Month: February 2013

The hidden classroom

Public School, 1892. (Boston Public Library)

As you stand at the front of your class, about to start the session, what do you see? What do you notice about your students? Who sits at the front? Who sits at the back? Who is chronically late? Who rarely makes it to class? Who always sits alone?

While we see our students at class, what do we really know about them? There was once a student in my class who consistently fell asleep. As a very new teacher, I was really surprised and, at times, wondered if there was something I was doing wrong. Was my class really that bad? I also wondered about the student and the choice to come to class just to sleep through it. The reality is that I don’t know why the student was falling asleep. Perhaps it was from the fatigue of working two or three part-time jobs in order to pay for school. Possibly, the student’s role outside class was the main caregiver for a sick relative. Maybe 3:30pm on Monday in a darkened 250-seat lecture hall just didn’t work.

In course design workshops, we ask participants to explore the context of their classroom. As part of that reflection, we discuss factors such as the class size, required/elective course, the distribution of majors and non-majors, TA support, etc. But what about the hidden context, the part we rarely hear about.

The reality is that we don’t know what is impacting students’ participation or engagement in our classes. I remember speaking with a colleague several years ago who spoke about how she never attended class. Having never pondered the idea of missing class when I was a student, and knowing how successful my colleague was at school, I was surprised. In essence, the lecture hall didn’t work for her. It was much better for her to learn from the textbook and the assignments. She wasn’t “skipping” class, she was making a choice that made sense for her as a learner.

Given that there is no way for us to know about all the contextual factors that are impacting our students’ success in our class (and, of course, online), what can we do? One option is to consider universal design, which focuses on design for all. Although its roots are in designing accessible places and spaces for persons with disabilities, anyone can benefit from this design modality. Consider curb cuts. Although originally designed to support people with mobility limitations, as a mom, I can tell you they are a blessing when you are pushing a stroller, your toddler is on their tricycle, or your pre-teen is pulling a wagon full of flyers to deliver. There are examples all around campus of design choices that originally served one purpose but benefited many others.

The same holds true for our courses. Thoughtful design that focuses on engaging a broader spectrum of learners, or one that was made consciously to support a specific group, can have far-reaching benefits. Consider transcriptions of video content. While this text helps students with hearing impairments, it can also be really helpful for students whose first language is not English. I would have loved podcasts and video content as a student simply because I am not the best note-taker in the world and am sure I lost a lot by scrambling to take notes. With a podcast, I would have the chance to go back to catch what I’d missed.

There are countless examples of how we can make small changes in our course’s design, our teaching methods, learning activities, and assessments, that can provide deep learning experiences for a broader spectrum of students. If you would like to explore this idea, why not join Jay Dolmage and I next Friday, March 8, as we explore universal design. For information about the workshop, please go to CTE’s events listing.

 

What are Teaching Squares? – Monica Vesely

teaching squares imageThe beginning…

Teaching Squares is a concept created by Anne Wessely of St. Louis Community College. It started when Anne Wessely, chair of the accounting department at the Meramec campus in Kirkwood, was leading a committee looking into peer evaluation. By her recollection: “We were sitting around and we had the hedonists, the relationship builders, and the task-oriented people just as you usually do. The relationship builders were saying ‘we just meet to get together,’ and the task-oriented people were talking about peer evaluation and were thinking of a developing formal component for our evaluation system.” Out of this discussion emerged the Teaching Squares approach as a non-judgmental, evaluative process that fosters in-depth reflection about teaching in general and in context. The program builds community across disciplines and provides an opportunity for instructors to engage in discussions about teaching.

The description…

The Teaching Squares approach involves a self-reflective process about teaching gained through observation of one’s peers. It is not a peer evaluation exercise but rather a self-evaluation process which takes place in a confidential and mutually supportive environment. The aim of the Teaching Squares approach is to enhance teaching and learning through a structured process of classroom observation, reflection and discussion (leading to a plan for revitalization).

The mechanics…

A square is formed by four instructors who visit each other’s classes over the course of one term. Those being visited are encouraged to provide peer visitors with a copy of their course outline, to comment on why students are taking that particular course, and to share any material that would enhance the observation experience. The peer visitors are instructed to take notes during the classroom visit which would include such particulars as teaching methods, attitudes, classroom materials, and classroom management. The visits are preceded by an organizational meeting and followed by a debrief meeting where the participants share their experiences (the positive aspects of what they have learned and how they might improve their own teaching).

In conclusion…

By allowing instructors to be “learners” again in their colleagues’ classes, Teaching Squares opens up unique spaces for reflection and conversation about teaching. During their classroom visits, the Teaching Squares participants have the opportunity to experience a variety of contexts and challenges which leads to a greater appreciation of the quality of and commitment to good teaching already in existence on campus and, at the same time, it provides the catalyst for growth as participants gather ideas on different teaching approaches and consider how they could be used to improve one’s own teaching.

