On this week's episode, James Lang shares about his book: Small Teaching
Quotes
What I started to notice was that the coaches who paid attention to these little things, and focused on small fundamentals, tended to do a lot better than the teams that didn’t.
—James Lang
I’m a big believer in the opening and closing minutes of class … I think those are really ripe opportunities for small teaching.
—James Lang
I try to do framing activities to help the students realize the value of what we’re doing.
—James Lang
Resources
Small Teaching: Small modifications in course design or communication with your students. These recommendations might not translate directly into 10-minute or one-time activities, but they also do not require a radical rethinking of your courses. They might inspire tweaks or small changes in the way you organize the daily schedule of your course, write your course description or assignment sheets, or respond to the writing of your students.
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Dr. Todd Zakrajsek, Ph.D., is the former Executive Director of the Academy of Educators in the School of Medicine and an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill. Dr. Zakrajsek is the immediate past Executive Director of the Center for Faculty Excellence at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and prior to his work at UNC, he was the Inaugural Director of the Faculty Center for Innovative Teaching at Central Michigan University and the founding Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Southern Oregon University, where he also taught in the psychology department as a tenured associate professor. Dr. Zakrajsek also sits on two educational related boards and several editorial boards for journals in the area of teaching and learning, is an international speaker requested regularly for keynote presentations and campus workshops, and has published widely on the topic of effective teaching and student learning.
Teaching should be more than telling.
–Todd Zakrajsek
If a worker knows why they’re doing something, they’re much better at doing it than if it’s a mystery to them. It’s the same thing in teaching.
–Todd Zakrajsek
Any time we start looking at these concepts and saying, “Should we do this, or that? Do the students fall into this category or the other category?” we lose the richness of all the individuals in between.
–Todd Zakrajsek
Lecturing alone simply does not return the same kind of advances you get when you add in engaged, active kinds of learning.
–Todd Zakrajsek
On today’s show, Betsy Barre joins me to share about the research on course evaluations.
Guest: Betsy Barre
Assistant Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Rice University
After making the move to Rice in 2012, she was able to pursue her interest in undergraduate pedagogy by working with students and faculty in Rice's newly developed Program in Writing and Communication. In this role, she taught a series of disciplinary-based first-year seminars and contributed to the PWC's faculty development programming for those teaching first-year writing courses. And in July of 2014, she began her current position as Assistant Director of Rice's newly established Center for Teaching Excellence. More
Quotes
One of the biggest complaints faculty have about student evaluations is that it’s not a reflection of teaching effectiveness.
–Betsy Barre
Just because a student likes a class doesn’t necessarily mean they’re learning.
–Betsy Barre
It turns out that the harder your course is, the higher evaluations you get.
–Betsy Barre
If students think the work is valuable and something that’s helping them learn, you can give up to twenty extra hours a week of work outside of class and students will still give you higher evaluations.
–Betsy Barre
When we want to know if students have learned, one of the best things to do is just ask them if they’ve learned.
–Betsy Barre
Part of the movement in student evaluations now is to ask questions about learning, rather than questions about what the faculty members are doing.
–Betsy Barre
Betsy’s Six Most Surprising Insights about Course Evaluations
Taken from her article “Do Student Evaluations of Teaching Really Get an “F”?”
Yes, there are studies that have shown no correlation (or even inverse correlations) between the results of student evaluations and student learning. Yet, there are just as many, and in fact many more, that show just the opposite.
As with all social science, this research question is incredibly complex. And insofar as the research literature reflects this complexity, there are few straightforward answers to any questions. If you read anything that suggests otherwise (in either direction), be suspicious.
Despite this complexity, there is wide agreement that a number of independent factors, easily but rarely controlled for, will bias the numerical results of an evaluation. These include, but are not limited to, student motivation, student effort, class size, and discipline (note that gender, grades, and workload are NOT included in this list).
Even when we control for these known biases, the relationship between scores and student learning is not 1 to 1. Most studies have found correlations of around .5. This is a relatively strong positive correlation in the social sciences, but it is important to understand that it means there are still many factors influencing the outcome that we don't yet understand. Put differently, student evaluations of teaching effectiveness are a useful, but ultimately imperfect, measure of teaching effectiveness.
Despite this recognition, we have not yet been able to find an alternative measure of teaching effectiveness that correlates as strongly with student learning. In other words, they may be imperfect measures, but they are also our best measures.
Finally, if scholars of evaluations agree on anything, they agree that however useful student evaluations might be, they will be made more useful when used in conjunction with other measures of teaching effectiveness.
Recommendations
Bonni
Think about how you administer the student evaluations.
Check out her Betsy’s screencast (see above).
Betsy
Design your own evaluation instrument and distribute it yourself, especially at the mid-point of the source.
Take advantage of the teaching center on your campus for student interviews and classroom observations.
Are You Enjoying the Show?
Rate/review the show. Please consider rating or leaving a review for the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast on whatever service you use to listen to it on (iTunes, Stitcher, etc.). It is the best way to help others discover the show.
Give feedback. As always, I welcome suggestions for future topics or guests.
Subscribe. If you have yet to subscribe to the weekly update, you can receive a single email each week with the show notes (including all the links we talk about on the episode), as well as an article on either teaching or productivity.
