Category: Teaching Strategies

High Failure Rates in Introductory Computer Science Courses: Assessing the Learning Edge Momentum Hypothesis – John Doucette, CUT student  

valleyIntroductory computer science is hard. It’s not a course most students would take as a light elective, and failure rates are high (two large studies put the average at around 35% of students failing). Yet, at the same time, introductory computer science is apparently quite easy. At many institutions, the most common passing grade is an A. For instructors, this is a troubling state of affairs, which manifests as a bimodal grade distribution — a plot of students’ grades forms a valley rather than the usual peak of a normal distribution.

For most of the last forty years, the dominant hypothesis has been the existence of some hidden factor separating those who can learn to program computers from those who cannot. Recently this large body of work has become known as the “Programmer Gene” hypothesis, although most of the studies do not focus on actual genetic or natural advantages, so much as on demographics, prior education levels, standardized test scores, or past programming experience. Surprisingly, despite dozens of studies taking place over more than forty years, some involving simultaneous consideration of thirty or forty factors, no conclusive predictor of programming aptitude has been found, and the most prominent recent paper advancing such a test was ultimately retracted.

The failure of the “Programmer Gene” hypothesis to produce a working description of why students fail has led to the development of other explanations. One recently proposed approach is the Learning Edge Momentum (LEM) hypothesis, by Robins (2010). Robins proposes that the reason no programmer gene can be found is because the populations are identical, or nearly so. Instead of attributing the problem to the students, Robins argues that it is the content of the course that causes bimodal grade distributions to emerge, and that the content of introductory computer science classes is especially prone to such problems.

At the core of the LEM hypothesis is the idea that courses are composed of units of content, which are presented to students one after another in sequence. In some disciplines, content is only loosely related, and students who fail to learn one module can still easily understand subsequent topics. For example, a student taking an introductory history class will not have much more difficulty learning about Napoleon after failing to learn about Charlemagne. The topics are similar, but are not dependent. All topics lie close to the edge of student’s prior knowledge. In other disciplines however, early topics within a course are practically prerequisites for later topics, and the course rapidly moves away from the edges of students’ knowledge, into areas that are wholly foreign to them. The more early topics students master, the easier the later ones become. Conversely, the more early topics that students fail to acquire, the harder it is to learn later topics at all. This effect is dubbed “momentum.”

Robins argues that introductory computer science is an especially momentum-heavy area. A student who fails to learn conditionals will probably be unable to learn recursion or loops. A student who fails to grasp core concepts like functions or the idea of a program state will likely struggle for the entire course. Robins argues that success on early topics within the needed time period (before the course moves on) is largely random, and shows via simulation that, even if students all start with identical aptitude for a subject, if the momentum effect is increased enough, bimodal grade distributions will follow. However, no empirical validation of the hypothesis was provided, and no subsequent attempts at validation have been able to confirm this model. The main difficulty faced in evaluating the LEM hypothesis is that the predictions it makes are actually very similar to the “Programmer Gene” hypothesis. Both theories predict that students who do well early in a course will do well later on. The difference is the LEM hypothesis says this was mostly down to chance, while the “Programmer Gene” hypothesis says it was due to the students’ skill.

In my research project for the Certificate in University Teaching (CUT), I proposed a new method of evaluating the LEM hypothesis by examining the performance of remedial students — students who retake introductory computer science classes after failing them. The LEM hypothesis predicts that remedial classes should also have bimodal grade distributions, because student success on initial topics is largely random. Students taking the course for the second time should be just as likely to learn them as students taking the course the first time round. In contrast, the “Programmer Gene” hypothesis predicts that remedial courses should have normally distributed grades, with a low mean. This is because remedial students lack the supposed “gene”, and so will not be able to learn topics much more effectively the second time than they were the first time.

To evaluate this hypothesis, I acquired anonymized data from four offerings of an introductory computer science course: two with a high proportion of remedial students, and two with a very low proportion. I found weak evidence in support of the LEM hypothesis, as all grade distributions were bimodal when withdrawing students were counted as failing. However, when withdrawing students were removed entirely, only one non-remedial offering was bimodal, a result predicted by neither theory.

