Teaching in Higher Ed

Teaching

Music’s Role in Our Teaching

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Playing music

I'm one of those people who almost always has a soundtrack playing in my head. Sharing music with my students is something I've always enjoyed.

I've now found there to be benefits that I never expected through this process.

Reach Out to Struggling Students

After I set up my equipment for a class, I tend to go sit somewhere in the classroom toward the back. I often find this to be a good way to connect very casually with a student who hasn't been completing assignments, or who did poorly on a recent test.

It doesn't have to be a big formal thing. We can just both enjoy the song. Most often, the student will bring up their difficulties with me, before I even address the topic.

Change the Mood

As some of you might remember, I sometimes teach three sections of the same class in a semester. I still marvel at how different classes can take on such different personalities.

I find it helpful to use music to bring more energy into a room. Or, there are those times when we really all need to settle down and center ourselves a bit, and the right tune will help us to do that.

Expand Musical Repertoire

Before streaming music services existed, students used to get a kick out of how large and how diverse my song collection was. They liked to play deejay before class and would help me rediscover artists I had forgotten about.

Today, it's less about pulling songs from my music and more about being introduced to artists who are new to me. It always seems like a turning point in a class when a student recommends new music to me.

My Playlist

Here are a few songs that you’ll hear, if you stop by my classroom this semester:

Your Turn

What are you listening to in your classroom this semester?

Music's Role in Our Teaching

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Playing music

I'm one of those people who almost always has a soundtrack playing in my head. Sharing music with my students is something I've always enjoyed.

I've now found there to be benefits that I never expected through this process.

Reach Out to Struggling Students

After I set up my equipment for a class, I tend to go sit somewhere in the classroom toward the back. I often find this to be a good way to connect very casually with a student who hasn't been completing assignments, or who did poorly on a recent test.

It doesn't have to be a big formal thing. We can just both enjoy the song. Most often, the student will bring up their difficulties with me, before I even address the topic.

Change the Mood

As some of you might remember, I sometimes teach three sections of the same class in a semester. I still marvel at how different classes can take on such different personalities.

I find it helpful to use music to bring more energy into a room. Or, there are those times when we really all need to settle down and center ourselves a bit, and the right tune will help us to do that.

Expand Musical Repertoire

Before streaming music services existed, students used to get a kick out of how large and how diverse my song collection was. They liked to play deejay before class and would help me rediscover artists I had forgotten about.

Today, it's less about pulling songs from my music and more about being introduced to artists who are new to me. It always seems like a turning point in a class when a student recommends new music to me.

My Playlist

Here are a few songs that you’ll hear, if you stop by my classroom this semester:

Your Turn

What are you listening to in your classroom this semester?

Five Ways to Change it Up in Your Teaching

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Bonni playing Heads Up Game

There are some ways in which predictability is important in our teaching.

That we consistently treat our students with respect and kindness, that we honor our commitments to others and ourselves, and that we keep high expectations while continually encouraging learners toward excellence…

However, some of our patterns translate into monotony for our students. They know what’s coming next and it often doesn’t involve them doing anything other than paying “civil attention.”

Here are five ways to change it up in your teaching, to draw students back in and to engage them more in the process of learning.

Make them laugh

This feat is easier said than done. It certainly doesn’t come naturally to me and can be a challenge.

I use my personal knowledge management system to keep track of items that are humorous that are related to my various courses. I’ve got a tag for each of my classes that I apply (e.g. BUSN114, MRKT369, etc.), as well as a tag for humor.

Show a short video clip

I also tag videos in my PKM system, so that I can quickly find a video to break up the patterns I may have going in a particular class session.

The best length for in-class videos tends to be less than five minutes, but there are certainly exceptions, like with a good TED talk, or with a wonderful speaker, like Seth Godin.

Have them reflect on their learning

Todd Zakrajsek has shared on the podcast, before, about the importance of metacognition. This doesn’t have to be as complex as what the word seems to warrant.

James Lang suggests wrapping up class a few minutes early and having students write down the answers to two questions:

  • What was the most important thing you learned today?
  • What question still remains in your mind?

It doesn't take a lot of time to get students reflecting on their learning, but it certainly is powerful.

Use the power of in-class retrieval practice

When Robert Bjork was on the podcast, he stated that, “Using our memories shapes our memory.” Retrieval practice is a wonderful way of helping our students focus more on getting information out of their heads, while still being in an environment where additional coaching is available.

I use PollEverywhere often for retrieval practice (in-class, anonymous quizzing). However, I also even change up the method by which I do retrieval practice, so even that doesn’t become monotonous. Buying a custom deck of Ellen's Head's Up game is a great way to review key terms in a class. That's the game I'm playing with students in the picture at the top of this post.

Change up the environment

Another illustration from Robert Bjork, when he was a guest on the podcast, had to do with context. When we study, or otherwise engage in learning, in different environments, our retention increases.

Consider holding class outside, or in a different room than normal on your campus. I sometimes have students get up and walk around the room, giving input using sticky notes or by writing on flip charts. I even occasionally have them walk around the building we are meeting in a couple of times, with a partner, quizzing them on some material we just talked about.

Your turn

What do you do to keep from being too predictable in your teaching?

Five Teaching Lessons from Bobby McFerrin

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Bobby McFerrin Teaching Lessons

Ever since I saw this video of Bobby McFerrin teaching about the pentatonic scale, I've been captured by all that it tells us about teaching.

Start Small

Bobby McFerrin stands up and walks to the front of the stage. His voice erupts with the first note, as he hops in the air, beginning to model for his students what he is inviting them to do. It is both simple and captivating.

Be Welcoming

He doesn't tell anyone to put their cell phones away, or read off of a syllabus. He doesn't say, “I'm going to teach you about the pentatonic scale, which first was performed by musicians back in…” No, he welcomes us to join him in experiencing the pentatonic scale, before we ever hear any of the particulars about it.

Leverage the Unexpected

The clip embedded above is only three minutes of what appears to be your typical panel. Five men sitting in chairs. When you're on a panel, you're supposed to sit, wait your turn to be asked a question and address it in the same way as everyone else.

Bobby McFerrin jumps up out of his chair, in what seems to be a response to a question about setting expectations (maybe?). Rather than talk about that, he demonstrates how expectations get set. He creates a sense of the unexpected and we begin to wonder what will come next.

Test Your Learners

He doesn't take the lead role throughout the demonstration. Instead, once he shows a bit of the patterns, he lets the audience move out ahead of his singing and show their learning as they go. He fluctuates between two notes in the scale and then lets the audience predict what will be the next note in the progression.

