Discussing Difficult Topics

Recently, I worked with a faculty member that was trying to identify a new database to analyze in a R exercise. The dataset they usually use in their course has become politically charged in the past few months. However, the dataset is used to illustrate some of the key learning objectives of the class.

Instead of removing the dataset, we acknowledged that the right to education does not guarantee a place where one is not challenged on ones beliefs. Conversations in class can never violate the university code of conduct or create a space where it is a hostile learning environment. However, we can think through how to analyze the dataset from multiple perspectives. The University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) suggests:

  • allowing those that feel distressed about the topic to talk to you confidentially.

  • providing all students with enough background material and preparatory homework to participate fully in the conversation.

  • providing clear descriptions of the topic and issues surrounding it, explain why it is sensitive and why it is important to discuss it.

  • provide guidance on how to analyze and judge issues based on context and evidence (you can involve a disciplinary specific librarian in this conversation to talk about information literacy).

Also, establish a community agreement, or statement that guides how members of a classroom community (students, instructors, AIs) work and interact with each other. Ideally, it should emerge from a process implemented at the beginning of a term.

UCSB offers additional advice:

  • Be aware of your feelings, assumptions and biases, and keep your personal opinions to yourself.

  • Add dealing with controversial or sensitive topics to learning outcomes so you can focus on teaching students how to think through complex issues from multiple perspectives.

  • Add a statement to your syllabus about discussing sensitive topics.

  • Make your commitment to inclusivity, respectful interactions, and consideration for diverse perspectives clear to the students.

In short as Hogan and Sathy (2022) ask in Inclusive Teaching, Do you have a plan? Do you have rules to help everyone stick to the plan? If not, consider taking time before classes resume to develop a strategy.

Ways to Reflectively Conclude the Semester – Revisited

Here are some additions to the previous list of recommendations on how to end your semester.

Reflect on your semester (Modified from Arizona State University):

Reflection is not only an important aspect of student learning but also offers an opportunity for faculty to seek insights from past teaching experiences. At the end of the semester, when the memories are still fresh, take a few moments to reflect on each course and write down a few notes about what went well and what you would like to change in order to avoid forgetting important details over the break.

Or, invite a colleague for a coffee to chat about your courses. You can also schedule an appointment with me, or a member of CITL to reflect on your course and start strategizing a plan for the Spring Semester….

What are some steps that need to be done? By what time? Depending on the number of topics, it might be necessary to prioritize.

Collect the Best Possible Feedback from Students (from Columbia University)

Encourage your students to fill out the end of course evaluation surveys and remind them to do so. Let your students know that their feedback matters. Explain to them how you use the information they provide to help improve the course. For free-response comments, ask students to provide specific examples of what would improve the learning experience. Remind them that their responses are confidential and that instructors only receive the data after final grades are submitted.

Ask Students for Permission (From Arizona State University)

Student artifacts are a powerful and helpful resource that can be used as a model for future students or as proof of student learning. To avoid any privacy or copyright concerns, the end-of-the-semester is a good time to ask students for their written permission for sharing those artifacts with outsiders.

Thank your students for taking your class.

Even if they were required to take your class.  They will appreciate hearing you thank them.  And if you want to include providing coffee and donuts (for the smaller classes), this will show them even more appreciation.

Student Reflections 

In a previous blog post, I mentioned having current students write a letter to future students. This is a modification of the idea. Use VoiceThread for this activity. Provide students with prompts that they can discuss in an interactive video such as:

  • it most helped my learning of the content when…because…

  • it would have helped my learning of the content if…because…

  • the assignment that contributed the most to my learning was… because…

  • the reading that contributed the most to my learning was… because…

  • the kinds of homework or in class activities that contributed most to my learning were…because…

  • the approach I took to my own learning that contributed the most for me was…because…

  • the biggest obstacle for me in my learning the material was… because…

  • a resource I know about that you might consider using is…because…

  • I was most willing to take risks with learning new material when… because…

  • during the first day, I remember thinking…because…

  • what I think I will remember five years from now is…because…

Encourage them to incorporate visuals (photos of prototypes or screenshots) of anything they produced in your course.

You can allow future students to (optionally) review this feedback from students during the following semester or incorporate the feedback with the review of the syllabus. Future students appreciate reading honest information from previous students about what they can expect.

Course Mapping Templates

A few weeks ago, I shared some resources that included an interactive site which allowed you to plan out each lesson or module of your course. The information below can be used to help you to map out your course. Couse Mapping is an excellent approach to designing or redesigning a course. The Course Mapping Guide linked below allows you to complete a curriculum analysis of your course which results in a course map that displays the alignment of all components of a course. If you view the example on their site of the Java Programming class, you are able to see how each of the course outcomes are addressed through the modules of the course. You can also understand how the assessments and rubrics, learner interactions and engagements, as well as the instructional materials support the learning outcomes for each module: https://www.coursemapguide.com/mapping-your-course

Screen shot of course map at the modular level.

Screen shot of course map at the modular level.

