“Transitioning from High School to a Post-Secondary Institution – What to Expect – Sunny Rakhra”

Every year thousands of students graduate from high school and look to pursue their life goals through post-secondary education. Leading up tstudents-with-laptopso the first day, students are excited about moving out, learning about a specific discipline, and having lots of freedom.  However by the end of the first week, some students are overwhelmed with the new responsibilities and changes.  I have described below four significant things I wish I knew prior to beginning my undergraduate studies.

  1. Professors are great!

Without a doubt, the relationship among students and professors is considerably different than the relationship between students and high school teachers. The class sizes are exponentially larger and some individuals may feel intimidated by professors. Consequently, students may be reluctant to ask professors for help.  Through personal experiences, I have come to a conclusion that professors are among the most helpful individuals on campus, because they hold scheduled office hours for students and are exceptional sources for career guidance.

  1. Independence

Whereas high school teachers might consistently remind students about upcoming assignments and exams, university professors might remind students about an upcoming assignment or exam only once or twice. Clearly, as students enter a post-secondary institution, it is the students’ responsibility to complete the assigned work and readings independently. Essentially, the university experience revolves around the goal of promoting independence.

  1. Sleep-Grades-Socialize

I am sure everyone has heard about how university students are only capable of choosing two-of-three options when it comes to sleeping, socializing, and obtaining good grades. However, such a statement is false, as many students are able to systematically balance all three options.  All it takes is excellent time-management skills, as such a skill will allow you to balance good grades, spending time with your friends, and obtaining the sleep your body requires.

  1. Make a schedule

Studies have indicated that it takes approximately twenty-one days to form a new habit or routine (Clear, n.d.).  With that in mind, establishing a study schedule will not only have a positive impact on an students’ grades and mental stress, but can also improve their time-management skills. Such positive outcomes are evident because once I began to follow a schedule, I saw a noticeable difference in my grades, while having much more leisure time.

In short, being prepared and recognizing the importance of making a schedule, understanding that professors are a vital tool for success, fostering the responsibility of independence, and defying the false ideology around sleep, grades, and friends will provide students a sufficient foundation on what to expect during the adjustment period

Finally, the University of Waterloo has Transition Programs  available for new students to make the adjustment process much smoother (University of Waterloo, n.d.).

References

Clear, J. (n.d.). How Long Does it Actually Take to Form a New Habit? Retrieved 2015, from James Clear: http://jamesclear.com/new-habit

University of Waterloo. (n.d.). Access Ability Services. Retrieved from https://uwaterloo.ca/disability-services/future-students/transition-programs

 

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.

 

References:

Walking the Talk: Preparing for an External Review — Donna Ellis, CTE Director

review facesAs many of you know, one of CTE’s key services involves facilitating curriculum retreats for departments as they prepare a self-study for academic program review. We help faculty to: identify program-level outcomes, map courses according to those outcomes, and explore how course assessments fit into the curriculum map. See our curriculum renewal website for more details. We feel strongly that we should also undertake similar processes for our own work.  Even though we have only a few programs that might look like a coherent curriculum, and fewer still that lead to some kind of certification, everything we do is meant to be an opportunity for learning about teaching.

As part of the Academic Programming strategic plan, CTE is up for external review in 2017.  Like an academic department, we recognize that some preparation is in order, including thinking carefully about where we’ve been and where we’re going.  One key preparatory step has been our work over the past few terms on designing a comprehensive plan to assess the work of the Centre.  Despite a growing body of literature in the area of teaching centre assessment, no set standards have emerged for assessing a Centre’s work, so we’ve been developing some parameters and frameworks to help guide our efforts.   In many ways we have been predicting this activity since we began preparing to support new academic review processes in 2007, and it is exciting to be acting more fully on it now.

Key principles underlying our plan’s development include being: a) collaborative by involving multiple stakeholders, b) defensible by drawing from the evaluation literature, and c) comprehensive while not assessing everything all the time.  Most importantly, we are striving to create a plan that is sustainable so that no one feels overburdened by contributing to its implementation: we can focus on providing our services and you can focus on your ongoing development.

Our plan is centred around four key questions:

  • Who comes to us?
  • To what extent are we meeting our participants’ needs?
  • What intended outcomes are our participants meeting?
  • How effective are our processes?

