Potent Protocols: Guiding Students and Instructors through the Final Weeks of the Semester

Welcome back to standard time. As most of us were sleeping at 2am on Sunday morning, our computers and smartphones magically jumped back an hour. This magical leap was due to the use of a Standard Network Protocol that digitally connected devices follow to coordinate time. The machines were synchronized through a protocol—“an established set of rules that determine how data is transmitted between different devices in the same network.”

Protocols are good for humans, too. Diplomatic procedures follow established protocols, such as who greets whom, how talks between negotiating parties are coordinated, etc. As Atul Gawande details in The Checklist Manifesto, surgical procedures, which can be quite ornate and fraught with complexity, benefit tremendously from a brief pre-surgical protocol, which includes everyone in the operating room introducing themselves by their first names. The reason, Gawande points out, is that these quick, pre-incision introductions initiate an “activation phenomenon.” Having introduced themselves, team members are more readily inclined to speak up, intervene when a problem appears, and ask clarifying questions during the procedure, the results of which have reduced accidental deaths and other complications by over 35%. The through-line here is that protocols can help computers, disputing countries, and surgical teams to “talk” productively with one another, and this in turn can regulate behavior in order to enhance desired outcomes.

As in the internal networks of computers, the rooms where treaties are negotiated, and the surgical theatre, protocols are useful in the classroom. Many instructors have had success with brief protocols such as the think-pair share protocol and the use of exit slips at the end of a lecture or class discussion. This blog post serves as a gentle reminder to continue their use and to consider additional ways protocols can be used by instructors and teaching assistants to support students—and themselves—in the remaining weeks of the semester.

Develop a Peer Response Protocol

Peer response is an effective practice for students to give and receive feedback on their writing. Research bears this out (1, 2, 3). However, some instructors may resist the use of peer response, due to previously poor experiences with it: the students were too passive with their feedback, too unwilling to be critical or engaged with the other students, too nitpicky about minor details, etc. Here is where a protocol can help. The Teaching with Writing online resources details the benefits of peer response and offers suggestions for how to develop a peer response protocol. Don’t have time to read about peer response approaches and develop an elaborate protocol? Consider this quick protocol, which works well for a variety of peer response situations and only takes about 15–20 minutes of class time.

Want to think through a peer response protocol for an assignment? Reach out to the WAC team for a one-on-one consultation.

Develop a Collaborative Reading and Review Protocol

Assigned reading and reviews for final exams are often presented as solitary endeavors. Because we want our students to demonstrate their own proficiency, we design our assessments to be aligned to individual performance. Nonetheless, stressing individual agency and accountability can be compatible with a collaborative approach to reading and reviewing course materials, especially when a clear protocol is provided. One protocol, developed in the 1990s, that has worked well in many contexts is the jigsaw protocol. Here is a basic template for the jigsaw protocol instructors can adapt to fit specific materials and course contexts:

Want to think through a collaborative reading and review protocol? Reach out to the WAC team for a one-on-one consultation. 

 Develop a Work-in-Progress Protocol

The end of the semester is often chock-full of final projects and presentations. Instructors can use this dynamic effectively by introducing a work-in-progress protocol prior to the final week, one that allows students to share their projects while they are still in development and to give and receive actionable feedback. Consider, for example, the use of a “Stuff and Vision” protocol, which is adapted from the tremendously useful resource, The Power of Protocols: An Educator's Guide to Better Practice.

A Protocol for Designing Protocols

At their core, protocols regulate group interaction and talk with hopes of producing more equitable, inclusive, and manageable results. This notion of regulation, however, can present some challenges when it comes to meeting varying student needs and acknowledging the dynamics of power within a classroom and within groups. Protocols benefit from clear procedural steps and these steps can be developed and adjusted with students. When possible, time parameters for each step will also ensure that the time allotted in class or online will enable each student to benefit from the experience of the full protocol.

In effect, protocols are tools for sharing ideas. In this spirit of a protocol, we warmly invite readers of this blog post to share in the comments below the protocols that have worked for them as instructors and students.