Sticky Notes: Powerful Tools of Student Engagement

If you're like me, you're always trying to find new tools to help stimulate class discussion. Sometimes, though, old tools work better.

Enter the humble sticky note. 

Those colorful, unassuming, little squares of paper can be keys to unlocking fantastic class discussions.

For instance, when I'm teaching my technical writing class face-to-face, I pass out sticky notes to everyone in class, asking them to draw a line, horizontally, through the middle of their note. I then ask students to write in the top half of their note some scientific fact, something they're absolutely certain about but that they think their fellow students won't know.

That's a tall order, a bit like asking someone to say "something" in a language you've just learned they speak. Sure, they can do it, but the question floods the brain all at once with things they might potentially say, and it takes a bit of time to choose between them all. As such, I give them a couple of minutes to decide on what they want to write down.

Once they've finished, I have them share their fact with their neighbor, which, by the way, is a fantastic icebreaker activity. After giving them some time to discuss their answers, I go around the classroom, asking people to share, not what their fact was, but what their neighbor answered and whether it was something they already knew or not.

After sampling enough groups, I then ask students to write below the line they drew at the beginning of the exercise where they learned their fact. Was it something they learned in class? Was it something they experienced? Was it something they picked up from social media? From some stranger on the street? 

Whatever the source, I then have them bring their notes to the front of the room and group them on the wall based on the sources for their facts. In other words, everyone who learned their facts from, say, professors in class should group their notes together, everyone who learned their facts from nature documentaries should group their notes together, etc.

Watching students do this never ceases to intrigue me. Each class reveals its personality in this activity. Some classes line up all their notes in neat little columns. Others arrange their notes as amorphous blobs. In all classes, though, students talk with other classmates as they're waiting their turn to put their notes on the wall, delightfully unselfconscious that I'm standing there listening to their conversations.

Once the last sticky note is on the wall, I give myself a minute or so to look over the groupings. Most of the time, they're in a useful arrangement for the rest of my talk, but sometimes they need a bit of rearranging. To avoid complete silence while I do this, I give a shoutout to any facts or sources that stand out to me.

When I'm ready, I turn to the class and point out the different sources of science facts. I point out that these can be broadly classified into things like personal experience, received wisdom, empirical facts, etc. And it's easy to illustrate each of those from the facts that students have shared. I ask them where they think those sources got the information. I ask them if some of those sources of information are better than others? In what contexts? This, in turn, segues into a discussion about what kinds of sources we rely on when doing scientific research, what qualities they have, what distinguishes, in scientific circles, justified belief from mere opinion.

After what is always a lively discussion using this activity, I point out that, as silly as it may have seemed to write things down on sticky notes and pin them to the wall, as trivial some of the facts might have been, as much fun as we've had, the whole time we've actually engaged in a deep discussion about a little thing philosophers call "epistemology", a theme we'll return to again and again through the rest of the semester.

This never fails to work and, by the end of class, students who were initially skeptical, or at least unenthusiastic, about taking a technical writing course are completely hooked.

Now, introducing this activity on the first day of class means those sticky notes are doing double duty. Not only are they creating an unexpected gateway to a complex concept that most of my students have never heard of, but those notes are also providing a fantastic icebreaking activity. It also sets the expectations for student participation in class discussions for the rest of the semester.

But, of course, this is just one example. Sticky notes find their way into plenty of other lectures at different points in the semester, and I've used them in many different courses. Granted, it can feel pretty vulnerable to face that first wall of notes not knowing what students might produce, but it is totally worth it.