Student Culture – Page 6 – Centre for Teaching Excellence Blog

Stress: Permission Granted – Kyra Jones

With upcoming academic milestones, children’s birthday parties, trips to conferences, and the usual daily grind, I have been feeling a lot of stress lately. This became evident to me on the day I served Eggo waffles for dinner. At the time, I thought, “I just need to feed everyone and I don’t have time to think about what to serve for dinner”. If you know me, you know that this is a complete shift in personality. I am the woman who shops at local food co-operatives, buys organic whenever possible, and thinks about what I feed my family and where it came from. I enjoy making healthy and satisfying meals for my family and myself and I take pride in knowing where my food comes from. At the time, serving Eggo waffles didn’t seem like a big deal and it isn’t – my family can survive one day eating a suboptimal meal. But as time passed, I noticed small sacrifices like this in other facets of my life and wondered if my inability to effectively manage stress was causing me to give up on things that are part of my identity.

This is when turned to Google. I searched for tips to reduce stress and came across the usual suspects:

Work off your stress with exercise such as jogging or yoga
Set realistic goals
Get enough sleep

These were all great ideas, but I knew deep down that these tips wouldn’t necessarily solve my root problem. Missing a yoga class I had scheduled to try to decrease my stress would likely do just the opposite – add more guilt and stress to my life. I had to decrease my own stress. I had to learn to say no to things when my plate was full.

Upon this realization, I began to think about my students. Many students have a lot of things going on in their lives in addition to their course work. Even if a student is stressed, there are many instances in which students do not have the opportunity to say no. Deadlines come and go, and students do their best to keep up. I did this as a student, and I always thought it was ok to make sacrifices because “one day” I would be done school and I could do what I want to do then. That is when I would enjoy my life more, once “this” stress was over.

I was naïve. “One day” never comes, because when one stress is over, another stress begins. I realized that giving my students advice in the form of ideas they can use to manage their stress may not be effective enough. By giving my students a list of things they can do to mitigate stress, I was making stress seem abnormal and using the tips would mean admitting to feeling this “abnormal” sentiment.

With this in mind, I decided that one of the most important things I can do for my students is to give them permission to feel stress. Stress is something that tells our bodies and mind that we have taken on too much, that we need to slow down, that we need to rest. A list of ideas to manage this feeling can seem like I am minimizing or trivializing this perfectly normal feeling.

I want my students to know that stress is normal. I want to tell my students that no matter what they accomplish and achieve, if they realize these goals but sacrifice their identity to do so, it may not be worth it. This is your life – all of the things that fill up your day, even the stressful things, are a part of your life. Each day is a day you only live once. Decreasing stress may involve prioritizing events and responsibilities – easier said than done. I hope that by emphasizing that stress is a normal feeling, students will more readily admit to feeling stress and hopefully through this admission, take action to manage their stress. I hope by giving students permission to pay attention to their mind, body, and mental well being, I can help them avoid their own personal Eggo waffle scenarios and enjoy living life fully each day, even during stressful times.

Attack of the Macs — Bailey Jacobs, CTE Co-op Student

It is safe to say that technology has dominated the world—Okay, I may be exaggerating [slightly] but it is evident, walking into any lecture currently taking place on the UW campus, that laptops have undeniably invaded the university classroom. Seeing as it has been a few years since the CTE blog has discussed the contentious topic of laptop use, I am going to tackle this subject from a new angle… The student’s perspective. Continue reading Attack of the Macs — Bailey Jacobs, CTE Co-op Student

Reading the (Class)room: There’s No App for That — Josh Neufeld, Department of Biology

I teach a 2nd year “Fundamentals of Microbiology” course, with hundreds of students distributed across multiple lecture sections. After years of prodding by student evaluations, I consented to posting videocasts of each lecture last term. Previously, my concern had been that attendance would drop. This same concern accompanies the development of online courses, which will be happening to my course, serving students who are off campus. With online course material circulating widely, in addition to the availability of videocasts from past and current years, why should students come to class? Given these concerns, I was very surprised that, although videocasts were posted within an hour of each lecture last term, attendance was higher than ever. This unexpected outcome reminded me of a videocast-requesting student evaluation comment from the previous year: “I believe being in class has its own benefits, students will still come”. But why?