Although my empirical results were ultimately inconclusive, my research provides a clear way forward in evaluating different hypotheses for high failure rates in introductory computer science. A follow up study, conducted with data from a university that offers only remedial sections in the spring term (removing the confounding effects of out-of-stream students in the same class) may be able to put the question to rest for good, and facilitate the design of future curricula.

References:

Robins, A. (2010). Learning edge momentum: A new account of outcomes in CS1. Computer Science Education, 20 (1), 37-71.

The author of this blog post, John Doucette, recently completed CTE’s Certificate in University Teaching (CUT) program. He is currently a Doctoral Candidate in the Cheriton School of Computer Science.

Bridging the Skills Gap – Katherine Lithgow

https://www.flickr.com/photos/gramarye/132249724
Sydney Harbour Bridge https://www.flickr.com/photos/gramarye/132249724

There’s been a lot of discussion in media and higher education about the skills, or lack of skills, our students have when they graduate from our universities. Politicians, the public, and even some of our colleagues have questioned whether universities are the best vehicles to help post-secondary students bridge the gap between high school and the working world of the 21st century.

Many of the arguments centre around what they call ‘the skills gap’ and claim that today’s graduates do not have the skills necessary to meet the needs for the 21st century work environment. For example, CareerBuilder.ca released results from a national survey which found that only 1 in 5 employers (19 per cent) believe academic institutions are adequately preparing students for roles needed within their organizations.

Of course, there are others who have argued that there isn’t a ‘skills gap’ to bridge. In 2013, for example, leading economist, Don Drummond, reported that he couldn’t find “a shred of evidence that Canada has a serious mismatch between skills and jobs” contradicting what Prime Minister Stephen Harper has declared as “an urgent national priority.”

Whether a skills gap exists or not, we do know two things:

  1. Students and parents have their eye on post-graduate job prospects, regardless of the degree.
  2. Employers report that they look for specific skills when hiring new graduates and these preferred skills are common across most, if not all, occupations.

A report by the Canadian Association of Career Educators and Employers (2013) identified communication, teamwork, analytical, strong work ethic, and problem solving as the top 5 preferred skills that employers seek when hiring new grads. These same five skills have been consistently identified in a number of similar surveys conducted across Canada and in the United States with slight variations in the order. Employers, then, appear to be looking for, what we call Professional Skills / Essential Employability Skills/Transferable Skills regardless of the degree designation.

Now, we might ask ourselves, “What does this have to do with me? It’s not my job to get students jobs”. And that’s true. And we also might say, “Well, I teach cutting edge research and best practices in my discipline.” And that is fine, too. And we might even say, “We don’t have time to ‘cover soft skills’ – it’s not our job to teach these.” Well, that’s not entirely true. Because, in 2005, the Ontario Council of Academic Vice-Presidents (OCAV) developed a set of Undergraduate Degree Level Expectations (UDLEs) for all universities in the province. The UDLEs are a set of guidelines that “elaborate the intellectual and creative development of students and the acquisition of relevant skills that have been widely, yet implicitly, understood. At their most basic, the six UDLEs articulated by OCAV are as follows:

  1. Depth and breadth of knowledge
  2. Knowledge of methodologies
  3. Application of knowledge
  4. Communication skills
  5. Awareness of limits of knowledge
  6. Autonomy and professional capacity

The University of Waterloo has added two more UDLEs:

  1. Experiential learning
  2. Diversity

Take a look at what the undergraduate degree level expectations are for UDLE 4 and UDLE 6.

  Baccalaureate/Bachelor’s Degree Baccalaureate/Bachelor’s Degree: Honours
UDLE 4. Communication Skills … the ability to communicate accurately and reliably, orally and in writing to a range of audiences. … the ability to communicate information, arguments, and analyses accurately and reliably, orally and in writing to a range of audiences.
UDLE 6.Autonomy and Professional Capacity a) qualities and transferable skills necessary for further study, employment, community involvement and other activities requiring:·   the exercise of personal responsibility and decision-making;  ·   working effectively with others;b) the ability to identify and address their own learning needs in changing circumstances and to select an appropriate program of further study; andc) behaviour consistent with academic integrity and social responsibility.

