Centre for Teaching Excellence Blog – Page 24

Navigating the Pitfalls of Peer Evaluations – Kyra Jones

Having students work as a team for summative and formative assessment can be challenging, but implemented thoughtfully, it can be highly beneficial to students. Teamwork allows an instructor to pose more difficult problems that encourage deep learning. Group work can also be an effective way to engage students in a large class as well as prepare students for the workplace. Despite these benefits, group work can be challenging to implement.

One tool that can help group work succeed in a classroom is to incorporate peer evaluations. Peer evaluations help to provide a key benefit of group work in the classroom: teaching students how to give and receive constructive feedback. Peer evaluations provide a method to keep students accountable for their contributions to the team’s task, can help reduce group conflict, and lead to a more evenly distributed workload amongst group members. Finally, this tool can help alert instructors to conflicts in between group member. Peer evaluations have many benefits, but like group work, using this tool effectively takes careful planning.

First, the expectations of the students in the team setting must be communicated clearly and directly. Students need to be aware of the criteria by which they will be assessed and use to assess their peers. It is also essential that instructors formulate expectations that are realistic and align with the course objectives. It can be helpful to involve the students in creating the peer evaluation criteria and designing procedures surrounding peer assessment. This can motivate students to take the process seriously and address student anxiety surrounding group work. Students take more control of the peer evaluation criteria and process, promoting validity and reliability of the peer assessments.

It is also important to have multiple peer evaluations during group assessments. This allows students to develop clear expectations of their responsibility as a group member and gives students who under-perform, especially those who do not realize the are not meeting their peer’s expectations, a chance to improve.

Additionally, we need to provide students with the tools and skills to give and receive constructive feedback. Giving constructive feedback is not a natural skill and many students have not had the opportunity to participate in peer evaluation. One method to introduce students to this process is through demonstration, looking at a journal article or other work as a class and providing constructive criticism. Further, the class can work together to restructure examples of inappropriate feedback to create constructive comments. This skill that takes practice, which further exemplifies the need for multiple formative peer assessments throughout the project.

In my view, one of the most important aspects of implementing a peer evaluation system is to take into consideration your own teaching style and goals for the class. One model of peer evaluation may work for one instructor, but this model may be ineffective when implemented in your classroom. As with all teaching tools, it is important to tailor peer evaluation models to your own personality, teaching style, course, and institution. Being a good teacher is something we all strive for, but it is important to be a good teacher in a way that reflects who you are.

Peer evaluations can be a tricky component of group work, but with diligent planning and consideration, this tool can make group work a more realistic and successful exercise in the classroom.

Aggarwal, P. & O’Brien, C.L. (2008). Social Loafing on Group Projects: Structural Antecedents and Effect on Student Satisfaction. Journal of Marketing Education, 30(3), 255-64.

Cestone, C.M., Levine, R.E. & Lane, D.R. Peer Assessment and Evaluation in Team-Based Learning. In Michaelson, L.K., Sweet, M., Parmelee, D.X. (Eds.), Team-Based Learning: Small-Group Learnings Next Big Step (69-78). San Francisco: Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Engineering Integrative Learning Community

When our students make connections between their learning experiences within a whole program of study, between courses during a term or between their academic knowledge and co-op experience they are integrating their learning. Designing learning experiences with the intentional goal of helping students integrate their knowledge can help our students apply skills and knowledge learned in one situation to problems encountered in another. For more information about this topic and examples on its use on campus please visit the Integrative Learning section in the CTE webpage.
In the faculty of Engineering, our different programs have very coherent curricula that are very well structured with the aligned lab components, design projects and pre-requisite courses. In addition to our well-structured program a group of Engineering instructors took a step ahead by re-designing their courses to intentionally help their students make connections in their learning. In May 2013 we formed a group called Engineering Integrative Learning community. We have decided to meet twice a term. At these meetings a different instructor will share his/her experience in designing and delivering a course or a course component that focuses on integrative learning, followed by an informal discussion.
This group has met three times so far and we have had very useful and fruitful discussions.

