English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI)
Video 4.3: Strategies in Action: Facilitating Participation
Keywords:
To comprise: To be made up of
To praise: To express a favorable judgment of
To probe: To search into and explore very thoroughly
To summarize: To tell in or reduce to a summary
Demonstration: An act, process, or means of demonstrating to the intelligence
(Definitions are from Merriam-Webster)
Dr. Bikowski: Let’s take a look at a strategy in action. In this video, Dr. Moon Cho at Ohio University will
demonstrate how you can facilitate participation in your course. Specifically, she’ll showcase how to ask
and answer questions so that students are more involved in the class. This is a course on statistics and
the topic is contingency tables and types of variables—continuous or categorical. You’re going to hear
some math terms in the following examples. Pay attention to the strategies that Dr. Cho uses to
facilitate participation, regardless of if you understand the math terms themselves. As you’re watching,
see if you can identify at least three strategies Dr. Cho uses to get students talking more. Welcome, Dr.
Cho.
Dr Cho: Let’s say I created a test comprising 20 multiple choice questions and administered the test to
40 students. Then, I counted the number of correct answers out of the 20 questions, like 18, 17, or 15.
Can I use a contingency table for data analysis in this situation? Yes? No? And why? [on screen: No
students answer, so Dr. Cho waits 6-7 seconds until finally one student volunteers]
“Dr. Cho Participation” by Dawn Bikowski is licensed under the CC0 license.
© 2022 by Ohio University. English as a Medium of Instruction MOOC Video 4.3 Strategies in
Action: Facilitating Participation for the Online Professional English Network (OPEN), sponsored by
the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. government and administered by 1
FHI 360. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, except where
noted. To view a copy of this license, visit [Link]
Student: I don’t think we can use a contingency table in this case because the number of the right
answers, like 15, 16, and 17, is a continuous variable.
Dr Cho: Well, you pointed out something very important here. Right, we don’t usually use a contingency
table for a continuous variable like test scores. The total number of the right answers sounds a lot like a
continuous variable because they are coded as integers, I mean whole numbers, like 15, 16, 18. But let’s
think about this. When we know the number of the right answers, or the sum of the right answers, what
would be the other values that we can automatically obtain?
Student: Well... maybe... the number of the wrong answers?
Dr Cho: Excellent. Right. In this case, we have the two discrete, or separate, categories of counts, the
number of the right answers and the wrong answers. We didn’t count the number of the wrong
answers, in this case, but we know that there are only two discrete categories of answers, right and
wrong. Remember we used a 2 X 2 contingency table for analyzing associations between taking a
vitamin supplement before bed, which is coded yes or no, and having a sound sleep, another yes and no
for 30 days, N = 30. Does this ring a bell?
Student: Oh... I got it. I think we can use a contingency table in this case because we’re counting
frequencies under discrete categories although we didn’t necessarily count the number of the wrong
answers. How about when we have more than 2 discrete categories? Can we still use a contingency
table?
Dr Cho: Excellent question! Yes, the number of categories doesn’t have to be binary. In this case, we use
a contingency table although the total number of the right answers sounds like a percentage, a
continuous variable. It’s a little bit different than a percentage of a mass quantity, like the percentage of
the area of a piece of pizza covered with cheese. It’s just one mass and some measurable percentage.
But a variable that measures the number of right or wrong out of N trials uses a contingency table.
Dr. Bikowski: Ok, thanks Dr. Cho for this excellent demonstration. Maybe you all noticed some of the
strategies Dr. Cho used to help students talk more in class. The ones I noticed were praising, when she
always started her response by telling students something they did well, like when she said, “you
pointed out something very important here.” That was praising for their effort and ideas. However, the
student didn’t in fact provide the correct answer.
So next, Dr. Cho moved to a probing question, when she asked, “When we know the number of the right
answers, or the sum of the right answers, what would be the other values that we can automatically
obtain?” She is helping the student come to the right answer on their own. You can also see Dr. Cho
asking questions and giving examples that require critical thinking from the students. This is going to
make the questions and discussion more interesting for them. And finally, she summarizes the correct
answer once the students have provided it to her. That way, all the students can leave class knowing
what the answer was.
Ok, that concludes our demonstration on facilitating participation in your course. Thanks, Dr. Cho for
your very useful tips!