Why Krathwohl helps make the affective a bit less mysterious – Veronica Brown

Let’s face it. I’m a mathie. Not in the Big Bang Theory way. It’s just that I tend to think in numbers. Numbers help me understand things and explain things. My teaching career reflects that. I taught general math at an agricultural college. Later, I taught introductory courses in computer science (computer usage and introductory programming). As a result, until recently, I haven’t given the affective domain a lot of thought. Not that it wasn’t on my mind. In my research, which has focused on different kinds of support systems (at the workplace and for students), it was a critical element – I just didn’t call it the affective domain.

As I discussed last week, the affective relates to our values, beliefs, behaviours, and attitudes. I am trying to figure out how to effectively assess these elements. Again, my early teaching career was spent teaching first year courses that focused primarily on knowledge and skill development. Topics that progressed in a fairly linear way. It didn’t make sense to ask students to create arrays or debug complex code before they had a decent understanding of the basics, such as variables, repetition, and selection. There’s no need to consider the affective if I’m just trying to teach them these basics, right?

Well, actually, it’s not that simple. As I think back to those programming courses, one of the basics we introduce is documenting your code (adding short comments throughout that explains the code to other users). These were small programs. Most of the code was self-explanatory, documentation wasn’t really necessary. But I wasn’t just teaching them about basic documentation. I wanted them to understand why it was important. I didn’t want them to write good documentation because they were expected to, I wanted them to value documentation so that it became an ingrained habit – where code just wouldn’t look right without a few lines of documentation.

But how could I instill that value with such short programs. Imagine writing a program that is only 20 lines long and having to write 5 lines of comments to explain it. Hardly seems worth it. And so I shared a story with them about why documentation was so important to me, hoping it might inspire them to find value in those comments. My first co-op job involved designing software for small robots. We used a language called Behavior Language (Brooks, 1990), which I had never seen before. I had four months of programming experience (one term of C++) and there was little available to help me learn the language. My best option was to read the code. The problem, I soon discovered, was that the last co-op student decided to use Alice in Wonderland characters for all of the variable and function names. So, instead of writing something like RobotTurnLeft, it said MadHatter.

Did sharing this anecdote mean I saw beautiful documentation in every project at the end of the term. No. But, it exposed my students to a reason to make an effort on documentation. At the very least, now it was on their radar. In 1964, Krathwohl, Bloom, and Masia expanded on the taxonomy of learning and explored the affective more deeply. They described five levels: receiving (awareness); responding (complies with set of values); valuing (expresses values through behaviour); organization (considers more critically – compares, synthesizes values); and internalizing (value system that is pervasive and consistent in behaviour). My students probably reached the awareness phase – they recognized that there was value in writing good documentation but might not have internalized it to the point of changing their behaviour.

As I consider how to assess elements of this domain, I come back to the idea of alignment among outcomes, teaching and learning activities, and assessment. So next week, I’ll spend some time talking about outcomes in the affective domain. By defining where I want my students to be by the end of the course, I can plan the activities and assessments appropriately. But the first step is to define the outcome. What would an outcome be in an area such as lifelong learning or diversity? What does it mean to value humility or critical thinking or creativity? How do I define an outcome related to ethics?

These are the questions I’ll be pondering for the next week. I’ll let you know what I find out.

 

Veronica

 

Image of rocks and small conifer trees

 

References

Brooks, R. A., (1990, April). A.I. Memo 1227. The Behavior language; User’s guide. Retreived Feb 4, 2014 from http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/AIM-1227.pdf.

Krathwol, D. R., Bloom, B. S., & Masia, B. B. (1964). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. New York: David McKay.

 

Community of Inquiry in Online Courses – Monika Soczewinski

Photo by Dan Barbus; retrieved from flickr.com Creative Commons; license agreement http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
Photo by Dan Barbus; retrieved from flickr.com Creative Commons; license agreement http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Online courses and programs, and courses with a significant online component, continue to be a popular option for students due to their flexibility and convenience. However, as many students and instructors taking part in an online, or mostly online, course would agree, there can be unique challenges as well. One of these challenges is the sense of isolation students can experience while online. A student might feel disconnected from the class and instructor, and simply read assigned readings and submit assignments, all without engaging in any significant contact with others in the course or engaging in deeper learning. As someone who is currently enrolled in an online graduate program, I can attest that feeling isolated can happen in online or mostly online courses, but it certainly does not need to.