At the 2014 Waterloo Science Grad Ball, I stopped by the mixing board of DJ Whitegold (pictured above), who is described as “one of Canada’s most versatile and talented DJs”. DJ Whitegold explained how the turntables he uses on his mixer no longer hold vinyl LPs, but instead are linked to music tracks on his system’s laptop. Nonetheless, he still uses the traditional one-handed turntable-rocking motion to help transition between two songs seamlessly, synchronizing the beats (“beatmatching”) and 16-bar phrases (“phrasematching”) of each song. After a moment of reflection, I asked whether software could automate the process of beatmatching and phrasematching, which would eliminate potential human error and possibly even make the DJ unnecessary. “Yes, there are apps that can automate the mixes,” DJ Whitegold was quick to reply, “But, there is something important that no app can do.” Gesturing toward the sea of science students, he continued, “Read an audience.” DJ Whitegold explained that the ability to connect with a crowd, sense their minds and moods, manipulate a group’s connection to the music, and engineer a dance experience are all important and irreplaceable skills of expert DJs, skills that can never be automated.

It later occurred to me that this conversation captured the teaching experience perfectly and helped address my concerns about recorded course content. Analogous to DJ Whitegold’s role of synchronizing musical tracks, the classroom experience is fundamentally one of beatmatching and phrasematching ideas into a coherent lecture. This process enables students to follow new information and understand concepts, not on a dance floor, but in a lecture hall. And of course we can digitize this process by offering online versions of our courses and by posting lecture videocasts. But there is something else important that can never be captured in an online course offering, or even in a videocast. Professors work very hard to read a room in every lecture, gauge student comprehension and mindset, sense and manipulate energy and attention, react to body language, engage students in group conversation, pause, watch, smile, and surprise. Much like a DJ manipulating a dance floor, the ability to shape a classroom experience is reactive and dynamic; it is art and it is science, it takes experience, and it can take a lifetime of practice to perfect.

Although videocasts have undeniable value for students reviewing course material, and online courses are essential for off-campus education, DJ Whitgold’s comments helped convince me that in-class education is alive and well. DJs are central to nightclub stages despite digitization, and professors in lecture halls remain an essential element of university education.

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Josh Neufeld (Twitter: @JoshDNeufeld) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology, studying the microbial ecology of terrestrial, aquatic, and host-associated communities. For several years, Josh has taught a large second year course (600-900 students) as well as a small upper year course (18 students), and is a recipient of the 2013 Jack Carlson Teaching Excellence Award by the Department of Biology.

Photo credit: DJ Whitegold

Reducing student anxiety in the classroom — Karly Neath

Many educators are unaware of what anxiety is, how it affects their students, and what they can do to reduce it.

To cope with anxiety students:

Do not participate
Skip class
Avoid enrolling in classes with participation

These students may be missing out on learning opportunities.

From research literature in neuroscience, it is clear that stress and anxiety inhibit learning through powerful brain mechanisms. The stress response has evolved to avoid threatening situations, however it impairs new learning. By caring about students, and doing our best to reduce anxiety in the classroom, we can help utilize brain processes that contribute to learning.

What can we do to reduce anxiety in our classrooms and help our students learn and succeed?

Below are a few ideas from research conducted by Birkett and Shelton (2011) in neuroscience and practices in higher education:

Be predictable. Numerous studies have demonstrated the anxiety-provoking nature of unpredictable stressors. This does not mean that you have to give up flexibility or spontaneity in your classroom, but it means that you need to make your expectations explicit. For example, you specify the requirements for a research project but you do not need to specify the topic. This entails providing a clear, detailed and explicit syllabus at the beginning of a course, with the assignments described, due dates listed, and policies for late submissions. This can go a long way towards reducing stressful unpredictability. This is especially important at the beginning of a course when the students’ anxieties about the course are high.
Provide opportunities for student control. In neuroscience and stress research, lack of control is the second ingredient in creating anxiety. Control or even perceived control of a situation is capable of reducing the physical and psychological reactions to stress. Giving students opportunities to control some aspects of their experiences in our classes is an effective way to reduce anxiety. This might range from flexible due dates to late assignment policies to allowing students to select their own topic for a research project, or using a class poll to determine the next topic in class, to fully student-led projects for classes.
Trust students. Ken Bain claims that the most successful teachers trust their students. Bain writes “trust and openness produce an interactive environment in which students can ask questions without reproach or embarrassment” (p.142). Bain suggests that we can demonstrate trust by sharing a sense of humility with students, occasionally sharing paths in our own learning, expressing our own curiosity about learning, and setting an intention to share a classroom with students as fellow learners.