 

 

 a) qualities and transferable skills necessary for further study, employment, community involvement and other activities requiring:·    the exercise of initiative, personal responsibility and accountability in both personal and group contexts;·    working effectively with others; ·    decision-making in complex contexts;b) the ability to manage their own learning in changing circumstances, both within and outside the discipline and to select an appropriate program of further study; andc) behaviour consistent with academic integrity and social responsibility.

These expectations are the very skills that top the list of skills that employers are looking for, those Professional Skills / Essential Employability Skills/Transferable Skills, regardless of the degree designation.

I’d say we do a good job addressing UDLE 1, 2, 3, & perhaps 5 – those UDLEs that focus on dissemination of knowledge. Through tests, exams, essays, projects, and for some students, theses or capstones and presentations, we provide opportunities for students demonstrate gains they are making in these knowledge-related areas. We explicitly ask them to demonstrate these gains, and we give them grades for demonstrating achievement in these areas. Assigning grades lets students know that these things are valued and worth learning.

What we might not do as often, or as well, is let students know that the skills and attributes outlined under Autonomy and Professional Capacity (UDLE 6) and Communication (UDLE 4) are also valued.

  • Communication to wide audience (not just the instructor!)
  • Exercise of initiative
  • Personal responsibility and accountability to self and others
  • Decision-making
  • Effective teamwork
  • Problem-solving

These are the competencies and skills that we presuppose student have or are acquiring while they are working on what we will eventually mark. We expect students to value these things, but if we looked at what gets marked in courses, which in turn translates to what gets valued by the students, I think we’d agree that these transferable/professional skills often are not assigned marks, or if they are, they count for a small portion of the overall grade.

This doesn’t mean that students do not develop or acquire these skills. But, because we don’t explicitly draw students’ attention to the fact that they are developing these skills, they often remain invisible to our students. And yet, these invisible, often unacknowledged or undervalued skills are precisely the extra-degree skills that employers want to hear about.

To help bridge the skills gap, we need to expose these transferable skills to our students. Make them visible. Make them count.

So the question is how do we make these visible and valued to students? The first step is to make them explicit and visible to ourselves. Then we are better able to make them visible to our students.

Here are some tips that can be used to help bridge the skills gap. [If some of these sound familiar, you may have seen a presentation that Jill Tomasson Goodwin and I gave at the OND conference this past April, or you may have seen blog posts by James Skidmore, Shannon Dea and Mary Power.]

