1. JUST IN TIME TEACHING
A 21ST CENTURY LEARNING
TECHNIQUE
Name
School
Department
@ TEACHING & LEARNING WITH TECHNOLOGY
SYMPOSIUM
OCTOBER 24TH, 2014
DR. JEFF LOATS
DEPARTMENT PHYSICS

2. THE EVIDENCE STANDARD
Teachers can feel bombarded…
I strive to be a scholarly teacher …
• Apply the rigor we bring to our academic
disciplines to the discipline of teaching.
• Choose teaching methods that are strongly
informed by the best empirical evidence
available.
Contrast teaching your subject with treating
diabetes

3. OVERVIEW
1. Motivation for change
2. Basics of Just-in-Time Teaching
3. Mock example
4. Evidence for effectiveness
5. Summaries

4. In your teaching, do you have a method for
holding students accountable for preparing for
class?
A)Stern threats and/or playful pleading.
B)A paper method (quiz, journal, others?)
C) A digital method (clickers, others?)
D)Just in Time Teaching.
E) Some other method.
4
18%
49%
10%
5%
17%
From
~190
others

5. PHYSICS EDUCATION REVOLUTION
Eric Mazur, Physicist at Harvard:

6. “ALL SIMILARLY (IN)EFFECTIVE…”

7. University of
Washington
CU Boulder
University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign

8. JUST-IN-TIME TEACHING
Learne
Online pre-class assignments
r
called WarmUps
First half - Students
• Conceptual questions, answered in sentences
• Graded on thoughtful effort
Second half - Instructor
• Responses are read “just in time”
• Instructor modifies that day’s plan accordingly.
• Aggregate and individual (anonymous) responses
are displayed in class.
Teacher

9. Consider a typical day in your class. What fraction
of students did their preparatory work before
coming to class?
A) 0% - 20%
B) 20% - 40%
C) 40% - 60%
D) 60% - 80%
E) 80% - 100%
9
28%
33%
21%
13%
5%
~215
others
Careful studies on
this give results near
30%

10. WARMUP QUESTIONS
• Every-day language
• Occasional simple comprehension question
• Mostly higher level questions (a la Bloom)
• Perhaps any question is better than none
Connections to evidence:
– Pre-class work reduces working memory load
during class.
– Multimodal practice (not learning styles):
JiTT brings reading, writing and discussion as
modes of practice.

11. METACOGNITION
Two questions in every WarmUp:
First: “What aspect of the material did you find
the most difficult or interesting.”
Last: “How much time did you spend on the pre-class
work for tomorrow?”
Connections to evidence:
– Forced practice at metacognition:
Students regularly evaluate their own
interaction with the material.

12. EXAMPLE: WHIRLING BUCKET
A bucket of water can be whirled in a
vertical circle without the water falling
out, even at the top of the circle when the
bucket is upside down. Explain…
~15% → An outward force holds it in
~30% → An inward force holds it in
~20% → Talked (correctly!) about
acceleration & velocity… but
didn't really answer.
~10% → Nailed it! (or close enough)

13. EXAMPLE: WHIRLING BUCKET
“The water doesn't come out because you
twirling the bucket is applying the force of
spinning, and the water just kind of counteracts
that motion.”
“Because the water naturally wants to keep
traveling in the same direction its being
whirled around in the water attempts to
continue going up in a straight line but the
bottom of the bucket forces it to stay in the
bucket, like when you are pushed by the door
of a car while making a turn.”

14. JUST-IN-TIME TEACHING
A different student role:
• Actively prepare for class
(not just reading/watching)
Learne
r
• Actively engage in class
• Compare your progress & plan accordingly
A different instructor role:
• Actively prepare for class with you
(not just going over last year’s notes )
• Modify class accordingly
• Create interactive engagement opportunities
Teacher

15. JITT STRUCTURE & RESPONSE
RATES
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Response Rate by Day
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
% Responsed
Class #
College Physics I, N = 78
Worth 10% of final grade
Due 10 PM the night before class
Assignments available for prior 2-3 days
College Physics I

16. JITT VS. FINAL GRADE
CORRELATIONS
100
80
60
40
20
0
WarmUps vs. Cumulative Score
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Cumulative Score (without warm-ups)
WarmUp Score
College Physics I, Fall 2013
Correlation r = 0.71