I would like to invite all Engineering instructors to join this group if they would like to know more about specific experiences that others have had, contribute to the discussion, or share their own experience. “Anyone who would like to know more about this initiative can contact me at sssmoham@uwaterloo.ca

Designing assessments that curb academic dishonesty (and increase learning too!) – Jane Holbrook

I recently listened to a segment on the Current on CBC, about academic integrity and the effect of technology on cheating. The main guest was Dr Julia Christensen Hughes, Dean of the College of Management and Economics at the University of Guelph, who talked about the findings of some of the research that she has conducted on Canadian university students. A whopping 80% of Canadian university students admit to having cheated. They admit to at least one of over 30 behaviours that are considered cheating at university ranging from outright cheating on exams, to plagiarism, to working in groups when specifically asked to work individually on an assignment. Interestingly this isn’t a new problem. American studies in the ‘60s found that 75% of students admitted to cheating in college. And it’s not a new behavior for students when they get to the post-secondary environment. In one recent Canadian study 60% of high school students admitted to cheating on tests, and 75% to cheating on written work that is handed in. Although technology provides more ways for students to cheat (buying “internet” papers, using online paper mills and just good old cut and paste from internet sites) it hasn’t impacted the overall rate of cheating. Technology has however increased instructors’ ability to detect plagiarism thanks to online services such as Turnitin that use huge data bases of accumulated student work, web pages and online journals to compare submitted work to common sources.

What interested me most from the conversation with Dr Christensen Hughes was her finding that students were less likely to cheat if they respected the instructor, if they felt that the quality of the education that they were receiving was high and if the instructor was using assessments that were truly assessing the skills and knowledge that students were learning in the course. This last point dovetails nicely with a book that I have just been reading, “Cheating Lessons – Learning from Academic Dishonesty” by James M. Lang. Lang discusses how the ways that we teach and assess can impact student’s academic integrity and how instructors can design assessments that reduce academic dishonesty and also create better learning.

Lang proposes that students are more likely to cheat if:

there is low intrinsic motivation to actually learn what they are being assessed on;
there is an emphasis on one-time performance rather than continuous improvement towards mastery;
the stakes are high on a single assessment;
they have a low expectation of success.

So what can an instructor do to decrease cheating and increase learning?

When students are intrinsically motivated, find the subject matter meaningful and can connect it to their own lives, they will learn more and retain their learning. Students driven by extrinsic rewards, such as grades, use strategic or shallow approaches to learning and will have more motivation to cheat. Posing authentic, open-ended questions to students or challenging them with problems or areas of investigation of their own choice can give students the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and reflect on what they have learned. Learning portfolios that include journal entries, short essays, and reflections can assess the student learning experience and understanding of concepts (and are darn hard to cheat on).

Learning for mastery (a deep approach to learning) rather than one time performance can be encouraged and assessed. Giving students multiple attempts on assessments or offering students choices on how they will be assessed can promote a mastery approach. These tests can also provide students with feedback so that they can learn from the assessment and then apply their learning again to show mastery. Scaffolded assignments or essays, where drafts and reworked versions are submitted for feedback, can provide evidence of learning and are not likely to be purchased in the internet.

There is evidence that repeated low stakes assessments have the largest impact on learning and retention of learning, particularly if the testing is in the format of short answer questions. Known as the “testing effect” it can be achieved through the use of short online quizzes or one-minute papers. Creating opportunities for students to retrieve knowledge and rehearse answering questions not only measures learning, but also produces learning (Miller, 2011). Lang discusses how taking the emphasis off a one big, high stakes assessment and introducing multiple low stakes assessments helps students rehearse for more substantial assessments and actually reduces cheating.

When students feel that they have no chance of success they are more likely to give up rather than attempting to master concepts, and they may look for alternative, dishonest ways to pass tests. Lang argues that helping students be aware of their level of understanding throughout a course will help them gauge how much work they need to do to be successful on major assessments. Activities like think-pair-share, clicker questions and other in-class activities or formative assessments help instil self-efficacy, and help students identify what they need to do to become capable rather than relying on cheating.

All sounds like more work for the instructor, yes, but with two great results – better learning and less cheating and presumably less time spent following up on academic integrity cases as well.

Lang, J.M. 2013. Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, USA.

Miller, M. 2011. What College Teachers Should Know About Memory: A Perspective from Cognitive Psychology. College Teaching, 59:117-122.