Each of these elements can help convey student caring. Each can be considered a characteristic of a classroom environment designed to reduce student anxiety, but a thoughtful and intentional combination of these aspects is required to be successful.

What strategies have you used to promote student caring and reduce anxiety in your classrooms?

References

Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Harvard University Press.

Birkett, M.A., Shelton K. (2011). Participating in an introductory neuroscience course decreases neuroscience anxiety. Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education, 10(1), A37-A43.

Do students know what good teaching is? — Dr. Mark Morton

Do students know what good teaching is?

That’s a question that often arises when I meet with instructors to explore ways of enhancing their teaching. It’s also a question that must occur to all instructors every time they review the results of their end-of-term course evaluations (no one, after all, gets perfect evaluations!).

The question might be restated this way: although students undoubtedly know what they like from an instructor, do they always know what they need?

The answer, I think, is that most of them do (but not all the time). I’ve reached this conclusion after reading through the submissions to this year’s Loving to Learn Day contest. That contest asked students (and others) to respond to this question: “What makes a teacher a really GREAT teacher?”

I received about 200 responses to this question from students ranging from grade three to undergraduates. All of the responses were genuinely thoughtful. Not a single one of the responses included glib or flippant statements such as “Teachers who end class early and give easy tests are great!”

More interesting, though, was the extent to which the students’ responses echoed the best practices for instructors that have been identified and articulated by experts in higher education. Chickering and Gamson’s “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education,” which was developed in 1987, is one such best-practices rubric. Here are those seven principles:

Encourages contact between students and faculty.
Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students.
Uses active learning techniques.
Gives prompt feedback.
Emphasizes time on task.
Communicates high expectations.
Respects diverse talents and ways of learning.

I seriously doubt whether any of the students who participated in the Loving to Learn Day contest have ever heard of Chickering and Gamson. Yet in the 200 responses that I received from them, each of those seven principles was articulated many times. In fact, it’s easy to recreate Chickering and Gamson’s best practices by extracting passages from the students’ responses:

“I really like a teacher who is willing to spend extra time focusing, one on one with a student to benefit their learning. I think it is admirable when a teacher will go out of their way and uses their own time to help a student or to talk to them about personal issues.”
“An awesome teacher is original, kind, fun, brave, courageous oh my I just could go on forever and they need to be wise, smart of course but they sometimes do not have to be smart because they and us kids learn better by learning together.”
“My favourite teacher would be one that teaches subjects hands-on, and lets you try new things. They would let you experiment, and you wouldn’t have to do exactly what they do.”
“Also, handing back marked work fast makes it easy for a student to find out what they need to fix for similar future work.”
“A great teacher is one who sets clear due dates/objectives for homework/projects and makes sure not to hand out more than a student can handle.”
“A great teacher sets high expectations and doesn’t give up on their students.”
“All teachers should respect their student’s different learning styles and know how to bend their teaching routine to help the students learn in a way that is comfortable for them.”

Based on the 200 students’ responses, it seems to clear to me that students do know what they need from an instructor. They know, in other words, what makes an instructor a really GREAT instructor. At least some of the time.

The reason I add this qualifier – “some of the time” – is that these students obviously wrote their responses when they were actively and intently reflecting on the qualities of great instructors. They didn’t write them when they were in the middle of a dry biology lecture, nor did they write them as they were trying to study for two midterms on the same night. Ask them the same question in those circumstances, and the responses might start to include comments like “great teachers liven up the class with jokes” and “great teachers give easy midterms.”