 

 

If you are interested in learning more about the Teaching Squares Program at the University of Waterloo, please contact Monica Vesely at mvesely@uwaterloo.ca

Wholeheartedness – Shirley Hall

heart

It was easy deciding on a topic to write about today.

The heart…Love.

We are told that love is in the air, all is fair in love and war, it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. There is much ado about love.

“Yes,” you may say, “this is true.” “But what does love have to do with teaching and learning?” Perhaps Thomas Carlyle said it best when he wrote, “A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.”

Yesterday the entire CTE team participated in our annual PD Day. We had a lot of fun. We got to know one another a little better. We played games like “Two Truths and a Lie” using iClickers to reveal little known facts (and fibs) about each other. We laughed a lot. We shared a little more than we would have in a work setting. We risked being vulnerable – perhaps letting others get to know us just a little bit better. In so doing, a new level of trust was built. We are a fortunate bunch. We respect and care about one another.

But letting others see who we really are is risky. Yes, I want to live “wholeheartedly.” There are times though, that I feel fear – fear of not being “good enough” -as a worker, instructor, parent. Paradoxically, being vulnerable takes courage. In order for me to connect with students, colleagues, even family and friends, I have to let my guard down and be real, authentic. Risk showing who I really am. Fortunately, I have teachers who help me see that I am not alone in feeling apprehensive about this.

My most recent teacher has emerged from the pages of a book I have been reading. The book is by Brené Brown, it is called “Daring Greatly.” I suggest checking her out if you haven’t already. For a sneak peak into some of the wisdom of her book, you can also find her on TED talks. When I thought of love today, I thought of this book. From the dust cover, “Brown explains how vulnerability is the both the core of difficult emotions like fear, grief and disappointment and the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, empathy, innovation and creativity.” She writes about the importance of recognizing our vulnerabilities, and accepting them as insights to greater meaning and understanding in our lives.

Chapter 6 of her book is titled, “Disruptive Engagement: Daring to Rehumanize Education and Work”, and holds many great examples of how to best lead. Brown’s description of a leader is “anyone who holds themselves accountable for finding potential in people and processes.” Further into the chapter, I found her idea of vulnerability being at the “heart” of the feedback process. I am working on adapting some of her strategies about student presentations and assessment into my courses. I think it’s worth the risk.

I would like to bring the spirit of wholeheartedness into my life and also my classroom, and by practicing some of the ideas suggested in this book, I have made a start. In the end, it is the loving thing to do. For myself, and others.

Brené Brown, Daring Greatly. How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead. 2012. Gotham Books, New York.

Redundancy and Contingency – Mary Power

stormWe weathered the storm of the three and a half day outage of our campus learning management system and have come out the other side relatively intact. It has left me thinking about our reliance on this technology and about redundancy and contingency. Basically, what do we need to do to prevent complete immobilization in the (I hope extremely unlikely) event of another shutdown?

An IT colleague described redundancy as: “If a system crashes, or the building falls in a sinkhole, an identical backup system takes over within minutes.  Like our Connect email server. We have 5 servers in the Math building and 5 identical in another building. If the math building gets sucked into space, within minutes the other building takes over and users notice little or no change.” Obviously, Desire2Learn needs to be responsible for the server redundancy – but it behooves all of us to have backup plans, our own redundancies, in place in case another black hole event occurs.

That brings me to contingency. In hospitals contingency plans are required to be in place to cover the eventuality of any system outage. Arguably there are more serious consequences of a system failure in a hospital environment. However, since so many are reliant on our course management system, a framework both system wide and as individuals should be in place – at least for peace of mind. The conversations have begun at an institutional level and I believe many individuals created their own workarounds.

It seems to me that the key in an event such as this, as with so many other things, is communication. A great deal of anxiety can be alleviated if communication lines can be kept open.  Keeping an email list of your students is a good idea. If you have sent an email to your class the copy that the system sends to you will have all the Bcc: addresses – keep that. The classlists available for download from Quest contain the student email addresses as well.  Just having the ability to let students know that you know what is going on and what your expectations are of them is a good first step. A number of faculty members are already using twitter as a means of communicating with their students. Generally a course specific Twitter account is created and then students are invited to follow and important information can be broadcast. Bill Power in Chemistry has been using this for several semesters now and his students did not feel the pain of the recent outage. Bill presented on his successful use of Twitter last year at the OND conference. During this downtime the Biology Department began using its departmental Twitter account to communicate with students.

Course materials are the other thing of primary concern to students.  IST supports a secure file transfer service called Sendit by which faculty can send a link via email to their students. The advantage of this route is that it is secure and supported by the university. Many people already use Dropbox to share files (even just between their own computers). With Dropbox, a url to a specific file can be shared to students via email or tweeted via Twitter.  Google Drive is another option.

These are just a couple examples of the contingencies that had been devised and I would love to hear of others that were used.  Of course we hope that something like this does not happen again, but if it does at least we can be prepared. I wonder if that is the silver lining? Or the 100s of new followers of the Biology Department on Twitter!