In part of his teaching, he is doing a version of retrieval practice (having the students recall what he has shown them so far). He also does what James Lang describes in his book, Small Teaching, as prediction. Lang streses that “making predictions about material that you wish to learn increases your ability to understand that material and retrieve it later.”

Allow for Improvisation

Our classrooms can be far too predictable. We do our students a disservice, by not preparing them for the complexity they will encounter as soon as they leave our white boards and our bulleted PowerPoints.

Watch this wonderful illustration of what's possible when we allow for improvisation.

What else did you see being illustrated about teaching from these Bobby McFerrin clips?

A taste of agency

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A taste of agency

I didn't formally know what agency was when I started teaching, yet somehow found ways to foster it in some aspects of my pedagogy. I also failed at it in other ways.

In my first couple of years teaching Introduction to Business, I let students choose from a set of “development opportunities” to learn more about business and demonstrate learning. More recently, I have been teaching a business ethics course using what I've informally started referring to on this blog as ‘Choose Your Own Adventure Assessment.'  There's a podcast episode about this approach, in addition to a two-part blog post (part 1, part 2).

Agency isn't only about giving learners choice, but that is the aspect that I'm touching on with this post. If you want more of a holistic appreciation for what is involved with agency, look no further than Larry Ferlazzo's site. While his resources speak to high school teachers, there is much to glean from his student agency collection for higher education. There's also a wonderful description of how agency fits in with critical digital pedagogy from Jesse Stommel.

First impressions

When students walk into a class of mine on the first day, I like to set the stage that something is going to be different about this class. I have historically found it harder to do an effective job at that with online classes (or, the online portion of a hybrid course), because I think I have valued consistency over the power of the unexpected.

Our university is switching learning management systems (LMSs) this summer: from Moodle to Canvas. The change has challenged me to rethink my course design. As I've learned more about Canvas and started to experiment a bit, I have found a way to create a way of giving choice to learners from the very beginning of the online portion of the class.

Choose your movie trailer

I've written before about being inspired to make a movie trailer for my classes. I finally took action and wound up creating two different course trailers. I circulated them on the Teaching in Higher Ed Slack channel and among some friends at work, asking which one people preferred.

One person suggested, “Give them a choice. Let them watch the one they would rather watch, or let them see both.” And so…

Workflow

Students taking my Introduction to Business course will now start with an instruction to click on whatever tv show / movie they would rather watch. Below is just a screenshot of what they will see and isn't formatted to work on this particular blog post. 

1-choose-your-movie

Trailers

Then, if students choose one of the more action-oriented options, they will be shown this page, on which they can view the action-themed trailer.

2-action-adventure

Those who watched the action-themed trailer can then either watch the romantic comedy-themed trailer, or return back to the getting started section of the course.

Of course, the same approach happens if students choose a romantic comedy genre of entertainment. They get a similar-but-different movie trailer.

You can click on the graphics of each of the trailers (action and romantic) and see the videos that my students will see, if you're interested. 

3-romantic-comedy

Next steps

The next logical step after this might be to have students create their own course trailers to demonstrate what they learned by taking the class. Then, I could use some of those in future courses and have an even bigger collection of potential trailers for the students to navigate to…

What are some small steps you take in the beginning of your online courses to give students agency?

Tools for better presentations

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Tools for better presentations

My imagination has been captured for what's possible through presentations, after attending the Podcast Movement Conference in Chicago last week.

The conference brought together such masterful storytellers as Glynn Washington, Alex Blumberg, and Anna Sale. There were a few other presenters who showed themselves to be more adept at podcasting than they were with an in-person audience.

Better presentations

The whole experience got me thinking about what approaches may be used to help create better presentations. Here are a few that I have found particularly helpful:

Make your slides interactive

One of the biggest flaws I noticed in a few of the presentations at the conference was the excessive use of the “raise your hand if you _____” technique. You can get away with that once, maybe twice. But, I counted over 20 uses of it in one presentation and that's over the top.

You can engage using audience response systems, most of which are available for use on mobile phones these days. Google slides recently was updated to include ways for audiences to engage with their phones and Educational Technology and Mobile Learning has this tutorial to get you started.

I use PollEverywhere and Sli.do currently. I am intrigued, though, by the way that Google is integrating the interaction within their service, vs having to embed outside services the way that it is when you use the other two services.

Know the difference between slides and handouts

Whenever I'm asked to provide my slides in advance of a talk, I usually start politely asking questions about the reason for the request. Often, the person asking wants to make photocopies of the slides for the attendees, since people are used to slides being really just the presenter's notes, which are shown on the screen during their talk.

What they are really asking for is a handout, a tool that can be used as reference after the presentation with additional ways to reinforce the learning from the session. Mark Hofer wrote about the importance of using slides for their intended purpose and creating handouts, when necessary, on the Luminaris blog.

Sometimes, the presentation part of the entire picture isn't even necessary. Check out this gorgeous example of how much can be communicated within a slide program from Nancy Duarte. She refers to this method of communicating via this medium as Slidedocs.

Communicate visually

Slides aren't designed to be handouts. They also weren't intended to display your notes on the projector screen for everyone to see.

There's a place for you to type notes that you want to see on the computer you're using to present on, but it reduces your learners' cognitive load if you use a relevant image to convey your idea, instead of a bunch of bullets that you'll attempt to “talk over.”

Better yet, with some practice and guidance on how to approach it, you can learn to present without any notes at all. That way, the focus can be on your message, and not on you losing credibility by needing to be lost in your notes throughout your presentation.

This design guide from Canva has bunch of phenomenal examples of visual slides throughout the article. Even if you don't have time to read all of their advice, just flip through some of the slide decks and prepare to be inspired.

HaikuDeck is a great place to get started creating visual slides, if you don't have as much experience at it. The way their service is designed is to “force” you into not putting too much on a slide.

Here's an example of HaikuDeck in action. I never actually got to give this presentation, since it was planned at our faculty gathering last year and I got super sick on the day I was supposed to give the talk.


USING TECHNOLOGY TO BE – Created with Haiku Deck

Resources

My presentation approaches have been profoundly shaped by two resources:

You can see some of their influences in this slide deck I designed for the Lilly Conference earlier this year.

What resources have you found particularly helpful in your ability to create better presentations?

Creating memories as teaching

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Creating memories through teaching

I had the honor of interviewing Gardner Campbell this week: twice. The first episode with him airs on June 30, while the second one posts on July 28.

