Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:

Today on episode number 430 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, I answer a question about how to grade creative assignments. Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches, so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students. For today’s episode, I’m doing something a little bit different, and I’m going to be answering a question that I got from my column on EdSurge and doing it in a little bit of a different format. And rather than have the person who wrote the question ask me the question, today I have with me Dave Stachowiak playing the role of Brian Plummer, who asked me this question about how to grade assignments. Again, this is Dave Stachowiak playing the role he’s been training for his entire life of Brian Plummer who wrote into me with this question. And for those of you reading the transcripts, I am kidding.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:19]:

Dave has not been preparing for his entire life, but he has been preparing for at least 5 minutes this morning. So we have that going for us. Alright, Dave. Take it away.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:28]:

Dear Bonni, I’ll be teaching a course on the history of Ireland later this year. I’ve been having trouble coming up with a good project for the students to work on. I want it to be something useful, interesting, and perhaps most importantly memorable, but I’m not sure what it should be. Seeing as how art has been such a big part of Irish history and culture, I was thinking about something artistic in some way, but how on earth do I grade something creative? I want the students to do something historical, obviously, depict an event or a person perhaps, but I understand that not everyone is equally creative in the arts. I’ve thought about opening it up widely, write a historical novel at using primary sources, of course, create a sculpture, write a song. But, again, I have no idea how to grade something like that considering the wide range of talent that my students likely will have. Do I grade a student lower if he or she isn’t able to write a song or create some kind of representative artistic element? What do I do? From Brian Plummer, adjunct history professor at Vanguard University.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:29]:

Oh, Brian, you post such vital questions. Thank you so much for asking them. The desire to have students produce something useful, interesting, creative, and memorable is to be admired. And your pursuit of this quest reminds me a little bit of an interview I did for teaching in higher ed with Ken Bain, who’s the author of What the Best College Teachers Do. And way back then in that conversation and in his book, of course, Bonni encourages professors to, quote, ask engaging questions that spark people’s curiosity and fascination, questions that people find intriguing. And Baines stressed that good teaching is about inviting students to solve problems or answer questions they find, quote, intriguing, interesting, or even beautiful. And as far as your concerns about assessing creative work, they do seem to reflect an important, and I would even say necessary ethic that you’re attempting to live up to in your teaching. And you reminded me of a tweet which I referenced in another recent episode from Corinne Gressang, an assistant professor of history at Erskine College.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:45]:

And she had a similar concern about a class that she taught about the holocaust. And this I’m quoting from her tweet now. In my course on the holocaust, I gave my students choice between a final project and a final exam. I feel weird about testing them on genocide. There are certainly, Brian, ample problems with grades that would take up far more space than even 10 of my normal episodes might require. And when I talked way back when with Josh Eyler, who’s the director of faculty development and director of the think forward quality enhancement plan at the University of Mississippi about the problems with grades on a recent teaching in higher ed podcast. He urged us to recognize that quote, the more we focus on grades, the less we focus on learning. And yes, indeed, back to the tweet I was mentioning from Corinne, testing students on genocide certainly does seem problematic, particularly when we consider the outcomes that her students were able to achieve when she gave them the choice about how to demonstrate their learning in more novel ways.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:04:57]:

And in her subsequent tweets, which I’ll be linking to in the show notes, they really reveal some of what the students were able to accomplish, and it’s truly marvelous. One student composed a song using string instruments with the goal of evoking the ominous and anxious feelings related to that period in world history. Others in the class applied for and received funding from their university’s student government association and held a campus wide night of remembrance. Another student’s final project took the form of video with photos and narration, comparing the classes learning about the Holocaust with recent events in Ukraine. One essential piece of advice I have for you, Brian, is to start small. Graseng and many of the other faculty who have assigned these kinds of projects, they’re certainly inspiring. When we see the final results, what it took to get there can sometimes be obscured. In Griseng’s case, she pulled back the curtain in subsequent tweets.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:06:05]:

She said that the key thing isn’t about assigning a high stakes final project and having students submit their work by that due date. For complex final assignments to work well, instructors need to encourage students to start small and break the assignment up into smaller pieces. And this is what she advised to us, ask students to develop a proposal for their project and work together to determine what the criteria will be to evaluate the assignments, have students turn in a reflection at the end, include citations in their submissions, and some of some of the habits of mind we’re used to when approaching academic projects. To set a new tone, professors can look for opportunities in the classroom to encourage student curiosity and wonder. And another example I talked about recently comes from Peter Newbury. He invites us to take advantage of the minutes before a class even starts to get students thinking. And he talks about when he taught astronomy classes, that he would include an astronomy picture of the day from NASA as students come into class. And the photos would generally get a glance as people arrived, but then the conversations would really move on to other topics.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:07:34]:

But when he added 2 prompts under each photo, he found the conversations before class time began were really transformed. And those 2 questions he would ask are simply, 1, what do you notice? 2, what do you wonder? And these small steps that we can take can contribute to helping students and not to mention ourselves unlearn a little bit more of that transactional approach to learning, giving students ample opportunity to wonder about what they’re learning, breaking large projects into smaller pieces, such that you can extend the invitations to get curious and experience deeper learning over time. Josh Eyler in his book, How Humans Learn, the science and stories behind effective college teaching, reminds us that in order to learn something, we must first wonder about it. So now to the core of your question, how on earth do you assess creativity? Well, before I answer that specific question, I want you to consider, Brian, whether or not what you’re really looking to measure is truly creativity. And one source you can go to to start to think more about this is the American Association of Colleges and Universities, AAC and U. And this is the definition that they use in their value rubric. Value is an acronym for valid assessment of learning in undergraduate education. And so this is from their creative thinking value rubric, and I’m quoting here, creative thinking is both the capacity to combine or synthesize existing ideas, images, or expertise in original ways, and the experience of thinking, reacting, and working in an imaginative way characterized by a high degree of innovation, divergent thinking, and risk taking.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:09:36]:

And as you reflect on what you’re seeking to develop and assess with the students enrolled in your class, you could consider exploring other value rubrics within that broader system, such as perhaps global learning or critical thinking. Those may be possibly more of what you’re looking to assess with this particular class and this particular assignment. And another, resource that you could use to explore is Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education’s project zeros, visible thinking project. And the website talks about these project 0 projects having 2 goals to cultivate students’ thinking skills and dispositions, and to deepen content learning. And one example that could help you in teaching the history of Ireland class is the group’s creative question starts thinking routine. As you introduce a new theme in the course or a new time in Ireland’s history, you could have students go through questions such as why, what if, how would it be different if, suppose that, what would have changed if dot dot dot. Each of these has dot dot dots at the end. Once you’ve identified the skills and abilities and knowledge you want to gauge with the assessment, It could be that you’re looking less at trying to see how creative these students are and more wanting to give them options for how to demonstrate what they’ve gained from the class.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:11:09]:

If you want to provide alternative means for demonstrating learning, the CAST universal design for learning, action, and expression guidelines may help you think through how to provide choices to these students. Harvard University’s alternative assignments creative and digital resource is another place you can go to look, and note their cautionary notes and advice that will be helpful as you further explore your options. Among those is the warning they have about the amount of preparation these types of assignments may require for students. And I can say for myself, Brian, having done these in my classes, I almost always find myself wishing I had even dedicated more time across multiple weeks in order for the smaller steps of preparation to take place. And, also, by the way, as a side note, for me to have time to give feedback, that’s something that I tend to not get right very often is remembering to build in plenty of time for weeks where I’m going to be providing feedback. And sometimes that feedback can take place, of course, in writing or a screen cast or audio format, but it also can take place in scheduling individual meetings with the different groups if it’s a group project or with individual students. And you can even have them sign up in groups and maybe come in in groups of 2 or 3 to meet with you that way, and that’ll help create some economies of scale depending on the size of your class. And, Brian, I really hope that your first attempt goes well with this coming semester as you teach the class and look to have a little bit more creativity in this assignment.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:12:48]:

And I just wanna leave you with one last note, and that is that alternative assignments can often be messy as can subsequent experiments, but that the rewards for students and teachers alike can be transformative. And I hope that the examples that I gave you give you some little glimpses into that messiness, but I have found sometimes until I get back in there myself, I I can forget and get a little bit optimistic. But learning is messy, and it’s worth it, that messiness for what can happen on the other side. I wish you the best on all of this, and thanks for the question, Brian. This is the time in a show where I get to give a couple of recommendations, and the first one relates to the topic of today’s show, and it’s by John Warner for Inside Higher Ed. And it’s an article entitled group projects don’t need to be miserable. John always has such great advice, and this is definitely a resource that will help people who are looking to incorporate some group projects into your teaching or to refine them. I always find myself when I assign them every time thinking of at least some ways I could Dave improved them, and I appreciated John’s inspiration on this one.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:58]:

And the second thing I’d like to recommend is that we all rethink the QR code. This is one of those things that I really thought was gonna go away at some point. And so a QR code, you’ve probably seen them many places. Sometimes you might see them digitally in someone’s PowerPoint slides or something like that, or other times you might see them somewhere printed and hanging up. And, of course, these days, a any smartphone, you open up the camera or an app that’s specifically geared toward opening QR codes. And as as soon as you get it hovered in the right spot, it will offer you the opportunity to open up whatever link it is that QR code is inviting you to do. And I mentioned that I thought that they were gonna go away, and it seems like they’re back stronger than ever now, and lots of different tools can easily create them. Something that I have been doing a lot lately is building presentations inside of Canva.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:14:54]:

Most of us think of Canva for designing things like flyers, but or graphics or that kinds of things, social media. And I really enjoy using Canva for giving presentations these days. It’s it’s been fun, and I can talk more about that in a future episode, but it’s been fun to experiment a little bit with some video Bonni slides that sort of play in the background. And another thing that you can do in Canva is easily copy a link and then paste it in and create a QR code. That way, that sits on your slides. And so you can create it in Canva. You can create QR codes in Bitly. You can create codes straight out of Google, all kinds of places to create a QR code.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:15:35]:

And then once you have them, I recommend saving them as a graphic with some sort of a name that’s going to remind you of what on earth that QR code links to. And you can then present QR codes in 2 broad ways. You can present them as in an in sort of an analog way, so you might have something printed like handouts. Or I found out recently in the last 6 months or so that our university, the print and copy and mail center will print out posters. And so for the first time, we’re gonna be including some posters for an upcoming event. And in the lower right hand corner will be a QR code that links to a padlet, which is a digital corkboard where people can contribute that way if they prefer. But you also, on those posters that we’re printing out, can just contribute the the old fashioned way, and that is we’re gonna have a bunch of sticky notes sitting around that people can then write on and then stick Bonni those posters. And same thing with the handouts, we’ll have QR codes on their handouts and also on our slides, and then that way people can access the materials.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:16:46]:

Or if it’s a poll, pull everywhere question I want people to easily be able to get over to. And once you kind of build up the muscle memory or I’m not sure that’s a great analogy, but once you build up the ability for for a whole group to get used to, that there’s gonna be a lot of uses of QR codes. It’s really an a format or a method that creates a lot of a sense of ease, And people can sort of relax a little bit because they know they can get back to that information, just by having those QR codes that are organized for them, again, in the handouts or via posters or what have you. So a lot of what we’re doing for an upcoming workshop with new faculty is going to be having different Padlet virtual cork boards for things like you’ve probably heard of having a parking lot before, so we’re gonna have a digital and an analog parking lot. We’re going to have a digital and an analog, back to Peter Newbury’s suggestion of the I notice, I wonder. We’re going to have a I notice, I wonder virtual and, analog place for people to wonder about things and notice things and a couple of other ones as well. So I’d like us all collectively to rethink the QR code and find some new ways to make use of them. This has been episode 430 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:18:06]:

Thank you so much for listening. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak, and was edited by the ever talented Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by the wonderful Sierra Smith, and these podcasts are just one Teaching in Higher Ed resource if you would like to access the weekly updates. It’s a email that comes in that’s got all the most recent show notes and links for you that you can access and gives you a little preview of the next episode as well as some recommendations and resources that don’t show up on the episodes. So head on over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe to get on that email. And thanks so much for listening, and I’ll see you next time.

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