These questions are meant to help us gather evidence about our overall impact and indicate how well we are achieving our aims of building capacity, building community, and promoting a culture that values teaching and learning.  We are interested in both short- and long-term results, including the ripple effects to our work, and we are poised to look more systematically at connections and transformations.

Building on the evaluation tool of a logic model, we have identified both output and outcome data to collect:

  • Output Data: event registrations and staff reports (e.g., consultation numbers); resource hits (e.g., website traffic); internal planning (e.g., workload analyses)
  • Outcome Data: surveys (post-event and long-term); participant reports/narratives; interviews and focus groups; other data (e.g., network analyses)

We are now at the stage of building a matrix that involves us mapping our various programs and services according to the questions that need to be addressed in each case and the most appropriate type(s) of data to collect.  A CTE working group is also developing survey questions based on our programming outcomes.  Our goal is to pilot our new instruments and processes this Fall, so expect to experience some new ways of providing feedback on our services.  We thank you in advance for assisting us with this important work.

Another part of our plan is to release an annual report that highlights key assessment data.  We plan to replace our Fall newsletter with this annual report, with the first one scheduled to come out this Fall.  Our new assessment plan won’t be in place by then, but we already have various data to report on to help increase transparency around CTE and the impact of our services.

I am grateful for all of the talented individuals at CTE who are contributing to our assessment plan and annual report, and to our faculty colleagues who have been providing feedback along the way.  Like academic program reviews, our assessment work is part of a larger ongoing continuous improvement process.   There is more work ahead of us, but it is exciting to contemplate all that we can learn from it.

If you have feedback about our assessment approach or would like to learn more, please give me a call   (ext. 35713) or send me an email (donnae@uwaterloo.ca).

References:

Grabove, V., Kustra, E., Lopes, V., Potter, M.K., Wiggers, R., & Woodhouse, R. (2012). Teaching and Learning Centres: Their Evolving Role Within Ontario Colleges and Universities. Toronto: Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario.

Hines, S.R. (2011). How mature teaching and learning centers evaluate their services. In J.E. Miller & J.E. Groccia (Eds.). To improve the academy: Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (pp. 277-279). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Wright, M. C. (2011). Measuring a teaching center’s effectiveness. In C.E. Cook & M. Kaplan (Eds.),  Advancing the culture of teaching on campus: How a teaching center can make a difference (pp.38-49). Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Program development and evaluation logic model templates from University of Wisconsin-Extension:  http://www.uwex.edu/ces/pdande/evaluation/evallogicmodelworksheets.html

‘Seeing beyond the self’: Using reflective writing as an assessment tool – Dan McRoberts

82648702_800bccf11eFor many years, post-secondary educators have been encouraged to move outside the classroom and create transformative learning experiences for university students. Field courses, service learning, and cooperative education are all examples of the kinds of programming that have become increasingly common and popular amongst undergraduates looking to incorporate some unique and useful experiences in their university careers.

Despite the popularity and growth of transformational learning, questions persist about the most effective ways of assessing student learning that results from these experiences. Experiential learning is hard-to-measure so traditional assessment measures often fall short of the mark. Reflective writing is often at the heart of assessment measures employed to qualitatively measure transformative learning, with self-evaluation, and journaling common assignment formats. There are significant challenges with using reflection to assess students, related to the highly personal nature of the transformations being recorded. Pagano and Roselle (2009) find that there is usually little clarity or systematization involved in using reflective practice. What is involved can vary substantially between courses or instructors. Also, reflection tends to rely on students’ own accounts of events and responses and as such it is very hard to discern if learning has indeed taken place. Woolf (2008) also identifies concerns with the confessional ‘dear diary’ approach to reflective writing, as he aligns this with highly personal change or transformation. Given that much of the possible value in transformative learning comes from the opportunity to ‘see beyond the self,’ the question becomes how to design assignments and assessments that will help students develop this awareness and critical reflexivity.

Sometimes it helps to divide the task into two parts, one which focuses on personal development and the other that relates to key academic objectives or themes. Peterson (2008) profiles a service-learning course assessment that combined personal narrative with more academic analysis. Students were asked to prepare two journals with these respective foci, rather than being asked to write whatever came to mind. Doubling the student (and instructor) workload may not be the ideal solution, but fortunately there are models for designing reflective writing that can assess several components in the same assignment.