  1. Make the transferable skills visible and explicit to yourself
  • Review the UDLEs – Review the bulleted list within each category, and determine if you could turn it into a learning outcome for your course or program. Pay particular attention to UDLE 4 & UDLE 6.
  • Review your existing course syllabus – Determine what UDLEs you are making visible to the students. What is it that you mark?
  • Review your existing course assignments – What communication skills, or elements listed under Professional Capacity and Autonomy are you expecting your students to use or develop in order to complete the assigned tasks, but are not making explicit to your students? What transferrable skills are students expected to use, but remain invisible and not counted?
  1. Make these professional/transferable skills explicit and visible to your students. Make them count.
  • Talk to your students about the UDLEs –show them what the undergraduate degree level expectations actually are and what that means in terms of your discipline, program or course. Review relevant UDLEs with your students and show how they map to the relevant Essential Employability Skills/Transferable Skills or Professional Skills (whatever you are calling them) that employers are looking for. Some instructors have assigned the reading ‘It takes more than a major’ to help students see the relevance these skills have in the workplace.
  • Discuss the syllabus – take some time in class, or online, to explain what the learning outcomes for your course really mean and how these outcomes fit into the bigger picture. Explain the differences between the skill being taught or acquired in the course and knowledge being imparted. Explicitly state which UDLEs your course activities are addressing, and how particular course activities will help students develop them. Throughout the course, as you review activities and assignments with your students, ask students to identify which skills they believe they will need or will be developing as they complete the course activities.
  • Add a question to an assignment or on an exam- provide students with the opportunity to reflect on what they are learning in the course, and how that connects to the bigger picture. This can be done by asking student to add an extra paragraph to an assignment where they explain how a particular assignment helped them meet a particular UDLE, or how might they transfer or apply what they’ve learned to another course or another context. Helping students see the relevance also helps them recognize that spending time learning how to articulate how they might use a skill beyond the course is important and not just ‘busy work’. If your students are working on team projects, have each student articulate how the experience has helped them develop communication skills (UDLE 4) or skills outlined under Autonomy and Professional Capacity (UDLE 6).
  • Provide opportunities for students to perform ‘authentic skills and tasks associated with their field’ and explicitly state why this skill is valued outside the classroom. In a philosophy class, students peer review each other’s articles because it is the kind of activity that philosophers do.
  • Provide opportunities for students to connect transferable skills to co-op/work and co-curricular experiences. See how Jill Tomasson Goodwin used ePortfolios in her DAC 309 course to help students make this connection
  1. Discuss with your colleagues or at department meetings how to intentionally integrate into the curriculum opportunities to help students develop and reflect upon how they might apply these professional/transferrable skills to new contexts.
  2. Utilize Existing Resources
  1. Share your ideas and strategies – How are you or a colleague bridging the gap and re making these skills valued and visible to your students? If you’re teaching a large class, and have examples to share, I’m especially interested!

The Culture of Sharing in Teaching and Learning — Christine Zaza

group workSocial engagement is front and centre in today’s teaching and learning environment, and the proliferation of technological applications makes it easier than ever for students to connect with one another.

As a Centre, we encourage instructors to engage students.  This often involves some form of peer learning activity where students work together to share ideas, debate, solve problems, provide feedback, reach consensus on test questions, create a project, etc.  Even with introspective reflective activities, we encourage students to share their reflections and provide feedback to one another.  These highly social activities take place in the face-to-face classroom and in online spaces alike, through the learning management system and/or through one of the many social media tools designed to connect large groups of people in a dedicated online space.  I think it’s safe to say that the academy values sharing and collaboration in teaching and learning.  There is much evidence to suggest that students also value sharing and collaboration in learning.

Judging from students’ widespread use of applications such as Facebook, Piazza, Snapchat, Instagram, QQ, Yik Yak, and others, it seems that a great many students are comfortable in a culture of connecting virtually with fellow students to share their opinions, ideas, and knowledge.   I’ve recently learned that for many students, participation in these online forums is driven by prosocial values.   In this day and age where wide-spread sharing is easy and immediate, several issues concerning academic integrity arise.

One issue is that we sometimes see excessive collaboration on assessments and assignments that were meant to be completed individually.  But when we encourage peer learning and even peer evaluation, how do students know when they’ve crossed the line?  Indeed, how do students know where the line is when that line is not explicitly defined in the first place, and shifts from one course to another?  How do we help students determine what “original work” looks like when they’ve discussed their ideas with peers and their peers have provided feedback?  When we promote peer learning, how do we define excessive collaboration?

Another issue is that it has become common to see course assignments, class notes, lecture recordings, lab reports, midterms, and essays can be quickly and easily shared, traded, bought, and/or sold on the internet. In fact, some websites use prosocial language to attract students who are looking for “study resources” to help them “build a better learning community” in order to “excel” (https://www.coursehero.com/).   Awareness of these shared “resources” may be common knowledge among students.  Are they common knowledge among instructors?  Are instructors aware of the backdrop of sharing that happens outside of the course learning management system?  If so, how does this awareness influence their decisions around course design?   Is there anything that instructors can do to prevent their teaching materials from being posted publically?  What do we tell students who worry that their original work will be posted publically (or worse, sold) by a peer with whom they have shared it in a peer evaluation activity?