Mostly I have been lucky in my program and had wonderful instructors who worked hard at making the courses engaging and rich in collaboration. One course design in particular comes to mind, which helped make that course one of my most valuable learning experiences. The instructor in this course used the Community of Inquiry (COI) model to structure our course. This model was developed by Garrison, Anderson and Archer at the University of Alberta. A course designed using this model strives to establish three important elements – cognitive presence, teaching presence and social presence.  The purpose of these three components is to create a shared learning experience for the students, which is reflective, collaborative and meaningful.

Cognitive presence has to do with students developing critical thinking skills in the subject area, and gaining a meaningful understanding of the topic. This part of the COI model can be fostered by asking students to engage in regular reflections and through guided discussions with their peers (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001). In other words it has to do with helping students create meaning of the material they are learning, and can be accomplished with the support of the next two components.

Teaching presence includes how the learning experience is designed and organized, how it is facilitated, and also includes the leadership component of moving the course forward in the right direction (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001). An important aspect of teaching presence is that it is not something that only the instructor is responsible for; instead the students increasingly share in this responsibility as the course progresses. It might be difficult to visualize how students can take part in teaching presence, because those components are traditionally solely the responsibility of the instructor. To give you an example from my own course, our instructor gave small groups of students the opportunity to lead the class discussion for a week on a given topic. This included designing the key questions to lead the discussion, making sure the discussion progressed smoothly, and preparing a summary of the conclusions the group reached.

Social presence is a component that might seem tricky to achieve, even in a fully in-class course, but is well worth the effort to strive for. It involves the creating of an environment that allows students to “be themselves” and therefore better identify with each other and the material. By providing an online setting that encourages the sharing of thoughts, reflections and experiences, students can build relationships and engage in discussions for a deeper learning experience (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000). In my own course, the instructor first guided us by his own example. In the discussion boards he asked open ended questions, promptly responded to student comments, shared his own experiences and encouraged us to share our thoughts. More than that he made the atmosphere comfortable by being warm and personable with little gestures such us using our names, and even using emoticons when giving praise. Students quickly started to feel comfortable and realized that their thoughts and ideas were valued. Soon we all picked up on the example of the instructor and allowed ourselves to make reflective comments, give each other feedback and share ideas.

Using this framework, a course takes on a more active learning approach, rather than the more traditional lecturer-centered approach. Through active learning students can collaborate and integrate their learning and experiences to create a new shared knowledge (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001). Each of the three components of the COI model are important on their own, but it is when combined that the model really makes an impact on the learning experience. When trying to incorporate some of the tactics of the COI framework the key thing to keep in mind is that this is a technique that takes planning, dedication and a time-commitment – both from the students and the instructor.

If your interest in the COI framework is piqued, you may want to visit the Community of Inquiry website, which includes publications about the model and even discussion boards where researchers and practitioners can engage in a community of inquiry on the topic.

 

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105.

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2001). Critical thinking, cognitive presence, and computer conferencing in distance education. American Journal of Distance Education, 15(1), 17-23.

The mysteries of the affective domain – Veronica Brown, CTE

Image of rock with pool of water

I spent a lot of time during the past year thinking about assessment at all levels. In the Instructional Skills Workshop, we talk about pre- and post-assessments during a lesson to evaluate where our learners are before and after the lesson. During the Teaching Excellence Academy, we discuss assessment as it relates to the overall design of the course. Julie Timmermans and I presented on assessment for learning and asked participants to explore their own assessment philosophy at a recent workshop. Most of the curriculum work I support looks at assessment at a macro level as programs evaluate themselves.