In other words, what students’ think about the characteristics of a great teacher is probably shaped by the immediate circumstances of those students. In a similar way, my thoughts about food are influenced by my immediate circumstances. I do, for example, have a pretty good understanding of nutritional best practices – that is, I know what I need to eat and not eat to stay healthy. But if I’m stressed out or overly hungry, all that goes out the window. Best practices become a bag of chips or a chocolate bar.

This recognition of the role of context is important, I think, because it means that if we want to ensure that students understand what good teaching is, we don’t really need to teach it to them. They already know what makes a great teacher. Instead, we need to teach them coping skills or meta-cognitive skills so that they can keep an awareness of that knowledge in their minds when they are in less than ideal circumstances – like when they are in the middle of a dry lecture, or when they are tired or stressed out but still need to study for an exam.

So, if you’re an instructor, I think you can trust that your students, deep down, already know what makes an instructor great. If you want to bring that knowledge to the surface, just give them the time and opportunity, once in a while, to take a deep breath and reflect on what they really need from their instructors. And, while you’re at it, you might also ask them to reflect on what they need to do to become great learners.

Incidentally, here are more extracts that I’ve taken from the 200 responses that students submitted:

I enjoy teachers that don’t always stick to the teaching schedule. They wander off topic to enable further learning and understanding of a topic or lesson. They encourage their students to dig deeper and learn more.
Creativity is essential to teaching because it keeps learning fresh, and students open-minded. It’s easy for teachers to make students sit in rows, and give identical worksheets to students, but a great teacher can inspire learning, inspire creativity.
I think a great teacher should take the time and effort to remember important things about a student’s life.
What makes a teacher a great teacher is when they always know your level of intelligence so they know what work to give to you. They should challenge you, but not too much.
I think a good teacher is one that never lets you give up. They’re patient and happy, they tell you “You Can!” when you think you can’t. They are there for you, they let you take the time you need, and they help you all the way through.
The teacher should make learning seem fun and comfortable. Not necessarily easy, but it shouldn’t seem like the hardest thing ever.
Teachers need to keep an open mind. Students differ in everything from gender and race to personality and sexual orientation. If a teachers push stereotypes on them, they could cause a lot of stress.
To be a good teacher you have to believe that you are good at teaching.
A great teacher respects their students. They are free to think whatever they want.
For teachers to be great, they have to possess some key qualities; patience, kindness, a desire to learn, a love for their job, and a sense of humour.
Great teachers choose teaching because they thrive on helping students and they have a passion for learning.
Another thing that makes a really GREAT teacher is that they need to have appreciation for everything you do. If you help another student they should take that into account.
Teachers need to have a sense of humour. Humour can keep students engaged in their learning. Having a less serious side makes teachers more human and approachable.
A great teacher does what is best for the student, whatever that might be.
What makes a teacher REALLY great? To me, it’s a teacher with passion. When your teacher comes through that door in the morning to the moment they leave, they are excited to teach, they are excited to enrich our brains with knowledge.
A good teacher is always well prepared and organized. They are a master of their subject, and would make their instructions clear to all students.
A great teacher doesn’t force their ways upon you.
We need the kind of people who will recognize the students that try so hard just to get a C. Teachers that care. We don’t need great teachers. We need great people.
The best teacher is one that teaches you the harmony between everything good and bad. One who helps you grow as a human being.
In twenty years you might not recall that your math teacher explained fractions well. But you might remember that she brought in a pie to show you.
A great teacher needs to be willing to try new things. To try a different lesson, to try a different approach, and to take risks. They need to be willing to experiment, to have successes, to have failures, and to learn from their experiences.
A great teacher is someone who understands that each student has different strengths and weaknesses, and from there aims to help them reach their individual needs. They never focus on grade comparison, but rather on the progress a student is making.
A great teacher would have to be able to teach in different way, because not everyone learns the same as everyone else.
A great teacher never keeps knowledge to themselves. When they’ve learned something new from their experiences they make sure that their students are learning from them as well. For this reason I would describe every great teacher I’ve ever had as generous. They are people who are always willing to share their wisdom with others.
To me a teacher is someone that helps you discover and guides you toward your dream.

And if you want more, you can read all of the responses to “What makes a teacher a GREAT teacher?” at the Loving to Learn Day site.

