Post-it Pedagogy

We face another critical juncture in conversations surrounding technology in the college classroom. On the one hand, the COVID-19 pandemic required all teachers, even those who were to that point inexperienced in online instruction, to experiment with new web-based tools and platforms. The pivot revolutionized our pedagogies: Even after returning to in-person learning, hybrid or blended instruction, methods that combine digital and face-to-face approaches have become the new normal in college classrooms.

On the other hand, concerns about student distraction and the risks of excessive screen time have led a swell of K-12 schools to ban phones and, in some cases, personal laptops and tablets. AI panic has prompted many college professors to consider a return to pen-and-paper essays and exams.

I am less interested in weighing in on these debates here than I am in using this moment to think more creatively about how we, as higher education instructors, spend our in-person class time—and to think more broadly about the tools available to us. I am personally ambivalent about the role phones and laptops play in my teaching. I am an English professor at a small, residential liberal arts college in the rural Midwest, and I have loved how digital tools and web-based learning platforms encourage my own pedagogical creativity and facilitate greater collaboration and engagement from my students. I have also always opposed blanket technology bans for accessibility reasons, since students often require phones or laptops for a wide swath of disability accommodations.

But I have also noticed that often, when I ask students to pull out their smartphones for a classroom poll or take out their laptops to participate in a collaborative annotation activity, I start to lose them. Some students start texting or checking their email, of course. But even those working diligently on the task at hand feel less “in the classroom” somehow. We are, in Sherry Turkle’s famous phrase, “alone together.” I started to crave the synergy of classroom activities that did not require us all to be online. More importantly, I started to wonder if, in my enthusiasm for digital approaches, I had stopped thinking about how I could creatively teach without computers.

I don’t think I’m the only one. Take a look at definitions of blended learning. The definitions always define the approach as one that combines “new” digital approaches with “traditional” or “conventional” face-to-face methods—as though the nondigital aspects of this pedagogical approach should be inherently conservative, tied to long-established teaching norms. Might we find low-tech tools that feel just as “innovative” as the sexiest new online learning platforms? Could we turn our angst about screens, AI or phone distraction into an enthusiasm for trying new, perhaps even unconventional, activities that consider objects beyond the computer as valuable teaching “technologies”?

I started to search my office for everyday objects that I could employ in activities that kept students both engaged and away from their computers for a significant portion of the class session. What could I do with binder clips? Playing cards? Popsicle sticks? The buzzer in my parents’ old game of Taboo?

I now offer up six ideas inspired by what has become my favorite low-tech teaching object: the Post-it note. I have generated this list in collaboration with my co-writer Eric Emmons, a professor of psychology and neuroscience, in order to offer activities applicable across disciplines.

1. A Cure for Writer’s Block: Say you’ve assigned an essay, and a student arrives at your office hours stuck, unsure of what to write or where to start. Take out a pen and a pad of Post-it notes and ask them to brainstorm. Say, “list anything you might want to talk about related to this topic.” As the student brainstorms, write each idea on a Post-it note and then, when the student finishes, place the Post-its on the table in front of them. Ask the student to group and sequence their ideas: Which might work together, in the same paragraph? Which don’t fit? The student leaves with an outline and—bonus!—one that is, thanks to the Post-it note’s inherent movability, flexible.
2. Poster Session Peer Review: When and if you require students to create research posters, invite students to visit their peers’ posters and leave comments or questions with Post-it notes. This could be done at the draft stage, so that students might gain feedback for revision. Or this could be done during final poster sessions or research symposia, as a way to keep track of if and how much students are engaging with their peers’ research. You could also provide each student with different colors of Post-it notes to encourage them to offer different types of feedback on their peers’ posters. For example, you could employ a variation of the traffic light approach where red indicates a comment representing confusion or a gentle critique, yellow represents an area for additional clarification or expansion, and green affirms or congratulates a job well done.
3. Cold Call Without Cold Calling: Try riffing on the old classic think-pair-share with think-Post-share: Introduce a discussion question and ask students to write their responses on a Post-it note. When finished, students go up to the front of the classroom and stick their Post-it note on the blackboard or the projector screen. Then, when you initiate the classroomwide discussion and ask that students share, you can pull Post-it note responses from the board and read them aloud, asking the contributor to elaborate and explain their thoughts. This approach allows you to include typically less vocal students in the classroom discussion without making them feel like they are targeted or put on the spot without preparation.
4. A Visual Check for Understanding: After a lecture covering a complex topic, draw a line on the board, with one side labeled “confident” and one labeled “confused.” As students leave, ask them to place a Post-it note somewhere on the line, indicating where they feel they are with the material, on the spectrum of very confused to very confident. Students can write topics or questions that require further clarification on their Post-it note, so you know what to review or clarify in future sessions. If you’re into numbers, you might ask them to quantify their understanding on a seven-point scale. By adding a numerical scale to your spectrum, you could then stack the Post-it notes vertically with their corresponding number and create a visual representation of the class’s collective understanding of the material. This can provide students with greater confidence, knowing that they’re in good company with their peers.

5. A Reader-Response Discussion: Assign a reading that typically elicits strong emotional responses from students (anger, sadness, etc.). As homework, request that students identify three moments in the reading (by page number) during which they felt especially moved. Then, in class, ask them to write those moments on a Post-it note. Draw a timeline of the reading on the blackboard and then ask students to place their Post-its at the moment’s appropriate place on the timeline. The result is an affective histogram that charts the intensity of the class’s emotional response to the reading. This is a great way to talk about strategies for narrative craft or to discuss the use of pathos for rhetorical persuasion.
6. A Test Review Take on the Celebrity Game: To review course concepts, devote a portion of a class period to the following game: Write each of the course concepts on a Post-it note. Then distribute these Post-its, asking each student to stick one on their back without looking at the concept written on its front. Now, have students go around the room and talk with other students, asking questions that will help each other guess which course concept they carry on their back.

Ideas like the six we propose require that all students in a classroom engage with the course material, interact with each other and move their bodies around, even if just for the few seconds it takes to walk up and place a Post-it on the blackboard. These are phones and computers away activities, but far more importantly, these are brains-on activities—they require that students actively participate and initiate their own learning. Plus, they are … well, they’re fun.