Centre for Teaching Excellence Blog – Page 17

Addressing Students’ Beliefs about Learning – Crystal Tse

What might be some of the things that are going on inside these students’ minds in this photo? One of them might be asking themselves, “Am I smart enough? Do I belong here? Will my professor think I’m competent?”

As instructors we often focus on content: what content to include in our classes, and how to best deliver this content. However, one important factor that is less discussed in teaching is students’ beliefs and mindsets—their identities, insecurities, and beliefs about intelligence—which can enter the classroom with them and affect their learning before learning has even begun. In this post, I want to talk about people’s beliefs about intelligence and their own abilities, which have been studied by social psychologists for the past few decades.

Growth vs. Fixed mindsets

If your student excelled on a test, would you commend them for their effort, or praise them for being smart?

Research by psychologist Carol Dweck shows that people can have fixed or growth mindsets. People who have fixed mindsets tend to believe that intelligence and ability are fixed, and that people cannot change how smart they are. In contrast, people who have growth mindsets believe that intelligence and ability can change, and that anyone can improve their performance through effort.

The empirical evidence on this concept shows the positive effects of holding a growth mindset, especially in learning contexts. In their research, Dweck and colleagues found that elementary-school aged children who were praised for “being smart” after completing reasoning problems tended to have a fixed mindset about intelligence. These children had performance goals—wanting to show others that they are smart—and after failure at a challenging problem were less motivated, persisted less, enjoyed the task less, and performed worse compared to children who were praised for “putting in a lot of effort.” These children instead tended to have a growth mindset about intelligence. They held mastery goals—wanting to become skilled and seeing failure as learning opportunities. The positive effects of having a growth mindset have also been shown to extend to grades and achievement later in life.

Students may come into the classroom with fixed mindsets about their intelligence and abilities, and encouraging students to think of intelligence as plastic and fluid is one way that may help with their motivation and learning.

Stereotype Threat

There is a persistent problem in education in which there are large group differences in academic performance, such as women performing worse on some university math and engineering tests than men, or some groups of minority students performing worse in academics compared with White students—even when they have the same high school grades. Extensive research conducted at universities over the past 20 years, however, show that these differences in test scores are not because some groups have less ability than others.

An important factor is a psychological threat in the classroom environment called stereotype threat: being concerned that one’s own behaviour could be interpreted by other people as confirming a negative stereotype, which can undermine the performance of people from stereotyped groups. Have you ever felt under pressure in a high-stress situation that made you “choke” in your performance in school, or in another area that was important to you, like sports? This is similar to when a person feels stressed while writing a test—it makes it hard for them to concentrate on answering the questions right because they are so anxious. This happens to everyone, but for women in math for example, they have the extra pressure of knowing that they are stereotyped as being inferior in math ability.

Psychologist Claude Steele pioneered this work (which has since been replicated in over 300 experiments) and showed in the classic study that Black students underperformed on a verbal ability test compared with White students, but only when they were placed under high stereotype threat: being reminded of their race (and the negative stereotype that their group does not do well in academics). When this extra pressure from stereotype threat was removed, however, Black students did just as well as White students.

Students may have identities, insecurities about themselves, or negative stereotypes about their group that may lead to this extra pressure when they are completing an exam, interacting with their classmates, or presenting in front of class. This extra pressure and anxiety can hinder their performance.

Practical Strategies

In light of some of the beliefs students may have about their own abilities or about intelligence in general, psychologists and instructors have come up with strategies that can encourage a growth mindset or lessen students’ fears about their abilities. Instructors can:

help foster an environment where students feel comfortable making mistakes. For example, instructors can share their learning experiences and failures with their students.
acknowledge students’ effort when providing feedback.
talk about stress and anxiety with students as something that is normal, temporary, and can be overcome over time.
communicate to students that they have high standards for them, and assure them that they can meet these standards.
provide opportunities for students to reflect on their development and how far they have come.
provide opportunities for students to make connections with each other, such as group work and study groups.
give anonymous surveys to students at the beginning of or throughout the term asking about their concerns, and teach to those concerns.