Despite all this focus, the affective domain still remains a mystery. Back in the 50’s, Bloom and his colleagues created their Taxonomy of Learning and split learning into three domains: cognitive; psychomotor; and affective. Today, in course design and curriculum work, we simplify these to knowledge, skills, and values. The affective domain is meant to capture our values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours. It encompasses areas such as ethics, impact on society, diversity, creativity, humility, openness to failure, questioning, appreciating complexity, valuing teamwork, professionalism, exploration, critical thinking, etc. It ranges from simply knowing about a concept (i.e., being aware of a given phenomena) to fully internalizing that particular value.

If the affective relates to changing perceptions, attitudes and behaviours, how can we teach it? Moreover, how are we supposed to assess it? Can we actually change behaviour? Should we? We’re expected to. Just look at accreditation requirements from the past 10 years. It’s no longer enough to teach specific subjects for a certain number of hours. Now, we must demonstrate how specific outcomes have been fulfilled, such as life-long learning, professional ethics, awareness of limits of knowledge, etc. But more importantly, we want to. When working with departments on their curriculum, we often begin with an “Ideal Graduate Brainstorm” during which department members list the knowledge, skills, and values they expect an ideal graduate to embody by the time they graduate from their program. And the list of values is often just as long as the knowledge and skills.

Over the next few weeks, I will be exploring ideas surrounding assessment of the affective domain, specifically the use of media in teaching and assessing affective elements, Eisner’s Expressive Outcomes (Eisner, 1985), and what I’m going to call, the one-hit wonder phenomena. Throughout the blog posts, you’ll see one picture in each post. At the end of these posts on affective assessment, I’ll share the theme of the images with you (sorry – no prize if you guess the theme before it’s revealed).

See you next Tuesday,

Veronica

Bloom, B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives : The classification of educational goals. New York: D. MacKay.

Eisner, E. (1985). The Educational imagination : On the design and evaluation of school programs (2nd ed.). New York: Macmillan.

 

 

Teaching Courses = Delivery + Design — Donna Ellis

effective teachingLate last term, I designed and delivered a workshop with my CTE colleague Julie Timmermans regarding peer review of teaching (PRT). Julie and I have been guiding a learning community (LC) on PRT for the past year and a half with departmental administrators. One key question that has continued to plague our group is: how do you define “effective teaching” in your context? This would seem to be a straightforward question, and yet it’s not. It’s also a very critical question as departments consider what criteria they will use to provide feedback on and/or assess teaching. One way to approach the question that the LC group asked us to explore involved identifying key principles of learning and how they might intersect with and inform PRT practices.

It was a challenge to organize the results from multiple decades of research on human learning, and yet we knew this task was important to help inform the work of the group. In the end, we categorized the main principles into three dimensions:

  • Cognitive
  • Motivational
  • Social

The cognitive dimension includes theories about students’ prior knowledge – the need to link new learning to existing knowledge and find ways to identify and address misconceptions. It also includes theory regarding the differences between novice and expert learners, particularly how they organize information. Cognitive theories also focus on the necessity for students to acquire, practice, and apply learning (knowledge and skills) and the value of metacognition.

Motivation, in the context of learning, “influences the direction, intensity, persistence, and quality of the learning behaviors in which students engage” (Ambrose et al., 2010, p.69). Expectancy-value theory from motivation identifies learning as goal-oriented behavior that is influenced by the value of the goal for students and the expectancy of success. Finally, theories within the social dimension indicate that learning involves building knowledge by interacting with others – both teachers and peers – and benefits from positive, encouraging environments.

The workshop participants worked together to identify specific instructional strategies that could be used to implement these theoretical principles of learning as well as evidence that could be collected for PRT purposes. PRT practices often include a classroom observation component in which behaviours such as organization of material or ways to engage students in class are assessed. But one “a-ha moment” from this activity was that observing classroom instructional behaviours won’t provide a holistic picture of the effectiveness of an instructor’s teaching:  teaching also involves course design decisions. For example, social learning may be assessed in class if small groups are used, but social learning may be implemented via group assignments outside of class. Reviewing the course materials related to that assignment would be the only feasible source of evidence about this form of learning. Similarly, reviewing the learning assessments used in a course would provide insights into whether students may perceive they could succeed. And reviewing the results of the students’ learning would provide information about the outcomes achieved as a result of the course delivery and design, in addition to students’ attributes and behaviours as learners.

