Transparency in Teaching: Working with First Year College Learners

Ilene Dawn Alexander, PhD

Ilene, Ida (name only - she/her)

Center for Educational Innovation

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11 August 2022

Who are your students? UMN Twin Cities

4A’s - purpose view

Learning Atmosphere & Aims

Learning refers only to significant changes in capability, understanding, knowledge, practices, attitudes or values by individuals, groups, organisations or society.

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– Frank Coffield

Learning → Change

Learning → Short- and Long-Term Memory

sensory → associations → motor

Teaching for Learning

Nearly all techniques labeled as active learning include features known to be required for the development and demonstration of expertise:

• thinking as a practitioner in the discipline
• working on tasks that simulate aspects of expert reasoning and/or problem-solving
• seeking & sorting actionable feedback (self-, peer-, instructor-feedback)
• reflecting on learning - aha’s and difficulties in order to improve understanding, practice, interaction, and demonstration

Teaching for Learning

Just as comics are built panel up on panel, page upon page, our learning is built upon smaller, more simple skills and concepts. We will engage with a combination of in-class activities, such as journaling, collaborative drawing, reading discussions, presentations, lectures, and small- and large-group feedback, building towards our larger learning outcomes. There are a total of 5 assignments and 1 culminating Creative Portfolio, a self-designed project which will incorporate your learning with your creativity and interests.

Comics as Storytelling

Teaching for Learning

Do not face challenges alone: Learning can be difficult, and I, as well as others, are here to help. I encourage you to reach out to me whenever challenges arise. I can assist you with academic matters, and I can direct you to helpful professionals for assistance with mental health, sexual harassment, disability accommodations, equity, diversity, equal employment opportunities, and affirmative action.

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Gas Chromatography-Olfactometry in Food Science

Learning On the First Day

Curiosity

Community

Learning

Expectations

What do you mean by understand?

Teaching vs Learning Centered

To Understand

• interpreting - clarifying, paraphrasing, representing, translating
• exemplifying - illustrating, instantiating
• classifying - categorizing, subsuming
• summarizing - abstracting, generalizing
• inferring - concluding, extrapolating, interpolating, predicting
• comparing - contrasting, mapping, matching
• explaining - constructing models

To Appreciate - to care, to humanise

Practice in Learning

Accessibility & Activities

Do class sessions build in a range of structured ways for learners to actively apply and share what they are learning?

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For gathering data, creating, reflecting on, and testing their learning by interacting with teachers, peers, and their own previous work or feedback?

Structured Learning - feeling vs actual learning

Structured Learning - Practice in Learning

Here the primary purposes are to (1) get and give feedback that is timely, actionable, feeds forward so that students engage in work to improve their learning, and (2) co-create knowledge

• Writing to Learn
• one sentence summary, application card, Chemistry Haiku, explain it to…, create photoquote linked to current public conversation (reading + photo)
• Reading to Learn
• article jigsaw, 3 - 2 - 1, annotate shared document, follow up a footnote
• Drawing to Learn
• photo series, create a figure or diagram from data, map a concept
• Speaking to Learn
• structured controversy, case analysis, fishbowl critiques/discussions

Structured Learning - Practice in Context

We as ___ instructors have been successful ___ students. Thus, many of us have likely found success with traditional ___ assessments in traditional settings. However, not all students succeed in such environments. Create and structure assignments to include a variety of types of problems as well as settings. For example, consider including problems that ask students to write long responses to explain their thinking or draw a visual to demonstrate an argument.

Chris and Jake are cooking pancakes. Jake ladles the pancake batter into the fry pan. While the pancake cooks, the radius of the circular pancake formed increases at a rate of 1 cm per minute. How fast is the circumference changing when the radius is 7 cm?

At a conservation site in the Amazon rainforest, a hyacinth macaw parrot is spotted flying horizontally 37 feet above a research site. The parrot is flying at 20 ft/sec. How fast is the distance from the parrot to the research site changing when the bird is 35 feet away?

The velocity of blood in a human’s blood vessels is related to the radius R of the blood vessel and the radius r of the layer of blood in the blood vessel….

Structured Learning - Practice in Context

“In my courses, the problems get quite long: by the end of the course, a single problem might take two or three hours to solve completely. There’s no way I can put one of those problems on a 50-minute test, but I still have to assess my students’ ability to solve them. I do it with the following generic problem:

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Given...(describe the process or system to be analyzed and state the values of known quantities), write in order the equations you would solve to calculate...(state the quantities to be determined). Just write the equations—don’t attempt to simplify or solve them. In each equation, circle the variable for which you would solve, or the set of variables if several equations must be solved simultaneously.

