Centre for Teaching Excellence Blog – Page 9

Program Outcomes – Join our new learning community – Veronica Brown

Goals. Aims. Objectives. Outcomes. Metrics. Performance Indicators. Ideal Graduate Attributes.

Last week, I spent some time with colleagues debating the meaning of these various terms. They are often used interchangeably but, depending who you ask, they don’t mean the same thing. I tend to lump goals, aims and objectives together because they represent our intentions – what we will work towards during a given learning experience. I see outcomes and attributes as what students are actually able to do by the end of that experience (specific behaviours, knowledge, skills, attitudes they have developed). Finally, I place metrics and performance indicators into a category of measurements of those outcomes. Our discussion last week verified that while we use these terms in the similar ways, it’s worth taking the time to clarify our shared understanding of these key terms.

Now, it’s time to expand that conversation across campus. I’m excited to announce a new learning community at CTE – program outcomes assessment. Many departments across campus are engaged in program assessment through academic program review, accreditation, and curriculum design and renewal. Bob Sproule (a member of the School of Accounting and Finance’s Learning Outcomes Committee) and I will be leading this group as we explore various aspects of program outcomes assessment.

The first session, on May 12, 2016 12:00-1:15pm in EV 241, is a brainstorming session to explore topic ideas for the coming year. Our goal is to meet twice per term, starting in Fall 2016, and we want to ensure the sessions reflect areas of interest for you, our community members. If you are unable to attend the session but are interested in joining the community, please email me, Veronica Brown (veronica.brown@uwaterloo.ca), Sr. Instructional Developer, Curriculum and Quality Enhancement, Centre for Teaching Excellence.

Small portion of a curriculum map — A slice of a curriculum map – a great tool in assessing program outcomes

A band-aid for mental health – Maggie Bradley

Before you read this blog post, let me assure you that I believe every student should have access to a positive learning environment. I am in no way advocating that we should start making students fight to survive in a distressing domain. However, there is a movement spreading wildly through post-secondary campuses to offer students increasing protection from ideas they do not like and words that make them uncomfortable. To date, there is no scientific evidence that coddling students is having a positive impact on society or on their future; the widespread use of trigger warnings could be dangerous for mental health. In an article written for The Atlantic, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt pose the question: “What exactly are students learning when they spend four or more years in a community that polices unintentional slights, places warning labels on works of classic literature, and in many other ways conveys the sense that words can be forms of violence…?” (1). Using warnings to protect students from potentially harmful ideas is setting them up for larger issues once they leave the “safe space” campuses that have been created for them. Instead, let’s help teach students how to cope with these potentially triggering situations.

Assisting people’s efforts to avoid their fears is misguided. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a non-pharmaceutical treatment of mental illness that would be more beneficial to students than using trigger warnings. CBT involves the patient working with a mental health counselor to help him or her “become aware of inaccurate or negative thinking so [he/she] can view challenging situations more clearly and respond to them in a more effective way” (2). The basis of the process is simple: notice that you’re being affected by a stressor, name it, describe the facts of the situation, and consider alternative interpretations. After treatment, people are less likely to suffer from anxiety, depression, and anger. Over time, this process becomes more automatic and also helps enhance critical thinking skills. This method can further be combined with exposure therapy, where a patient’s cognitive distortions are diluted with a gradual increase of exposure to the offending scenario. Over time, using either approach, the triggered reaction would deflated. You can’t always control the situation, but you can control how your thoughts, actions and feelings affect the situation.

Keep in mind that I am not an expert. I am not prescribing treatment, nor am I making false promises for results I cannot guarantee (which in this case – I can’t). I’m also not naïve enough to think that cognitive behavioural therapy or exposure therapy are one-stop solutions that will work for everyone. Every person and situation is different. Furthermore, not every reaction to trauma will require the use of one of these coping mechanisms.