These are just some of the concerns that affect those of us who teach and learn at university today. Perhaps students, administrators, and instructors can, and should, connect with one another to share their thoughts about how to navigate teaching and learning in this culture of sharing.

The Debate Over Accommodations: Making Space for Mental Health in the Classroom — Sarah Forbes

Equality doesnt mean EquityMost professors are aware of their responsibility to accommodate students with disabilities in their classroom.  Many of them may not be as aware that this responsibility extends to students with a documented mental health condition as well. While mental health issues are often invisible, they create many difficulties for students in academia. By allowing reasonable accommodations, instructors can encourage these students to reach their full potential.

What do these accommodations look like?

Accommodations can take many forms. For students with difficulty focusing in crowded environments due to issues like ADHD, alternative exam locations allow them to write their exams in smaller rooms. Often other resources are used alongside alternative exams such as peer note-takers, where a student will take lecture notes on behalf of someone who may not be able to multi-task or focus as well. For students with depression or anxiety who may have difficulties with motivation, short negotiated extensions on assignments may help them to manage their time. Other changes in assignment structure can be negotiated with specific students as well, such as changing a public speaking presentation to a prerecorded lecture for a student with social anxiety. In any of these cases, accommodations require the student to document their issue with AccessAbility Services. For extensions and other personalized changes in exam or assignment structure, the student and instructor can collaborate to find a solution that fits both the assessment needs of the instructor and the issues faced by the student.

cartoon accommodationsThere is some controversy over the idea of accommodations that change assignment structure or allow extra time. However, as illustrated by the cartoon accompanying this article, expecting all students to achieve the same results based on their different abilities and starting points in life is unrealistic. Accommodations given to students who need them simply gives them the chance to truly show the work they have put into the class and the knowledge they have gained.

 The debate over content warnings

The most controversial accommodation by far appears to be the “trigger warning” or “content warning.”  The idea is exactly the same under either name. For controversial or difficult topics that must be discussed in class, the instructor will present a short warning prior to the introduction of the topic. This allows students for whom this topic may be upsetting or trigger flashbacks/anxiety attacks to choose how they interact with the subject matter. This is especially important in the arts, where controversial discussions are the backbone of many classes. While discussions about rape culture and sexual assault on campus are important and help to eliminate stigma as well as introduce students to new viewpoints, they can send a student who has survived sexual assault into a debilitating panic attack, forcing them out of the conversation. Many professors view these warnings as an escape route from difficult conversations and assignments. Anyone can claim to be “triggered,” they argue, and then skip out on important lecture material and assignments with no penalty. However, the content warning does not mean that the material is not mandatory – it just allows students to be prepared for the discussion. If a student knows that they will not be able to handle the material, they can then approach the professor privately and negotiate any other accommodations necessary.

These warnings are easy to add to a syllabus. They can be placed in the class schedule, next to lectures in which topics such as sexual assault, eating disorders, violence, and any other potentially graphic or disturbing topic are discussed. The discussion culture of university is incredibly important for allowing students to experience many different ideas and viewpoints – but by including upsetting subjects without any warning it can alienate many students with mental illnesses, leaving them out of a discussion that often focuses on them. The voices we most need to hear when talking about some of these issues are from students who have personally experienced them. To encourage them to speak up, we need to keep our classrooms welcoming.

The FDW (Facilitators Development Workshop) – Monica Vesely

ISW Logo

During the last week in May (May 25-29, 2015), ten participants dedicated a week of their time to become trained as Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) facilitators. These now certified facilitators came from a number of institutions – Guelph, McMaster, OCAD, Wilfrid Laurier and Waterloo Universities –to complete the Facilitator Development Workshop (FDW) at the University of Waterloo with their local colleagues. This is the third time the FDW has been held at the University of Waterloo – the previous offerings took place in May 2011 and May 2013.

The Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) is a comprehensive three-tiered instructor development program designed to enhance the teaching effectiveness of both new and experienced educators. The Facilitator Development Workshop (FDW) is the second tier of this program, where participants develop the capacity to lead the Instructional Skills Workshop. Completion of the ISW is a typical prerequisite to the FDW.

