Keeping it in the Zone

By Lew Ludwig

In this series, I share my mistakes in teaching and provide alternative approaches. This serves two purposes, 1) to help prevent me from committing these mistakes again and more importantly, 2) to help you avoid similar mistakes by providing evidence-based practices that are effective in the classroom. Luckily, I am returning from my teaching sabbatical in the fall, ready to continue my mistake-making!

Even though I was on sabbatical from teaching, I couldn’t help making a mistake during a recent webinar that readily translates to the classroom: match activities to students' level of understanding.

Setting the stage:

Recently, the MAA asked me to conduct a 50-minute webinar on ChatGPT. We carefully planned our time, mindful to cover the basics, but also included techniques to engage the audience. While engaging the audience sounds good in principle, the method I used needed to align better with my newly formed audience.

To start, I used some simple icebreaker and polling-type questions to get the audience engaged:

  • If your mood was the weather, what is your current "weather report?" (are you feeling sunny, cloudy, hazy..?)

  • What institution are you from?

  • How much have you used ChatGPT?

  • Have you received guidance from your institution about student use of AI (syllabus language, etc.)?

  • Have there been any conversations/training at your institution regarding the uses of AI (beyond informal conversations in the hallway)?

The first two are icebreakers that help attendees relate to others. The latter questions were sprinkled throughout the presentation and helped me adjust my delivery based on the audience – formative feedback.

The MAA guidance I received asked that I make the session as engaging as possible and limit my amount of talking – sound advice. To address this, in addition to the interactive questions above, my crown jewel would be a break-out room. After I presented an overview of ChatGPT, how it works, its limitations, and examples of how it can be used in the classroom, I sent the 140+ attendees to breakout rooms to further brainstorming ways they could use it to prepare activities before class, during class, or after class.

The Mistake: Neglecting the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

I aimed to engage the audience during the webinar through icebreaker questions and interactive polls. However, I failed to align the activities with the participant's familiarity with the subject matter. From polling, I knew over 60% of attendees had limited experience with the ChatGPT, while others were well-versed. This mismatch prevented effective engagement within the group.

In my eagerness to create an engaging session, I missed considering Vygotsky's concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Attendees new to the topic were overwhelmed by the challenge of generating ideas for its use, while experienced participants felt unchallenged. Both groups were outside the ZPD, hindering meaningful interaction and learning.

The zone of proximal development (ZPD) is the difference between what a learner can do without help and what they can achieve with guidance and encouragement. As we see in the graph below (Hill & Crevola), the green region is ideal. For my example, attendees new to ChatGPT were above the zone where the level of challenge – creating ways to use this new technology – was beyond their level of competence – they had only used ChatGPT a few times or not at all. On the other hand, the more skilled attendees familiar with ChatGPT were bored as their level of competence was far beyond their group members.

How you can avoid my mistake:

When using group work, ensure your students are ready for the task so that all can contribute to the exercise. The goal is to get everyone in the ZPD green zone. Depending on your class and topic, this can be challenging, just like my attendees with a missed-matched experience. Use formative feedback to help reveal your students’ understanding of a topic. A quick clicker-type multiple-choice question is an excellent way to do this using the free versions of Poll Everywhere or Mentimeter. Of course, you can use low-tech versions like A-B-C-D flashcards that allow students to respond.

Once you know what your students do and do not understand, you can adjust your activities to meet their ZPD better. In hindsight, I should have shared more examples of how to use ChatGPT and then asked for suggestions from the audience. While this is not ideal for equitable “class participation,” sometimes, under time constraints and other limiting factors, letting more experienced students take the lead on the discussion is all right. But be sure to limit this approach; otherwise, you are just teaching to the “smartest students” in the room, leaving most of the class confused and frustrated.

Lew Ludwig is a professor of mathematics and the Director of the Center for Learning and Teaching at Denison University. An active member of the MAA, he recently served on the project team for the MAA Instructional Practices Guide and was the creator and senior editor of the MAA’s former Teaching Tidbits blog.

Annie Petitt