of the quality of work in my class has increased significantly, this is proof to the effectiveness of both student response technology and podcast based lecturing," explained Michael when asked to give one final thought.