It's really not about the ducks

I received some very strange looks from my colleagues when I stated that I was no longer going to allow students to put their hands up in my IT workshops to ask for help. Nope, not even once.

What is this nonsense you might ask, or in terms of the name given to the initiative, What the Duck?

Let's make one thing very clear at the outset, students can ask for help during my classes, but they have to do it in a specific way. I will elaborate but first some background.

There is a very successful initiative for improving the programming and data management of primarily postgraduate and postdoctoral scientists who are not computing specialists. This initiative, Software Carpentry (and it's allied friends) takes a strongly evidence based pedagogy and uses some smart methods in the classroom. One of those is the application of red and green post-it notes. When a student requires help they put the red sticky up on their monitor. When they have completed the task at hand the green sticky is used to indicate visually to the instructor that they are ready to move on.  This is an effective method for those classes which are high intensity with highly motivated and high calibre participants.

I have translated this to my classes. I don't use stickies (though they are usable in this context) but instead simplify the approach to this:

If you want help, talk to the duck!

The duck is anything that you can stick on the top of your monitor. It is surprisingly easy to detect any perturbation in the smooth flat line of a monitor from across the classroom.

Whilst the duck is there, explain the problem, talk it through. Often the student solves the problem and takes down the duck before the instructor can reach them.  But while the duck is doing the attracting, the student can concentrate on the task, eyes are on the screen, hands are on the keyboard.

How well does it work? It is only the start of semester and only one class in but the students got the idea very quickly and really liked the ducks/sheep/penguins/swans/hedgehogs etc. I distributed. This is a small class in an elective module - the large classes will have to earn their ducks through interaction in lectures/workshops. The response was great - I could see that ducks that had been up were taken down before I could attend to that student. And while students had ducks up on their monitors they were actively engaged in attempting to solve the problems rather than being engaged in attracting the instructor's attention.

So a positive response so far from the students and the desired behaviour in the classroom. We'll see how  it plays out through the rest of semester and larger classes.

Yes, all of these are ducks, in the right context.

Edit: We are now three weeks in and the ducks are extremely popular. The class is less stressed and students are keen to bring in their own personal ducks (or win some for answering questions in class). It is surprising how easy it is to see almost anything on top of a monitor screen, even in a room of 150 (our largest IT lab).

Has this inspired you to try ducks in your classroom? If so, please let me know how you get on via a comment or email.