Recognizing the role of course design fits clearly with the advice we provide in CTE about the amount of time a student should spend on a course: 3 hours in class and 5 to 7 outside of class. This out-of-class time typically involves student work that is directed by an instructor’s course design (e.g., assignments, readings).

This session left me with one key takeaway:

  1. To truly review our peers’ teaching, we need to focus on more than what happens in classrooms – course design materials are critical sources of evidence of effective teaching as well.

If you or one of your colleagues wants to explore more about course design, the Teaching Excellence Academy may be a great next step. Contact your department Chair or School Director in mid-February to discuss being nominated. Let me know if you have any questions about this multi-day workshop or about the peer review of teaching.

Reference:

Ambrose, S.A., Bridges, M.W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M.C., Norman, M.K. (2010). How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

New LITE Grant Recipients Announced

Photo by Sharon Drummond
Photo by Sharon Drummond; retrieved from flickr.com Creative Commons; license agreement http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

 

In collaboration with the Office of the Associate Vice President, Academic, the Centre for Teaching Excellence is pleased to announce that two LITE Full Grant projects were funded through the October 2013 competition.  Congratulations to the recipients!

 

 

 

 

Project: A Comparison of Traditional and Experiential Approaches to First-Year Geomatics Instruction
Grant recipients: Peter Johnson, Peter Deadman, and Richard Kelly, Department of Geography and Environmental Management

Project: Enhancing Written Communication in Social Work
Grant recipients: Alice Schmidt Hanbidge, School of Social Work and Judi Jewinski, Provost’s Office

The purpose of the LITE Grants is to provide support for experimenting with and investigating innovative approaches to enhancing teaching that aim to foster deep student learning at the University of Waterloo.  Two kinds of grants are available: LITE Seed Grants for one-year projects up to $5,000, and LITE Full Grants for two-year projects up to $30,000. Both grant formats emphasize the contribution of the project to the University of Waterloo learning community.

For more information about the grants and to browse the descriptions and findings of completed LITE Grant projects, please visit the LITE Grant website.

Posted by: Julie Timmermans

 

 

 

 

 

Winter 2014 — what’s in store for faculty teaching development?

IMG_3681Welcome to January! This is a pretty special term for us here at CTE in that we have our new workshop spaces fully operational. We hope you’ll come round for our official Open House on January 20th between 10 and 2 to see the space and experience its features. More than that, we hope it will be your teaching development “home away from departmental home” when you want to join one of our many workshops and events this term. Most will take place in EV1 241 or EV1 242; an overview follows.

The Centre for Teaching Excellence offers workshops and events on a range of topics; we invite you to visit our Events page for the full listings of workshops for you, and for instructions on how to sign up (myHRinfo will be unavailable on Friday, January 10 for scheduled maintenance).

  • Getting Started with LEARN?  Check out the January sessions of LEARN for TAs, the quiz feature, the grades tool and timesaving tips in LEARN.
  • CTE642: Course Design Fundamentals (six hours) is offered on Monday, March 3 and repeated on Tuesday, March 4.
  • CTE908: Documenting Your Teaching for Tenure and Promotion Lunch and Learn for pre-tenure faculty being held in Needles Hall on Tuesday, March 25 from 11:45 am to 1:15 pm.
  • CTE601: Instructional Skills Workshop is scheduled over four days in February 2014.  Very limited enrolment for this 24-hours workshop on February 18, 19, 20 and 21.