One is the DEAL model developed by Patti Clayton, which involves students Describing their experience, Examining the experience in light of specific learning objectives, and Articulating their Learning. The assignment is guided by specific prompting questions that encourage students to complete these various tasks in their reflective writing, from the who, what when and where of an experience (describing learning) to more detailed prompts about what was learned and how (examining and articulating learning).

Another, perhaps less well-known, approach is the ‘refraction model’ proposed by Pagano and Roselle (2009). Refraction tries to incorporate critical thinking into the process of reflection to encourage students to move beyond their own perceptions and consider how to address problems or scenarios they may have experienced in their course. This process begins with reflection and activities that are common to the assessment of transformational learning outcomes. From here, however, the authors propose using critical analytic and thinking skills to refract this knowledge and generate learning outcomes. The first stage – reflection – involves asking students to log events and journal reactions. The critical thinking phase asks students specific questions about these experiences, and the refraction stage invites them to suggest solutions and interact with others and their ideas about the same events or issues.

Whether or not the DEAL approach or refraction model are applied, it is useful to remember what Nancy Johnston from Simon Fraser University says about reflection as a means of assessment. “We are looking for evidence of reflection, which means that students are challenging their assumptions, appreciating different points of view, acknowledging the role of power and discourse, the limitations of their conclusions and in short moving from black and white understandings towards recognizing varied shades of gray.”

(image credit: Paul Worthington)

Making Teaching and Learning Visible at the University of Waterloo’s Teaching and Learning Conference – Julie Timmermans and Crystal Tse

owl

 It is moving and inspiring to see 250 colleagues gathered for a day of thinking and talking about teaching and learning.  This year’s Teaching and Learning Conference took place on Thursday, April 30th, with over 200 people from the University of Waterloo and numerous colleagues from neighbouring universities participating in over forty research-based and practice-based sessions.

Vice-President, Academic and Provost, Ian Orchard, set the tone for the day: he opened the Conference by underscoring the value placed on teaching and developing as teachers at the University of Waterloo:

“The University of Waterloo values excellence in teaching, just as it does in research. […] Investing time in developing teachers is a vital aspect of fostering a culture that values teaching and learning and that develops teaching in a community environment.  This conference helps foster community, and makes the sharing of teaching experiences possible, creating a community of scholars of teaching.”

The theme of this year’s Conference was “Making Teaching and Learning Visible.” There is indeed much about teaching and learning that remains unintentionally hidden and unspoken.  And so, through this theme, we explored what we can do to clarify and communicate the processes underlying teaching and learning so that learners and teachers work towards the same outcomes.  We explored challenging and provocative questions, such as “How do we know what students already know, what they don’t know, and what they have learned?” and “How can we make the thinking underlying our instructional decisions more explicit for ourselves, our students, and our colleagues?”. Each of the day’s panel discussions, workshops, and presentations attempted to reveal and communicate assumptions or practices in some way.

Presidents’ Colloquium Keynote Speaker, Dr. Linda Nilson, pursued this theme in her talk, “Making Your Students’ Learning Visible: How Can We Know What They Know?”. During this session, Linda delved into one of the most common yet challenging questions we have as teachers: How can we gather evidence of and measure student learning? She advocated for setting measurable learning outcomes in our courses, and for ensuring alignment between these outcomes, teaching and learning strategies, and assessment methods. Drawing on examples from across the disciplines, Linda provided concrete strategies for measuring and interpreting gains in student learning.  If you’re intrigued by these ideas, you are welcome to download the slides and handouts from the keynote session, available through the Conference website.

A highlight of the Conference was the “Igniting Our Practice” session.  Two inspiring and award-winning University of Waterloo professors, Gordon Stubley, Associate Dean, Teaching in Engineering, and Jonathan Witt, Teaching Fellow in Biology, each taught us a concept from their courses and, in doing so, drew us into the ways of thinking of their disciplines. Does the impressive display of feathers in the tail of the male peacock serve an evolutionary purpose?  What do pre-tests reveal about fourth-year students’ knowledge of particular concepts in their third fluid dynamics course?   Through vivid examples, Gordon and Jonathan led us to think about designing teaching for student learning, and how we might integrate these ideas into our own teaching.