Students’ fears and insecurities about their abilities, and how they conceptualize intelligence and the process of learning can hold them back from learning and performing the best they can. However, instructors can help address these problematic beliefs with an awareness of these issues, and by letting students know they are on their side.

As soon as coffee is in your stomach… Ideas begin to move – Honore de Balzac–By Jason Grove

“I believe that I learned more about the machine and how… [it] actually works in more detail from that one activity… than I would ever have done had I just read somewhere about how a coffee maker works in some book.”
Have you ever considered what coffee is and how to brew the perfect cup? We invited over 1200 incoming engineering students to do just that in their first week of classes, in a “pilot” activity launching the Engineering Ideas Clinic. Intended to facilitate learning by exploration, students were first asked as a class to identify the safety hazards associated with using and then dismantling a coffee maker. This proved to be both effective—identifying many hazards that we instructors had missed—as well as “a fun and exciting way… to be introduced to WHMIS”.
Groups of students were then given either an electric drip machine or a Moka pot and asked to brew a “small amount” of coffee (usually interpreted as a full pot). Further instructions were not provided and, since a surprisingly small number of students are coffee drinkers when they arrive on campus, this caused some challenges. Where does the water go in the Moka pot? Which coffee goes in which machine? During brewing, groups were asked to consider the physical processes occurring in the machine and make a list of all the components they expected to find inside. This resulted in a number of points of contention, such as whether a drip machine must include a pump.
If this is coffee bring me tea; and if it is tea, bring coffee.* Perhaps fortuitously, the laboratory venue precluded any tasting of the resulting brews, but the groups moved on to consider what “coffee” is and its desirable characteristics, such as bitterness, acidity and colour. Characterizing coffee can be achieved as a combination of sensory perception—sight, smell and taste—and analytical measurement—we provided thermometers, pH probes and spectrophotometers.
With the coffee brewed and characterized, it was time to discover whether the guesses at the machine’s internal components were correct. While the classes differed in their zeal for disassembly (most of the machines could be re-assembled), some surprises were in store inside, such as the amount of empty space, the absence of a pump, the mystery object in one of the tubes (a one-way valve) and the single heating element serving double-duty as water and hot-plate heater. While the Moka pot was much easier to dismantle, figuring out its operation was usually more challenging. Groups prepared a sketch of the machine they had and used this to explain its operation to a group with the other machine.
Finally, the instructor brought the class back together for a rich discussion, ranging across how the machines work, measurement variability and error, communication with technical drawings, constraints and criteria for design, the concept of design specifications and answering questions such as “what is coffee?” and “how is the filter basket made?”. Led by their own inquiry and exploration, this activity provided students with an opportunity to consider what engineering design is and how it is underpinned by principles of physical science. In keeping with the spirit of the activity, I will leave the last words to the students:
“Learning how a common household object required various engineering concepts to design and construct really opened our eyes to how applicable our engineering education can be.”
“The lab was a great hands-on experience. It was very interesting to see the inner workings of coffee makers and the engineering design behind them. Hopefully we can have more labs like this one”
“The ChE 102 Coffee Lab was one of the best moments of 1A so far. I liked that we students finally got to experience a hands-on introduction to the world of engineering. Taking apart an everyday object and analyzing how different parts help the machine function as a whole was a fun way to apply engineering concepts that we’ve started learning about in class. I hope they do more of these hands-on labs since they’re a nice break from just lectures and theory.”

With thanks to Patricia Duong, Partho Mondal, Gerry Shebib, Inzamam Tahir and Geethan Viswathasan from the Engineering class of 2019 for allowing me to quote their comments on the coffee activity.
*This quote is sometimes attributed to Abraham Lincoln, though it appears to have been an old joke even in the mid-nineteenth century.

You can’t see me — The Spotlight Effect – Sherry Lin, CTE Co-op Student

Thinking back to before I can remember, my peers and educators have identified me as a shy and quiet individual: slightly inadequate in class participation, but excelling with regard to listening skills. After acknowledging this about myself and given time to reflect, I have since been challenging myself to become more outspoken and pushing to leave my anxiety-neutral condition — to step outside of my comfort zone.

