Teaching Strategies – Page 8 – Centre for Teaching Excellence Blog

The Challenge: Experiential Education for All – Katherine Lithgow

“Experiential education for all” is one of the goals set out in our strategic plan and stems from our recognition “that learning is stronger when knowledge is tried and tested”. It is the ‘for all’ part that sounds a bit overwhelming, doesn’t it? I mean, how can we provide this opportunity in a meaningful way for all of our students? Continue reading The Challenge: Experiential Education for All – Katherine Lithgow

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

Passion – Veronica Brown

This is Georgian Bay. North of Parry Sound.

As a long distance swimmer, it is my favourite place in the world to swim. Not only because it is fresh water, has fewer scary creatures than the ocean (no sharks or jelly fish here), is warm (usually a balmy 75F in the summer), and is relatively calm (unlike the English Channel). But it is also where I learned to swim.

But many changes have occurred in the Great Lakes since my Great Uncle and his father bought the island 100 years ago. The ’30s and ’60s were marked by extremely low water levels while the ’80s had some of the highest water on record. The challenge today, among others, is low water. You see, this is where I learned to swim.

In the background, you can see a small green bucket. That’s where our dock used to start. It was moored to the rock in the foreground. The one with the chain attached. There was enough water here to park a 14′ aluminum with a 35HP, our canoes, and, depending on the wind that day, a small sailboat.

Where I used to paddle, now there are trees.

And if you look closely at the island below, you can see the high water mark. The line where the rock colour changes from grey to beige.

Consider the size of the Great Lakes and then look at that image. The water is four or five feet lower. What has happened to all the water?

During the past several weeks, I have shared my exploration of the affective domain. Appreciation. Uncertainty. Honesty. Integrity. Ethics. Awareness of Limits. Open-mindedness. Commitment. Compassion. Cooperation. When I work with departments across campus, these themes arise regardless of the discipline or degree-level. These affective elements give our students a shared experience.

Now, why did I share the water story above? Not because I want you to know about dropping Great Lake water levels but because it is an example of an activity (and assessment) that you could try in your own class to encourage expression of ideas in the affective domain. Here are some suggestions.

End a class with a picture that relates to key themes in the class. Ask students to find connections between the image and the theme as part of a short assignment that functions as a review of the past few weeks and helps you assess their readiness for the next unit.
Create a 3-Minute Thesis contest in your class around a theme that requires a sense of more than just the knowledge and skills components of the course. If I had presented the above water story in class, it could be done in 3 minutes.
Encourage creative responses to assignments through flexible formats for submission. If writing is not a specific objective of the assignment, why not encourage video, poster, or presentations. A well-designed rubric could be used to assess all these formats.

And now, the title. Passion. It is yet another element of the affective domain. In all this need for measurement – grades, program evaluation, accountability – I worry that we are squeezing out the affective elements that are, I believe, critical to success, in school, the workplace, and in life. Several weeks ago I shared that the affective domain is a mystery to me. I think that mystery was tied to a fear of not “measuring it properly”, as if there was a single answer. Ironically, it is not unlike how my students must sometimes feel when faced with a complex problem, one in which there is no one single answer, one that cannot be measured to two significant digits.

Thank you for sharing this journey with me. I do not have a single answer because it does not exist. But I better understand the tools that can be used, it has reaffirmed my idea that we need to provide multiple opportunities to our students to explore these ideas, and that while they might not all fully embrace these affective elements, we can provide the activities, opportunities, and experiences, that can help them move in that direction.

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.

Media and the affective domain – Veronica Brown

I am still letting last week’s thoughts about expressive activities leading to expressive outcomes rummage around in my head. For now, I’d like to talk about the value of media in instruction and assessment of the affective domain. I’d like you to take a few minutes to look at the following three examples.

Example 1 – Tacoma Narrows Bridge

First, watch this video. It shows the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse in 1940.

The image of that bridge oscillating has stayed with me all these years. We watched that film (yes, this was pre-YouTube and I’m almost positive it was a film) in high school physics. For me, it was life-changing. Sounds a bit dramatic but I could never look at a structure the same way again. Even watching it today, a thousand questions run through my mind. How did that happen? Not just the physics of it but the human side, too. Who reviewed all the specs? How did this possibly happen? Can concrete actually move like that? Why did that car get stuck there? Was anyone hurt? But as I sit at my computer writing this blog, a different question comes to mind.

Why did my physics teacher show us that film?

Example 2 – Rural and Urban Life in England

Now, I would like you to perform two Google searches for images (just click the links below to see my search’s results).