Effective Feedback – Gowsi (CTE Co-op Student)

Entering my third year at the University of Waterloo, one thing that never crossed my mind was the idea of higher learning and teaching. I never thought to myself about how any of my classes could be improved. Was it because I did not care or was it because I was not asked?

Since working at CTE I constantly find myself analyzing my past professors and their teaching methods to see if they were actually effective. As a Sociology major I find that most my classes should have been more engaging. There are many ways professors could have engaged students to want to learn, using methods such as effective discussions or switching up the delivery of the content. But the problem was that many of my teachers never asked me how I felt about the class. As a result, I rarely found myself focused on lectures. This is why feedback is necessary in courses. Feedback in a classroom setting is beneficial to both parties involved. The students giving the feedback are able to critically examine the teaching method. The receiver of the feedback, the teacher, can get a better understanding of the effectiveness of their teaching method. The feedback allows them to cater towards students need and create a better learning atmosphere.

Feedback must have a balance of perfect timing and effective questions to be valuable to students and teachers. I have written many feedback forms for my courses at the end of the term. But what is the point of that, the students filling out the feedback forms don’t get to see any of the results. Don’t get me wrong, feedback at the end of the semester for a class is beneficial, but not for the writers. As a student I want to see the changes made from my feedback first hand to benefit me. Implementing a system of feedback throughout the term would increase student engagement and participation.

For the first time in my university existence I was asked to give feedback within the first few weeks of class this term. My professor had asked us questions based on the simple feedback mechanism called SKS. The professor simply asked the student what he should Stop, Keep, and Start doing. The next class he would display the outcome of the feedback in a graph, a simple and easy way to read the results. This method allowed students to expose their issues with the class early and allowed the professor to assess such issues early enough that the class could mover forward without any issues. He then changed his method of delivery to benefit the majority of the class. This schedule of feedback throughout the semester should be implemented in all courses the university provides. Students in the classroom feel more welcomed because it shows that the teacher is interested in the success of their students. I guess the takeaway of this blog is that everyone is aware of the benefits of feedback, but what is key, is to begin the process sooner then later.

How to Reignite Intrinsic Motivation — Sophie Twardus (CTE Co-op Student)

There are two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is something you do because you enjoy it for its own sake. Extrinsic motivation is something you do for outside factors like grades or money. One of the intriguing things about motivation is that if a person is intrinsically motivated to do something, giving them an extrinsic motivation diminishes that original motivation.

This is especially relevant in education considering that humans are naturally interested in learning. You only need to talk to four-year-old children to see how excited they are to go to school, how proud they are that they can count to ten. However, talk to them ten years later and all that enthusiasm will have dissipated. The problem is that in school you don’t learn for the sake of learning – you do it for external reasons like grades and getting accepted into university.

This approach leads to a decline of people’s intrinsic motivation to one solely driven by external rewards. The question is how do we address this problem. I know personally that math is my passion. Despite that there have times where I have been so bogged down by assignments and midterms that I have forgotten that math can be fun.

Last term I had an absolutely brutal week: I had gotten sick twice, I had gotten a midterm back and the results were less than optimal, and I had broken my laptop screen. I was in dire need of a break, I was exhausted, with zero motivation. I walked into the MathSoc office where my friends were playing the card game called SET. The game has a lot of interesting mathematical properties. You can see a sample game here.

While playing the game, I mused out loud how many unique sets exist in the game. “That’s an interesting problem,” exclaimed my friend. Naturally, being mathematicians. we put the game on hold in order to solve it. It took us no time at all to find out that the answer was 1080. We then tried finding out if it’s possible to model the number of sets for the general case of n values and m attributes.

It took me four days to solve this problem. Working on it reminded me why I was studying math. I love the mental challenge of a good problem, the battle of wits as I try to deconstruct the situation. I especially love the flash of insight that comes at the end when the solution is suddenly obvious.

University can be a stressful environment. It is all too easy to get caught up in the frenzy of midterms, assignments, and exams and forget why we originally chose to pursue post-secondary education. If you feel burnt out I recommend taking a break from your responsibilities and do something not because you have to but because you want to. Remind yourself that learning is fun.

As for the solution to the problem, I leave it as an exercise to reader. I would not want to spoil the fun.