Just last week, I had the wonderful opportunity to sit in on and participate in the CTE Fundamentals of University Teaching workshop “Teaching with Confidence”, facilitated by Angela Nyhout. Participants were able to reflect on aspects they were less confident about in their teaching methods, and discuss why this may be so. One of the most relatable and interesting concepts I took away from this workshop was the social psychological aspect of confidence.

I believe we have all felt it at some point in time: the feeling we’ve coined as ‘butterflies in our stomachs’. The psyche holds much more power than we think, and this reflects in our actions; it could be in the form of an uncharacteristic stutter, quivering of the voice, or an uncontrollable tremor of the hands. These behaviours are a result of what we call “The Spotlight Effect.”

The Spotlight Effect phenomenon refers to the tendency to overestimate the attention you are receiving from the audience you are interacting with. One is left with the constant awareness brought on by a glaring forehead zit, or the paranoia about whether or not there are pieces of spinach stuck in between the teeth. Were your hands too clammy when you shook the ones of your future employer? What about the possibility of a mustard stain on your shirt, when giving an important speech in a sea of attentive eyes? If we take a moment to think about it, each and every one of us can probably recall a situation where self-consciousness took over and the impulse to fold into yourself and self-destruct, or run away, arose.

Speaking to a few participants in the workshop, I realized anxiety and self-consciousness is a trait we all hold – it’s just that some people have it to a greater extent than others. Regardless of whether you are far skewed on the extrovert side of the scale, or a shy and introverted individual, feelings of anxiety and self-consciousness are universal, and do tend to occur now and again. I also learned that, to my dismay, anxiety will likely follow me to postgraduate studies and beyond. Fortunately, through taking this workshop, I have discovered ways to combat this predicament. The key, as I had always known but had trouble acknowledging, is practice and experience. More practice will provide one with more experience. By accumulating more experience, confidence will naturally be boosted through familiarity and routine. Other tips and tricks include eating something small or chewing a piece of gum. This will trick the mind into thinking that if one is eating, there is no imminent danger. Without the threat of danger, it will rid the mind of the “fight or flight” adrenaline response that may kick in.

Narcissistically speaking, we are the centres of our own universes and therefore we are apprehensive of judgment from others. Unfortunately, we are also our own worst critics. In the clashing of these two fates, we tend to beleaguer ourselves regarding our letdowns, and overlook or make light of our achievements. We subconsciously believe that the only way to feel accomplished, that we did a job well, is to please everybody. I think something we often forget is that we spend so much time worrying about ourselves that we do not have time to worry about others. The figurative double-edged sword runs both ways, in that others likely do not find the time to worry about you. Thus, it turns full circle. You can’t see me; so I can be confident, because there is nothing to worry about.

Quick and Dirty Guide to Sentence Structure — Mark Morton

One of the things I enjoy most about working at CTE is the opportunity to work with c0-op students. Each term, we have a co-op student who writes Teaching Stories that feature Waterloo instructors whose teaching practice is especially effective or innovative. After the co-op student writes the teaching story, I’ll usually edit it and — because my PhD is in English — I really give it a thorough going over! Fortunately, we’ve always had co-0p students with excellent writing skills, so not much editing is needed.

Nonetheless, the process recently reminded me of a document that I wrote more than 20 years ago, when I was teaching first-year English courses at another university. I eponymously entitled it “Mark Morton’s Quick and Dirty Guide to Sentence Structure.” Rereading it, I still like it: it’s brief, efficient, and clear (which is not an easy job when you’re trying to explain the vagaries of English grammar!). Rather than have it languish on my PC, where it would eventually vanish when my hard drive crashes, I’m going to share it here as a PDF: Mark Morton’s Quick_and_Dirty Guide to Sentence Structure. Use it or ignore it as you see fit!

Peeking Behind the Campus Curtains: Learning Through Leadership — Fahd Munir, CTE Coop Student

Imagine a university experience without clubs, teams, or leadership opportunities. While academic achievement is important, many other campus opportunities provide chances to get involved in other aspects of university life. Going to class is usually the number one priority; however, that does not and should not make it the only priority. This idea of getting involved with campus life as a student leader is something I learned in my first year living at the Ron Eydt Village residence at the University of Waterloo.