Search 1: 17th Century rural England http://bit.ly/1iUw3JL

Search 2: 19th Century Tenements http://bit.ly/1g0ZRof

How do you feel when you see those two images? Where would you rather live? Why? This idea of sharing images for comparison was presented by Linda Hunter at the Teaching & Learning Innovations (TLI) Conference at the University of Guelph (2012). She used two images to help students immediately see the difference between two time periods. She also played examples of the music of the eras (the abstract of her presentation, Making Connections Across Disciplines: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Interpreting Art, Music and Film for Sociological Theory Applications, is available on the TLI web site). While we might understand that it was crowded in London in the late 19th century, how quickly we might be able to appreciate just how different it was from rural life 200 years earlier. These images and the music served as an introduction to a lesson but could also become an assessment tool. By asking students to find images to represent that era then comparing the images through a written component, students are able to demonstrate their knowledge of the era while also reaching into the affective domain. Another option would be to have students create something to represent both eras, such as a piece of art, a photo, a video, or some other piece.

Example 3 – Durham City Baths

Finally, I’d like you to look at the images in this article, Adventures of a Serial Trespasser. In particular, check out Photo 20 then compare it to the photos on Rob Birrell’s photography blog – Durham City Baths. I can imagine asking students to review both photos in any number of disciplines. They could prompt a discussion in any number of disciplines, such as planning, recreation and leisure, sociology, fine arts, engineering, economics, or environment and resource studies. To encourage students to look beyond the simplistic view that it is an old building that’s falling apart, why not ask students to defend the city’s decision to abandon this facility in order to build a new recreation complex. Other questions could encourage students to consider diversity, societal impact, socio-economic factors, historical factors, political implications, etc.. A broad question, such as What factors might influence the city’s decision not to repair the existing facility?, could provide opportunities to assess whether students are even aware of these factors. In this case, media can be used to encourage students to take a broader view of the scenario beyond addressing only the knowledge pieces.

Veronica

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.

Taking one for the team – Jane Holbrook

Last week CTE had our annual professional development day and Mary Power, Samar Mohamed and I facilitated a short exercise with our CTE staff on team-based learning that introduced our group to the use of IF-AT (Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique) cards. We simulated a typical team-based learning activity (where group work is a critical part of the learning process) by having our participants take a multiple-choice test individually and then as a group. Known as RATs (Readiness Assurance Tests), the individual test encourages students to prepare for class, through a reading or other homework, and assesses their level of understanding of the concepts addressed in that pre-class work. A group of 5-7 students then take the same test again together, and in the process they discuss the questions and their answers and then come to a collective decision on the best answer to each question. If they select a wrong answer the IF-AT cards will indicate that and they can discuss and answer the question again … and again until they are correct. By using the IF-AT cards the group gets immediate feedback on their answers, see IF-AT First You Don’t Succeed…. Mary Power’s blog post about an activity using IF-AT cards and students’ reactions to this activity in a Pharmacy class.

Our CTE teams were carefully handpicked for diversity (longstanding CTE staff and new people mixed together) and we assigned them tricky questions on a range of topics (copyright, Canadian history, a math-based brain teaser) hoping that we could prove a key point about this type of team-based activity – that the score of the group is always better than the same test taken by an individual, rather than being dependent on the knowledge of the most competent group member. And even with our tricky questions this was true, people were learning from each other and not just being led by one strong group member. Larry Michaelsen, who has championed team-based learning for many years has tested group decision making in post-secondary courses and has found that when teams are engaged in “contextually relevant and consequential problem-solving” that the group will outperform the most competent individual (Michaelsen, Watson & Black, 1989).

Team-based learning activities using IF-AT cards are most effective when students are applying concepts to solve problems, analyze situations or data, or make diagnoses; when there may be many different approaches to answering the question but where there is one best, defensible answer. Teams should be thoughtfully assembled to include students with diverse backgrounds or skill levels and ideally they work together for a whole term on a series of these activities. The activities can also be used as a springboard to deeper class discussions and/or a preamble to more in depth group projects. The groups in a class should be working on the same problems so that after the RAT is completed, the groups can share their reasoning and conclusions with each other. There’s an aspect of competitiveness in the activities too, with groups vying to do better than each other on the tests. Another important aspect of the RAT process is that groups can challenge the instructor on the correctness of an answer – and that was certainly what happened during our PD day (we’re a fairly argumentative bunch).

See http://www.teambasedlearning.org/ for more information on team-based learning and some convincing testimonials about its effectiveness in large classes. Instructors report higher attendance and participation levels in these classes and importantly students are engaged and motivated.

If you would like to try an activity like this in your class, we have a good supply of IF-AT cards at the Centre to get you started, so please be in touch! Designing some team-based learning opportunities in your course can be a great way to flip some classes in your course too. See Course Design: Planning a Flipped Class.

Michaelsen, L. K., Watson, W. E. & Black, R. H. (1989). A realistic test of individual versus group consensus decision making. Journal of Applied Psychology. 74(5), 834-839.