The Conference closed with a wine and cheese reception where colleagues had the opportunity to connect over a drink and some food.   Associate Vice President, Academic (AVP-A), Mario Coniglio closed the Conference, thanking people for their commitment to enhancing teaching and learning.  He also took time to recognize the many people who had contributed to the Conference, including the participants and presenters, the Teaching Fellows, members of the Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE), people who chaired sessions and provided technical support, Creative Services, as well as FAUW.  At CTE, we’re particularly grateful for the vision and financial support AVP-A, Mario Coniglio, and Vice-President, Academic and Provost, Ian Orchard.

And now, it’s time to pursue the ideas that were sown at the Conference. And these actions have meaning and impact.  As Ian Orchard said,

 “All that you do as individuals allows students to be successful, allows teachers to be successful, and, if individuals are successful, the community is successful and therefore the University as a whole can be successful.  Thank you for all you do.”

For details about this year’s Conference, please visit the Conference website.  Planning for next year’s event has already begun!

(Image credit: Sanatanu Sen)

Classroom Demonstrations for the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences: Don’t Let Physicists Have all the Fun! — Dylon McChesney

chemistry demonstrationIf you have a background in science or engineering, there is a good chance that you took part in a classroom demonstration at some point.  Perhaps in high school you helped your chemistry teacher explode or set something on fire (this is the type of teaching that tends to produce audible gasps).  Or, perhaps, in an introductory level university physics course, you did something riskier, like students who volunteer to lay on a bed of nails while their professor smashes a brick on their chest with a sledge hammer as in this example from Harvard). By the way, don’t try anything like this at home, folks!

When you witness somebody survive the force of a brick-smashing sledgehammer while lying on a bed of nails, something abstract like force suddenly becomes concrete.  Nobody will appreciate this more than the volunteers who find themselves indebted to their professors’ lifesaving knowledge of physical laws.  Such demonstrations clearly promote interactivity in the classroom: rather than passively soak in formula after formula, students become active and engaged with the material.  This is good pedagogy because active learning has many benefits, including increased memory retention. For an extensive review of the benefits, see Prince (2004).

Science and engineering make it natural for teachers to incorporate demonstrations because demonstrations are not that different from experiments.  And while an element of risk might ramp up entertainment value, it is fortunately not essential for promoting active learning.  Most demonstrations don’t require students to sign waivers in case they are harmed.  Regardless of risk factors, physicists (as a paradigmatic example) seem to have an advantage with respect to integrating demonstrations into their classrooms that are both inherently interesting and able to concretize otherwise theoretical material in immediately obvious ways.  In the arts, humanities, and some social sciences, the objects of study are typically more abstract.  Rather than looking at the physical world, students in these fields examine ideas and cultural forces—to the chagrin of some, this subject matter can be difficult to connect to the “real world” and, even more disappointingly for others, does not involve burning, smashing, or blowing anything up.  Demonstrations in the arts are perhaps less natural because the elegant but mindless operations of the natural world are not always directly considered.

The above might look like an excuse, but it’s not.  No matter what you teach, there is going to be some way to involve students in demonstrations, as long as some creative interpretation of the word “demonstration” is allowed.  Teaching economics?  Have some of your students volunteer to make trades (with, say, different pieces of fruit) in order to help them understand Pareto efficiency.  Teaching political science?  Split students into two groups that have to accomplish a co-operative task: one in Hobbes’ state of nature, and the other a sovereign state.  Teaching poetry?  Print out poems you have covered and cut them into pieces, then have volunteers race to reconstruct them based on memory.  Teaching game theory?  Have volunteers play a prisoner’s dilemma involving cookies instead of jail time, and see if player strategies veer away from Nash equilibria over time when outcome information is accessible to each successive set of players.

The possibilities for using demonstrations outside of science and engineering might not be endless, but they are plentiful.  It is to our students’ benefit to incorporate demonstrations and promote active learning, so if you are teaching in the arts, remember that you have access to a wide range of pedagogical tools.  After all, a demonstration is just a way of translating a concept into an experience, which is a central aim of teaching.  So don’t let physicists have all the fun!

References

Other Resources

Dylon McChesney is a Graduate Instructional Developer in the Centre for Teaching Excellence.

Image courtesy of Penn State News