When September rolls around, the campus is filled with promotions from the various student clubs, teams, and services offering leadership opportunities. So why get involved? Why take on leadership opportunities at all?

Signing up for clubs and attending meetings sounds a bit overwhelming, especially with midterms, assignments, readings and finals all term long. This being said, once you dip your toe into the extra-curricular pool you see how easy it really can be! There are plenty of opportunities across campus that student leaders can utilize to refine their learning style.

Any first year undergraduate student can tell you about the challenge of making new friends in class. Most students are too focussed on lecture content to care what you have to say, and when you are finally able to strike up a conversation with someone, you don’t see them again in that same spot next class. University is always a good place to find a common-ground with students who share similar interests. So how do you find these students if not in class?

One of the most comforting things to know as an undergraduate student is that there are students in my class that can be helpful if I miss a lecture due to illness or an interview. Not every student has the luxury in their first year to have a residence floor where making friends is as simple as saying hello every morning. Assembling study groups with the students in your residence is crucial to learning how to learn in a new environment away from home. Every student has a different mode of learning, so understanding what works on an individual basis is the best way to achieve academic success.

If you talk to any successful upper-year university student on campus they will tell you the same thing: they didn’t get to where they are alone – they needed the people around them to help put them in a position where they could succeed and learn more effectively. Study groups that may not have been as effective back in high school become much more constructive and useful around exam times. One of the most satisfying rewards that study groups or extra-curricular involvement provides is the chance to bounce ideas off of other students.

The Federation of Students(FEDS) works with services and clubs on campus that specialize in academics, religion, environment, politics, business, health, and everything in between. Learning is not limited to these types of clubs; it can also become easier by involvement in intramural sports, fitness classes and sports team. With all of these different ways to meet other students it was really up to me to pick what I felt best lined up with my interests.

So now that we have established the presence of opportunities on campus, the question becomes: do the new friends you meet outside of class help or hinder your learning? In other words, is student leadership a hindrance or a supplement to learning? Experiential learning is one of the pillars of the University of Waterloo’s strategic plan, especially with the emphasis on co-operative education for many students. Experiential learning, through club and service experiences, allows students with similar academic and employment aspirations to interact. This is beneficial to learning because it allows both students to gain a new perspective and discuss concepts more openly. See the Centre for Teaching Excellence blog written by Katherine Lithgow called “Providing Authentic Learning Experiences” for more information about experiential learning.

My own involvement with the Campus Response Team (CRT), which is composed of undergraduate students from all of the different faculties, shows how getting involved with other undergraduate students enhances one’s learning. The bonds that I have made during my previous two terms volunteering have given me an outlet to ask for advice from the older students, as well as the opportunity to make some great friends to spend time with outside of classes. So how does this experience make me a better learner? Not only has the CRT boosted my confidence during a medical response, but it has helped reinforce important soft skills such as communication, teamwork and project management. CRT has also given me an opportunity to discuss academic interests, course content, lab experiments and instructor teaching styles with my fellow undergraduate students.

Clubs, services and teams help you obtain the soft skills necessary to succeed in the workplace and academic environment. The soft skills are transferable to different areas of learning, such as study habits at work or on campus. Learning how to communicate better can lead to setting up a study group which can actually lead to more success in academic work. Joining an intramural team on campus can be the perfect way to alleviate the stress that gets built up from assignments and exams. Without this burden of stress, students can learn freely and absorb knowledge better. Professional schools and graduate student programs in Canada are becoming more competitive, so it is important to be well-rounded through leadership experience.

Being a leader on campus is about more than just résumé building; rather, it’s about applying effective leadership qualities to the academic learning environment such as on a co-operative work term. Leadership opens the door for self-discovery, but it requires that we check behind the scenes of campus life to do so. So the next time the club fair rolls around, use it as an opportunity to sneak a peek behind the campus curtains. What you notice might actually surprise you!