Safely Exploring Unsettling Questions — Julie Timmermans

Photo by Wink, Creative Commons, flickr.com

Last month, I attended a conference on the theory and practice of adult development. The conference left me feeling profoundly unsettled and yet, inspired, in a way that no other conference ever has. I see this state of “unsettledness” in a positive way. Organisms need something to disturb their current state of balance in order to grow. For humans, this kind of disturbance of our current ways of knowing and being can lead us to new, more expansive, ways of understanding and being in the world.I’d like to share some of the questions and ideas I found unsettling during conference, as I think they may be of value as we design learning experiences for students and for ourselves – experiences that may be unsettling, but that may ultimately lead to growth.

• What are the big questions in our field?
• Are there deeper levels to the questions we’re asking?
• What does the theory not explain?
• What is the larger stage for the work of our field?
• Is there a deeper purpose behind this work?
• Imagine the best society. What would it look like? What am I doing (through my work) to contribute to this vision?

At the conference, we were invited to explore these questions. To fully engage in exploring them, both individually and collectively, required a certain amount of courage. Yet, rather than leaving each day of the three-day gathering feeling disheartened or disillusioned in the face of these rather unsettling ideas, participants appeared to feel uplifted and hopeful. And this is where the very intentional design of the learning environment seemed to play a crucial role. The conference hosts designed a program that accomplished two goals: it invited people not only to share knowledge, but it also provided a safe environment in which to explore the frontiers of our knowing – that is, our not knowing. This reminded me of the powerful potential of course design to create learning spaces that fill us up, shake us up, lift us up, and ask us to make connections to the world beyond the classroom.

Acknowledging Cultural Variation during Classroom Participation- Karly Neath

In 2012, 32% of graduate students and 11% of undergraduate students enrolled at the University of Waterloo were international students, representing a broad range of cultural and educational backgrounds. This cultural diversity has tremendous pedagogical potential, but it also poses challenges to our ever growing emphasis on classroom participation. As we begin a new academic year with thousands of new students it is important to remind ourselves of these challenges and work to overcome them.

Students’ actions in the classroom may be based on different cultural understandings of what constitutes appropriate student and instructor behaviour. When a student is quiet during a discussion, for example, they are not necessarily unprepared or bored; they may simply be behaving according to their own culture’s standards of classroom etiquette.

Most North American (N.A) students have had experience with class discussions in high school. Thus, they are at least familiar with the discussion conventions (e.g., small group work, expectations for preparation and participation) that they will encounter in the university classroom. Here in N.A, discussion classes, labs, and projects are valued as important parts of the learning process along with lectures instructor (e.g., Brookfield, 1999).

However, in many cultures, lectures are the sole mode of instruction. Thus, some international students may not see the benefit of discussions or group work, believing that they cannot learn anything substantive from their peers. Additionally, the students may not have learned the skills necessary for participating in group-work or discussions, and may only feel comfortable participating when they can answer questions the instructor has posed. The challenge here is that instructors may assume that these students are not interested or have not done the assigned reading.

Another challenge is that the unwritten rules for discussion may be different. For example, in one culture, it might be acceptable to interrupt or talk more loudly to gain control during a discussion; in another, it may be considered polite to allow short silence; in another, students might expect to be called upon before offering their opinion. Consequently, international students may find the N.A conventions of discussion frustrating and may be viewed as too shy or rude.

Perhaps instructors simply need to be more aware of cultural differences and sympathetic to the challenges that students face in adjusting to them. However, this does not require them to lower their standards or apply a different set of performance criteria for international students. Consider the following simple pedagogical practices:

Make expectations explicit– Explain why you think discussions are valuable, how they will be evaluated, and ground-rules.

Model the kinds of work you want your students to do– For example, have students observe two faculty members engage in an animated debate.
Represent the material you are teaching in multiple ways.
Give students ample opportunities to practice applying the knowledge and skills you want them to acquire – For example, ask students to discuss a design, case study, or experiment in small groups (without being assigned a grade).
Provide varied opportunities interaction– For example, encourage students to email you with ideas and questions. Also, monitor student groups to correct misconceptions and encourage everyone to be involved.

While this may post may seem very “common sense” I believe it is important to constantly remind ourselves of the cultural diversity within our university and to help make the transition into our classrooms smooth by using these simple tips.