The prerequisite Instructional Skills Workshop 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 five-day Facilitator Development Workshop is designed for individuals who have completed the Instructional Skills Workshop and who will be conducting the ISW Program at their institution. The activities of the ISW form the nucleus of the FDW as participants develop new knowledge and techniques for facilitating group development, explore other teaching methods and formative evaluation techniques, and receive feedback on their own teaching and facilitating skills. As with the ISW, the FDW is a peer-based model providing participants a small group setting in which to work on their facilitation skills. The small groups meet in plenary sessions each day featuring such themes as preferred ways of learning, group development, and the use of questions in teaching, among others. The FDW provides an opportunity for individuals to concentrate on their own professional development in a challenging and supportive atmosphere. Some chairpersons participate in the FDW to enhance their competence in providing constructive feedback for their teaching colleagues. Upon completion of the FDW, participants can become part of a larger instructional development network.

The third level of the tier is the Trainer Development Workshop (TDW) where individuals who have completed the Facilitator Development Workshop and who have led several Instructional Skills Workshops develop their skills to offer the Facilitator Development Workshop.

If you are an ISW alumni and are interested in becoming an ISW facilitator, I encourage you to contact me, Monica Vesely (mvesely@uwaterloo.ca) to have your name added to our waiting list. 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 August 18-21, 2015.

Speaking and Visibility: How Google Docs Can Create Co-Presence in Non-Arts Classrooms — Sara Humphreys

Be visibleI work in the Faculty of Math at the University of Waterloo. I was hired as part of a massive project to rethink communications for both native speakers of English and non-native speakers of English. This initiative came about after university administrators learned that scores for the standardized test measuring English competency (the English Language Proficiency Exam or ELPE) were so low that students were unable to do the work required of them in their courses – this, of course, was disastrous for the students, who pay exorbitant tuition as international students.

While some faculties are still using the ELPE, based on this information, the Faculty of Math dumped the ELPE and partnered with both UW’s and St. Jerome’s English departments to shift from simply using a standardized test to measure language skills to actually supplying support for the high percentage of international student that comprise students the Faculty of Math (over 80%).w

I teach a course called ENGL119 Communications in Math & Computer Science, in which approx. 80 -90% of the students I teach are international students, on average, and of that 80%-90%, maybe 20% are female. While I am very glad to see the changes made by the Faculty of Math, I find there is still a gap in the support systems offered non-native-English speakers, namely for specific marginalized populations within the  Faculty of Math.

My focus is on providing supportive, safe environments for female multilingual student: these students face tremendous systemic racism and sexism, even if they do not realize it (and most do not – when we have discussed this issue in class, these women tend to blame themselves – stating, for example, that they need to simply work harder).

Co-Presence

Here we need to turn to Mary Louise Pratt’s idea of co-presence. When these female students are silenced or self-silence (for self-protection), the university loses the voices of these talented students. Their co-presence (active, vocal presence) in the contact zone of the university – the space where cultures of different geographies, histories, languages and cultures intersect – is required to imagine news ways of learning and being. Just to give you an example of these student voices, the following excerpts are by female multilingual students, who were working in an online collaborative environment designed by WordPress and Desire 2 Learn – here, students could interact with each others’ personal pages (this is representative student work – I find most math students are community-minded):

From a personal statement on how math should be taught:

“We should be entitled to the freedom to express and share our personal understandings and experiences in certain disciplines. While this is usually inherent in the arts disciplines, personal understandings and experiences also play an indispensable part in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines to reach out to the general public. We feel connected if we share similar emotions or experiences, and the desire to connect motivates us to learn proactively. Last but not least, we should be entitled to the freedom to diminish the barriers between different disciplines and connect them in varying ways. Blurring the borders between different fields helps us to understand them from diverse perspectives. More importantly, connections between different disciplines bring people interested in these areas together and encourage them to explore themselves from an interdisciplinary perspective.”

