Summer News

Summer, for many of us, is a time to catch up on news in higher education and to spend a bit of time reading more than the headlines. Here's some recent articles of interest:

Do you think about the future of education?  Check out the 2020 Forecast which provides ideas for you to explore, in terms of drivers of change, trends, signals, and learning agents.
 
Ever wonder about the debate between the effectiveness of lecture versus active learning?  There is a great deal of research supporting the effectiveness of pedagogies that engage students.  Take a look at this recent article on the results from research on an undergraduate physics course, "Applying science to the teaching of science"; "according to Dr Deslauriers and his team, their result is the biggest performance boost ever documented in educational research."


Want to learn more about options for new classrooms and learn about new trends (and possibly throw in your recommendation with an administrative committee?).  Campus Technology has an interesting article on new "active learning classrooms" that integrate technology for positive results. http://bit.ly/j43Rw6


And finally, read the new Faculty Focus special report on Course Design and Development Ideas that Work.  You can download the report for free.  There are several relevant topics to teaching at a university today, and my eye was caught by the discussion of scaffolding (supporting) learning:

"But the point of teaching cannot be to eliminate or even reduce the likelihood of failure. To eliminate failure throttles the learner. For the student does the learning. The student must be free to think and act and, in so doing, err—and recover. That is the cost of learning. To prescribe that teachers enable learning is a tautology. Of course that is what we want to do—the question we beg is: “How?” If scaffolding is to help answer that question, it should illuminate the differences between what the teacher does and what the student does. It should get us to think about the instructor as a planner and initiator of activities that invite students to develop their own goals and strategies. As we know, learning grows out of the students’ previous knowledge and skills. But the assignment must challenge without being so difficult as to discourage learning or so easy as to evade it. Both student and instructor have to be active."

Reflecting on our semester

Having finished courses for the year, I regularly think and write about what went well and what I want to change.  Reflecting on your course is best done in the moment, by thinking about what has just happened and how you reacted to the events of the semester.  Reflective writing can take many forms, such as an entry in a teaching journal or through a quick note added to your course material folder or notebook, even a brainstorm list that you file for reference next year.  Be sure to note what worked as well as what did not; these jottings can help you remember how the course worked in action (often different from your mental image and plans!) and help you make improvements to the course. 


I posted previously on creative teaching and reflective practice, but at this time I want to share with you a letter from a faculty member who participated in the Faculty Inquiry Group on Creative Teaching (we at the Tenn TLC offer several FIGs each year).  Each person ended the semester with a reflection--a letter to colleagues--on the group's discussions. In her letter, Dr. Polly McArthur, PhD, RN, from the UT College of Nursing, writes:

Dear Colleague,

For the past 8-10 weeks, I have had the pleasure of meeting on Friday afternoons with a small group of professors to talk about creativity in teaching. We are interested in engaging students in creative learning activities at the university. We brought topics of interest to the group, shared ideas and experiences, and asked for help with particular challenges.

            Our group leader asked us to write a letter to you – an unnamed “you” who perhaps represents a college professor in the early 21^st century. I want to share with you my thoughts on creativity in teaching. I would like to be a creative person, but I question exactly what I mean by the term creative. Does this mean being original, talented, gifted, unique, outstanding, exciting, inspiring, or just memorable? I am certainly not the next American Idol of College Professors. I believe my goal is to try new ways of doing things in my course that accomplish the learning objectives but give the students some freedom to make the experience their own.

            If I strive to innovate, where do I find my inspiration, support, and energy to imagine something anew? For me, there are three critical pillars for this process, which is ongoing and never fully attained. First, I have to stay rooted in the basics of my discipline of nursing. I must examine and re-examine the knowledge of my field. Second, I must associate with people who are inspiring, skillful in collaboration, and constructively critical of my teaching, my vision, my interactions, and anything related to my professional aspirations. Third, I must try to walk in the students’ shoes to understand their responses to the learning environment. How am I creating both opportunity and means for them to create a personal experience that facilitates a change in capacity?

            Creativity, in essence, is open to interpretation. It is a breath of fresh air when life seems weighted down with the mundane or the expected. Perhaps just working towards higher levels of creativity is as important as finding a definite answer to some perceived problem or deficiency. As professionals who guide learning in the university setting, we are fortunate to connect with other people and continually transform our being in the world.

`                                   Sincerely,

Polly

An off-the-wall idea

A recent article in the NY Times points out that we may think we remember and know material well when we have an easy time processing what we read. A review of recent studies of memory points out that processing is not the same as recall--and that difficult fonts make us pay more attention and learn better.


You might want to send out study sheets today in Lucinda Handwriting!


Joking aside, the studies reviewed are interesting; I recommend the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/health/19mind.html?pagewanted=2&_r=3

Assessing student papers

I will never forget the night that my brother, who was then an art student, called me and said (as I recall):
"I have to write a paper on Sartre for class.  Where do I start?" 
"When is it due?" 
"Tomorrow."
[silence]

Fortunately, he is a successful artist who can write a mean artist's statement.

Reportedly, less and less of us are giving our students written assignments (just refer to Academically Adrift for a current conversation on this issue).  So, when we do assign papers--and students will start turning that work into us soon, as the semester approaches a close--how can we help students make the most of that experience?


One idea is to create a feedback loop with the student.  We comment on a nearly complete draft and students send us a response before they do a final edit. We may even incentivize this exchange with some extra credit and achieve several good results.  Students are nudged into writing a draft earlier in the semester (not the night before that paper is due) and they get a peek at their grade so that they have a concrete idea of what they need to do to finish their work.  In an email back to us, they have to articulate the steps they need to take before they do the work.

For us, the benefit is that we will have helped that student by doing the assessment on a nearly complete draft--our grading process for the final papers will be much faster, with the need for much less feedback at that point.  We also can identify students who are struggling--and recommend a trip to our office or the writing center.

Sometimes the process of providing written feedback in and of itself is a chore.  One recommendation is to record (audio or video) your feedback for the student.  The theory is that as your feedback is given linearly, as you are reading, rather than all at the end.  Feedback should note positive aspects as well as areas for improvement (thus students avoid changing something that was already working!)

If you are interested in an interesting alternative to written feedback, see the method below.  I have also used Jing and found it easy to use.

Short Screencasts Provide Personalized Feedback about Student Writing

Submitted by Francine Glazer

Assistant Provost and Director, Center for Teaching and Learning

New York Institute of Technology

http://www.nyit.edu/ctl

One of the factors that faculty often consider when assigning written work is the time it will take to grade. Whether the writing is an essay, a draft of a longer paper, a lab report, or a project proposal, it requires a considerable amount of time to write comments for each student – and often, students don’t read and/or incorporate them.

An alternative approach is to create a short screencast for each student, in which you talk to the student about his or her paper. Prior to starting the screencast, make a couple of brief notes on the paper, or highlight the areas you want to discuss. After a couple of trial runs, you’ll find that you can scroll through the paper and talk about the major items you want the student to consider.

The screencast technology is free (you may need to buy a microphone if there isn’t one on your computer) and easy to use, the time investment is comparable to what you’d spend writing comments, and students respond very positively, appreciating the personalized feedback.  The five-minute limit imposed by the software helps keep the focus on the most essential points.

There are a number of free screencasting programs available. My favorite is Jing, produced by TechSmith. There’s a small piece of software that you download to your computer (yes, it comes in both Windows and Mac versions), and register for a free online account on their server where the videos will reside. It’s easy to use – when Jing is running in the background, you simply go to the Jing icon in the system tray or the dock and select “capture.” A grid opens to allow you to select the portion of your screen you want to capture. The control pane has “capture an image,” “capture a video,” “redo selection,” and “cancel” buttons.

If you capture an image, you can edit it by adding highlights, arrows, boxes, and text to call attention to specific areas of the photo. If you record a video, you can mute the microphone, pause and resume, or restart if necessary. Once you’ve completed your video and clicked “stop,” you get a chance to preview it and decide if you do in fact want to save the file.. The url for the video is automatically placed into your clipboard. You can then open an email to the student, paste in the url and write a brief note, and off it goes!

Resources:

http://www.jingproject.com/

http://www.jingproject.com/features/ (download the software)

http://screencast.com/t/NmE1ZDYz(sample feedback video)

Are your students working on their assignments?

Tips for Teaching from the Writing Consortium

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Initiated by :
Sally L. Kuhlenschmidt, Ph.D.
Director, Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching (FaCET)
Western Kentucky University Bowling Green

When Doing Less for Students May Help Them Learn More

If your philosophy includes the notion that students should leave college more independent and self-reliant than when they entered or if you have ever used the words entitled and students today in the same sentence, read on.

1. Suggest steps that students can take to solve academic problems, alerting them to use resources and people and to consider schedules. Often these steps mirror what adults do in order to solve life problems (such as a broken home appliance):

• review your notes or course text material (read appliance instructional manual)
• check with a classmate (seek advice from your neighbor)
• come to office hours (call Sear's appliance repair department)
• ask the professor in class (schedule a home repair visit)

2. Craft student-made rubrics for student-constructed assignments/projects Student-constructed projects (e.g., essays, posters, art projects) have essential criteria and performance levels. Bring in a ready-made example project and ask students to determine the essentials (4-6 optimum) and what a beginning, satisfactory, and stellar fulfillment of each criterion would be. Type up as a rubric and distribute, thus providing students an understanding
of :

• (1) the project's essential criteria,
• (2) the levels of performance,
• (3) a road map for doing their project, and
• (4) the assessment tool for self, peer, and teacher evaluation of the final project.

If projects are too cumbersome for office-storing, conduct a class sharing session and capture a digital camera image of each project and student instead of collecting.

3. Guide students to monitor their own progress on assignments Set aside class time to discuss dividing assignments into segments, the steps toward completion of each segment, and a tentative timeline. At a couple critical times throughout the term, discuss (and collect?) have done and have yet to do lists with students.

4. Limit your corrections and lengthy identical feedback on student papers When you correct students' writing, do they truly learn the writing rules or merely copy your edits? If the latter, consider making a hash mark(s) in the margin of a line with error(s) and asking students to find and correct their own errors. Another rule of thumb is to mark only the first 10 mechanical errors in a paper, and then ask students to correct the remainder and resubmit. For general feedback to the entire class, consider putting only letter codes by errors on individual papers (e.g., RO for run-onsentence) and either (1) preparing a page of explanations (codes and the rules) and distributing or (2) giving oral explanations (with examples) as part of a total-class-feedback session.

Adapted from submission by:
Dr. Cynthia Desrochers
Institute for Teaching and Learning, Faculty Director
California State University
Email: cdesrochers@calstate.edu

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Recall and Relate

To prepare students to thoroughly understand new material, plan an activity that bridges their existing knowledge of the topic to the new information you're planning to introduce. In particular, recall and relate activities can help students focus on the new instructional material and process it more effectively.

Recall : One way to help students link old and new can be a simple review of previously learned facts, concepts, or procedures that are associated with the new material. Students may appreciate having their memories refreshed before they start processing the new material. It will also allow you to learn what students already know and understand before making your own instructional points.

Relate : Another way to prepare students for new information is to help them cognitively put the new knowledge into an existing framework. Pose a question or series of questions that stimulate thinking and focus on the instructional topic. Ask questions that have several possible answers (Example: Why does an employee quit? How can you tell how intelligent someone is?). Promote a discussion that probes student opinions, hypotheses, or conclusions. As the classroom discussion advances, point out similarities or differences between the new knowledge and old knowledge, so that the new knowledge is tied to the old.

Submitted by:
Faculty Development Center
Bellarmine University
Louisville, Kentucky
Email : dgriffin@bellarmine.edu

Mid-Semester: Expanding the Conversation

At this point in the semester, you know your students as a group and have tested them enough to know where they are in their thinking. 

It's time to push them further and deepen their learning experience.

In order to do so, you and your students need to know where they are in the course.  First, they need a midterm progress report.  If you are already posting grades online, excellent.  

