Fostering learning and effective teaching: Checking for Understanding

By: Lindsey Fuller, M.A.T.
College of Pharmacy Educational Technology Consultant

As a high school educator, I found myself feeling pressed for time, pushing to deliver all content to my students during each class. I wondered, “How am I supposed to teach all of this content in this short amount of time?” We had a state test at the end of the year. I was the content expert; I had the answers they needed them. It was my job to prepare them. It was easy to fall into routine with lecture mode, while occasionally asking a few call and response questions to the class. Usually, the same people answered, and I thought, “OK, they are getting it”. When it came time to take a high stakes assessment, I was often baffled by the scores and wondered “How did they get this question wrong?! I went over this so many times!” I knew I taught the material, “I did my job”, or so I thought.

I would reflect. I would go back in my head, look at my presentations and notes. I gave great examples, connected the content to real-world examples, modeled what was needed to pass the exam. Why didn’t they learn it? I realized I was only doing part of my job and not allowing the students to do theirs. I did provide the content, but I didn’t leave any facilitated time for the students to interact, practice, reflect, or analyze it. I assumed they were doing this through homework and reading at home. After all they were high schoolers, they should be doing this on their own!

Merriam Webster’s definition of the verb learn is, “to gain knowledge or understanding of a skill in by study, instruction, or experience”.

Read that definition again… “to gain knowledge or understanding of a skill by study, instruction, or experience.” Students must have time to take the content, concepts, and/or skills being taught and do something with it. As educators, we need to allow students a chance to gain understanding by doing.

Merriam Webster’s definition of the verb teach is, “to cause to know something”.

What a powerful role that is, to cause to know something!

Now that I understood where I was in my teaching, I sat down and realized I needed to find out what the students know, what can they do? In my own education in becoming a teacher, I was taught that checking for understanding is a crucial part of teaching. It allows us to ensure their learning is actionable and that our teaching is effective. I was instructed this over and over, yet it wasn’t until my own teaching experience that I actually learned it. See what I did there?

We know we need to check for understanding, but how do we do it effectively in higher education? It is easy to name the challenges: large class sizes, classrooms set up for lecture style teaching, limited class time, content overload, unengaged learners, etc.

Take a step back and think about things you can control as an educator.

Checking for understanding can:

• provide evidence of student learning allowing you to better guide your teaching in real time.
• increase learner engagement with the content and material.
• help you build stronger, more in-tune, relationships with your students.
• help bring a clear picture of the learning objectives to the students.
• provide students a chance to reflect on their own learning through low-stakes assessments and feedback.

When and how should you check for student understanding?

Effective teachers use continuous checking for understanding. To do this, it must be in real-time using assessments to measure student learning. Checking for understanding using various questioning techniques should occur at least three times during a class. This should happen at least once before, during, and after class. Best practice would be to check understanding multiple times during class. Remember these do not have to be formal or graded assessments. Do not get overwhelmed! Let’s break it down.

Before Class

Checking student understanding before class helps gage prior knowledge to guide teaching as well as awaken students’ prior knowledge! This decreases the amount of content delivered if students already have a foundational understanding of it.

Example Strategies:

• Pre-quiz: test your students’ knowledge on the material before class. See if there is anything you can cut out, build upon, or further challenge your students on. This can also help you identify common misconceptions, or areas of real strength. This can be done online using Brightspace or Examsoft. Address areas of strength, celebrate knowledge out loud in class.
• Pre-reading with guided questions: Assign students a short reading, video, and/or lecture material before class. The key component here is also assigning them 3-5 guided open-ended questions. Questions that make them pull from the material, challenge their thinking, and guide them toward the learning objective(s). Once in class, start a discussion with these questions. Challenge as many learners to share what they got from the material. Don’t be afraid of the silence during discussion. Allow for “wait time”, give the students time to think and try not to fill in the silence with your thoughts or answers. This was my personal favorite when teaching! You could ask students to submit these answers online as an assignment before the beginning of class.
• Student made questions: Tell students to come up with questions about previous material or pre-class material. Be prepared to ask and share at the beginning of class. Have other students try to answer those questions before you do. Try asking students to raise their hand if they had a similar or the same question.

During Class

Checking for understanding during class keeps learners engaged and accountable for their learning. This provides real time data which is essential for teacher reflection regarding the lesson and students who are excelling or struggling to understand. Additionally, this enables teachers to adapt the lesson during class to meet student needs.

