Jose thinks aloud: Click here to view this video of a student working through a math problem Pasadena City College.

Think alouds are ways of getting a transparent glimpse of what students are thinking when they are trying to learn. Think-alouds prompt students to verbalize their thoughts as they solve a problem, case study, or interpret an important text. The focus in the think-aloud is to gain access to student processes when working on an important topic of the course, central to the discipline, not necessarily whether or not they successfully complete the task.

This think aloud from Jose comes from a case study conducted at Pasadena City College, called “How Jay Got His Groove Back.” In this project, Professor Jay Cho and his colleagues conducted think aloud with their students that provided them valuable insight into where student thinking stalls in working a math problem. An especially interesting insight was how Jose’s problems in working the problem were not just a matter of math operations (totaling two negative numbers) but also of attitude and habit of mind (how to respond to being wrong and having a method for checking each step.)

Read more about Jay Cho and his colleagues work with think alouds in their Windows on Learning case study.

REFLECTION PROMPT: Whether or not this particular think aloud seems relevant to your setting, can you imagine a way that you might make use of think alouds?

Once you have gathered evidence and data, it is sometimes a challenge to make sense of what you are seeing. Often, student learning evidence can add to complexity or confusion by giving you too much data; or it can be difficult to interpret in part because the reasons for student confusion might be opaque or contradictory.

In some cases, faculty look at evidence of student learning and try to make sense of separate elements or difficulties. In this example, Jay Cho, of Pasadena Community College, uses a voice over track on video a student think aloud to reveal his response to each dimension of student difficulty, ranging from procedural (helping students with how to add negative numbers) to attitudinal (helping students learn to work backwards from wrong answers and not lose confidence).

Sometimes the initial evidence you gather is not sufficient to make enough sense to take a next step. For example, after an initial analysis of her student performance data, Katie Hearn (Chabot College) felt the need to conduct student interviews in order to make the transition from her gradebook data–which revealed that 51% of her students who did not complete the course had received at least a passing grade on a major assignment–to a better understanding of the reasons and causes. This then enabled her to take a further step from descriptive cases to a more fully developed framework for understanding the problem.

REFLECTION PROMPT: If you have gathered evidence as part of an inquiry project, share your own strategies for making sense of the evidence? What puzzled you? What worked well? Did you share with colleagues? Devise additional ways to contextualize or flesh out the evidence you had?

Think-alouds prompt students to verbalize their thoughts as they solve a problem, case study, or interpret an important text. The focus in the think-aloud is to gain access to student processes when working on an important topic of the course, central to the discipline, not necessarily whether or not they successfully complete the task. Several case studies in the SPECC project make use of think alouds. For example:

Pasadena City College (Math)

“Jay wanted to learn more about how his students learn, so he chose 3 of his students to participate in a think aloud. Then, Jay asked 5 of his colleagues to complete a survey, view and respond to the video-taped think alouds, and complete another survey.”

Glendale Community College (English)

“In watching our students think through exercise sets, we can ‘map’ or ‘make visible’ their learning processes, which can then help us refine our instructional practices to address specific needs.”

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Following the path of the student as they work through a problem yields insight into the types of questions he or she asks, the train of thought, an ability to make connections to other course concepts, difficulties or challenges he or she encounters, and his or her use of prior knowledge.

Throughout this Toolkit there are numerous pointers to resources and case studies related to using Think Alouds and student learning. Use the categories or tags to navigate.

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An excellent tutorial on the use of think alouds to make student thinking visible (as part of the development of faculty inquiry reseach plan) is available here, from the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse.