Recovering the Joy of Teaching in the COVID Era

As we end the first day for all of our onsite classes to be delivered remotely, I wanted to share a well done essay recently published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The author, Flower Darby, has taught using the online environment for the last 12 years and is an instructional designer at Northern Arizona University. Her comments may not come into play for many of you until about two weeks and for some of you it may never appear but the advice is sage and important. She notes, "In the first few weeks of the pandemic, a lot of faculty members were rushing out of their comfort zone, moving their face-to-face courses online, and figuring out how to teach from home with kids and pets. As head of a teaching center on my campus, I am seeing many of my earnest colleagues overcome their nerves and experiment with unfamiliar modes of instruction. They are excitedly posting their first attempts at recording mini-video lectures and drafting syllabus statements of flexibility and support for students. But how long will that fizz last? After all, many faculty members are sacrificing much of what they love about their chosen vocation. At some point, they will need time to mourn the loss of spring 2020." Continue reading here.

A Dickens for the 21st Century

Can old things be made new again within the context of 21st century cultural norms? A paper by Megan Witzleben with Hilbert College suggests just that. She writes, "Today, we may not teach Dickensian prose as superior. However, we do seek to empower students through verbal and cultural literacy to connect them with influential stories of the past and present. This paper demonstrates how teaching a little-known Dickens detective story, “Hunted Down,” in its original serialized context, and then performing a dramatic reading of that story to a community partner, helps students understand Dickens in his own time and in ours." What she is suggesting is another way to incorporate active learning into our classes. She even suggests some service learning opportunities around the work of Dickens. I encourage you to view the student's personal journals towards the end of the article.

SQ3R Is Not a New Star Wars Character

It is about that time in the semester when we begin to notice a pattern developing. We have assigned reading for our students and reminded them that it should be done before the class so that they can come with prepared questions. Yet they don't seem to have grasped the concept and so we fall back into presenting the entire reading material during class rather than using our active learning teaching interventions that promote deeper learning. We have shared some teaching interventions that work in this blog before. Dr. Dimple J. Martin offers us another process that she uses that may work for you as well. Dr. Martin writes, "First, let’s acknowledge this universal epidemic. College students despise reading textbooks and e-books that cover content with academic information. Fortunately, I discovered a cure for the reading plague that only requires five teaspoons of ingestion: 1) survey 2) question 3) read 4) retrieve and 5) review. In my class, I have found the SQ3R Method to be a step-by-step approach to learning and studying from textbooks. Although it took my students time and practice to master this method, it has been valuable in regards to preparing students for more content-driven class discussions, increased retention and understanding of information, strategic study skills, and test preparation." You can read the entire article here.

An Inventory Helps to Promote Higher Order Thinking

One of the issues I hear from many of you is the problem we encounter when students do not do the assigned reading prior to class. It certainly creates multiple teaching and learning problems and can really stifle the entire class. One of the suggestions I have made to help alleviate this problem is to have an "As You Come Into Class" question(s) on the board. In that way, as they are getting settled and I am checking attendance, they can be thinking more deeply about some of the things I plan to discuss in class. It helps to alleviate those "top of mind" responses that are usually anecdotal and totally off-topic. I also want to suggest something that Karen Harris uses in her classes. Her learning outcome is focused on having students use higher order critical thinking. She describes her teaching experience as a thinking inventory. Harris says, "Although a thinking inventory is made up of questions, it’s more than a questionnaire. When we say we’re “taking inventory”—whether we’re in a warehouse or a relationship—we mean we’re taking stock of where things stand at a given moment in time, with the understanding that those things are fluid and provisional. With a thinking inventory, we’re taking stock of students’ thinking, experiences, and sense-making at the beginning of the course. A well-designed thinking inventory formalizes the essential questions of any course and serves as a touchpoint for both teacher and students throughout that course." You can read the details of her inventory here. Students are engaged by learning that can be tied to real life. Assuring them that being able to think critically and offer the best solution in the workplace will always benefit them is the go to answer for how this relates to real-world situations.

Aren't We All Math People?

Working in higher education for the last 36 years (how did that happen?) has given me a lot of opportunity to hear lots of opinions about developmental education (formerly remedial education, etc.). Nothing causes a life-long educator more pain than to see a student come to you underprepared. How can this happen when they have been duly approved to graduate from an accredited high school? But I am not here to argue that point, I would rather talk about this nonsense of math versus non-math people. We often say things like "Everyone should be able to read; how are you going to function in life without learning how to read." Shouldn't we be saying the same thing about math? How would you function without understanding math? That is why I was excited to read Sarah D. Sparks' piece on the matter. She writes, "My 2nd grader finishes his math enrichment, then gleefully creates blank versions for his dad and me to try: a subtraction-based, number-placement logic puzzle, intended to be challenging. My husband withdraws for 10 minutes or so, returns and hands over the completed puzzle. I stare at my blank triangle. Mom, aren’t you done yet? my son asks. Are you struggling? A dull pressure starts to thud behind my eyes. I’m thinking, I say, a little too sharply." Did reading that make you feel a little uncomfortable? It certainly made me remember when I sat in Ms. Sparks place with my children. I encourage you to read the brief, concise article and join us who say we are all math people.

We can all agree that many of our students struggle with how to best prepare for assessment. Many of them seem to "trust their gut" and go with the tried and true rereading of the entire chapter or pulling an all-nighter. Science proves that neither of those methods work very well. So I was interested to read an article that explains how Colorado State is using science and technology in a new course that helps students become better learners. My curiosity was piqued because of the College Success Skills course we offer (and I teach) but also because I am fascinated by how our brain really works. The article notes that, "Learning is not intuitive. Research shows a disconnect between what people think are the best ways to learn and the habits that actually lead to true understanding and retention." In my experience, that is true but how can we make learning more intuitive or is that even possible? The article goes on to say, "To that end, students study the research behind different learning strategies. Take cramming, for example. Students learn that, while people estimate they learn better studying all at once versus spacing out their learning, studies show the opposite. Similarly, people perform better when they test themselves on what they know while they are studying, as opposed to reading the same material over and over." That is reassuring as we based our Study Group Program administered by the Academic Learning Center on those very notions (garnered from research in the near past). You can read the entire article here and I encourage you (as you continue to prep for spring 2019) to apply the lessons learned by CSU to your own teaching.

"A couple of weeks ago, I did something that I have never done before in my classroom: I sacrificed invested a week of instruction to hold a one-on-one conversation with each one of my students. I had always made the excuse that it took up too many instructional minutes, and that I couldn’t sacrifice the time. And after that long-winded week the only regret that I have is that I did not start doing this much, much earlier in my career. That week, was an absolute revelation!" That is how Jeffrey Frieden starts his fascinating blog that explores what his students really think. What he did was simple. He asked them. Continue reading here.

DOES A BAD GRADE MOTIVATE OUR STUDENTS?
David Gooblar wrote a terrific post a while back that is filled with great information specifically about grades and motivation. He wrote, "In an exhaustive review of the literature on formative assessment, two researchers at King's College drew on a number of sources who have documented a phenomenon familiar to many faculty — that is, students’ reluctance to be drawn into a more serious engagement with learning work. Such students, for a variety of reasons, do not primarily aspire to learn as much as possible. Rather, they want to get by with minimal effort, avoiding any disasters along the way. For those students (and it's fair to say my student who wrote a poor essay falls into this category), a properly bad grade might be just such a disaster. A bad grade might be the jolt that lets those students know their current approach is not working. But if we acknowledge that grades might be able to help in our efforts to motivate students, we also have to understand that we can't rely on grades alone." Keep reading here.

HOW TO TEACH TO ALL YOUR STUDENTS
Dr. Matthew Wright has posted an article that is full of aha-moments. He writes, "Faculty members are generally happy to select out a few elite students who they are confident can make it all the way to the top. For these few bright and gifted students, the college experience becomes almost otherworldly. They do research projects with their professors, network with superstars in their field, travel to exotic locations, and give papers at major conferences. Their professors become role models and mentors who help them transition to greatness. But remember, most of the professors are elite folks themselves. You have to be to make it through the maze that a typical professor endures to get to the coveted tenure-track positions. So, essentially, you end up with the top five percent of educated elites teaching to the top five percent of elite students. That’s messed up." Keep reading here.

CAN I DO THIS?

David Gooblar writes, “No matter how much students value your course, or how supportive your classroom environment, they won’t be motivated to do the work if they don’t think they can succeed at it. And of course the solution is not about making things easy for them. As a new academic year gets underway, I’ve been thinking a lot about student motivation. Specifically I’ve been rereading a 2010 book How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, which offers a compelling chapter on the three main pillars that underlie student motivation. Continue reading here.

 

WHAT GOOD LEARNING LOOKS LIKE

This blog post by Anya Kamenetz for NPR has some pretty useful information. So print it out; get out your highlighter and take off the cap. Ready? Now throw it away, because highlighters don't really help people learn. We all want for our kids to have optimal learning experiences and, for ourselves, to stay competitive with lifelong learning. But how well do you think you understand what good learning looks like? Ulrich Boser says, probably not very well. His new research on learning shows that the public is largely ignorant of, well, research on learning. Boser runs the science of learning initiative at the left-leaning thinktank the Center for American Progress. He has a new book out, also about the science of learning, titled Learn Better.

RECOGNIZING DIFFERENCES IN LIVED EXPERIENCES BETWEEN STUDENTS AND INSTRUCTORS
As part of the first week of classes, we had our regular opening reception for adjunct faculty. It’s a combination of a social gathering, an orientation, and an awards ceremony. I sat at a table with someone who teaches in the Homeland Security program, having recently retired from the field. He mentioned his shock last semester when he referred to 9/11, and the students didn’t remember it. He did some quick math, and realized that when it happened, most of them were only a year or two old.  He remembers it so vividly that it doesn’t even seem like the past; they remember it not at all. It sneaks up on you. I remember referring to Ronald Reagan in a class, and getting back a wave of blank looks. Today’s 18 year olds may remember Bill Clinton mostly as Hillary’s husband. Jimmy Carter is about as current for them as Harry Truman was for me. From the perspective of the instructor getting older, it’s easy to perceive that as loss.  And in a certain way, it is. But it’s also the gift of fresh sets of eyes. Keep reading here.

CAN YOU LEARN WHILE YOU SLEEP?
Hypnopedia, or the ability to learn during sleep, was popularized in the '60s, with for example the dystopia Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, in which individuals are conditioned to their future tasks during sleep. This concept has been progressively abandoned due to a lack of reliable scientific evidence supporting in-sleep learning abilities. Recently however, few studies showed that the acquisition of elementary associations such as stimulus-reflex response is possible during sleep, both in humans and in animals. Nevertheless, it is not clear if sleep allows for more sophisticated forms of learning. A study published this August 6 in the journal Scientific Reports by researchers from the ULB Neuroscience Institute shows that while our brain is able to continue perceiving sounds during sleep like at wake, the ability to group these sounds according to their organization in a sequence is only present at wakefulness, and completely disappears during sleep.


INTEGRATING ACTIVE LEARNING
James Salsich, writes, "During my career, I have at times struggled with the effectiveness of active learning in my classroom. But after reflecting and planning over the summer, I have always returned to school convinced more than ever of the dire need for our students to claim ownership of their learning. Active learning is student-driven, teaches students how to learn in collaboration with their peers, and asks teachers to give some portion of the authority that has traditionally been theirs over to students. Students, on the other hand, take increased ownership for the direction and progress of their learning. However, when we take a step toward this student-centered approach to teaching, we must first help our students to unlearn some problematic ideas. When we ask our students to adapt to a more complex, self-directed, self-regulated approach, we are often going against their very beliefs about how people learn. It is a process that is most successful when implemented gradually and purposefully." Continue reading here.

From Science Daily: Study shows for first time that a free, online course can change students' mindsets towards their mathematical abilities, leading to increased academic achievement. A free 'massive, open, online course' (MOOC) designed to change students' attitudes towards mathematics makes them more engaged in class -- leading to significantly higher test scores. Published in open-access journal Frontiers in Education, these findings go against the discouraging results of previous studies. It is the first of its kind to show the impact of an online course in changing students' mindsets and beliefs about mathematics and their achievement, with the potential for more widespread dissemination. Continue reading here.

From Faculty Focus: So much of what determines the overall success or failure of a course takes place well in advance of the first day of class. It’s the thoughtful contemplation of your vision for the course — from what you want your students to learn, to selecting the instructional activities, assignments, and materials that will fuel that learning, to determining how you will measure learning outcomes

From Univ. of Washington's The Daily: With all the recent advancement in science, from virtual reality to genetic editing to artificial intelligence, one issue that still plagues society is how best to teach students how these things work. Dr. Carl Wieman, one of the world’s leading thinkers on science education, spoke to a sizeable crowd at Kane Hall on Thursday, April 26 to outline techniques for finding more effective teaching tactics. Wieman holds a joint appointment as professor of physics and of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. He won the Nobel Prize in 2001 for his research in atomic and optical physics. Wieman, 67, argued for a shift away from lecture-style teaching toward what he calls an “active learning” process where students spend more time working with their peers than being talked to by professors. In his physics classes, Wieman isn’t just teaching material, he is teaching his students to become physicists through classroom activities, tests, and critical reasoning.

From Education Week: Contrary to popular stereotypes, many young people are acutely concerned about online privacy, spending significant time managing how they present themselves on social media and worrying about what happens to the digital trails they leave behind. That's the takeaway, at least, from new research presented here Sunday at the annual conference of the American Association of Educational Research by Claire Fontaine. As part of a small study, Fontaine and colleagues interviewed 28 teens and young adults, ranging from 16 to 26 years old. All were low-income New Yorkers, all owned a smartphone or similar mobile device, and all regularly used at least one social media platform. 

Since we have learning objectives for each class we teach that correspond to broader course objectives, it is important to do a self check from time to time to make sure we are staying on track with both. Continuing to explore this topic, I have become more aware of alignment between the two in relation to my teaching. One of my course objectives is to help student to become better at critical thinking. Posing problems for them to solve and engaging them in group discussion while allowing for reflection time has created a truly active learning experience in my classroom. Lisa Nielsen's recent post about George Couros' book The Innovator’s Mindset provides a really clear visual for this process. Couros says that if we want innovative students, we must become innovative teachers. He goes on to list eight elements that he has noticed innovative teachers use to create this active learning environment that allows students to unleash their creativity. Continue reading here.

What does learner-centered teaching look like? That is the question Dr. Maryellen Weimer asks in her latest post. She writes, "It’s hard to say—we have no definitive measures of learner-centeredness or even mutually agreed upon definitions. And yet, when we talk about it, there’s an assumption that we all understand the reference." That is true of so many things. As education science continues to evolve and new discoveries are made, are we making sure that everyone understands what we are talking about? She continues, "My friend Linda recently gave me a beautifully illustrated children’s book that contains nothing but questions. It reminded me how good questions, like beams of light, cut through the fog and illuminate what was once obscured. And so, to help us further explore and understand what it means to be learner-centered, I’ve generated a set of questions. For the record, these questions were not empirically developed, and they haven’t been validated in any systematic way. However, they do reflect the characteristics regularly associated with learner-centered teaching." Keep reading here and let me know what you think.

New year's resolutions are a great way to refocus on your teaching. Nothing like the class schedule and preparing for a new semester to get us started in a new direction. It is also a good time to incorporate the idea of resolutions into your classes by having your students make resolutions for the semester. One of the areas I will be focusing on this semester is listening more and speaking less. Having my students dive deep into a stimulating classroom discussion is always such a joy. You can actually see the creativity and discovery happening right in front of you (or virtually if you are teaching an eLearning class). But beginning a new "habit" and having it stick requires effort and planning. So I plan to begin on the first day; perfect for more listening as I am trying to learn the names of my students, their aspirations and motivations. Of course we all dread the point where the students stop sharing and there is silence. We feel compelled to fill every second with "sound" but should we? Dr. Kevin Gannon shares his tips for encouraging engagement in the classroom in the latest post on the Faculty Focus blog. He writes, "I’d like to suggest that a flagging discussion, or one that fails to launch entirely, is most often the fault of something other than our students. Sure, there are some students who haven’t done the reading or who refuse to participate come hell or high water. But most of our students are receptive to at least the idea of engaged, active learning. The key is to turn that general willingness into specific practices. Here are some strategies and methods that have proven effective for me across survey and upper-level courses, small and large classes, in rooms that may or may not allow any deviation from the regimented rows-and-columns arrangement." Take a look at his specific tips here. Welcome to the beginning of what I hope will be a successful semester for you and your students.

We have all heard of helicopter parents but have you heard about helicopter instructors? That is how Kristie McAllum describes instructors that she says "[have] replaced helicopter parents with helicopter professors. Through our constant availability to clarify criteria, explain instructions, provide micro-level feedback, and offer words of encouragement, we nourish millennials’ craving for continuous external affirmations of success and reduce their resilience in the face of challenges or failure.” I am not sure I totally agree with her argument but I do feel that we let our students off the hook when we assign reading and then lecture on everything they were supposed to read. It sends a clear message to our students that we will cover all of the material so why read the textbook. That is why I have encouraged all of us to ask questions at the beginning of class that allows the instructor to gauge the level of reading the students completed and the knowledge they retained from the reading. Dr. Maryellen Weimer offers the following suggestions as well. "Are there other benchmarks we could use to determine if we’re doing too much or too little? Could we look at individual policies and practices? Does extra credit coddle students? What about dropping the lowest score? What if teacher feedback is only provided on the final version of the term paper? Should we call on students who very obviously don’t want to participate? Or, must individual policies and practices be considered in light of course content and who’s enrolled in the course? Do students need more support when the content is especially challenging or requires sophisticated skills they have yet to develop? Does it matter whether the course is one taken by beginning students, majors, students fulfilling a general education requirement, first-generation students, or seniors in a capstone? Are there good reasons to do more for beginning students and less for seniors?" You can read the full article here.

Anyone reading this blog knows that I am big proponent of active learning. You should also know that I believe that students have a lot to learn from their peers and I try to infuse my class with opportunities for them to review their peer's work. A recent article by Tiffany Potter, Letitia Englund, James Charbonneau, Mark Thompson MacLean, Jonathan Newell, and Ido Roll (University of British Columbia) entitled "ComPAIR: A New Online Tool Using Adaptive Comparative Judgement to Support Learning with Peer Feedback" provided me with a new appreciation for student interaction. One of the concerns of using peer review is that students, especially early in their college career, may not be able to properly evaluate someone else's work. What the folks from UBC found through their research is that using a comparison option alleviates some of that effect. Better yet, the process help students learn more deeply, improves their ability to assess their own work, and improves their capacity to provide feedback on the work of others in a collaborative learning environment. You can read the entire article here.

The beginning of a new semester is always an exciting time. Instructors are excited about new learning experiences they want to try. Students are excited about moving one step closer to graduating but many of them are anxious about what the semester will bring. I like to start the first class by sharing the journey ahead with my students. It puts them at ease, excites them about the possibilities, and motivates them to learn. It also takes care of the number one expectation of current students, "How is this going to be relevant to my life?" Another topic I spend some time on is the typical misconceptions new students have about college. Dr. Stephen Chew has a classic article about this very topic. He notes there are four things that students typically are misinformed about. He writes, "Students think that learning can happen a lot faster than it does. Take, for example, the way many students handle assigned readings. They think they can get what they need out of a chapter with one quick read through (electronic devices at the ready, snacks in hand, and ears flooded with music). Or, they don’t think it’s a problem to wait until the night before the exam and do all the assigned readings at once. 'Students must learn that there are no shortcuts to reading comprehension.' Teachers need to design activities that regularly require students to interact with course text materials." You can read the rest of his short and concise article here.

The story about Dr. Carl Wieman in Inside Higher Ed is terrific. It begins, "As a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Carl Wieman could probably get away with being a mediocre teacher. Yet he’s devoted much of his career to improving the ways colleges and universities teach science, in his own classrooms and in one of the grandest experiments of his life: the multicampus Science Education Initiative. Wieman’s new book chronicles the latter effort and makes a strong, evidence-based case for pursuing broad changes in science instruction: out with lectures and in with active learning. It’s also an easily digested how-to guide for interested parties, including deans, department chairs and other faculty members. The project has major implications for administrators, too." I am looking forward to reading the book. As a proponent of active learning I am glad to see additional evidence-based results that prove its worth. You can read the entire article here. If you are interested in active learning, there is an abundance of information on this blog.