---

What is Just-in-Time Teaching designed to accomplish?

• 1. To maximize the efficacy of the classroom session, where human instructors are present.
• 2. To structure the out-of-class time for maximum learning benefit.
• 3. To create and sustain team spirit. Students and instructors work as a team toward the same objective, to help all students pass the course with the maximum amount of retainable knowledge.

What JiTT is Not

The JiTT Feedback Loop

The Web Component

• 1. Student assignments in preparation for the classroom activity: WarmUps and Puzzles.
• 2. Enrichment pages. Short essays on practical, everyday applications of the course subject matter, peppered with URLs to interesting material on the web. These essays have proven themselves to be an important motivating factor in introductory service courses, where students often doubt the current relevance the subject.
• 3. Stand alone instructional material, such as simulation programs and spreadsheet exercises.

  For detailed examples of the JiTT web resources, please see the JiTT resources page.

  WarmUps and Puzzles are the heart of the JiTT web component. These are short, web-based assignments, prompting the student to think about the upcoming lesson and answer a few simple questions prior to class. These questions, when fully discussed, often have complex answers. The students are expected to develop the answer as far as they can on their own. We finish the job in the classroom. These assignments are due just a few hours before class time. The responses are delivered to the instructor electronically to form the framework for the classroom activities that follow. Typically, the instructors duplicates sample responses on transparencies and takes them to class. The interactive classroom session, built around these responses, replaces the traditional lecture/recitation format.
  Students complete the WarmUp assignments before they receive any formal instruction on a particular topic. They earn credit for answering a question, substantiated by prior knowledge and whatever they managed to glean from the textbook. The answers do not have to be complete, or even correct. In fact, partially correct responses are particularly useful as classroom discussion fodder. In contrast to WarmUps, Puzzle exercises are assigned to students after they have received formal instruction on a particular topic. The Puzzles serve as the framework for a wrap-up session on a particular topic.
  The WarmUps, and to some extent the Puzzles, are undergirded by education research and target a variety of specific issues. The list of targeted issues might contain: developing concepts and vocabulary, modeling -- connecting concepts and equations, estimation- getting a feel for magnitudes, relating technical scientific statements to "common sense", understanding the scope of applicability of equations, etc. The targeted issues are highly content specific. They may involve the characteristics of a particular class (e.g. the background skills of a particular student body).
  In preparing WarmUp assignments for an upcoming class meeting, we first create a conceptual outline of the lesson content. This task is similar to the preparation of a traditional passive lecture. As we work on the outline, we pay attention to the pedagogical issues that we need to focus on when in the classroom. Are we introducing new concepts and/or new notation? Are we building on a previous lesson, and if so, what bears repeating? What are the important points we wish the students to remember from the session? What are the common difficulties typical students will face when exposed to this material? (Previous classroom experience and teaching and learning literature can be immensely helpful here). Once this outline has been created, we create broadly based questions that will force students to grapple with as many of the issues as possible. We are hoping to receive, in the student responses, the framework on which we build the in-class experience.

  The Active Learner Classroom

  The JiTT classroom session is intimately linked to the electronic preparatory assignments the students complete outside of class. Exactly how the classroom time is spent depends on a variety of issues such as class size, classroom facilities, and student and instructor personalities. Mini-lectures (10 min max) are often interspersed with demos, classroom discussion, worksheet exercises, and even hands-on mini-labs. Regardless, the common key is that the classroom component, whether interactive lecture or student activities, is informed by an analysis of various student responses.
  In a JiTT classroom students construct the same content as in a passive lecture with two important added benefits. First, having completed the web assignment very recently, they enter the classroom ready to actively engage in the activities. Secondly, they have a feeling of ownership since the interactive lesson is based on their own wording and understanding of the relevant issues.
  The give and take in the classroom suggests future WarmUp questions that will reflect the mood and the level of expertise in the class at hand. In this way the feedback loop is closed with the students having played a major part in the endeavor.
  From the instructor's point of view, the lesson content remains pretty much the same from semester to semester with only minor shifts in emphasis. From the students' perspective, however, the lessons are always fresh and interesting, with a lot of input from the class.
  We designed JiTT to improve student learning in our own classrooms and have been encouraged by the results, both attitudinal and cognitive. We attribute this success to three factors that enhance student learning, identified by Alexander Astin^* in his thirty year study of college student success:
  
  • increased amounts and quality of student-student interaction
  • student-faculty interaction
  • student study outside of class.
  By fostering these, JiTT promotes student learning and satisfaction.

  ^*Astin, Alexander: What matters in college? Four critical years revisited (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993).