OSU Center for Teaching and Learning

The lives of university faculty are busy; professors must be strategic about how they balance  valuable time between research, service, teaching and family. Regrettably, the current institutional reward structure for the continued improvement of teaching lags far behind those for research and service. And yet, the classroom is a university’s key point of contact with students. Classrooms are that rare place where large groups of students voluntarily and regularly gather…to learn. It is the place where we as academics and social agents have immediate access and opportunity to influence thousands of peoples’ attitudes, perceptions and understandings.

I want to be very clear here…we need rewards for the process of improving…not just summative awards for excellence. Teaching is a complex constellation of skills that must be continually shaped, honed, and catered to each group of students, delivery method, course level, classroom, available technology, etc. etc. Dynamic teaching requires both planned and on-the-spot complex problem solving. Just as an engineer, in the midst of building a well-designed bridge discovers unpredicted complications, the university professor may be in the midst of implementing a technical course only to discover, (through a formative assessment) that many students are not making the conceptual “grounding” necessary to proceed. Just as the civil engineer consults colleagues and research to determine how best to proceed with the construction of the bridge, the professor must consult research and colleagues to determine how best to support students in their intellectual constructions of knowledge.

When faculty are brilliant in the classroom our students not only learn, but also become inspired…and are more inclined to stay until graduation. I urge public university communities to reevaluate the importance of teaching excellence and create clear and tangible rewards for faculty who seek to improve their teaching.
Teaching is, after all, one, if not the primary purpose for the existence of public universities.

Public education is committed to the ideal that all students must have equitable access to learning…equitable is the key word here.  Brain research confirms what every teacher has known for centuries:  students vary widely in their prior knowledge, skill development and readiness to learn.  While private schools may have the freedom to sort and select their students to minimize the variance in knowledge and skills (we only take those students in the top 2% percent of SAT scores), public schools have a commitment to serve all our citizens regardless of race, creed, gender, sexuality: we teach any and all.

What then, must professors do to ensure the academic success of all students, regardless of where they may fall in their knowledge and skills?  First there must be “program readiness”: a carefully designed curriculum that is aligned to academic outcomes.  Required courses must be offered in the appropriate sequence; ensuring students’ continually develop the targeted knowledge and skills  as they move through the academic program towards graduation. Course outcomes are directly aligned to the program outcomes.

Begin each new course by establishing a positive learning environment for your students: use kind, inclusive humor. Clearly communicate what the students will know and be able to do at the end of the course. Outline the criteria on which students will be evaluated, if possible give examples of student work that illustrates the level of proficiency you expect your learners to achieve by the end of the course (with student permission you can post examples of student work from years past) or post rubrics to guide students’ learning throughout the course.  Be sure to explain how the knowledge and skills in this course are relevant to the students’ lives, world of work or study; relevancy helps students to contextualize the course content and increases student motivation (Marzanno, Pickering, Pollock, 2004).

Administer a pre-assessment that helps you identify the variance in your students’ knowledge and skills…as you review these pre-assessments seek patterns: is there a group of students who need more math development? A group who are second language learners and struggle with the vocabulary or with writing?  Is there a group of students who are advanced and may need some extensions and refinement of the content, or may need to be in another course? Pre-assessment is a critical first step in getting to know your audience; the better you know them the more likely you will be able to support them in their learning.  Let’s be honest, with hard work students will learn…but some students will have to work harder than others depending on what their prior knowledge and skills are upon entry to the course. Tell your students this…ensuring students that your expectations are high, yet attainable for all through hard work, communicates an ethic of care…central to creating a classroom environment conducive to learning. the pre-assessment should also communicate the kind, and proficiency level of thinking you want your students to do during the course: if you want them to apply the knowledge, ask them application questions; if you want them to synthesize, ask a synthesis question.  If most students fail at this type of thinking at the very beginning of the course what will you do as a teacher to improve their thinking?

Formative assessments, (those mini quizzes and assignments teachers assign during the course) are the primary way in which students academic growth is monitored.   Use the formative assessments to diagnose students’ misconceptions, check the pacing of your instruction, and…(here’s the nugget) identify the variance in the students’ understandings.  Formative assessments (I like to call them “dipstick assessments”) allows you to “check” the students’ academic progress…they need not be factored into the final grade as they are the classic example of “assessment for the purpose of supporting student learning.”  As the instructor reviews the students’ work, patterns will emerge: those who need additional help with language…math…group work etc.  This is where we can really assist our students’ learning.  By “scaffolding” or “differentiating” (Tomlinson & McTighe, 2006)   support, students learning will be enhanced.  For instance, students who need more work with vocabulary may need the BB site to include definitions of key words; those who need further mathematical assistance may need to see  example problems on the BB that include a narrative or podcast explaining the thinking behind the problem solving.  support provided on a BB site can be catered to attend the learning differences identified through the pre-assessments and the formative assessments.