From a biography statement:

“Coming from a low-income area in Pakistan, I was determined to change the conservative mindset that prevails in my hometown where the women are considered homemakers and denied equal opportunities. Therefore, I taught in Mathematics in a government school in my hometown. I emphasized the importance of education and women empowerment to the few girls attending the school. This is one of the main reasons I wanted to study abroad at a prestigious university like the University of Waterloo, so that I could set an example for the rest of the girls back home and encourage them to strive for the best.  I also want to further develop my knowledge and thrive to achieve academic success so that I could go back home and make a difference.”

Amazing – right? These women deserve support, encouragement and safe spaces free from the threat of stereotypes (or worse), in which they can thrive.

According to a study conducted by Emily Shaffer, when women had no role models or little in the way of support networks, they equated themselves with the stereotype that women have a hard time succeeding in Math, science or tech fields. The hypothesis when Shaffer started her study of female math students was that these women would try to defy the gender stereotypes they faced; however, what Shaffer discovered is that without a strong support system of peers offering examples of counter-stereotypic behaviours, the women conformed to stereotype and their math scores declined.

Annique Smeding found that when women in STEM disciplines are given support and their counter-stereotype behaviour is supported, they redefine what comprises STEM practice. For example, these female math students who resist stereotypes defined emotionality as  a positive aspect of their STEM practice – a direct contrast to the edict of rationality as the ultimate term of STEM disciplines

Social science studies tell us generally that women in STEM need support networks and I argue that multilingual female STEM students need those networks and strong role models because  they are doubly or even triply oppressed under multiple stereotype threats and are often racialized to boot.

This is where social media comes in.

Elizabeth Koh explains that “[u]sing online collaboration applications, two design elements…. affect learning outcomes – sociability and visibility”; the affordances of Google docs (commenting function, choice to add a photo and other identity markers) can increase agency and confidence. Don’t take my word for it, Popov et al showed that  online collaboration encourages “more equal participation for non-native speaking students… than face-to-face discussion.” Online collaboration enhances inter-cultural awareness, including the sharing of experiences, background knowledge, and decision-making strategies.

The above quantitative social science analysis are useful but in order to culturally situate and find solutions, we need cultural critique: social media can offer the third space, as Homi Bhahba calls it, in which identities are fluid because they and the spaces they are in are always in an act of becoming – they are always in a state of being made. Within this space, new ways of interacting and understanding each other can be imagined and embraced. The third or interstitial space invites respectful, non-violent conflict – this is a space of negotiation. I can’t think of a better description of the Google docsspace in which students join with me to comment and interact. Students can remain anonymous or take on their own identities. Female students (actually all students) who normally do not say a word in class are talkative in this space, sharing ideas, and even countering my own interventions.

Watch Your Essentialism

Helen Kennedy, in her essay in that really excellent essay collection edited by Julie Rak and Anna Polette Identity Technologies, explains that we need to take heed of Stuart Hall’s warning concerning “the essentialist model of human subjectivity,” but we also need to understand that “the tropes of identity and community endure.” After all, visibility is not necessarily a good thing: as Foucault tells us, visibility is a trap. The online presence must not be about surveillance and control. And so, as Kennedy explains,  we must not simply understand identity static and quantitative  but fluid cultural performance and  practice that is in continuous formation. Whether online identities are fragmented or not, (keeping in mind Sherry Turkle’s famous analysis of online identity formation) people will continuously try to connect across political, social and cultural barriers and to me, marginalized students, in particular,  can use the intersectional capabilities of social media spaces to empower themselves through visibility and agency.

What Do I Do?

The way it works is that you need to get a Google account, then open a Google doc and create content you and your students can edit or that your students can build. Hit “share” (top right of screen in Drive) and choose “get shareable link” so that your students can use docs without having to open a Google account (most of them have one, though). The idea is to interact with students and encourage them to interact with each other in a safe space online. This space is, in part, made safe by reminding students they need to follow the ethics of the university and also the presence of an encouraging teacher (I try). When I saw how powerfully female multilingual speakers were interacting on Docs, I knew that they saw this as a safe space and told me so in an online survey. Now I will expand my use of Drive and Docs to provide resources for female students while also creating an inclusive environment for all my students.

