The Power of the Socratic Classroom

By sharing your tracking system with your students, you can set very simple and manageable goals together. A student who asks two questions one seminar can try to ask three the next time. A student who cites the text once in a while can attempt to use citations regularly. Although this may seem overly simplified considering that one insightful question can be vastly better than three comments, tracking quantity is still a powerful tool.

The students could even track their data in learning logs or spreadsheets. Dennis Li, in his 2017 Edutopia article “Why Student Data Should Be Students’ Data,” writes: “Having students enter their own scores into a spreadsheet was intended to help teachers by gathering the data in one place for them to view and analyze. But what we observed was that the process was having a profound effect on the students: They became very interested and engaged with their own data and tracking their learning … When I surveyed students who were tracking their data, they were substantially more likely to respond that they were trying their hardest and felt in control of their learning than students in other classrooms.”

Track what you want to measure, share the data and help students improve. Some apps like Class Dojo and Equity Maps are great tools for the job.