17. MAZUR AFTER 1 YEAR

18. ELSEWHERE?

19. STUDIED EFFECTIVENESS
Used at hundreds of institutions
Dozens of studies/articles, in many disciplines:
Bio, Art Hist., Econ., Math, Psych., Chem., etc.
– Increase in content knowledge
– Improved student preparation for class
– Improved use of out-of-class time
– Increased attendance & engagement in class
– Improvement in affective measures

20. WHAT MIGHT STOP YOU?
In terms of the technique:
Time, coverage, not doing your part, pushback…
In terms of the technology:
Learning curve, tech. failures, perfectionism…
In any reform of your teaching:
Reinventing, no support, too much at once…

21. MY SUMMARY
JiTT may be among the easiest research-based
instructional strategies that you can consistently
integrate into your teaching.
From an evidence-based perspective, JiTT
addresses often-neglected areas.
Be prepared to find that students know less than
we might hope. (Perhaps freeing?)

22. YOUR SUMMARY
What part of JiTT concept/process is the fuzziest
for you after this talk?
What is the biggest reason you might not give
JiTT a try in one course next term?
Email: Jeff.Loats@gmail.com
Twitter: @JeffLoats
Slides: www.slideshare.net/JeffLoats
Don’t hesitate to get in touch.

23. ON-DEMAND SLIDES
JITT REFERENCES & RESOURCES
Simkins, Scott and Maier, Mark (Eds.) (2010) Just in Time Teaching: Across the Disciplines, Across the
Academy, Stylus Publishing.
Gregor M. Novak, Andrew Gavrini, Wolfgang Christian, Evelyn Patterson (1999) Just-in-Time
Teaching: Blending Active Learning with Web Technology. Prentice Hall. Upper Saddle River NJ.
K. A. Marrs, and G. Novak. (2004). Just-in-Time Teaching in Biology: Creating an Active Learner
Classroom Using the Internet. Cell Biology Education, v. 3, p. 49-61.
Jay R. Howard (2004). Just-in-Time Teaching in Sociology or How I Convinced My Students to
Actually Read the Assignment. Teaching Sociology, Vol. 32 (No. 4 ). pp. 385-390. Published by:
American Sociological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3649666
S. Linneman, T. Plake (2006). Searching for the Difference: A Controlled Test of Just-in-Time
Teaching for Large-Enrollment Introductory Geology Courses. Journal of Geoscience Education, Vol.
54 (No. 1)
Stable URL:http://www.nagt.org/nagt/jge/abstracts/jan06.html#v54p18

24. PROGRESSIVE EXAMS CORRELATIONS
College Physics I:
Correlations between Total WarmUp Score
0.18
and Sequence of Exams
0.33
0.43
0.54
0.80
0.70
0.60
0.50
0.40
0.30
0.20
0.10
0.00
Mini Exam
(week 4)
Exam 1
(week 7)
Exam 2
(week 11)
Final Exam
(week 16)
None Weak Moderate Strong
Important disclosure: This was not a hypothesis we were
testing, it appeared as we analyzed the data. Could be

25. Mean on 1-5 scale
STUDENT SURVEY RESULTS
How did WarmUps affect your...
Preparation Engagement Learning
Preparation for class 4.06
Engagement during
class 3.93
Learning the material 3.79
N = 781
9% 10%
81%
10%
18%
73%
10%
22%
68%
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Harmful Neutral Helpful

26. STUDENT SURVEY QUOTES
Physics:
“Initially, it was hard for me to get used to the
warm-ups. It seemed like along with the
homework assignments there was a lot of things
to do. Eventually I got used to it and ultimately
the warmups really helped me to learn the
material and stay caught up with the class.”
“If it weren't for warm ups, the amount of time I
spent reading the book would have dropped by
75%”

27. WHATTOOLSTOUSE?
The crucial part:
Daily reading, grading & using responses
• Automatic full credit for any response
• View all responses to a question together
• Grade responses on the same page with
minimal clicks
Wishlist:
Easy (quick!) individual feedback

28. WHAT TOOLS TO USE?
• CMS/LMS (Blackboard, D2L, Moodle, etc.)
Ready to use, tools… imperfect  awful
• Free service from JiTTDL.org.
Designed just for JiTT, but extra login, and the
site has not been improved in ~5 years
• Students email responses
Easy! usually overwhelming and awful
• Blogging tools (WordPress)?
• New tools (TopHat, Learning Catalytics)?