Citations:

  • Koh, Elizabeth, and John Lim. “Using online collaboration applications for group assignments: The interplay between design and human characteristics.” Computers & Education 59.2 (2012): 481-496.
  • Popov, Vitaliy et al. “Perceptions and experiences of, and outcomes for, university students in culturally diversified dyads in a computer-supported collaborative learning environment.” Computers in Human Behavior 32 (2014): 186-200.
  • Shaffer, Emily S, David M Marx, and Radmila Prislin. “Mind the gap: Framing of women’s success and representation in STEM affects women’s math performance under threat.” Sex roles 68.7-8 (2013): 454-463.
  • Smeding, Annique. “Women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM): An investigation of their implicit gender stereotypes and stereotypes’ connectedness to math performance.” Sex roles 67.11-12 (2012): 617-629.

Dr. Sara Humphreys is the editor and project leader of Digital Communitas, where this post was originally published (it has been republished here with her permission). She has been published in anthologies and leading journals in the fields of game studies, rhetorical theory, literary theory, and American literature. Dr. Humphreys hopes this site will evolve into a new form of research dissemination and collaborative thought about connections between and amongst academic publics, digital tools, media and spaces.

Image courtesy of Light Brigading.

‘As Long As You Don’t Get Sick’: Mental Health on the University Campus – Sarah Forbes

In the past few years, mental health issues have become increasingly visible as an obstacle in university education. Ivy League schools, such as Yale and Harvard, have been faulted for placing standuptostigmastressful burdens on their students without providing access to services that would help them manage the load. Rachel Williams, a student at Yale, wrote of her experience suffering from depression and attempting to navigate the withdrawal/readmission policy, ”Thinking back to that welcome packet, there is a conspicuous omission: ’We love you and want you and will provide for you and protect you, as long as you don’t get sick.’”

In this student’s case, her forced medical withdrawal from campus was prompted by her sense that her safety and security were in jeopardy at her university. Others felt that they were being forced to choose between staying in their programs at the expense of their health, or medically withdrawing with no guarantee of being able to readmit. After Luchang Wang explicitly referred to the readmission policy in her suicide note in January 2015, Yale promised to examine where it can do better. But is it too little too late?

These are the schools that students aspire to attend and educators strive to emulate, and even they are struggling with how to handle the mental health issues of their students. Therefore, it’s important for us to look at the experiences of those affected by these problems in our own community. This winter, Imprint published a feature article (I Don’t Live Here I’m Just Visiting) that discussed one student’s battle with depression and how it impacted her academic success. A key point in her narrative is the idea that the services were never going to be sufficient for the number of students that needed to use them, leading to wait times that could be extremely detrimental.

It took about a month of waiting for my first appointment. And then when I was walking to the bus to go to my first appointment, I got a call saying the counsellor I was meeting was taking a sick day and I’d have to reschedule. The next available time was a month later.

The University of Waterloo has committed to address this issue, but in the meantime students are left in the cold without the tools to handle their symptoms. Untreated mental health conditions can lead to withdrawal from courses, failing grades, late or incomplete assignments, and many other negative outcomes in the classroom. With the aim of keeping students in the university system, what can instructors do to help students?

At a classroom level, there are many actions instructors can take to improve the learning experience for those with mental health issues. A huge factor in student success is the sensitivity of the instructor, and this can manifest in many ways. For a student who has suffered a trauma, some seemingly innocuous subjects can cause flashbacks or anxiety attacks. An instructor who is willing to preface these topics with a warning or allow students to pursue alternate assignments will allow for greater success in their class. For students whose depression leaves them without the energy to complete assignments on time, flexible and reasonable extensions make a huge difference.

In the next installment of this series, I will discuss specific accommodations and strategies in more detail, focusing on the debate over reasonably accommodating different needs while still accurately testing the abilities of each student.

 

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