Centre for Teaching Excellence Blog – Page 20

Stress: Permission Granted – Kyra Jones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo credit: DJ Whitegold

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.

The One Hit Wonder – Veronica Brown

For several years now, all Ontario degree programs have been expected to demonstrate their students’ fulfillment of degree-level expectations as part of their program review process. There are different requirements at the undergraduate (UDLEs) and graduate (GDLEs) levels (more info is available in the Program Review area of the CTE Curriculum site). There are six UDLEs, which institutions could choose to use, adapt, or create their own and demonstrate how their own fulfilled the six required. At Waterloo, we adopted the six required UDLEs.

Depth and breadth of knowledge
Knowledge of methodologies
Application of knowledge
Communication skills
Awareness of limits of knowledge
Autonomy and professional capacity

But wanted to capture other elements that uniquely define Waterloo and added two more.

Experiential learning
Diversity

Consider the UDLE, “Awareness of limits of knowledge”, which is defined as

… an understanding of the limits to their own knowledge and ability, and an appreciation of the uncertainty, ambiguity and limits to knowledge and how this might influence analyses and interpretations. (Ontario Council of Academic Vice-Presidents in University of Waterloo, n.d.)

How do you measure “an appreciation of uncertainty, ambiguity and limits of knowledge”? I don’t think you can, not as it is stated here. You need to better define this UDLE as it relates to the experience your students have had and what you might expect them to experience. I find Eisner’s suggestions for expressive activities that will lead to expressive outcomes (see my February 18 blog) more and more appealing. Every student might have a different limit of their own knowledge but we can provide experiences that help them explore what those limits are. We can expose them to examples where a lack of knowledge has led to serious analysis and interpretation issues. We can give them labs or problem sets or case studies, etc., that have no single, right answer to help them gain comfort or an appreciation of uncertainty. The final outcome for each student might not be the same but we can control and define the activities that lead to that outcome.

The challenge, however, is to ensure that these experiences are scaffolded throughout the degree rather than being a one-hit-wonder. How can a student gain an appreciation of uncertainty if every question they are asked to answer has a single answer? How is that comfort or appreciation demonstrated by questions like “Will that be on the test”? How do we gauge student’s limits of their knowledge if we gather no evidence of the reflective process they use to review (or not) their performance in our class?

Next week, as I conclude this blog, I’ll explain why I posted the images throughout these blogs. Have a look at the images and try to guess where they are from, why I posted them, and what they have to do with the affective domain.

Veronica

References

University of Waterloo. (n.d.). The degree level expectations. Retrieved from https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/curriculum-development-and-renewal/program-review-accreditation/8-degree-expectations on March 4, 2014.