Teaching in Higher Ed

How to apologize [as a professor]

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I'm not having a very good semester at setting quiz dates in one of my classes.

HOW TO APOLOGIZE

Almost all my classes have the same hybrid structure: We meet on Mondays and Wednesdays. Students also have online assignments that are due anytime that week before the time our class normally would have met on that Friday. I encourage them to get stuff done by Wednesday night, but there are always some who wait until the last minute and find themselves scrambling.

In 11  years of teaching, it is the first time I've had a Tuesday night class (at least at the undergraduate level). I've been having their quizzes due before our class meets on Tuesdays, except on nights when we have exams. Since the way I have the quizzes set up, the deadline has to have passed for a given quiz, for them to go back in and see how they scored. To review the correct answers and assess why they may have gotten a question wrong, that deadline has to have passed.

So, I've been making the quizzes on those weeks due the Friday prior to the Tuesday night exam. Let's just say that today a student gently called it to my attention that, once again, I had set the quiz due date for a different date than the pattern we have been working off of all semester. I'm pretty sure this may be the third time this has happened, much to my dismay.

The whole experience got me thinking about apologies.

I'm a firm believer that when we mess up, we need to apologize. I've been taught that an apology typically has three components to it:

  1. The actual words: “I apologize,” or “I'm sorry.”
  2. The naming of what has occurred: “I didn't set the quiz date on the day we had agreed upon.” (A classic non-apology is a statement such as: “I'm sorry you feel that way.”)
  3. A commitment to what will happen differently in the future to avoid a reoccurrence, or some statement about how you plan on rectifying the situation: “I have set this week's quiz back a week, because of the confusion, and emailed all the remaining quiz dates for the semester, so we can be sure we're on the same page.”

I followed the pattern stated above with my students regarding their quizzes and got a kind message back from one of my students that put it all into perspective for me. I get it “right” most of the time with them and strive for excellence in all aspects of my teaching (including the online assignments and communication piece). I've earned the right to make some mistakes along the way, without coming across as not respecting their investment in the course, or making them think that it is ok to not do what we say we're going to do.

I do think there are times when apologies aren't a good idea, however.

The most common situation that I can think of where apologies can be a distraction is when technology in the classroom isn't going as planned. In those times, I do everything I can to avoid saying anything to the students about what's going wrong. Is there a way I can proceed with class without the technology?

I try to always have backup plans for those times when the technology will inevitably fail. Apologizing to students just magnifies the problem and can sometimes give them the impression that they didn't get the value out of the class session that they were expecting.

[reminder]Do you find there are times when apologies should be avoided in your teaching? Is there anything else you would advise we do for those times when an apology is warranted?[/reminder]

Getting things done gets redone

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I met with a student yesterday who was completely overwhelmed. She used to be a faithful user of a paper planner, but had not used it this semester and was feeling the consequences.

gtd

The student had come to the conclusion that while she might often be able to carry everything that needed doing around in her head, that any “change in plans” threatened to bring her whole system down. An illness earlier in the semester had thrown her off in most of her classes and she was having trouble getting away from constant chaos.

Of course, it isn't just our students who can get overwhelmed. One of the truest stereotypes that so many of us academics have earned is that of the absent minded professor. The practices recommended by experts in learning design can seem impossible to pursue, since just keeping status quo is hard enough.

I've just started reading David Allen's revised Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity. He shares in the first chapter about what has changed since he first wrote the book and what is still the same.

If you're not familiar with the Getting Things Done system, this is a good overview. Additionally, Dave (my husband) recently interviewed David Allen for his Coaching for Leaders podcast.

As I think about the key lessons I gained from the first time I read it all those years ago (not to mention the times I re-read portions of it), the following principles stand out:

  1. Get it out of your head. Our brains are not at their best when we try to carry our to do lists in our minds.By having some proactive and reactive means of capturing all that is coming at us, or otherwise occupying our thoughts, we can more easily tap into our creative capabilities and experience less stress.
  2. Separate the processing from the doing. When we are going through our various inboxes to sort through our tasks, we need to avoid the temptation to try to actually start tackling them.If a task requires less than two minutes to accomplish, it is ok to go ahead and get it done. However, those actions that require more time will be better served if we consider them in the context of everything that needs doing.
  3. Get better at saying no by allowing time for reflection. If we are simply “doing” machines, we lose the opportunity to cultivate those activities that provide the greatest meaning for us in our lives. If our system for managing our time and tasks includes reflective thinking about our dreams, goals, and priorities, we gain the courage and confidence to say no to things that aren't aligned with our sense of purpose.
  4. Only use due dates for actions that truly have due dates. I used to carry a Franklin Planner with me everywhere. I relied on it heavily to keep me organized. One faulty part of my approach, though, had to do with deadlines.Theoretically, if I didn't get enough done in one day, I should have copied the tasks to the next day's page. That quickly became tedious and I would have to do lists that I was consulting from three weeks ago, since I hadn't taken the time to copy them over to the current page.

    It can be that same way with electronic task list item due dates. We tell ourselves that it is due by this Friday, because there's a sense of urgency around it. however, if we don't get to it by Friday, we either reset the due date, or have a growing snowball of overdue tasks.Our productivity approaches should be ones that we trust. If we regularly look at outstanding tasks, we can prioritize as we go which ones are most important to us. That helps us avoid putting due dates on things that we no longer trust, since we know that so many of them aren't actually due on the day we say that they are.

  5. Invest time each week considering what's most important in the coming week. I perform a weekly review at least 75% of the time. The weeks when I'm disciplined enough to go through this activity, there's a noticeable difference in my stress levels and my productivity. I've decided, in advance, what is most important to focus on during the week and made any contingency plans for areas where there may be trouble ahead.

One of the chapters that David Allen added to the revised version of Getting Thing Done is a section on personal mastery. We don't ever “finish” GTD, but rather are continually developing and adapting.

Peter Senge writes of personal mastery:

People with a high level of personal mastery are able to consistently realize the results that matter most deeply to them–in effect, they approach their life as an artist would approach a work of art. The do that by becoming committed to their own lifelong learning.

We don't someday wake up and completely follow a system like GTD every day of our lives from then on out. Instead, we continually strive to incorporate habits into our lives that will maximize our effectiveness and cushion the blows when times get tough.

The quest is a worthwhile one to me and one I am continually seeking to cultivate even further than I have already…

[reminder]Do any of you have an interest in doing an informal book club on the revised edition of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity? If so, put a comment on this post. If there are at least five of us (including me) who want to commit to reading it within the month of April and having some informal, virtual dialog on it, I'll put something together to connect us.[/reminder]

Sharing tools

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Sharing is an integral part of one's personal knowledge management system.

This week, I bookmarked a post with 44 social media tools recommended by pros. While I do get tempted to explore new tools, especially on a week full of grading, I'm staying away for the time being.

sharing tools

It did get me thinking about the most essential social media tools that I use, specifically in the process of sharing. Michael Hyatt did an episode this week where he spoke about how he gets a blog post done in 70 minutes each week. I typically can cut that time down even more, by leveraging the following:

Use Canva to create blog and other sharing graphics

Having graphics included with social media content increases the likelihood that someone will see and then share your content. If you need some creative ideas for how to use visuals, check out this article from the Social Media Examiner.

Canva makes it easy to create a graphic. You can use one of their predefined sizes, or input a custom size. The service is free, though they do have graphics for sale on their site for $1 a piece, so be prepared to upload your own graphics or be sure to restrict yourself to their free options.

Schedule your social media sharing via Buffer

Buffer is a service that allows you to pre-schedule content to share across all of your social media. I intersperse original content, links to others' blog posts, and quotes from my podcast episode to spread the word even further.

Once you have content placed in a schedule, you can drag individual items around to suit your needs. It even has a shuffle button to really mix things up.

Discover excellent content from your friends using Nuzzel

Despite using an RSS reader daily, there are still occasions where I am at a loss for solid content to post. Nuzzel does the curating for me by looking through who I follow and recommending relevant content.

When I first head about Nuzzel, I didn't think it would offer any additional value. I was wrong. Each time I've used the app, it has served up rock-solid content and has done so in a streamlined way.

[reminder]What tools do you use to make the sharing process easier?[/reminder]

Course evaluation reflections

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I've been inspired by Doug McKee (past guest on the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast and co-host of the Teach Better podcast) on a number of occasions.

In this case, I've been inspired by his courage to share his course evals online and reflect on what worked, what didn't, and what changes he will make in each course he teaches.

His recent post describes how he extracts value from course evaluations. I will follow a similar process below.

Fall 2014 course evaluations

At our university, we don't typically get our course evaluations back until well into the next semester. I received mine on February 20, 2015, which is sooner than they've been in past years, but still not soon enough for me to have made any significant adjustments to this semester's courses.

Those of us with tenure only have half of our courses evaluated each semester, creating a bit of a gap in the feedback process. Still, there are lessons to be gleaned each time I review the evaluations.

Quantitative results

In both classes that were evaluated (Introduction to Business and Sales and Sales Management), the evaluations were rated higher than the national average. This feedback is typically not very valuable to me, since having my institution's data to compare myself to might be a better data set to use.

However, there are some detailed questions toward the end of the quantitative section that tend to help me put things in perspective. The items that typically help me remember who is was who was providing me feedback include:

  • What grade are you anticipating in the course?
  • How much effort did you put into the course?
  • The workload for this course was _____ (heavier, about the same, lighter than) other courses you took this semester.

Sometimes, there will be one or two students who anticipate earning a D or an F in the course. In those instances, there are also anomalies on the quantitative results such as one person that marks that I didn't have a command of the English language, or that I treated people unfairly, based on their gender. I haven't ever been marked down for not speaking English well, or treating people unfairly, except in those cases where one or two students anticipate not earning a passing grade.

I realize it is correlation, not causation, that I'm describing here. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that perhaps in those cases, it has less to do with me needing to work on my ability to speak English and more to do with me needing to keep a pretty thick skin during the course evaluation process for those students with more of an external locus of control who aren't likely to pass the class.

Introduction to Business quantitative results

outcomes

communication

interaction

outcomes

effort

Sales and Sales Management quantitative results

m-organizationm-communicationm-interactionm-courseoutcomeseffort

 

Qualitative results

I find the qualitative data on course evaluations to be far more beneficial for me. I often wonder if a simple net promoter score might be able to take the place of all the other quantitative data.

Of course, I recognize that I don't have access to any institutional data. I just see my raw scores and the national mean. It seems like a whole lot of time and expense that goes into data that isn't very actionable in my case. However, perhaps it is more beneficial for my institution than I realize.

Our quantitative data essentially gets to the question of what worked and what didn't, though it isn't phrased in those exact works. Here are the results from my fall classes.

Introduction to Business (n=29)

What worked:
  • Pencasts (n=6)
  • Everything (n=5)
  • EdTech tools (n=4)
  • Interactive teaching style (n=4)
  • Business plan project (n=3)

I am not including those comments that only came up once or twice.

One of the most humorous comments to me was when one student said what helped her learn was “Dr. B's calmness.” Wow. That's not something I get every day. Enthusiasm? Yes. But, calmness? That's a first.

What didn't work:
  • Everything worked (n=9)
  • Case studies (n=4)

I am skipping the two other comments that only came up once, though if you're interested, one student didn't like that I had them use Zotero and another didn't like that I had reading assignments in the course. Can you imagine that? A professor who assigns reading?

What I think is interesting about the case studies is that there were a number of comments on those items about them not being graded. Therefore, the students indicated that they didn't take them as seriously and didn't learn as much from them. I feel a bit stuck in my thinking between Ken Bain's advice to have there be opportunities for feedback before any grade gets assigned to something… and the accountability that comes from a stricter grading process.

I do look over all the students' cases in the class and there are points associated with them. However, the vast majority of the time, the students walk out with the full points and they don't feel the pressure to perform well.

Sales and Sales Management (n=16)

What worked?
  • Role plays (n=3)
  • Real-world scenarios/experiences (n=9)
  • Sales challenge #3 (where they visit a company and do a final role play with a business professional they've never met) (n=7)
  • Increased confidence (n=3)
  • Relationship with the professor (n=3)

I skipped those comments that only came up once or twice.

What didn't work?

There weren't any items that came up more than once. However, I do plan on making changes as to the accountability on the blogging assignments when I teach this course in the future. I've started using a Google doc form to track submissions and my first trial run was a success.

Next steps

I've taught both of these courses many times (Intro to Business 30+ classes and Sales and Sales Management 10+ classes). I write new exams each semester, in an attempt to lower the opportunities to cheat. I also bring in fresh examples of what's happening in the business world each class session.

There are many affirmations in the assessments above that encourage me in my teaching. I commit to making the following changes next time I teach these courses:

  • Use a Google doc form to track blog submissions, as described above, and do not waiver in the slightest on the due dates/times.
  • Consider being more stringent in my grading of the cases and perhaps having the students be required to complete them as a group before they come to class on the day they are being discusses.
  • This one isn't related to the evaluations, but I also want to start showing students a TurnItIn.com originality report before they submit their first assignment. It can be just one more way I can minimize the potential for academic dishonesty.

[reminder]Have you received your course evaluations back from last semester yet? What changes are you implementing for the next time you teach those classes?[/reminder]

 

Feedback and grading workflow guest on Mac Power Users

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feedback-workflow

A couple of weeks ago, I was the mini workflow guest for the Mac Power Users podcast, episode 240.

Katie and David were in rare form. It was David's birthday and perhaps nearly the last episode he recorded prior to announcing that he was going solo with his law practice…

I spoke about how to use screencasting to give feedback to students in a way that students report seems more authentic, honest, and helpful.

It's the first 15 minutes of their live show, recorded live on February 7, 2015, episode 240.

Listener Follow Up

I heard from a couple of Mac Power Users, after the episode, which was so rewarding.

David M. from Qatar wrote to say that he purposely doesn't include a track changes document for his students, as he wants to be sure they listen carefully and digest more of the feedback that way.

I hadn't clarified on the episode that I don't do track changes for the purpose of making corrections to the students' papers, either. I use the Word (or other) documents to place written comments or to highlight things.

David described more of his process for me:

Amongst other areas of EFL, I teach a lot of writing classes.

I am always concerned about the level of feedback I give students in their drafts. Too much and I am basically writing it for them and too little and I am not helping them.

I began to do feedback by screen cast using Camtasia and MS Word or PDFPen.

I read the essay before casting and then go through it asking for clarification, correcting errors and pointing out poor vocabulary, grammar, etc. I do type into the Word file but importantly I do not send them back the file with corrections, in fact I do not save my changes.

This forces students to listen, understand and fix their own errors.

I post the videos on Vimeo with a password only the student knows. Vimeo is great because I can track how often the students watch the video (up to 8 times). I do have a paid account and uploading can be a little slow but those negatives are not outweighed by the ease and tracking functions.

Tom S. also wrote to say that he uses screencasting in his business. He finds the feedback gets followed through on much more like his original intent when he uses this form of communication.

Tom wrote:

I am a Sales Vice President for a mid-sized electric manufacturing company in Connecticut.

Over the past year I’ve been using Tapes as a mode to provide feedback to not only my direct reports (regional sales managers) as well as my peers on the executive team at the company.

I do this often with financial reports such as excel documents as well as detailed word documents such as contracts and strategic planning documents.

The feedback that my team has about the process is incredible and I’ve found that the understanding and implementation of the feedback I provide is faster and more in-depth.

Reaching Out

I even got to touch base with Betsy Weber, Chief Evangelist for TechSmith (the makers of SnagIt), who I knew way back in my days in the computer training industry.

She thanked me for the mention of SnagIt on the show and also inquired as to whether or not I had any additional feedback for them.

SnagIt is, and has been for years, a fantastic piece of software. The only minor complaint I had was that it would be nice is there was greater parity between the Mac and PC versions.

Even More Tools

As I mentioned on the live MPU show, I reached out to the Mac Power Users Google Plus community for help on another grading-related workflow.

On the thread, Soram K. from UCLA Medical School reached out to share about other annotating tools he discovered from others in the community that meet his needs and augment the power of SnagIt.

He wrote:

I did find iAnnotate in my own research but do not like to convert the Word file my students send me to PDF. Too many steps!

I am looking at the following as a way that I think will be easier with a desktop screen writing app that will record in Snagit.

Here are some links…

Next Steps

As those of you who know me (or are getting to know me through the podcast and the blog) will predict, I am thrilled to discover these new tools.

However, I am going to force myself to hold off until after the semester ends before doing too much experimenting. It is too easy to go down a rabbit trail and lose time on the most important priorities for now.

I just finished reading the book Essentialism and am even more reminded of the importance of saying no to things. I've added the suggestions to my Evernote list of tools I want to try in the future.

Summer will give me opportunities to play a bit with technology, especially going to read some of the older posts on The Digital Researcher blog.