[Spoiler alert] One of the things he spoke about during the recommendations segment was his recent purchase of the quadrophonic albums of the group, Chicago.

Ever since our conversation, I've had Chicago playing almost non-stop in the soundtrack in my head.

Chicago always reminds me of my Dad and the many trips my family would take out to Joshua Tree when I was little. It was touching for me to discover that Gardner and I share such a deep connection with the music of Chicago.

Music almost always evokes deep memories for me. When students recommend music to me, the memory of them introducing me to a phenomenal musician or musical group is forever etched in my mind.

Before streaming music services existed, my students used to be amazed that I had over 10,000 songs in my digital music collection. I've always enjoyed playing music before class and often invited students to take the role as DJ to find songs that they liked to play.

My favorite memory of those early days of teaching was the student who asked if he could find a song from my collection to play and came up with this little number:

To be clear, this was not done in any sort of flirtatious way, but rather as an attempt to embarrass me for owning the song. I think it was also a “test” to see what kind of professor I was going to be, since it was early in the semester.

I must have passed the test, since this took place ten years ago and I'm still in touch with about half of the students who were in the class.

Creating memories as teaching

I promise not to give the entire episode #107 with Gardner away in this post, but he also shares about listening to Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill with his study abroad students and the lasting memory that it is for him of his teaching experiences.

While any study abroad experience is going to be an extreme example, I keep reflecting on the aspect of our role as teachers of creating memories.

I teach a sales and sales management course once per year that I've taught for 11 years now. I've stayed in touch better with the students who have taken that class more than any other that I teach. I also hear from more of them, years later, as they share some way that the course is still having an impact on them.

I attribute much of that to the way that the students take risks in the course and are able to demonstrate their skills in a powerful (public) way at the end of the semester.

The final experience of the course is called Sales Challenge #3 (as in there are a couple of lessor challenges that come before it, to build up their skills and help prepare them for the experience.

Sales challenge 3

The students dress in professional attire and role play a sales scenario with a business professional they have never met before. It is typically a nerve-wracking experience for them. However, even years later, they tell me what an impact it had on their confidence that they now have the skills needed to influence others and help people solve business-related problems.

We create a memory together, through the experience. It is one that lasts for years down the line and helps them reflect even further on the skills that began to develop, during their college years.

How do you see creating memories as an aspect of your teaching?

The four agreements of teaching

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the four agreements of teaching

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to talk with Doug McKee and Edward O'Neil on episode #32 of their TeachBetter podcast.

The designated topic was teaching freshmen, but we discussed everything from Baskin Robbin's taster spoons, to retrieval practice, to memory palaces, to Evernote, to metacognition. In the episode notes, they also included a link to Vanderbilt's Center for Teaching‘s Teaching First Year Students guide, which is well worth a look.

As I have reflected more about our conversation and what I would want to tell people who are teaching first year (or, really any year) students, I see strong parallels with the principles illustrated in the book The Four Agreements () and teaching well.

The four agreements

Below are the agreements as articulated by don Miguel Ruiz in The Four Agreements, along with a few thoughts about how each one relates to our teaching:

Be impeccable with your word

Stephen Covey defined trust as consisting of both character and competence ().

We can show students our character by providing meaningful and moral feedback. We can have kindness at the core of our teaching. Our exam grading practices can also exhibit fairness and integrity.

We can maintain our competence by having a robust personal knowledge management system and by building effective habits. Ultimately, we want to use the strength of our words to show respect for our students and to demonstrate our own commitment to lifelong learning.

Don't take anything personally

For a long time, this was the only agreement I could recall from the book, because I wrestled with it so often. And that was even before I became a college professor.

“Nothing others do is because of you” (). In the past, when I discovered that students had shown a lack of academic integrity, I thought it was a direct affront to me. Now, I have come to realize that I'm really not anywhere near as much of the center of my students' universes as I once had believed.

James Lang's Cheating Lessons () really helped me depersonalize plagiarism and academic cheating. On episode #19, he stated, “You’re the last thing on their mind. When a student is cheating… their cheating isn’t an assault on your and your values” ().

Don't make assumptions

As I shared in the Engaging Difficult Students episode, I have shown a great ability to completely misread students. It is so easy for us to ascribe intent in situations and establish fertile ground for power struggles, instead of for learning.

We can observe a student on his/her cell phone and immediately assume that they must be attending to something nowhere near as important as whatever it is that we are doing/saying. We forget that his sister may be in labor, her Mom may have had her car break down on the side of a busy freeway, or no one ever really attended to him well when he was younger, so he has nothing to emulate in social or learning contexts.

Mahan Khalsa () describes what he calls “yellow lights” in selling, but I see them as coming up regularly in my teaching and relationships with students. He says that yellow lights are “signals the client may buy something that won't give them the results they want or expect; that they may not buy at all; or that may not buy from us,” but those signals may be that a student is being disrespectful and not buying in to what you were hoping for in the learning environment are also a form of yellow lights.

Khalsa's three steps for responding to yellow lights also apply to a broader context:

  1. Slow down – don't increase the potential for conflict by becoming aggressive. Instead, remind yourself that there's a lot you don't know here and maintain your composure.
  2. State it – name whatever you is that you observe, without anger or defensiveness.
  3. Hand the “yellow light” to the client – ask them how to handle the situation and let them turn the light red or green/

Always do your best

The hard part about always doing our best, is that our roles are so often in conflict with one another. Those of us who are teaching are also pursuing some next step in our educational journey. Some of us are parents. We may be struggling to balance research, teaching, and university service. We may be struggling with our health, or with the health of someone we love.

Or some of us may just consider ourselves bad female academics.

Teaching is incredibly hard. Yet, I imagine even harder still, when done without a care or concern about doing it well.

References

[reminder]Which of the four agreements resonates with you the most in your pursuit of teaching well?[/reminder]

Going public with our learning

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My mind is still invigorated from my conversation about public sphere pedagogy with Thia Wolf on episode 101 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Something special happens when we have our students take their work public in some way.

Whether I reflect on this past semester's experiments with poster sessions in my Consumer Behavior classes, or when my sales students role played a complex sale with someone they hadn't met before, the excitement of what these learning opportunities present energizes me.

My students were so engaged with the idea that their work could take on a more significant role than an exchange solely with me through the grading process.

IMG_1881

The most fertile ground for significant learning experiences takes place within multiple disciplines.