Oh SMART Board, where art thou? Part 1 — Eric Van Halteren

Having recently finished my Bachelors of Education degree, I came out of school with a wealth of knowledge and an array of teaching strategies under my belt. During my practicum placements, I gained a variety of experiences working with middle school students and learned about the wonders of SMART Board. To quickly describe, a SMART Board is a digital board where an image is projected onto a large, whiteboard looking touch screen which is connected to your computer. With the appropriate software, the instructor can actively engage in his/her lessons using the touch screen with writing tools, built in manipulatives, and video capabilities.

From a teaching standpoint, I think SMART Boards are wonderful teaching tools that go far beyond that of the ‘glorified whiteboard’ that they were sometimes described as. They are a great interactive tool that I could use in a classroom, and the software was relatively intuitive. With the software for the board, I was able to create lessons that could accommodate multiple learning styles without having to draw upon a vast array of external tools. I found myself experimenting with the software and testing the limits of it, with the goal of enhancing student learning in my classroom.

With this newfound knowledge about SMARTBoards in mind, I was fully expecting to see these tools in many classrooms when recently I arrived at uWaterloo. However, when I arrived on campus and explored some classrooms, I was not able to locate one. I went on a quest to find a SMARTBoard, looking from building to building, but was only able to locate whiteboards, chalkboards and projectors without interactive boards. Although they may be somewhere on campus, I was at a loss as to where they could be. At this point I started to question my view of SMART Boards. Was I wrong? Were they really just glorified whiteboards? But having used them in a classroom, I knew this to not be true. But if this is not the case, than why are they uncommon in a post-secondary classroom?

What I would like to know is what may hold instructors back from using a SMART Board in the classroom. If the university offered these boards, would instructors use them? When I was teaching in an elementary school setting, having a SMART Board often enriched my lessons due to the variety of manipulatives that I could readily have at my disposal. However, classrooms at a university level are often more lecture based and the appeal of manipulatives may be lost on many lecturers. Also, classes in university tend to be much larger than secondary school classes, which may restrict the interactive nature of the board. There are many possible reasons for not having a SMART Board in a post-secondary classroom, but the question is whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks for instructors.

At the moment I don’t have an answer as to why SMART Boards are not more common in post-secondary classrooms at uWaterloo. Perhaps they are, but I just haven’t been in the right set of classrooms to find them. Regardless, I plan on unravelling this mystery, or at least further my perspective towards SMART Boards in a post-secondary classroom.

If you happen know of the whereabouts of SMART Boards on campus, or have your own personal experiences using SMART Boards, please share your thoughts and help me unravel this mystery. You can also look forward to Part 2 of this entry, which will be posted on December 11th. For now, I will end this mystery with to be continued…

Exploring Curiosity about Teaching and Learning through LITE Grants

The intent of The Learning Innovation and Teaching Enhancement (LITE) Grants is to promote curiosity, reflection, and exploration in the areas of teaching and learning, with the ultimate purpose of fostering deep student learning. At uWaterloo, we have a vibrant community of faculty and staff members, graduate and undergraduate students involved in this exciting and important work.

Since the inception of the LITE grants just over two years ago, over 30 projects from across all six faculties have been funded. The range of project topics is rather remarkable and includes inquiries into online learning, experiential learning, case-based and community service learning, learning across disciplines, language learning, assessment, written communication, teamwork, and many more. Almost 90 people have been involved in a LITE Grant project. Indeed, most projects are collaborations – some within departments, others across departments or units. Several projects also include graduate or undergraduate students as co-applicants. For most projects, graduate or coop students are hired.

The LITE Grant website features descriptions of the projects and provides a forum for sharing resources generated by the projects, such as reference lists and presentation materials. We invite you to browse through the project descriptions, findings, and resources. You may find answers to a question you’ve had, ideas for a topic you’d like to explore, or the names of colleagues with whom you can connect to talk about shared interests in teaching and learning. We also invite you to consider applying for a grant. The next deadline is October 1, 2014 for the LITE Full Grants and February 1, 2015 for LITE Seed Grants.

Finally, we’re pleased to announce that nine new Seed Grant projects will begin this fall. For more information about the projects, please visit the LITE Grant website.