What are you and the students getting out of class. Heads up! It’s time for WHOOPPEE!

I’m passionate about predictive analytics; and I want my students to learn to be equally passionate about learning quantitative tools and using them to think about problems in the real world. I’m not teaching so that I can give my students grades or so that I can look at the tops of their heads (or the backs of their laptops) while they take notes. I teach because I care about data and statistics, and I want my students to feel that these tools/problems are inherently interesting, instead of serving as “boxes to be checked” as they proceed towards their degrees.

I think other faculty feel the same way. But that’s not what we do. We grade and we lecture to students who take notes.

I thought there had to be a better way. So I’ve made two major changes to my classes so I can spend more time conveying my excitement and so that my students really learn this stuff. These are particularly useful in MKTG/STAT 476/776, which has earned a reputation as a difficult, quantitative class. This is a class where students learn about probability models –theory, methods and applications. I want them to think–a lot–about the models they’re building and what these “stories” tell them. To get them to think in the ways I want them to, I needed new ways of interacting in class and evaluating their work.

First, I tell my students to keep their heads up. Don’t even take notes in class. Listen, ask questions when you need to and think about what you are seeing and hearing. The material is new to most of the students and they need to get the main points first before they can manage the rest. Keeping their heads up means that they focus on what’s happening in class (not what they need to write down to pass the exam). I record the lectures, slides, spreadsheets, and everything I write using the multimedia Panopto software, which students can access through Canvas. By keeping their heads up, they find the cognitive pegs that will allow them to later organize and understand the rest. The students then watch the recordings (which include a rich display of all the media I’ve presented) after class and create their own set of notes. Even better, I encourage them to watch the video from a different section (I teach three of them), so they can experience a different angle (and different Q&A) on the same content. It is that second time through when the learning really occurs–and the note-taking is far more effective.

Second, I get my students involved in class and engaged in their own learning using a well-calibrated peer review process. I want my students to encounter challenging issues and think deeply about the questions in ways that aren’t friendly to multiple-choice questions. Grading the types of assignments that challenge students in the ways I want to challenge them is very time consuming and, undoubtedly, my least favorite part of teaching. I tried helping students by posting the best answers to every assignment online so they could see what they needed to do. But one of my students told me “that’s very depressing–don’t just post the best papers.” He suggested posting average papers or just some random set of papers. I thought that might be a good start–letting students see the range of papers. But then I thought it would be better if they got to see those papers and then had to interact with what they were seeing. This train of thought led me to develop a peer review system called WHOOPPEE (“Wharton Online Ordinal Peer Performance Evaluation Engine”). 

The TAs and I still grade some papers to set a “gold standard” against which other raters are compared, but I don’t have to grade all of them. In terms of my goals for doing more of the stuff I like to do, adding peer review has made a huge difference. But peer review also has clear advantages for my students.  First, because the students get grades based on both their paper and their review of others, even before they complete the assignment, they know what I’m looking for. I also motivate them to do a good job with the peer review by including the peer review as part of their grade. Students get their grades much sooner­—in days (rather than weeks). Reading other students’ papers helps students internalize the analytical skills they need and gives them a sense of how to improve in ways my comments can’t. Students also get to see a wide array of different kinds of responses to the prompt. Initial student response to this system was that 93% felt they understood the course material better. Beyond the immediate advantages, there’s a long-term advantage: being able to give and receive this type of feedback, questioning and critique is part of a healthy work environment and will give my students a leg up in the world of work.

Students aren’t always as fully happy with the system as I am. While many learn more from this approach, some students see it is a black box and think that there could be some “game-playing” in the collaborative system that wouldn’t exist in the usual TA-driven grading process. This is understandable, but I’m convinced this system gives a more accurate grade than any grade given by an individual. Thus, I’ve had to work to help them understand the system and make it more transparent. I’ve also given students clearer messages about why I think it works and why it’s ultimately better for them (both from a grading and learning standpoint). I’m very optimistic about the future of WHOOPPEE, particularly as we roll out a new interface that will make everything much clearer and more engaging.

I’m glad that students enjoy my course for the usual content-oriented reasons, but it’s great to see that these technology angles play a big part as well. There is no substitute for a good lecture or a challenging writing assignment–technology will never take those things away. But it can enhance students’ ability to learn from the content that they’re hearing and reading, and have it stay with them long after they graduate.

Pete Fader is the Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor, Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School and the recipient of the 2018 Iron Professor.

This essay continues the series that began in the fall of 1994 as the joint creation of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Lindback Society for Distinguished Teaching. See https://almanac.upenn.edu/talk-about-teaching-and-learning-archive for previous essays.