Our educational system seems to be starting to figure this out at the preschool level, but I rarely see examples like this in higher ed. Our son's preschool writes about their curriculum this way:

Learning in preschool is hands-on and integrated. A child’s time outside chasing insects in the garden, for instance incorporates all the ‘dispositions for learning’ as well as cognitive development: science (“What kind of bug is this?” “What do they eat?”); math (“Is it larger or smaller than the other one?” “How many did you find today?”); language (“Monarch Butterflies are orange and black.” “Let’s make up a poem about butterflies!”); social skills (“How can we all see?” “You can have a turn next.”); physical development (running after the butterfly, carefully stepping around plants, manipulating the butterfly net); and creative (painting a picture of the butterfly in its habitat. Dancing and moving like one.)

There is no “math time,” “science time,” or “language time.” Learning is everywhere and happening all the time supported by teachers skilled at looking for and creating moments of discovery and learning based on children’s needs and interests.

IMG_3119

I wish there was more of a push to have this paradigm in higher ed.

When we think of our students as producers of knowledge, the vision of higher education is magnified.

I recently came across the theme of Vanderbilt's Course Design Institute and was trying to figure out if there was a way I could attend, even though the application deadline has passed (oh yeah – and I don't work there).

Their site explain the Students as Producers theme as follows:

“Students as Producers” is shorthand for an approach to teaching that helps students become not just consumers of information, but also producers of knowledge, engaging in meaningful, generative work in the courses they take.

IMG_1691

[reminder] Were you inspired by something that Thia Wolf shared about public sphere pedagogy, or have you tried something similar in your teaching? [/reminder]

Behind the curtain

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Behind the curtain

The Chronicle recently re-posted a 2015 article by Carol Holstead about her experiences requiring her students to take notes by hand. One important distinction she made was that laptops aren't very good for note-taking, leaving a lot of room to conjure up ideas as to how she might use technology in other ways in the classroom.

There have been many articles out in the past few years about hand written note taking:

Just to cite a few…

I have been primarily laptop free in my classes for years now. The exception to the ban is when the learning activity involves something that would be enhanced by having access to research tools, or if I want to transform the students' cell phones into “clickers” using PollEverywhere.

One thing has changed, though…

I'm much more cheerful when I ask my students to put away their laptops/cellphones, even if I need to remind them of the request multiple times during the semester.

Here are my reasons:

Kindness. I continue to be inspired by Jesse Stommel on episode #057, as he shared how integral kindness is to his pedagogy. Whenever there are opportunities to show kindness to my students, I take them. Or at least I aspire to…

Rationale. It gives me an opportunity to reinforce my rationale behind the request to put away their laptops. I can remind them about the research that shows that, yes, taking notes by hand will slow them down, but that it will also often lead to greater retention.

Purpose. Jose Bowen shared this on episode #030: “Nobody uses a laptop while doing yoga or playing tennis.” By demonstrating to the students the function of a classroom community, the benefits of presence, I can better help them see that I care deeply about their learning and that is the purpose behind the restrictions.

When we let our students see “behind the curtain” a bit, we help them better understand our pedagogy, as well as our care for them as learners.

[reminder] How do you let your students see “behind the curtain” into your pedagogy? [/reminder]

The first few weeks

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IMG_0877

I continue to be encouraged by people like Doug McKee who “teach out loud.” I thought that I coined that phrase, but it turns out that other people have had the same idea.

When we work out loud, we:

…[start] with making [our] work visible in such a way that it might help others. When [we] do that – when [we] work in a more open, connected way – [we] can build a purposeful network that makes [us] more effective and provides access to more opportunities.” – John Stepper

The definition fits well with teaching out loud, too.

Spring 2016

To that end, here are some thoughts about my semester so far…

Failures

Lest I depress myself too much with this post, let me start with some of my failures and then move on to the positives.

Speeding up versus slowing down

I continue to have a tough time with all the “inputs” at the start of a semester. New names and faces. Students wanting to add my classes. Collecting scantrons for the semesters' exams. Getting students set up on the various systems that I use (Remind, PollEverywhere, etc.).

Ideally, I would be able to slow myself down when I felt overwhelmed by the line of students waiting to talk to me after class. Instead, I find myself speeding up. I talk faster. I neglect to capture all the information I need to take action on the requests being made.

Making assumptions

I've already found myself making assumptions about some of my students, something I really wish I didn't do. I have found myself able to curb this a bit when I think about each of my students being someone's child. Then, I push myself to imagine if that person was my child, how I might wish that their professor in college would treat them.

I find myself already wanting to excuse my assumption-making by telling you that I'm not unkind to my students. However, I know that even my attempts to hide my initial impressions of students will only ever take me so far.

There will always be a potential for me to not assume the best of others and react without having an adequate context of a given situation.

IMG_0885

The first week of my business ethics class, I had a series of signs hung around the classroom that asked various questions. The students paired up and discussed each question with a partner and then recorded their answers on sticky notes.

The one in the bottom right broke my heart.

The most ethical person I know is… My Mother

What makes me consider him/her as having such integrity is… She was always considerate and honest. 

That student's mother passed away last year.

I want to be doing everything I know how to do in my teaching and in my life to avoid making assumptions. I suppose that rather than trying to avoid ever thinking something, I can try to redirect those initial thoughts into ones that assume the best of my students.

Successes

It still feels awfully early in the semester to be running any victory laps.

Learning names

I'm surprised that when I relax a bit about names, without absolving myself of the responsibility to learn them, that I actually do pretty good at it. I'm not there yet, but I'm working toward it.

Getting moving

I've been happy that in almost every class session I've had so far this semester, students have been out of their chairs and moving around the classroom. The Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episode #085 that airs on 1/28/16 has a write-in recommendation from a listener about a book on the same topic. Getting our students moving in our classes has such positive outcomes.

Playing games

I'm back to playing HeadsUp in many of my classes to help them review key terms. Two of my classes are back-to-back and take place in the same classroom. One of my students from the later classroom was standing outside the class, looking in the window yesterday, chuckling at me holding my giant iPad pro above my head. She also had a look on her face like she hoped we were going to do the same thing in her class.

Discovering a new pencast workflow

Since receiving the iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil for Christmas, I've been looking forward to rethinking my pencast workflow. Doceri came off my someday/maybe technology list and wound up being what I chose to now create them.

I first spend the time drawing the pencast drawing, taking all the time I need as long pauses get edited out in the creation process, automatically. Then, I “play back” the drawing, while I add the narration. I can speed up, slow down, or pause the drawing while I'm talking.

Next steps

The semester is just getting started and there's a lot I need to do to create an effective learning environment. However, we are on our way and I'm enjoying getting to know my students and each class' personality.