If you have not been posting grades, then student perceptions of their grades may not match the reality.  Give them a progress report so that you are on the same page before you talk to them about the course (for more on this topic, read Will Millhiser, "Why Post Grades on Blackboard?").

At midterm, they should know where they stand in terms of their learning and grades, and all you need to do is put that into perspective, in terms of the whole class.  In general, is everyone completing homework, for the most part?  Are they reading?  Participating in class?  Address these basic issues, and if the class is struggling, ask them, what is getting in your way?  They may be setting up barriers to their own learning (such as getting too involved with social groups or working too much), and they need to hear from you that you expect them to change their behaviors.   Give them advice on how to prepare better for class and learn more from the course.

When you ask your students to review their performance, also let them review yours. Check with them about their experiences with the course (again, have them a response at the end of a course).  This midpoint 'formative assessment' lets you know how the class is going from their point of view.  It sends a clear message to the students that they are participants in their own learning; education is not something that is "done to them."  Issues will come up that you can not fix and those you can ignore (after all, you cannot change the class meeting time).  Address those issues that you can change or modify--disturbances in class or distracting situations.  If they need more handouts, more frequent study guides, or need you to slow down, they will tell you.

 

Review the course objectives and learning outcomes with your students (they haven't thought about the syllabus for months, at this point, so remind them of it).  Talk to them about the goals of the course and remind them that the course is more about learning information.  Ask them: what more do you want from class at this point and how will you take charge of your learning? 

Find out where they can meet more challenges in the course.  Ask them to delve into their thinking and logic.  Socratic questioning works very well at this point, especially if they are used to coming prepared to answer questions in class.   The website by the Critical Thinking Foundation is very useful and thorough.  However, for a quick glance at question structures, check out this page on "Socratic Questioning."


Once you start asking questions, who knows what could happen!  They  might even take charge and ask questions of their own.

Counting the days?

Are you hitting a mid-semester slump?  Don't just wait until spring break; help yourself and your students by doing something to shake them up now! 


Have you done a formative assessment with your students yet?  At the end of class, ask them to write (anonymously) for one minute on the pros and cons of class up to this point.  Collect and read these assessments and look for patterns.  Return to class with a short report back.  Tell them about the strengths of the course as they see it, and let them know what you can adjust to solve problems (and what is out of your control--such as changing their 8 a.m. class to noon!)


Re-energize your class with some fresh pedagogies.  Here's two ideas from blogger Rob Weir of Inside Higher Ed:

• Change the usual routine: If you customarily lecture in a class, try having a discussion. (If you have a mammoth lecture class you’ll need to act more a talk show host walking into the studio audience, but you can still do this. Punctuate questions and discussion with quick lecture soundbites.) If you usually discuss, give a lecture. If it's appropriate and logistically possible, make a sign-up sheet, suspend classes for a week, and require students to stop by for a one-to-one tutorial or planning session.
• Change the backdrop: Come to class armed with something that's not generally part of your repertoire. Play a piece of music and ask students to analyze it. Project a single slide, ask students to write down everything they observe on the image, and discuss their responses. Invite a guest to take over your class for a day. Set up an experiment and abruptly tell students that you’re reversing roles — they’ll conduct and explain it while you listen. Conduct a nature walk with your bio students, or discourse on Emerson while walking by campus nature spots. Let your imagination run wild. The worst that can happen is that you’ll try something that doesn’t work and you can share a good laugh about it the next class. (“Okay, so that wasn’t my most brilliant idea ever!”

On that last note, consider ways to be more playful with learning in a class or two.  Conduct a study review by playing a jeopardy game (bring a bag of candy for the winners) and have the students create the questions (if they are missing any items, you can add your own questions at that point). Put students in groups and have them create a 1 minute "ad" or skit for a concept that you want them to learn.  They can use their phones to take videos and then post on Blackboard. For a class of 35 or less, bring in large pieces of paper and markers and have them create concept maps. Make these activities non-graded so that students feel free to experiment.


Send in your ideas for changing things up!