Transparent Assessment

Norm-referenced vs. criterion referenced grading

• Norm-referenced grading - student work is graded based on comparisons with other students’ work.
• Criterion-referenced grading - student work is measured against criteria named in course aims, preparing for class activities, major assignments, and benchmarks set beyond (but linked to) the current course.

Grading for Growth

Transparent Assignments

Core components for framing assessments aligning with aims

• purpose, tasks, skills, criteria, and audience
• address the WWAATS query
• why would anyone assign this stuff?
• why would anyone assign these stages? (eg process, feedback)

Provides an equitable starting place for broad range of students

Supports students in developing authentic, original work

Offers accessible choices in support of essential learning aims

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Marks indicate progress

“Feedback should convey information to the learner about their work that will be useful in crafting a next iteration of that work”.

• Marks should indicate progress - writing college app material (ready to send/needs minor revision/needs major revision)
• Use a small number of mark (eg, Talbert’s EMRF; 0-1-2pts)
• Avoid loaded words and wording that masks subjectivity

Reattempts without penalty

• Learning takes time and effort which a one-and-done approach to grading doesn’t support.
• We ultimately want students to learn what they missed.

OR allow for Starting Slowly

Making progress without penalty for early wobbly start, perhaps as someone new to the field, returning to school, finding way to integrate school - home - work responsibilities, life happens

Reasonable reattempt guidelines

• A limited window of opportunity.
• Offered at limited times.
• Limit the number of reattempts.
• Require a reflective statement, evidence of practice, or some other form of evidence that students spent time learning.

OR

• Drop a set number of lowest scores
• Provide “life happens tokens” for delayed submission

Syllabus Matters

A notable characteristic of a learning syllabus is that it enables instructors to communicate directly with the learners…

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Tabitha

It is about the students. It is about the how and why more that the what. It is a map that guides the class, not just a document that is written to list the materials or only to meet the university’s requirements. There you start your interaction with your students with clear directions.

Zaina

Small Changes: Organization

Students value organisation aligned with this hierarchy

• Contact Information
• Course Description & Learning Aims
• Course Learning Resources: texts & technology, supporting resources
• Assignment Descriptions: purpose, tasks/skills, criteria, aligned to aim
• Grading Information - due dates, weights, feedback & evaluation details
• Policy Information - integrated throughout
• Course Schedule - what/when in an overview; details built into VLE site
• Visual Appeal - meaningful icons & naming conventions in docs & site

Small Changes: Rhetorics of Success

Attend: Your attendance and participation are central components of what makes this course - and your deeper learning - work. Given that “life happen,” I’ll ask you two things: Let me know quite soon about planned absences, and use my calendar or email to let me know “life is happening” in real time. If you already plan to be absent for more than three classes, we’ll work together to make a virtual plan; and if the 3 absences just happen, we’ll talk about making “stay current” and/or “catch up” plans.

Participate: Early in the semester we’ll work together to describe the skills and “how to” of participation required for learning-centered engagement in this course. We’ll all talk about difficulties, stuck points, and Aha! moments.

Prepare: Intentionally called “preparing for class assignments,” these are activities I’ve designed so that you’re poised to activate long-term memory during our time working together in class.

Small Changes - Policies and Practices

Identify & “chunk” policy statements essential to your course:

• access/disability inclusion/climate participation/process
• a sentence links to your course - why significant, how beneficial
• bold, styled subheadings boost visual and screenreader scan

Consider placement of “less essential” policy:

• incorporate these policies in a closing section with a short opening paragraph - eg, “Nice to Know” in my spring syllabus will include use of electronics and class notes, with academic freedom
• full text of accreditation materials may become an appendix, with key-to-course policies included in main document

Small Changes - 3 Significant Shifts

For Your Own Review

Further Syllabus and Policy Examples

Small Changes: Rhetorics of Success

Course Description: Calculus is the study of the relationship between a quantity and its rate of change. Just as a line is determined by a point and the slope, a more complicated function can be determined by a point and the instantaneous rate of change, called the derivative. In this course, we will learn how to compute the derivative of many many functions. We will also learn how to reverse-engineer a function from its derivative in a process called integration.

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Derivatives and integrals are strange, abstract concepts. To make things more concrete, we will apply calculus to real-world situations involving changing quantities, such as velocity, profit, disease spread, and pollution. When examining real data, our ability to actually do computations will always limit the accuracy of our predictions. We will attempt to understand these sources of error and minimize them whenever possible. By examining the differences between the results of abstract mathematics and observed data from messy real-world scenarios, we can better understand both the mathematics and the real-world scenario.

Policy Example - Disability Policy

Many people think that disability doesn’t apply to them because they either define disability narrowly or fear the stigma and shame surrounding the term.

While understandable, both thoughts are problematic: everybody will become disabled at some point in their lives - it’s only a matter of time. You might sprain an ankle after slipping on ice, develop wrist pain from typing too much or have difficulty focusing on your work after the loss of a loved one. Relying on the patience and kindness of others to accommodate your disability may make you feel grateful and appreciative but that’s not a long-term solution, especially if your disability is “invisible” and not physically apparent.

That’s why we will adapt these policies….

Policy Example – Conduct + Harassment

The university holds instructors as well as students responsible for maintaining climates in line with campus community standards, calling on use to interact with civilly and integrity as we work to deepen our understanding in complex contexts.

In all contexts, as the course instructor, I will address observed and reported incivility forthrightly and confidentially. Always, you will have access to this confidential route for communicating your concerns to me.

For further information and support, individuals might contact the Office for Equity and Diversity about sexual harassment concerns, and LGBTQA concerns, or be in contact with the course instructor, the PFF program coordinator, or Student Conflict Resolution Center's staff.

Policy Example - Why Quizzes?

Test anxiety is a real issue for many people, myself included. I’ve organized this course around frequent testing, which generally helps ease anxiety because as a learners are practicing - testing - their learning over shorter periods of time. This means I can offer feedback more quickly, and you can steadily build your understanding. Als, to address extenuating life circumstances, bad days, or “stuck” moments, your two lowest quiz grades will be dropped when I calculate this portion of your course grade. This will leave you with a total of XX graded quizzes, at XX points each, for a total of XX points.

Rethinking Assignment Policies: Late Work

Late assignments. No one has escaped this health crisis unscathed. During the pandemic, I split child-care duties with my wife, felt exhausted, and had trouble focusing. I had to ask for extensions from journal editors, co-authors, and colleagues. I dropped the ball on some things; I graded assignments later than usual. I received a lot of grace from others.

College students deserve that same grace and understanding when they have trouble meeting your deadlines for course assignments. So consider these alternatives:

• Set [a range of due dates students sign up for as assign begins].
• Have a “consequence free” late policy on one assignment (e.g., if an assignment < 5 days late, it will be considered on time).

And if you refuse to budge on your late-work policy, you must publicly proclaim in class that you never asked for extensions on reviews, referee reports, revisions, or anything of the like during the pandemic.

Rethinking Assignment Policies: Due Date

• A UTexas-Austin communication’s instructor is offering students a “time bank” from which learners can draw one two-day extension on an assignment, or one-day extensions on two assignments.
• The instructor wondered whether this policy would “create a logistical headache for her? Would it send students the right message?” With Canvas (and most other VLEs, virtual learning environments, it’s easy to set alternative due dates for individuals).
• Once in the term, if needed, you may turn in an assignment up to 2 days (48 hours) late for full marks. In order to receive full marks on your assignment, you must notify the TA at least 24 hours prior to the original due date that you will be using your late-work-grace period. You do not need to provide a reason for using your grace period.

Rethinking Assignment Policies: Make Up

• Make-up quizzes will only be given for excused absences… and requests must adhere to the following guidelines: 1) When at all possible, you must contact me prior to missing a quiz deadline or you may not be able to make up the quiz, 2) Make-up quizzes must be taken within one week of the original due date, and 3) Any make-up quiz will be administered in a format determined by the instructor and may differ from the original quiz. If the above guidelines are not met, you may use your “drop the lowest quiz score” opportunity for an unexcused missed quiz; any additional unexcused missed quizzes will result in a 0 for that quiz.”
• Over the course of the term, I will allow for one test or quiz re-start due to technological issues such as platform glitches or internet disruption. If you are in the middle of a content quiz and some technology issue closes you out of it before its completion, you can reach out to me for a re-start. Importantly, you must reach out to me as soon after experiencing this issue as possible.

Rethinking Assignment Policies: Misconduct

Paraphrase with course examples + provide hyperlink for context

• Students at [University] are bound by the [University] Code of Academic Conduct, which requires that any cases of academic misconduct result in a 0 for the assignment and referral to Student Judicial Affairs. Academic misconduct includes cheating and plagiarism. Cheating includes collaboration with other students on response papers and the exams. Plagiarism includes turning in any work that is not your own, as well as improper or missing citations of others' work. For a full statement of the policy, refer to the University’s Academic Misconduct statement.

Extend boilerplate language to align with tone of your course

• …In my experience, academic misconduct most often occurs because students are unaware of how to properly cite sources, or because students become overwhelmed and desperate. If [When] you are concerned about how you are doing in this course, please come speak with me instead of considering academic misconduct. You are very capable of meeting my expectations for this course.