Technique 22: Cold Call (perhaps the single most powerful technique in the book)

(Part of Chapter 4: Engaging Students in your Lessons)

This technique means that you reserve the right to call on anyone at any time to answer a question.  Thus, all students have to pay attention all the time and be ready to answer a question.  This ensures that all students answer all the questions in their minds, although only one has to answer out loud.  This technique has a similar effect as Take a Stand.

In Cold Call, you call on students whether or not they have raised their hands.  The technique is simple, but perhaps has a subtle difference from what some teachers do.  Some teachers might identify a student, and then address the question to her.  In Cold Call, you state the question first, and then you ask someone to answer it.  Because the students don't know who will be chosen, they all have to have their answer ready.

Cold Call can speed up your teaching because you don't have to wait for someone to raise their hand to answer.  It also allows you distribute questions around the room -- in fact, it is essential that this be done.  And, it reinforces the fact that this is the teacher's classroom.  He is in charge and will pick which students participate.

The author states, "For the reasons I've described above, the single most powerful technique in this book is, I believe, Cold Call."


He goes on to say that Cold Call can be done wrong.  To do it right, you must:

• Be predictable.  You don't want to occasionally use it to wake students up -- i.e., you don't want to use it as a discipline strategy.  If you use it consistently, then students know they have to be ready at all time.
• Use it systematically.  Use Cold Call to set expectations, not to single out individuals.  Spend a minimum of time choosing which student to call upon.  Otherwise, it appears you are picking on individuals.  Also, make sure you call on all individuals.  Don't call on students based on ability, or location in the classroom, or some other sub-grouping.  Anyone should be eligible to be called upon at any time.
• Be positive.  Use Cold Call to show students that they can grasp this material, and that their participation in this community is important.  Don't use Cold Call as a "gotcha", to bring students back to the fold when their minds have wandered.
• Make your questions clear.  Asking ill-formed questions does not allow for a positive experience for the student.  Instead, the student will be confused and may feel like they are dumb or inferior (when, in actuality, most of the student probably didn't know what was being asked for).
• Make your questions scaffolded.  That is, start with easy questions, and then gradually build up to harder ones.  Or, start with multiple easy questions, and then use the answers to build a harder question.  "Starting simple doesn't mean ending that way, but it does tend to engage and motivate kids and cause students to be inspired by the building level of rigor and challenge." (p 118).

To demonstrate the value of your students' participation, you can use these techniques: 

• Follow-on to a previous question.  Ask a simple question, and then a harder one, to the same student.
• Follow-on to another student's comment.  Ask another student the next harder question.
• Follow-on later to a student's own answer.  After building on an answer, come back to an earlier student to see if the answer to an easier question still holds.

The author goes on to propose these variations on the Cold Call theme:

• At some point, you can tell the class to not put their hands up to answer a question.  Instead, you'll be doing pure Cold Calling -- i.e., asking questions around the classroom "randomly".
• Occasionally, it may be useful to tell a student beforehand that they are going to get the next question.  This is useful if the student has language difficulties, is especially shy, etc.
• Mix with Call and Response (coming to a blog post soon): in Call and Response, instead of Cold Calling an individual, you "Cold Call" the entire class.  So, you say, "What is 9 times 7?", Pause, "Class?".  And then the whole class responds together.

My Response:

I believe Cold Call generally works well in the (small) college classroom.  It does require the professor to learn the students' names, but that is always a good thing.  For me in Computer Science, it is useful as it gives the professor an opportunity to get many repetitions in -- i.e., to increase the number of At Bats -- and repetition is crucial for learning how to program, in my opinion.  

In my Intro Programming classrooms, the students get so used to Cold Call that they rarely put their hands up.  That is fine with me, in general, although I do occasionally ask the class, "Who has an answer they believe is correct?".  This does slow down the pace of the teaching, but I still think it is a good way to mix things up a bit.  I also use the Call and Response technique to mix things up.  As it is so similar to Cold Call, I think the students don't even realize that it is a different technique.

Cold Call works extremely well with my general pedagogical philosophy of Formative (or Diagnostic) Assessment.  It helps me assess how well the class is understanding concepts -- not only by how often they get the answer correct, but also by how quickly they get the answer correct.

Things I've done wrong:

• I've too often used it as a "gotcha": Ha! I caught you tuning out!  That'll larn ya!  This is not good.
• Sometimes my questions are too vague.  In the college classroom we are learning not just facts, but concepts.  This happens in middle/high school, too, but it is emphasized even more in college.  I find it difficult to ask clear questions about concepts, not just facts.