Teaching Squares is a peer based program well suited to faculty interested in broadening their teaching perspectives by taking part in reciprocal classroom visits. Teaching Squares focus on the valuable take-away(s) made accessible by observing other teachers in action rather than on the potentially harsh critique of peer evaluation. 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 of one’s own teaching). A square is formed by four instructors who visit each other’s classes over the course of one term. 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 classes). The total time commitment over the term is approximately 6 hours. If you are interested, please send Monica Vesely an email (mvesely@uwaterloo.ca) indicating the term you would like to participate (this term – Winter 2014 or later in the year) and the course you will be teaching.

The sixth annual University of Waterloo Teaching and Learning Conference: Opportunities and New Directions (OND) will be held Thursday, May 1, 2014 with the theme “Rethinking and Reframing the Assessment of Learning”. We welcome research-based or practice-based submissions related to the theme.  We are excited that Dr. John Bean will be our Keynote Speaker. Proposals are due Friday, January 31, 2014. The call for proposals, as well as the proposal submission form can be found on the Conference website: https://uwaterloo.ca/cte/OND2014 . Even if you do not submit a proposal, we hope that you and your colleagues will join us for what we hope will be an enriching and exciting day!  For Conference-related questions, contact Julie Timmermans (julie.timmermans@uwaterloo.ca).

Upcoming Deadlines

OND Conference proposals:  Deadline Friday, January 31, 2014

LITE Seed Grants: Application deadline Saturday, February 1, 2014
Distinguished Teacher Award: Nomination deadline Friday, February 7, 2014

Amit and Meena Chakma Awards for Exceptional Teaching by a Student: Nomination deadline Friday, February 14, 2014

Waterloo’s 2014 Loving to Learn Day falls on Friday, February 14. Enter the contest by Tuesday, February 11, and win a book prize! “What makes a teacher a really GREAT teacher?”

 

As always, contact your CTE Faculty Liaison with any questions you may have about CTE services.

If you have difficulty enrolling using the myHRinfo system (most of us have, at various points), contact Verna Keller.

 

For confidential consultations about course ratings, classroom observations, or the like, contact Trevor Holmes or Jane Holbrook.

The ISW (Instructional Skills Workshop) Annual Reunion – Monica Vesely

ISW Logo

The ISW (Instructional Skills Workshop) Annual Reunion – Monica Vesely

 

Since the initial offering of the Instructional Skills Workshop in May of 2008, 120 participants from across all six faculties have completed ISW at the University of Waterloo. On Wednesday, November 13th, a group of ISW past participants gathered in EV1 241 to (re)connect with their fellow ISW alumni. This ISW Reunion has now become an annual event taking place in the fall term and allowing for ISW graduates to touch-base with not only their ISW cohort group but all past ISW participants. Through both formal and informal discussions, the transformative value of ISW is considered and encouraged to grow.

The Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) is an intense 24-hour peer-based workshop that involves participants in cycles of mini-lessons accompanied by written, verbal and video feedback. It challenges the participants to explore new approaches to their teaching while at the same time being intentional about their lesson planning approach. The program started in 1978 in British Columbia and subsequently spread across Canada and the US. It is now an internationally recognized and facilitated program.

The Instructional Skills Workshop is offered within a small group setting and is designed to enhance the teaching effectiveness of both new and experienced educators. ISW encourages participants to reflect on the underlying processes behind the experience of teaching and learning. For many, the greatest value of the workshop lies in the opportunity to participate in and reflect on instruction from the experience and perspective of a learner.

Attendees at this year’s ISW Reunion had the opportunity to hear more formally from three past participants (Lisa Doherty, Shirley Hall, and Markus Moos) who shared their ISW story and how it shaped their subsequent teaching. After the panelists had shared their thoughts, the discussion opened up to include comments from the group at large. Past participants reflected on how the ISW experience had influenced their approach to teaching and what take-aways had made their way into their classrooms. Some even wondered about repeating the experience now that a significant amount time had passed since their own ISW participation.

If you are an ISW alumni, I encourage you to save the date for our next reunion, tentatively set for Wednesday, November 5, 2014. If you are interested in taking the Instructional Skills Workshop, please visit the CTE events page for future offerings. Our next ISW is scheduled for February 18-21, 2014 (Reading Week).