Example Strategies:

• Peer teaching: Ask students to teach someone they are sitting near a concept from previous material or material learned in class that day. Tell them to teach it in less than 3 minutes. Then have the students switch and teach another concept or add onto the first one. Discuss as a class if someone got a different perspective from their classmate or if they struggled with a certain concept.
• Metacognitive metaphors: During or after the lesson, ask students to come up with an object or animal that represents what they learned. Have the students submit this using something like a virtual word cloud so the objects/animals can appear on the screen in front of the class. Call out a few of them and ask students to explain why they chose the object or animal. This allows students to summarize their learning, dive into their own understanding and thinking on a concept or presented material. Encourage classmates to challenge their peer’s answers. This was one of my favorites when teaching. It is interesting to hear how the students are interpreting your teaching and introduces multiple perspectives and levels of understanding to the class.
• Use PollEverywhere or Nearpod multiple times during class to quickly check knowledge anonymously. Students are more inclined to pay attention and offer up what they think their answer is if they know it is anonymous and if it is happening regularly.
• Solve the question: Give students a solution, or an answer to a question. Give students the opportunity to discuss with a partner or work individually to come up with a question that would have that solution or answer. Then call on students randomly to discuss their ideas. This could be a math problem, lab values, diagnosis, etc.
• Connect to the real word: Ask students to connect content to real-world experiences or problems. This can be through verbal or written form. You could also provide a real-world scenario and ask students to pick out concepts from the taught material and discuss.
• What is missing? Give students a scenario, case, or problem and ask students to apply their knowledge to come up with what is missing. What needed number, history, questions, values etc. are not answered or provided? What do they need before they can solve it or fully understand it? Students could work individually or in groups.
• Physical response: Ask students to give a physical response to questions in class. This could be a thumbs up or down, a number, or a certain color index card. This allows students to show their understanding without speaking up or raising their hand alone. This will quickly show you if you need to further explain or can move forward in teaching. Or even say, “if you have your thumbs down, get with a classmate that has their thumb up. Work together to answer any questions to have”. After a few minutes, ask again and see if the number of thumbs down decreases. You could do this virtually teaching as well, using emojis.
• Gamification: Play a competitive game like bingo, jeopardy, Nearpod’s Time to Climb, Kahoot, 4 corners, role playing, simulations, etc. Allow students to work in groups or individually. Overall, I’ve found students are competitive and usually enjoy gamification review or checking for understanding because it is low-stakes and fun. It keeps them engaged and gives you solid data about their learning.

After Class

At the end of class or after class, allow students an opportunity to reflect on their learning. This type of checking for understanding will allow the instructor and the students to know if the skill or content was mastered. It can also give students time to practice what was learned and/or to prepare for a summative assessment.

Example Strategies:

• Post-class quiz: Compare to the pre-class quiz. Analyze the performance to guide your teaching. Students can validate their learning through post-class quizzes. 
• Exit ticket: Ask students to quickly write something they didn’t grasp in class or don’t fully understand. Read these and address at the beginning of the next class.
• Student recorded mini lesson - Ask students to record themselves giving a lesson the concept or material taught. Ask how they would teach the more important information/concepts to someone that was absent for that class. They can record and submit this as an assignment on Brightspace.
• Student written exam questions - Ask students to write a few higher-order thinking exam questions from the material they learned. Give them a few examples of good questions they can reference. Give students feedback on any errors you see. Maybe even include a few on your exam.
• Provide the rationale: Provide students with sample exam questions with the correct answers. Ask the students to write rationales for the correct answers and explain why the other answers are incorrect.
• Concept map - Assign students to create a visual concept map of the material learned. Model an example of a concept map during class or attach one to the assignment. This gives students the freedom to put their thinking on paper and form original connections to concepts and ideas. Allow students to be creative.

We know checking for understanding is best practice, we know educators should do it consistently for the benefit of the student and instruction. We also know a few strategies that could work in a higher educational setting. I challenge you to reflect on your own teaching. Ask yourself the following questions and make small goals from there.

• Do I know what my students understand about the content? What are they struggling with?
• Am I giving them facilitated time to engage with the content before a high-stakes assessment?
• Have I used any of the data from my checking for understanding to modify or guide my teaching?
• Have I challenged my students to higher order thinking?
• Have I given them any feedback on their learning before a high-stakes assessment?

In my short time as an Educational Technology Consultant at the College of Pharmacy I have seen a desire to increase active learning and push for higher order thinking from our faculty members. Some of our faculty members feel more comfortable trying innovative ways of teaching than others. I suggest you seek out those individuals you know for the extra push and peer support in trying something new with your teaching. I believe that risk taking, and collaboration are crucial to effective teaching. Let me know if you try a new check for understanding strategy or would like to discuss your successes and/or pain points in the classroom! You can reach me at fullerli@musc.edu or send me a chat on Teams!

References:

1. Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2015). Checking for understanding: Formative assessment techniques for your classroom (2nd ed.). Hawker Brownlow.
2. Lumpkin, A. (2022). Checking for understanding strategies using formative assessments for student learning. Global Research in Higher Education, 5(1), 50–58. https://doi.org/10.22158/grhe.v5n1p50
3. Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. (n.d.). Classroom Assessment Techniques. Retrieved from https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/Classroom-Assessment-Techniques