[reminder]How is your semester going so far? What's working? What's not working?[/reminder]

More on blind grading

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blind grading

On episode #068 Dave and I discussed the biases that can be problematic when working to grade exams fairly.

One technique that we shared to promote greater integrity in our exam grading was blind grading. Not everyone agrees with this method, since there are some downsides.

David Gooblar stresses that despite the challenges that knowing which student is being evaluated presents, we should have knowledge as to which student produced the work we are grading.

Gooblar writes:

If I were to grade blind, I wouldn’t be able to chart a student’s progress throughout the term, from one assignment to another, nor would I be able to tailor my grading to the specific skills each student is working on. – See more at: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1186-should-we-all-be-grading-blind?

While I tend to grow increasingly depressed each time I allow myself to read the comments section of anything on the internet, I was pleasantly surprised by the nuanced reactions to Gooblar's piece.

One of the commenters describes how s/he attains a balance between the two extremes:

I grade essays blind, but then identify each author when I record grades. So I do know how each student is doing through the course, while still reducing bias in grading.

I realize that, like parents with their children, we should love all of them equally. But, like parents, we are human, and we like some better than others.

I didn't emphasize it in episode #068: my blindness in grading is a temporary thing.

Being able to talk with each of our students, individually, about how we see him/her developing is an important aspect of our roles as teachers. However, doing what we can to ensure that we aren't poorly evaluating their work due to conscious or unconscious biases is also paramount.
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Assessment and instructional design

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luke-pt

My husband (Dave) and I are preparing to participate in a parent/teacher conference about our son (Luke) for the first time. Dave brought home a couple of forms that we needed to fill out about Luke, that included us doing some at-home assessment.

I told Luke we were going to do some games and some experiments and that I needed his help. Many of the questions asked about things that I wasn't sure as to Luke's current level of proficiency.

Sample questions

The questions went something like this:

_____ can jump forward six inches with both feet.

[  ]  Yes  [  ]  Sometimes  [  ]  No

_____ can follow a three-part set of instructions without being reminded of any of the steps (such as move your jacket from the floor to the couch, bring me the red book, and put your cup in the sink…)

[  ]  Yes  [  ]  Sometimes  [  ]  No

Careful consideration in assessment

I was conscientious as I filled in each answer. I didn't want us to be those parents who over-inflate our child's abilities in our own minds.

The directions were quite clear and they seemed to predict my questions about how to rank Luke's skills.

Verifying skills

After I completed the assessment, I kept reflecting on how many of the items I had to double check (by having Luke perform whatever skill it was asking whether or not he knew how to do).

I'm one of his parents and one would think I would already know such things.

How much more, then, is it likely that we as faculty aren't always able to gauge where our students are in terms of their progression in our classes?

Motivation vs competence

Dave and I also joked quite a bit while completing the assessment about the number of times that we were confused about whether we should answer the questions as to whether or not he can do a particular task, or whether or not he will.

How much of the time are we able to assess whether it is a lack of competence that is holding our students back, or whether or not the problem is with motivation?

The Mager Six Pack

The whole experience had me thinking, once again, about my most-often consulted set of books in my home office: The Mager Six Pack.

I was first introduced to Mager's books in the late 90s, when the third edition of the Mager Six Pack was published.

Mager's writing is more geared toward an audience doing any kind of instruction, not necessarily specifically toward those teaching in a higher education context.

However, this does not present a weakness, as far as I'm considered. I'm still amazed that a couple of decades later and in any kind of an educational context, Mager has much to offer.

Analyzing Performance Problems: Or, You Really Oughta Wanna–How to Figure out Why People Aren't Doing What They Should Be, and What to do About It

The title of the first book in the series speaks for itself. I've used it extensively in teaching managers how to figure out what to do when their employees aren't meeting expectations in some way.

Often, a company asks a training department to offer some kind of workshop to fix a performance problem, when it is way down on Mager's list of steps to potentially take, well after having looked at other potential reasons for things not going as they should.

Preparing Instructional Objectives

This would be the place I would have all teachers in higher ed start, as it relates to Mager's work. I just saw that you can purchase this title on Amazon for $4.00, so it is also an affordable way to get started with Mager's work, if you decide not to purchase the entire Six Pack.

Those of us who are fans of the Choose Your Own Adventure books will like Mager's writing approach in this book. He presents information to you along the way and then gives you little quizzes to assess your learning. He has you turn to a specific page, based on how you answer a question.

If you wind up turning to the page that shows you knew your stuff, he has you skip over additional review. If the page you turned to shows that you need a bit more support in learning about this aspect of instructional objectives, he provides further examples.

Measuring Instructional Results

The prior title looked at how to craft instructional objectives. This book explores how to assess learning and the attainment of those outcomes.

I probably need to pull this one off the shelf more often than I have, as it has checklists and other resources to help you when working to assess learning outcomes.

How to Turn Learners On… Without Turning Them Off: Ways to Ignite Interest in Learning

As I shared with the example of Luke not necessarily always wanting to perform a particular task, this isn't only a problem when relating to almost-four year-olds… Mager gives insight in this title about how to help motivate learners.

Goal Analysis: How to Clarify Your Goals So You Can Actually Achieve Them

Mager leverages his writing approach in this title, as he gives you over 50 practice exercises to help you with goal setting.

Making Instruction Work: Or Skillbloomers: A Step-By-Step Guide to Designing and Developing Instruction That Works

Again, this is a title I could probably pull out more often. This book describes itself as a practical resource for instructional designers. There are all sorts of instructional methods out there, but Mager focuses on proven ones that work and will enhance your teaching.

My recommendation

It looks like the original publisher of the Mager Six Pack is no longer printing them. However, I saw in the reviews that the Mager Consortium still has them available.

Mager does have a playful writing style that may be a source of irritation for some academics. If you can get past that, he does provide a structure for his books that focus on the concrete and practical side of instruction.

I hope you'll consider adding the Mager Six Pack to your instructional library. While you're at it, spend some time thinking about ways that you are assessing your students' learning throughout your course and approaches you're using to address motivation throughout the semester.

[reminder]Are there any books on your higher ed bookshelf that you have referenced more than any other over the years?[/reminder]

Continuous improvement in teaching

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continuous-improvement

My Introduction to Business students just took their first exam of the semester. For some, it was the first college-level test they have ever taken.

I had a couple of goals I was aiming for this semester.

Avoid surprises on the exam structure

Each semester, I have students participate in an online forum, where they reflect on their first exam. They write about what went well, what didn't, what they will do differently next time, and what I could have done differently to support them in their learning.

The most common factor that students have identified in the past as a hinderance to them doing well on the exam was that they didn't know what to expect on the exam. This has frustrated me in the past, because it tends to come from an external locus of control paradigm. However, I now think I was just being stubborn and could have done something much sooner to take away this as a potential challenge for the students.

This semester, I'm using PollEverywhere even more than in the past. In particular, I regularly let them know that the kinds of questions they see (especially the multiple choice and the true/false) are the same types of questions they are going to see on the first part of the exam.

They also take weekly quizzes and I reminded them frequently that those questions were written by the publisher… the same source for the questions that show up on the exam.

Finally, I had them take a non-graded pop-quiz with an essay question that was in the same style / format as the ones that would show up on their exam.

I'm happy to report that not a single one of my 95 students who are in the three sections of the classes I'm teaching this semester indicated that they were unaware of what the exam would be like…

Success.

Prepare students for application-oriented questions

The other goal I had for this first exam was to better prepare students for going beyond memorization, but being able to apply their learning in a given context.

One of the most listened to episodes of Teaching in Higher Ed is the conversation I had with Tine Reimers on critical thinking.

It doesn't surprise me, as I struggle to develop these skills in my students. I had mixed results on the exam in this area.

One of the questions posed to them had to do with defining corporate social responsibility and then giving examples of ways that a particular company might address various stakeholders' needs and wants.

All students in the classes were able to list the stakeholders. The vast majority were able to give generic examples, such as offering benefits to the employees. There were probably 20% who were unable to make their examples specific to the company, however.

When it came to students being able to give examples for the four types of competition in markets, the success rate was much lower. Students were able to regurgitate the definitions from the textbook (which are poor, at best), but the examples they used demonstrated their lack of comprehension of these types of competition.

For monopoly, students were most often able to indicate that this was a market in which there was only one competitor.

However, their examples either had to do with their preference for a particular brand (“Apple is a monopoly, because no other technology company makes products as well as they do and they are one of the wealthiest companies in the world”), or they had answers like that bottled water companies were monopolies (We had discussed many times about how it wouldn't make sense to have multiple pipes going to your house of water and you choosing which one you liked the best). I guess they had water on their mind, but didn't realize how different bottled water is from the water we pay for as a utility.

David Merill always emphasizes that when we are teaching in the phase he calls demonstration, that we should show the learner not just how to do something, but also how not to do something.

The students clearly didn't have enough examples of what wouldn't fit into the category of each of these competitive structures.

The next time I teach this course, I'm either going to decide that this topic just isn't necessary at the level of introductory business and have them learn it in economics, or I'm going to create an experiential exercise in class to hammer home the examples more.

Creating an in-class reinforcement exercise

I'll bring in a bag full of items for each group of 4-5 students. There will be signs hanging around the classroom for each of the type of competition. Students will take each item in the bag and set it on the table under the appropriate competition type sign. Then, I'll have each group go and stand in front of one of the signs and determine whether or not the items that have been set there are correct for their type of competition.

Competition exercise

If I ultimately determine that I don't have enough time in class to go this in depth on this one learning objective, I can always build some kind of online exercise that will accomplish the same thing.

Building an online reinforcement on competition types

I could have a virtual bag in which the items that require sorting could be housed. Then, I could have some kind of a drag-and-drop interaction that has them drag them over to the name of the appropriate type of competition.

Articulate Storyline is a rapid elearning creation tool that has the capability to build drag-and-drop interactions in online courses. We have been big fans of Articulate's eLearning creation applications over the years. However, they are a Windows-only platform and we have now become a Mac-only household.

It looks like Adobe Captivate also now has drag and drop interactions. Captivate is available on the Mac and PC, so makes for a good option.

Both Articulate Storyline and Captivate are high-end applications and have the price tag you would associate with such advanced features.

Continuous improvement in teaching

I am overall pleased with the results of this first exam. Taking the time to reflect on how I can continuously improve this class after each exam is important to me. I'm glad I invested the time today to consider what changes to make, both the next time I teach this class, and as I continue with these students throughout the rest of the semester.

[reminder]Have you had any exams in your classes yet this academic year? If so, what did you discover? [/reminder]

Quick teaching

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quick-teaching

I've often been frustrated at the 50-minute time block for courses.

At our university, morning classes on Monday/Wednesday/Friday are held [typically] in 50 minute blocks, while afternoon classes and those held on Tuesday/Thursday are conducted in an hour and 15 minutes.

Generally speaking, I tend to reserve the first five minutes for an introduction and welcome, while the last five minutes is left open for questions (or more likely because something took longer than I predicted).

That leaves really 40 minutes to facilitate learning.

Let's say I use five minutes to introduce the topic and some key terms and up to ten minutes to show some kind of video.

Now we are down to just 25 minutes to facilitate learning.

I might give instructions on an exercise for five minutes, let them come up with ideas on their own for ten minutes and then work in groups for another ten minutes.

Class is now over.

No feedback has been given on their group work.

There are all sorts of ways to change the time estimates up that I've reflected above.

Students can watch the video before they come to class and answer a few questions on their own. I could combine the giving instructions with the welcome.

However, the fact remains that it is very challenging to invite active learning in a 50 minute class session.

One technique I do is to follow up with some written or spoken feedback after the class session has ended.

My Introduction to Business students did an exercise recently about corporate social responsibility and stakeholders.

Introductory Pre-work

Before coming to class, the students watched a pencast and took a quiz to gain the basic vocabulary.

Activation in Class

In class, we listened to part of an interview with John MacKey (Whole Foods' CEO and founder) about conscious capitalism, in which he discussed some of ways in which he responds to stakeholders' needs. As they listened, I asked them to group the approaches he described under a list of the five, main stakeholders: investors, community members, employees, the environment, and customers.

We then scrolled through Apple's supplier responsibility site and discussed how challenging it can actually be to live out your company's values when you have a complex supply chain.

Application

Finally, I hung up signs around the room with the names of the various stakeholders. I made the signs on Canva, which is a terrific resource for quickly making gorgeously-designed graphics, without being a graphic designer, yourself.

The students met in groups and had to come up with three ways that Toyota might address each of the stakeholder groups.

Here is one of the class section's stickies.

Reinforcement after class

There wasn't time for me to review their responses in class. However, I was able to quickly capture their ideas via Evernote's iPhone app. Then, I wrote an email to them and discussed areas of strength in their responses and what they will want to improve upon by the time their first exam arrives in a couple of weeks.

Interleaving practice in weeks to come

Even though I would much prefer not to teach in 50-minute sessions, it does keep me from neglecting opportunities for interleaving practice.

Here's Robert Bjork describing the benefits of interleaving practice and how it is superior to blocked practice (even though it doesn't initially appear to be so).

Now that students have had an introduction to corporate social responsibility and they have been able to practice applying their new vocabulary in different contexts, they are ready for unexpected and low-stakes practice in the weeks to come.

I am getting a lot of leverage out of Remind this semester, as I send short messages no more than 2-3 times a day, asking students follow up questions about subjects we have explored in class.  They are not required to respond, but if they do, I will reply to them and let them know if they're on the right track.

[reminder]What approaches do you use when dealing with a short time frame in which to teach?[/reminder]

Calm teaching

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calm-teaching

My former students often tease me, saying that having kids changed me as a teacher.

They reflect on how much calmer I am, in terms of when students aren't necessarily “following the rules” I set in the classroom. [I'll leave the discussion for how creating a culture of compliance may or may not be the best goal for education for another day…]

Both of our children were conceived as a result of many medical adventures. When I was pregnant both times, I worked hard to keep my stress levels low.

It was actually easier than I thought it was going to be…

I vacillated between being somewhat tired to being completely exhausted throughout the experiences. There just wasn't enough energy for getting angry at students.

When something would happen that would normally have frustrated me to the point of stress, I instead just took a deep breath and addressed whatever it was that happened in a patient way.

Despite the fact that we are done having children now and I get 8 hours of sleep most nights, the sense of calm in my teaching has remained.

Behavior does not equal intent

I used to be so incredibly good at ascribing bad intent to a behavior that a student would exhibit in a class.

If they were texting on their cell phone, I made that action somehow about me, specifically. They weren't just being rude, but were specifically choosing to be rude to me.

Now, while I still have times during my classes when the cell phones get put away and we focus on being fully present for one another, my feelings have changed during those times when the cell phones somehow sneak back into the foreground.

I still will ask a student to put their cell phone away, but I'll just mention that we aren't going to be needing them for what we are working on and that I know they don't want to miss what we're experiencing.

I frame my request more like I might an invitation and less like I might an indictment .

Students will often mirror our level of anxiety

Calm teaching certainly creates a better experience for me, but it also creates a calmer learning environment for my students.

Family systems theory is based on the idea that, in psychotherapy, you need to think about the individual you're treating as a part of their overall family system.

Organizational psychology draws from family systems theory and attempts to show the ways that the same dynamics from family systems theory emerge in the workplace.

If you would like to hear a robotic voice explain how this works, check out this video on family systems theory in the classroom.

We can model for students how to keep their anxiety low and reduce it for others by remaining calm when facing a potentially challenging situation with a student.

I have found that taking a deep breath (during which I remind myself that there's a lot that I don't know about this student) and formulating either a question I can ask, or an invitation to that student to engage works well for me.

We've been encouraged by Jose Bowen to Teach Naked… and I'm so looking forward to discovering from James Lang in 2016 more about Small Teaching.

I'm thinking calm teaching is another aim we can cultivate as educators…

 

Choose your own adventure learning (part 2)

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choose-your-own-adventure-learning

I wrote a post about how I provided some Choose your own adventure-style learning for my students last semester. In the comments, Doug McKee indicated that it sounded like it would wind up being much harder than a “normal class” and asked if that was a fair assumption to make.

The question seemed worthy of a follow up post to my prior blog entry about Choose your own learning.

The inherent challenges of course design

I will say upfront that it is challenging to assess what additional time was required, since it was my first time teaching the course at the undergraduate level. Whenever I do that, I spend an enormous amount of time crafting learning outcomes, developing rubrics for each assignment, and on instructional design.

Someone who had taught a class previously, but just wanted to add the component of choose your own adventure would have a lot less work to do than I did last semester.

Questions to address before adopting this approach

Here are some of the areas I've identified that would require additional planning and thinking for a choose your own adventure type approach:

How will you handle exams, when not all students in the class will take them?

  • I taught the course in a three-hour block, so it was easy to schedule the exams as the last activity for the night. Those not taking the exam just left after the first two hours of instruction.

How strict will you be about the class policies you set up for this approach?

  • I had a form that students completed with their points designation, which states that changes could not be made after the fact. I wound up making changes on a number of fronts and would probably figure out other wording to use in the future to reflect what are likely to be my true actions when changes are warranted.

How can you structure the potential options for earning points to be sure that all learning outcomes are assessed?

  • My course had four modules and one comprehensive exam or assignments. I required that students take at least three of the five exams and earn points for some assignment related to the fourth module they potentially wouldn't be taking an exam on.

How will you structure your grade book to show progress toward total points in the class?

  • I was transparent with the students that the way the grade book was set up, they would have to do figuring on their own of how they were progressing toward a desired grade in the class. I didn't have a way to set up individual reports for students, based on the ways they selected to earn points during the semester.
  • This didn't wind up to be too problematic. Half of the class was comprised of accounting majors, who were all quite comfortable with projecting their own grades, individually. The remainder of the students were highly mature and also either kept a close eye on their points, or weren't as concerned about their grade in the class.

How will you track students' selected assignments?

  • I used a form that the students filled our during the second night of class (after hearing about it and receiving the dome during the first session). Then, I made a photocopy for me and handed the originals back to the students. This became problematic when I scanned the documents and recycled the copies.
  • I didn't notice until too late that the items each student had checked did not show up on the scanned copy, except in a few cases. Even then, the documents were difficult to sort through and manage. Some students also lost their originals throughout the semester and had to rely on memory for what they had chosen.
  • Next time I use some kind of choose your own adventure style, I will use a Google form for collecting the students' point selections. I'll have each student include their email address on the form and will set up a mail merge to send each student their selections.

Yes, using a choose your own adventure state of teaching took some additional time, versus having a standard set of assignments. However, I can refine my processes over time and probably carve that down to something almost negligible in the long run.

 

Choose your own adventure learning

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choose-your-own-adventure-learning

When I was a kid, one of my favorite forms of story telling was the Choose Your Own Adventure series. The books were written in a non-linear way, allowing me to grapple with how I would handle a particular situation.

Cave_of_timeEvery couple of pages brought forth a dilemma with two or three possible routes to take. If I wanted to choose option A, I was directed to turn to a specific page. Option B took me to an entirely different part of the book. You could read the book repeatedly and get a different story each time.

Edward Packer created the series of books out of an exchange he had with his daughters. He used to tell them stories each night about a character named Pete. One day, he ran out of adventures to send Pete on and he asked his children what they thought Pete should encounter that night.

When he saw how engaged his daughters became, he decided to extend the idea into written form. The Choose Your Own Adventure series was quite successful, selling 250 million copies between 1979 and 1999.

Choose Your Own Adventure Learning

The idea for using a choose your own adventure style of instruction for my business ethics course came, initially, from my desire to incorporate some type of undergraduate research into the class. Bethany Usher was on episode 27 of Teaching in Higher Ed and was such an inspiration to me to begin to engage in the messy work of leading undergraduate research.

I wound up failing in my ability to get traction with any kind of formal research projects, but I did start to think more about approaching the class in a more flexible manner than my typical syllabi afford students.

Goals

As I started to put together a framework for the assessment for the learning, I kept a few goals in mind.

1) Offer varied methods for demonstrating learning

I wanted to be sure that students were assessed on each, main, learning outcome for the class. However, I also wanted students to be given choices as to how they might demonstrate their learning.

2) Help students discover their strengths

Instead of having students focus on improving their weak areas, my desire was that this course would help them identify and amplify their strengths.

3) Ask students to take responsibility for their learning

I also hoped that students would be more autonomous in their learning and have some of their childlike curiosity sparked.

Structure

I started by putting together a graphic that showed the students the various ways they had to demonstrate their learning throughout the semester and the associated potential point values.

busn435-pointsdistribution

In order to ensure that students demonstrated learning in each of the four primary learning outcomes, they were required to take at least three exams (out of a possible five).

Each student chose a combination of points that added up to 1000 and only contained one project worth 250 points (the service learning or research project).

Then, I showed them how the various assignments were timed throughout the semester.

module-timing

Some assignments were based on the four modules, each around 3-4 weeks apart. I had students use the scheduling service, Doodle, to sign up to give their in class presentations.

The timing of the exams was not flexible, as they occurred in class and were only offered on a single night of class. The timing of the weekly assignments was also not flexible, as they were designed to be reinforcement for before the class sessions were held.

There were a series of comprehensive assignments, which were assessed in the last few weeks of the semester. Some of our graduating accounting majors put together this video on how to create more ethical business practices through internal controls, as their service learning project.

The intent was that it could help people with limited business experience reduce their risk of fraud. One area that I know I need to improve on the next time I teach this class is to have more measurable outcomes surrounding what “done” looks like for these projects. While I was incredibly impressed with the video, I had hoped that they would have a particular group of individuals who could be helped by it.

I'm disappointed that I didn't outline my expectations more effectively, but am also reminded of what my friend, Doug McKee, says:

If you aren't failing at teaching, you aren't trying hard enough.

Results

On the final week of our class, I asked the students to give input as to what worked and what didn't about the way the class was structured. I had been candid with them in the beginning about my experimentation with this format and we had made some tweaks along the way as we discovered problems with my initial design.

The students were excited to share their feedback with me on how much they liked the class structure.

Here are some of the notes I took that relate directly to the Choose Your Own Adventure learning approach:

We got to play to our strengths.

I could schedule the assignments around my other classes' exam and assignment dates.

It shifted the responsibility for learning from you, as the professor, to us, as the students.

I liked being able to decide whether or not attendance was going to be a factor in my grade for this class.

The flexibility of this structure was great.

Planning out which assignments I would do when also helped me do a little thinking about my learning, in advance of right around when the assignment was due, like I do in so many of my other classes.

It was rewarding to discover that the goals I had set out for this experiment were achieved. I also found other aspects to the approach that I hadn't even anticipated as a potential benefit.

Other ideas

I wasn't surprised when I discovered that I'm not the only person to have had the idea to make a class in to a Choose Your Own Adventure format. Here are 20 ideas for ways you might use a similar format in your classes.

[reminder]Let us know what ways you have given your students more control over their own learning. [/reminder]

 

 

The treasures of a teacher

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The treasures of a teacher

I took our kids to the beach the other evening. Our 3 year-old, Luke, found a penny while we were walking toward the pier. He was thrilled with his find and wanted to put it in one of the parking meters we kept passing.

It was difficult to try to explain to him the errors in his logic.

First off, paying for parking at the beach is only required until 5 pm and we were there after that time. Second, I tried to explain to him that there really wasn't much that a penny would do for him these days. A penny wouldn't even be accepted in the meter, let alone result in any minutes of parking time.

After I told him these things, this was his response to me:

Mommy, this penny is my treasure.

It was one of those “in the eyes of the beholder” moments. I loved that he took such delight in something so seemingly insignificant.

It got me to thinking about the things I treasure the most in my teaching.

For me, its the letters and emails I receive from former students. They remind me of the ways in which I've been some small part in helping another person grow. They remind me that even though students will likely be challenged beyond what they would choose for themselves in the short term, that they have the potential to reap rewards that extend well beyond that final week of classes.

During the stressful final days of the semester, I like to read former students' words of encouragement that remind me of the longer arc of learning we are striving for…

My most treasured letter came from a student who failed her first class with me. She was devastated. At the time, she suspected that she was going to be unable to return to the university the following year.

I listened to her and had her talk through the possibility of not coming back. She was prepared to accept that outcome, though of course she was saddened that it would set her back so much in her life.

The following year, she was able to return. She took the class, again, and this time earned a C. Each class she took with me, she told me she worked harder than she ever had in college.

I would sometimes stay late in the evenings to study with her and others in the classes. It was rewarding to watch her put forth such effort, despite the fact that she wasn't able to accomplish the specific grades I know she wanted.

As is so often the case, her graduation seemed to come so quickly. She dropped a letter off for me in my office as the last week of classes was ending.

In it, she wrote about how much I had meant to her as a professor. She said she appreciated that not only did I challenge her to do more than she ever thought she was capable of, but that I believed in her more than anyone else ever had.

Most of the letters that students write wind up getting scanned and put in to a folder on my computer for my post-tenure review or future promotion portfolio. While I have scanned hers, just in case something were to happen to it, the physical copy of it has remained in my desk hutch all this time.

I can see the lines of the back of the piece of paper paper all the time when I'm sitting at my computer, knowing the precious treasure of words that sits inside those folds.

Yes, Luke, I understand what unexpected treasures we might find on our journeys. Thank you for reminding me of that with your penny the other night.

Speaking of which, I don't think I took the penny out of my pocket. By now, it has probably gone through the wash. Sigh. 

[reminder]What is a treasure in your teaching that you've collected?[/reminder]

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]