Where is all this coming from? Straight out of high school, I attended college. I earned my diploma, worked in my field for a couple years, and then decided it wasn’t the right fit for me. As someone who has recently made the transition back to academia from the “real world,” I’m rather shocked at how hard it is to say the right thing anymore. It can be very tricky to live in a world where “I’m offended” could be used at any given time as an unbeatable trump card. Constantly having to worry about whether an answer you give in class will elicit an upsetting response while discussing the assigned material is exhausting. As a student, I would prefer to utilize the nonthreatening environment of the classroom to discuss controversial topics instead of feeling limited by uncertain restrictions.

The above methods do not entirely invalidate the need for trigger warnings on certain material. They are an excellent temporary solution. It would be more practical long term to negotiate coping mechanisms in a classroom environment before students are released into the “real world.” Throughout elementary and into high school, students are sheltered to protect them. A safe space is provided to nurture students as they mature. In the infamous life after school people keep talking about, it is likely you will have to engage with people and ideas that make you uncomfortable. Outside of the classroom, there will be significantly less protection from any potential stressors. The long-term benefits of developing proper coping mechanisms should not be diminished.

This post was inspired by “The Coddling of the American Mind” written by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff for The Atlantic’s September 2015 issue. You can view their full article here: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
To read more on trigger warnings, check out the Centre for Teaching Excellence’s tip sheet here: https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/creating-positive-learning-environment/trigger-warnings-and-content-notes-inviting-all-students

Sources:
(1) The Atlantic – http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
(2) The Mayo Clinic – http://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/cognitive-behavioral-therapy/home/ovc-20186868

Pathways to feminist pedagogies — Charis Enns

femnist pedagogies My introduction to feminist pedagogy took place as an undergraduate student in an upper-level geography class at the University of British Columbia. The final assignment for this class involved conducting a community-based research project. Students were assigned small groups, in which they partnered with community organizations to design and carry out research based on the organization’s needs. My small group partnered with a local food bank, which asked us to investigate how the food bank could partner with community gardens in order to contribute to food security in Vancouver.

This learning experience was transformative. Ultimately, it shifted my thinking about social life in Vancouver and motivated me to pursue my interests through research. Importantly, through this class, I was introduced to spaces within the university that were orientated towards building community and social action. This is one explicit intention of feminist pedagogy. In classrooms grounded in feminist values, “there is a need and desire to move learning beyond the walls of the classroom” (Shrewsbury 1993, p. 171). Students are encouraged to extend theory to action, and then action is brought back into the classroom in order to inform theory.

What is feminist pedagogy?

My initial experience with feminist pedagogy not only shaped my research, it laid the foundations for my approach to teaching and learning. Broadly, feminist pedagogy is a way of thinking about teaching and learning that is grounded in feminist values. It is therefore more appropriate to speak about feminist pedagogies, and then to highlight what these different approaches to teaching and learning have in common. Common principles of feminist pedagogies include:

Resisting hierarchy and empowerment: In a traditional university classroom, the instructor holds power over the class and knowledge is passed from instructor to students. In contrast, feminist pedagogy involves the de-centering of power. Instructor and students exist in a “symbiotic” relationship and knowledge is constructed through discussion, dialogue, and critical inquiry. Importantly, students are also invited to play a role in influencing the design of the class and to participate in the delivery of content.

Building community and using personal experience as a resource: Like a traditional university classroom, many classrooms grounded in feminist values continue to rely on traditional sources of information, such as textbooks and academic journals. However, feminist pedagogy also involves drawing on students’ and teachers’ own experiences as learning materials. This promotes critical thinking, as students are challenged to bridge scholarship with “real-life.” Drawing on personal experience in order to deepen and widen understanding of course content also encourages students to value difference and diversity.

Transformative learning: This is the principle that was put into action in my first experience with feminist pedagogy as an undergraduate student. Traditional university classrooms may provide limited space for critical thinking and problem solving. However, in classrooms grounded in feminist values, teaching and learning aim to shift thinking in new directions. Students are asked to examine either their own experiences or social phenomena in new and critical ways. This often involves creating learning experiences that draw attention to real world problems or power differences that contribute to inequality.