Farewell – Darlene Radicioni

Change…never stops, however we at times wish it would. After thirteen years at CTE it is time to bow out. When I first started, I was hired by the TRACE Department (Teaching Resources and Continuing Education). There was a director, Gary Griffin, associate director, Donna Ellis (now director), Verna Keller, myself and one TA developer. We offered six to eight workshops per term. After a few years we amalgamated with LT3 (Learning and Teaching Through Technology) to form what is now CTE. We have certainly come a long, long way. Now we have a permanent staff of 19, along with 9 contract graduate students and 2 coop students. We offer more than 30 events per term for the university community.

I’ll miss the university as I have spent most of my working years here, starting in the early 70’s, taking a break to raise two daughters, Stefanie, who has a MSc (Molecular Biology & Genetics) from Guelph and Natalie who has an BScN (Nursing) from McMaster. I returned to work on a casual basis to what was once the Correspondence Department, now the Centre for Extended Learning. Then I got a full-time position at St. Paul’s United College. From St. Paul’s I moved to the TRACE Office. But, most of all, I’ll miss the people, friends I have worked with, students and faculty. What a wonderful community to have been a part of!

Now, again, it’s time for a big change for me. My husband and I made a deal: I would retire the year after he did…so here I go. With three grandchildren under the age of two and elderly parent/-in-laws, my family needs me for the next little while. Since my husband and I have travelled through the United States and Europe, it’s time now to see Canada coast-to-coast, which we’ll start visiting next summer.

Farewell all, the memories will be forever in my heart.

‘Gimmicks’ in the Classroom – Maxwell Hartt

Everyone has sat through boring lectures or classes. Whether it was during grade school, high school, undergrad or beyond, we have all been in one of these head-nodding situations. In fact, many of us have probably experienced far too many of these at all the levels of our education. Do ‘serious’, ‘intellectual’ lectures need to be inherently boring? Or is there room for creativity? Absurdity? Or a little pizzazz?

I believe that most students and teachers can all recognize the value in an exciting, memorable lecture. And hopefully, we have all experienced some of these at one time or another. So let me take the question one step further, is it right for students to feel that they should be entertained? Considering the high cost of post-secondary education, is it fair for students to expect a show along with academic rigor? At what point do classroom creative approaches become nothing more than antics? And is there room in respectable, effective teaching for such gimmicks?

To be perfectly honest, there is no definitive answer to these questions. As with many aspects of teaching, different people believe in different approaches. For the most ‘traditional’ educators, there is absolutely no room for such shenanigans. School and universities exist for the exchange of knowledge, not for entertainment. Games, costumes, videos and the like are merely distractions that take away from serious academic work. Adults should not need anything more than the quest for knowledge as motivation. Catering to child-like methods of engagement and learning are ultimately holding back the students from educational maturation.

On the other hand, why not embrace exciting, creative teaching and lecturing methods? Excitement and surprise can be extremely effected ways to engage students and build student participation. If the content can be delivered in an unexpected, upbeat or emotional way that will engage students and create a positive, electric learning atmosphere, then shouldn’t this approach be taken whenever possible? The students are paying to learn and if this best peaks their interest, why not embrace it?

University teaching has seen a shift towards participatory and creative teaching styles. Much research has been done to document the positive outcomes of such approaches. That isn’t to say there is no longer a place for traditional lecturing. Above all, the method must suit the material, the environment, the lecturer and the students. However, in general, it can be said that integrating creative approaches into lectures is a fantastic way to engage students as long as all aspects remain relevant to the lecture content.

This brings me to my last question, are gimmicks (something done to make lecture more exciting or captivating but does not necessarily emphasize course content or learning objectives) of use in the classroom as a teaching method? Some argue that these distractions take away from the material and are often, unfortunately, the memorable part of the lecture while the real content goes forgotten. Alternatively, excitement and classroom gimmicks can help energize the classroom and raise both participation and attendance.

I, personally, feel that when appropriate classroom gimmicks can be useful. However, it is imperative that the lecturer be aware of its role and does not accidentally overshadow the course material. Also, whenever possible all aspect of creating memorable lectures should stay relevant to the lecture content. Use the creative approaches to excite and drive home the learning objectives.

That being said, if attendance is low, lectures delivered dressed as a clown to a full room will be more effective then those dressed professionally to an empty one.