This term I've been wishing that I'd remembered to try a strategy from the Dallas League for Innovation conference in March - having students confront the failure of their schema to solve the central problem of the course, right at the beginning of Week 2.
A Canadian script-writing professor from Humber College recommended aligning each course with the plot structure of a Hollywood comedy. He pointed out that in a Hollywood comedy the audience learns of the central problem within minutes of the start, and then the plot unfolds to resolve this problem or conflict.
In a typical course, though, students don't realize they have a problem until late in the term - typically Week 7 or later - when they try to do a final project or they face the most challenging material. This professor suggested that Week 1 be spent creating a safe space to make mistakes, and then early in Week 2 giving students the challenge that the course would help them overcome, so that they could then move on to learning.
In the context of a script-writing class, this meant assigning students to write a script and share it so that the group could identify the problems with the attempt. In my context, it would be reading a difficult text and failing to comprehend it. A lot like a pre-test, which has always worried me as a Week 1 activity, because I like the focus to be on community building. What I'm thinking now is that if Week 1 is community building, then early Week 2 could be the dramatic revelation that students' schema is not up to the task of comprehending college text.
Maybe by the time students come to me they have taken so many tests that I don't need to give another! Maybe all I need to do is give students the time and support they need to compare their test results with the results they would need to move ahead - that might be the evidence they need to see that their schema is not enough.
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