Importantly, feminist pedagogy is a way of thinking about teaching and learning that shapes both what we teach and how we teach it. But how can this translate into classrooms that might, at first glance, not appear conducive to such approaches? In other words, are there practical applications of the principles of feminist pedagogy in all university classes? Or, is feminist pedagogy best reserved for certain levels of learning and certain disciplines?

Feminist pedagogies in practice

Research suggests that there is space for feminist pedagogy in all university classrooms and at all levels of learning; however, what this looks like in practice is likely to vary significantly. Here are some examples of feminist pedagogy in practice, along with links to research in support of this practice:

Feminist pedagogy can be used to change teaching strategies and deepen learning outcomes in engineering. For example, Cashman and Eschenbach (2004) use labs to teach students how to work in small-groups to design their own approach to solving real-world problems. They ask students to solve problems that are community-based or locally relevant. Cashman and Eschenbach (2004) have found that this empowers students to extend their classroom learning into the community – some students even become involved in community projects or local politics. This approach also encourages students to approach exams and homework assignments using real-life scenarios.

Feminist pedagogy can be used in psychology education to de-centre power in the classroom, contribute to more diverse curriculum, and to guide students in developing their feminist consciousness. For example, Robinson-Keilig et al. (2014) adopted the photovoice research methodology for a classroom project on violence against women. The project encouraged self-disclosure of students’ own lived experiences, as a means of integrating student knowledge into classroom content. The authors of this study found that this particular project facilitated critical consciousness, as students became more aware of the multiple systems of oppression that exist in society and became empowered via new insights and self-reflection to make change.

Feminist pedagogy can be integrated into economic classrooms to include students in the learning process and urge students to grow as critical thinkers. For example, Nelson and Goodwin (2005) argue that economics learning materials often do an inadequate job at integrating feminist concerns into introductory economics courses. Accordingly, they have published alternative learning materials that introduce students to neoclassical economic principles but also make room for ecological and feminist concerns. They argue that this deepens students’ understanding of economics, as they are exposed to less mainstream debates about the interconnection between economics, gender, and the environment.

Ultimately, if we understand feminist pedagogy as a way of teaching and learning that empowers students to be reflective and critical learners and to apply their learning through social action, it is possible to imagine how this approach is relevant across the university and beneficial to students, regardless of discipline.

References

Crawley, S. L., Lewis, J. E., & Mayberry, M. (2008). Introduction—feminist pedagogies in action: Teaching beyond disciplines. Feminist Teacher, 19(1), 1-12.

GEA – Gender and Education Association (n.d.). Feminist Pedagogy.

Shrewsbury, C. M. (1997). What is Feminist Pedagogy? Women’s Studies Quarterly, 25(1/2), 166-173.

Charis Enns is a Graduate Instructional Developer in CTE and a PhD Candidate at the University of Waterloo and the Balsillie School of International Affairs.

Introverts in the Classroom – Crystal Tse

Last year I attended a professional development seminar that involved four days of intense group work and meeting new people, and I was completely exhausted by the end of it. As a graduate student, conferences were a lot of fun, but I would need frequent breaks during the day to muster enough energy to keep going the rest of the time. As a high school student I hardly spoke up during classes and my teachers would tell me what a shame it was that I didn’t share my good ideas. My name is Crystal, and I am an introvert.

What is an introvert? This is a personality trait associated with people who, compared to extroverts, do not derive their energy from social interaction. In fact, sustained social interactions have the opposite effect of draining them of their energy and mental resources. They are not necessarily shy or socially anxious (common misconceptions of what introversion is) – it just means that they are generally more reserved, and enjoy having time alone or with people they know well in intimate settings.

Where did this construct come from? The five-factor model of personality, or more commonly called the “Big Five” was validated by psychologists McCrae and Costa (1987) and includes the dimensions of agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness, and most relevant, extroversion (you can take the Big 5 personality inventory to see where you might score lower or higher on along these dimensions). Their research has shown that these five factors can predict behavior, and appears in across different cultures in the world.

In the Atlantic last year an article was published on how introverts’ needs in schools are often neglected, as active learning strategies are encouraged and expected in the classroom. Introverted students benefit from having “quiet” time to reflect or complete individual work, and classrooms where activities such as group work and think-pair-share are the norm may at be odds at what they find are optimal learning environments. I’ve had many conversations with a friend and sessional lecturer, a self-identified introvert herself, about how she struggles with incorporating too many active learning strategies into her classes because she herself would struggle with having to do those exercises all the time.

That is not say to forego active learning strategies – there is good evidence for the benefits of active learning for example, in STEM fields. Active learning strategies can still be used, but they do not always have to involve group work or collaboration. They can include “one minute essay” questions or quizzes, and reflection activities. The flipped classroom can benefit introverted students, as they can complete readings and activities for the upcoming class individually, and have their thoughts and questions prepared beforehand.

Lastly, class participation is often valued, but introverted students may speak up less and to instructors, appear less interested or engaged with the material. This educator has a great perspective on this issue: You don’t want to alienate and punish introverted students by requiring that they speak up all time, but you also want to push students out of their comfort zone and allow them to develop their communication skills. He offers strategies that he has used to get students to speak up, and they’re simple, such as giving students time to think and prepare what they will say or transitioning from smaller to larger group discussions throughout the term.

It’s all a balance! As instructors and educational developers we can be more mindful of the introverts in the room, and come up with strategies (they don’t have to be extensive or immediately obvious to students) to engage, challenge, and draw out (but not tire out) the introverts in the classroom.

Image above provided by Scott Robinson under the Creative Commons “Attribution” license.

Learning to Leap via Experiential Education — Michelle Gordon

michelle gordon I can’t say enough about experiential learning. By stepping outside of textbook learning and living the experience, you develop personal connections to the theory. In my experience, this personal connection creates a drive to learn more about a topic, similar to how when you meet a person you like, you want to know more about them. Through experiential learning, I have also found that I develop soft skills that are not replicable in classroom learning, and which stay with me long after the experience is over.

This fall I was fortunate to be one of six student delegates selected from the University of Waterloo to attend the 21st Conference of the Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which was held in Paris, France. Also known as COP21 for short, this conference resulted in the Paris Agreement — an agreement to limit climate change to well below 2C of warming — being adopted with the consensus of 195 states. This was a historic moment to be a part of, where climate change was front and center on the world stage and it was finally agreed upon that quick and drastic action needs to be taken on a global level. Climate change is one of the global challenges of our century, and I hope that COP21 will be written in history as the turning point towards a cleaner and brighter future without fossil fuels.

Through this experience I learned much more about climate change than I could have in an entire semester in the classroom, but I think the most important thing I learned is confidence in my ability to leap. I believe to leap, or to jump into something new and unfamiliar when the opportunity presents itself instead of waiting until you feel “good enough,” is an essential skill to succeed in what you want in life.

Theoretical Knowledge

When I first applied to be a student delegate for COP21, I was hesitant as I thought I was less knowledgeable than many of my peers who were applying. Because I am in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability program, I had a working knowledge of climate change but by no means considered myself anywhere close to an expert! I applied anyway, and was thrilled to be selected. I studied climate change negotiations leading up to COP21, and observed them all around me during the experience. From this I gained a deeper knowledge than I had expected, and I am glad to have made the leap to apply and learn as I went, even if I was hesitant about my experience beforehand!

Social Media

Before attending COP21 I used social media such as Facebook, but I was shy about voicing my thoughts about social and environmental causes. Leading up to and during COP21, it was our job as student delegates to involve the wider campus community in awareness of the conference and climate change. It felt very uncomfortable at first, but I began posting on Facebook, joined Twitter, and then decided to make the leap by volunteering to be one of the lead students on the delegation’s communications and social media team. I felt out of my element at first, but through working in a team with two other students we created a successful and engaging campaign.

Networking and Meeting Influential People

At the COP21 conference, you are surrounded by people from all around the world, many of whom are very influential and knowledgeable. At first I felt a bit intimidated and timid in approaching people. However, I gained confidence when professor Ian Rowlands arranged for a few students and me to chat with Marlo Raylonds (the Chief of Staff to Catherine McKenna, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change) as well as David Miller (the President and CEO of World Wildlife Fund Canada and former mayor of Toronto). Chatting with these intelligent people help me build confidence in knowing that influential people are just like anyone else, and I will now feel more comfortable approaching leaders in the future.

Bringing Experiential Learning into the Classroom

I understand that not many teachers can simply take their students abroad on a whim. However, experiential learning opportunities are out there — they just need to be found and acted upon!

I think that classroom and lecture studies are important, and can serve their purpose as theoretical foundations for experiences. However, I strongly urge students to be always searching for opportunities to experience their passions outside of the classroom, be it conferences, volunteering, or through work experience. Remember, Google is your friend! For example, an afternoon spent searching can uncover field courses you can take for credit abroad or in Canada, bursary programs, and much more. Teachers can support students by sharing opportunities that they become aware of, and urging students to leap: to apply, follow through, and have the confidence to make it happen.

Michelle Gordon is a third year undergraduate student in the Environment and Resource Studies co-op program. Michelle was part of the delegation of students from UW that attended COP21. Michelle’s other interests include outdoor education, ecological restoration, and illustration.

Open Educational Resources: A Call to Action — Dina Meunier

On February 8^th, Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani from Kwantlen Polytechnic University in B.C. presented a strong case for the use of open textbooks in higher education to an interested audience at the University of Waterloo¹. Open textbooks, he argues, such as those provided through OpenStax College or BC Campus OpenEd, benefit students, professors and institutions.

What are open textbooks? Open textbooks are “licensed under an open copyright license [such as a Creative Commons license] and made available online to be freely used by students, teachers and members of the public.”² How do open textbooks differ from electronic versions of traditional textbooks? Some textbook publishers provide students with an online or digital version of a traditional hard copy textbook, but access to this electronic version is not free and it is under a limited license, that is, students loose access to the digital textbook after a period of time, for example, 6 months after purchase. Open textbooks, due to the nature of being openly available also promote lifelong learning, says Jhangiani.

There is no denying that traditional textbooks are expensive. Textbook costs have increased by 82% in the last decade, according to Jhangiani and these costs contribute to crippling student debt. In Canada, the average student graduates with a debt of over $28,000 and three years after graduation, only about one-third of graduates are debt free, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Jhangiani argues that professors can mitigate this unfortunate situation simply by deciding to use an open textbook or a series of open educational resources to replace their traditional text.

Another advantage of open textbooks, for both students and instructors, lies in their flexibility. Open textbooks, Jhangiani explains, “aren’t just free, they’re free with permissions.” These permissions include the ability not only to retain, reuse and redistribute the resource, but to potentially remix and redistribute it based the instructor’s pedagogical goals for the course.

Universities also benefit from the use of open textbooks. There is a direct relationship, Jhargiani says, between textbook costs and student success and retention. Research shows that students enrolled in courses using OERs, had lower withdrawal rates, had better grades and enrolled in more courses in the current and subsequent semesters³.

So why aren’t more instructors using open textbooks? Lack of awareness about where to find open textbooks and uncertainty around their quality are two of the main reasons.⁴ But the quality issue is an issue of perception. Jhangiani states that quality has improved dramatically in the last 5 years and recent research shows that 75% of faculty who have an opinion about OERs, rate them as equivalent or better than the traditional textbook.⁵

Want to learn more about open educational resources? March 7 to 11^th is Open Education Week so there is no better time to start than right now.

Check out how the Faculty of Mathematics is leading the way in Waterloo’s own open courseware initiative: math.uwaterloo and courseware.cemc.uwaterloo;
Explore the possibility of incorporating an open textbook in your upcoming course this spring or fall;
Are you interested in creating your own set of open educational resources to replace a costly textbook in your large enrollment course? Contact the Centre for Extended Learning (d2meunie@uwaterloo.ca), we may be able to help you!

References

¹To view “Open Educational Practices by Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani,” Centre for Teaching Excellence, (published to YouTube on Feb 12 2016) go to https://youtu.be/kb8U6VmOVsk

²Open Textbook FAQ. BCCampus OpenEd. https://open.bccampus.ca/open-textbook-faq/

³ Fischer, L., Hilton, J., Robinson T. J., & Wiley, D. (2015). A multi-institutional study of the impact of open textbook adoption on the learning outcomes of post-secondary students. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 27(3), 159-172. doi:10.1007/s12528-015-9101-x

⁴Green, K. (N.D.). Going Digital: Faculty Perspectives on Digital and OER course materials. Retrieved from The Campus Computing Project. http://www.campuscomputing.net/goingdigital2016

⁵ Allen, I.E., & Seaman, J. (Oct 2014). Opening the Curriculum: Open Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2014, Babson Research. Retrieved from http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/openingthecurriculum2014.pdf

The author of this post, Dina Meunier, is Associate Director of Online Learning at Waterloo’s Centre for Extended Learning.

Early Student Feedback — Paul Kates

Feedback from students doesn’t have to wait until the time of end-of-term course evaluations. Getting feedback early and often in a course allows you to build on what’s working and make changes towards what can work better, all in time to have an impact on your students.

Asking students at the start of the term about their expectations for the course, the lectures, the textbook even their own work habits can give you an insight into why your students are in your course and let you address expectations immediately should they be out-of-line with the way the course is going to be run.

Eric Mazur in his book Peer Instruction gives a start-of-term “Introductory Questionnaire” to his Physics class where he asks

What do you hope to learn from this course?
What do you hope to do with this new knowledge?
What do you expect the lectures to do for you?
What do you expect the book to do for you?
How many hours do you think it will take to learn all you need to know from this course? Include everything: lectures, homework, etc.

(This and the following set of questions are attributed to Prof James Sethian, Department of Mathematics, University of California at Berkeley.)

With the answers in hand he addresses each of the questions in class – supporting and encouraging his students and expanding on student answers with his own goals for the class:

I want the material we cover to be useful to you beyond the exam. I want you to become good critical and analytical thinkers, able to tackle not just familiar problems but also unknown new problems or questions. Not only to plug numbers into equations but able to develop new models and theories, to make qualified assumptions, and then use those models and assumptions to break new ground in science and technology.

He also has the opportunity to address student expectations, realigning and influencing those expectations about the lectures, text and workload.

He gives a sample reply to all the questions above (ask me for a copy), but here I’ll only quote the answer to the question
What do you expect the lectures to do for you?

There were many very thoughtful responses to this question, but I did encounter a number of misunderstandings about the lectures that I should address to avoid falling short of your expectations. The most serious misconception I encountered is that the lectures will present and explain the fundamental concepts, while the book will clarify the ideas presented in the lecture. This is not what is going to happen. You will be reading the material before coming to class. The book will introduce the basic terminology and definitions, hopefully raise some questions, perhaps even confuse you a little (“to wonder is to begin to understand”). The lectures are intended to challenge your thinking and thereby help you assess your understanding of the concepts you read about, to further and deepen your understanding of these concepts, to stimulate and inspire you, and to show you how things “fit together.” The book will then provide further reference. In addition it will be a source for questions and problems.

Some of you expect to practice problem-solving in lecture, but problem-solving is not the main focus of this class. I want you to understand things, not just be able to “plug and chug.” This is clearly reflected in the way you will be tested – take a good look at the exams in the back of the syllabus. Close to half of the questions on each exam are not the traditional, quantitative problems you may have seen before. The solutions to many of these don’t involve even a single equation. Rest assured, the sections and homework assignments will offer ample opportunity to sharpen your traditional problem-solving skills. The lectures are meant to stimulate your thinking, to further your basic understanding. I guarantee that a better understanding of the concepts will improve your problem-solving abilities, whereas the reverse is not necessarily true. Here is what I think of some other answers given: …

After a month Prof. Mazur uses the following questionnaire to gauge how students are settling in to the course. This is another early opportunity to address concerns, misunderstandings and expectations.

What do you love about this class?
What do you hate about this class?
If you were teaching this class, what would you do?
If you could change one thing about this class, what would it be?

If you have your own in-course questionnaire and want to share it I’d be happy to use it along with any comments you care to include in a follow-up post.