Depending on the nature of the course and your philosophy of teaching there are many ways to administer a summative evaluation of students knowledge.  The first and most important principle of a fair exam is that it is directly aligned to what you, as their teacher, have emphasized throughout the course: the exam is aligned to what was taught.  The purpose of a final is to learn what they learned…not to trick them…so it is a good idea to provide a space for students to also do a free write in which they can explain what else they learned in the class that was not included in the exam…  Consider allowing student to bring a page of notes with them to the exam (by the time they prepare the page of notes they have done a great deal of review).  Another technique to consider is to have a portion of the exam done independently…then allow students to get in groups and discuss the exam, allowing students to make revisions to their exam in a different color.  Even the final exam is an opportunity for the students to clarify misconceptions and learn the content and skills once again.  The manner in which you choose to administer the final exam, scenario, task of course will vary with the nature of the discipline, the size of the class, and the importance of the course content to the major.  If student learning is our ultimate goal, though, it is worth taking the time to consider,what kind of final “event” will best illustrate all that students have learned as a result of this course.

If there are any “rules” in teaching they are: be kind, love your subject, enjoy your students, clearly communicate your expectations and continue to encourage your students that they too, regardless of where they came from…can, with hard work, succeed.  Avoid dumbing down your expectations, and concentrate on helping student identify what “work” they need to do in order to be successful in your course.

Have fun out there…and thank you for all you do for our students!

I’m grateful to Barb Bond, Director of OSU’s Office for Postdoctoral Programs, for encouraging me to develop a poster and attend this year’s National Postdoctoral Association 2013 Annual Meeting that was held in Charleston, SC, this past weekend (March 15-17).  I’ve been working with Barb for the past year to develop and deliver workshops about pedagogy and instructional strategies to the postdoctoral scholars at OSU.  This past fall, we decided there was enough demand for deeper, longer-term development that I would create a teaching seminar series.  I did so and delivered the series of 5 bi-weekly seminars this winter 2013 to an energetic, creative, courageous group of 15 postdocs.  Time well spent.  They seemed to enjoy it, too.

Near the close of fall term, Barb forwarded me an email announcement calling for poster proposals for the NPA meeting and suggested we collaborate on one.  This was to be a new experience for me.  As a humanities scholar, I’ve been to many conferences and delivered many essays.  Occasionally, I’ve led a workshop at a conference. But a poster was to be something new: a visual representation of ideas rather than studied, meticulous rhetorical articulation. We decided to create a couple of graphics that would illustrate the foundational components of the seminar: 1) the pedagogical framework for what was delivered and learned in the seminar and 2) the collaborative framework, that is, the relationships initiated by the OPP with other campus units to make possible not only the seminar but also the opportunities for postdocs to teach on campus.  Though in less fully fleshed out form, the poster also includes the evaluative framework I’m using to assess the seminar.  A pdf version of the poster, if you’re interested in the final product, may be found here: PostDocPoster_NPA2013-rp

Overall, the poster inspired lots of conversation and a lot of agreement about the importance of providing opportunities for instructional development to postdocs. Postdocs themselves were interested in this, to be sure, but so also were administrators of various stripes. At least among this audience, the time has come for institutions to take responsibility for the mentoring and career development of those who serve their research programs with care and dedication. But data shared during one of the last sessions on Saturday suggested that development opportunities are needed to support postdocs not merely for academic careers but also for careers in areas far from those in which they originally imagined themselves.

I’ve known that the humanities has been shrinking significantly and gave up hope some years ago for finding my niche in a tailor-made tenure line position.  I did not know until recently, however, that the sciences have been undergoing marked contraction, as well.  Funding from the NSF and NIH, among other long-relied on agencies, is in steady, probably long-term decline.  Two ideas that were repeated throughout the meeting were 1) the funding levels and number of research programs that characterized the past 2 decades are unsustainable; and 2) the “PhD machine” must be dismantled, assessed, and re-calibrated to reflect actual funding availability as well as academic workforce demand.  In the meantime, postdocs–and, it turns out, all doctorates–must be prepared to look into, prepare for, and seek employment beyond academia.  Moreover, they’ve got much to learn about how to represent the wealth of their abilities in ways that address the array of characteristics named in position descriptions (read: transferable skills!) and that are transparent to employers. Among other recommendations, speakers urged postdocs to develop the art of informational interviewing.  (Barb and I immediately agreed that a workshop on informational interviews should be on deck for spring term.) There were also warnings/reminders that some of the very characteristics that make one successful in academia are negatively correlated with success in jobs in other work environments.  I don’t yet have access to the slides from the presentations containing the data I’m responding to in this post, but I’ll post it once it’s been made available.  Meanwhile, I welcome guesses about those pesky characteristics.

As I listened to the sobering pronouncements for postdocs, I quickly realized that the same warnings and recommendations apply to graduate students.  After all, they’re currently in the belly of the machine, and it’s likely that they’re harboring the contemporary legend that hard work, rigor, publication, and sacrifice lead without fail to a tenure line academic position.  It also occurred to me that undergraduates, from seniors down to first-term first year students probably ought to be developing the skills associated with maintaining a broad and creative outlook regarding knowledge and skill acquisition, not to mention informational interviewing, adapting descriptions of one’s experience to align with position descriptions, and imagining multiple possible–and rewarding–futures.  One important difference between the postdocs and first year students, though, is in the sense of self-efficacy.  The presenters spoke from the assumption–and the many nods and spoken affirmations among postdocs in the crowd confirmed it–that revising one’s career plans is not magical or arbitrary but a process one must actively and intentionally undertake.  And for that group, a process that requires learning and acquiring new skills is just one more in a long series of challenges to be faced and overcome.  I don’t sense the same thing with first-year students.  Lots of courage, yes.  Lots of willingness, too.  But a sense of the how and the why of things, or the awareness that even without a clear map the way will arise if one will begin asking questions and taking notes, these are kinds of knowledge with which people new to higher education do not typically arrive.

More to come.

I have been an educator for over thirty years: from elementary school to a tier-one research institution. I have noticed over the years, a general trend that I find curious…at the very least.

Education, like any other discipline, has it’s own vocabulary…words like “objective,” “rubric,” yes, even “assessment” and “evaluation” have specific and clear meanings grounded in foundational articles. As an educator, I prefer to use the disciplinary language: it is how I understand and communicate my discipline. And yet, in every school culture in which I have worked, I have experienced a general disdain for the use of education’s disciplinary language. I am often cautioned by well-meaning colleagues to avoid any use of “educational jargon,” while addressing faculty about…any educational issue: program design and evaluation; formative assessment; instructional strategies for English language learners; institutional change; academic outcomes versus objectives. The good news, I guess, is that folks are asking complex questions about teaching and learning, but I do find the general pejorative tenor towards educational vocabulary a bit confining. How can I discuss and explain the unique nuances and complexities of teaching and learning with out the language of my discipline?

Over the years I have noticed a general erosion of of our disciplinary language; “academic outcomes” are incorrectly referred to as “objectives;” I hear the term “assessment” used when in fact it is “evaluation” that is actually being discussed. This curious avoidance of educational vocabulary has unfortunately led to general misconceptions about curriculum and instruction. One of the most common misunderstandings is in the area of accreditation and accountability. In a good-willed effort to provide accreditors with “evidence of student learning” faculty often spend hours of valuable time reviewing syllabi design…which in fact, is an issue of curricular design…far from the act of implementation…and even farther from discerning the degree and breadth of student learning.

At the end of January, I started my first MOOC: E-Learning and Digital Cultures, offered by University of Edinburgh through Coursera. One of my goals early on was to compile a list of tools that I’ve used to organize and filter the massive flood of information that’s available to me. With over 7,300 active members, there are TONS and TONS of content being generated on an hourly basis! I was interested, but also humbled, to learn that more than 60% of the “students” actually have graduate degrees, so much of this content is incredibly sophisticated.

How do I keep up with the tweets, blog posts, discussions, etc., both inside and outside Coursera? The short answer is that I don’t. And this evokes a continual feeling of being left behind. It’s impossible to collect and make use of all of the information coming in, and that’s perhaps one of the greatest lessons that the MOOC can teach us: there’s no expectation that all of this content will be reviewed by all of the students. Some bits of information are ephemeral, and I’ll certainly be missing things. And that’s okay.

This is very unlike a university classroom, where missing details could prove disastrous for students. As a learner, I had to adjust my strategy. An early blog post along the way made this transition a little bit easier, with a concession that this was the new norm: you’re not accountable for all of the new content because there’s simply too much of it. Nevertheless, information was still coming in through many different channels, and I needed a very specific set of tools to filter, manage, and categorize the flood of content available to me. I also needed tools that would allow me to contribute and be heard. In addition to the class forums in Coursera, these included Hootsuite (for tracking tweets), Netvibes (for aggregating blogs and RSS content from other class members), and Drupal Gardens (for posting content to my own temporary blog).

For instructors, the lesson is in parity with the lesson for students: the body of knowledge available for texts and curricula never seems to stop growing, and a university classroom is yet another river adding to the flood of information that students must filter, manage, and categorize. Instructors will need new strategies (and maybe new tools) to help students focus attention on the important trends, how they’re related to course material, and how the trends are related to each other.

Related: Who or What is a Teacher on #edcmooc?

The NMC Horizon Report > 2013 Higher Education Edition was released this week in conjunction with the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s annual meeting in Denver.  This yearly report highlights emerging technologies that show potential to have a major impact on teaching and learning in higher ed over three different “adoption horizons” in the coming years.   The 2013 report identifies tablet computing and MOOCs (massive open online courses) as key technologies within the next year, learning analytics and gaming/gamification as keys in the 2 to 3-year adoption horizon, and wearable technology and 3D printing as having a major impact in higher ed on a 4 to 5-year horizon.

Do you agree with the 2013 Horizon Report’s prognostications?  What other emerging technologies will significantly impact OSU and higher ed in general during the next 5 years?