Quality Matters provides a similar tool that includes a Learning Objectives Activity. This activity helps you to ensure that your learning objectives are S.M.A.R.T.:
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time Bound.  https://www.qualitymatters.org/sites/default/files/presentations/MapYourWayToAQualityCourse_HandoutLOs_ApodacaForsythe.pdf For more information see: https://www.qualitymatters.org/qa-resources/resource-center/conference-presentations/map-your-way-quality-course-course-mapping

A few more template examples can be found here:
https://nmsu.instructure.com/courses/949381/assignments/3676931

Universal Design: Implications for Computing Education

The article, Universal Design: Implications for Computing Education https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2037276.2037283 provides examples of the strategies that apply UD to instruction and assessment in the context of a computer science classroom and recommends topics for future research. The examples include:

  • Select printed materials and prepare a syllabus early to allow students the option of beginning to read materials before the course begins and allow adequate time to arrange for alternate formats, such as books in audio format or in Braille.

  • Include a statement in her syllabus inviting students to meet with her regarding learning challenges, disability-related accommodations, and/or computer and technology lab access issues.

  • Provide a comprehensive syllabus that includes learning objectives, a grading rubric, course assignments and deadlines, test dates, and student resources.

  • Arrange seating to ensure each student has a clear line of sight to her and visual aids and allow room for wheelchairs in multiple locations.

  • Give students scaffolding tools such as outlines, graphic organizers, and copies of projected materials with room for note taking.

  • Use large, bold fonts on uncluttered overhead displays.

  • Speak aloud content presented with visual aids.

  • Face the class, speak clearly, make eye contact with all students, and refer to students by name.

  • Incorporate background and contextual information.

  • Present content in a logical order, summarize what has been covered periodically, and emphasize major points.

  • Avoid unnecessary jargon and complexity; define new terms and acronyms.

  • Provide multiple examples of specific concepts to make them relevant to individuals with diverse characteristics with respect to gender, ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status, age, ability, disability, interest, and life experiences.

  • Repeat questions asked by students to ensure all have heard them.

  • Encourage students to share multiple perspectives and model mutual respect.

  • Avoid drawing undue attention to a difference, such as a disability.

  • Put class notes and assignments [in Canvas or] on a Web site in an accessible, text-based format.

  • Provide multiple ways to demonstrate knowledge, allow ample time for tests, and use a testing format that is consistent with teaching practices and assignments.

  • Provide regular feedback and corrective opportunities (e.g., allow students to turn in parts of a large programming project for feedback before the final project is due and give students some credit for correcting errors after an assignment is first submitted).

  • Know campus protocols for getting materials in alternate formats and arranging for other accommodations for students with disabilities.

  • Make sure that assistive technology can be made available in a computer lab in a timely manner when requested.

If you have time, consider sharing under this post:

What issues have you seen, or could you imagine, related to equitable treatment of people with disabilities in your classes? What are your thoughts on the approaches for making classes more accessible suggested in the article?

How do you think the concept of universal design interacts and intersects with some of the other ideas we’ve discussed this semester? How can it apply to other aspects of equity and inclusion?

High Volume Office Hours

As you know, the demand for office hours is increasing as we get closer to finals. In particular, Western University notes: Students will visit your office hours expecting to hold an hour-long one-on-one study session. This could certainly be valuable for the student, but can you manage such a session given the time constraints that come with being an instructor of a large class? If the answer is no, you may want to organize a dedicated review session.  Dedicated review sessions or inviting more than one student at a time into office hours may be more efficient (before doing so, confirm with students that no one has a private matter to discuss). Record the review session so that it is available for students who were unable to attend.

I interviewed a few of our award-winning AIs in Luddy brainstormed tips based on how they manage office hours in large enrollment classes during finals which may be a bit different than the logistical systems you usually use to manage your large enrollment courses.

Before office hours begin –

  • Compile a list of FAQs that have occurred over the semester. FAQ list can be generated from:

    • Any questions frequently emailed to instructors/AIs or posted in a community forum (such as Slack, InScribe or MSTeams)

    • Any questions that students have answered incorrectly in the past in discussion sections or labs

    • Any questions/concepts that have been historically challenging for students since the course has been taught

    • Any questions reviewed to be difficult based on analytics you have access to from Canvas or other course tools.

  • Provide an agenda to students prior to office hours letting them know what topics you plan to cover during office hours before addressing individual questions.

  • Solicit questions from students. Many of the questions can be consolidated to address more than one concern.

  • Prepare handouts that cover FAQs that can be referenced during office hours.

During Office Hours

  • Moderate the waiting rooms. Ask students to submit questions while in waiting rooms and direct to rooms as frequently as possible

  • While students wait

    • Share threads to community forums in waiting rooms for students to review while waiting for individual help.

    • Share a list of study strategies that may be useful to enact.

  • Edit videos used during pandemic that address FAQs. Use PlayPosit to add additional commentary to videos to help support specific questions. If office hours are held in a computer lab, have videos loaded on specific computers while students wait for personalized feedback.

  • Create stations (in face-to-face classes) based on FAQ topics.

Teaching.Tools and the Active Learning Library

The Teaching.Tools Website has a few resources that may be helpful to you.

The Active Learning Library https://teaching.tools/activities allows you to explore teaching strategies aimed to increase engagement in the classroom. This site allows you to search for activities by filtering based on:

  • Difficulty (for the instructor)

  • Prep Time Required

  • Bloom’s Taxonomy (e.g., remember, apply)

  • Active Learning (e.g., individual engagement, small group engagement)

  • Inclusive Learning (e.g., gives students choices, emphasizes the relevance or value of the material)

  • Whole-Person Learning (e.g., emphasizes student values and emotions, emphasizes metacognitive skills)

  • Formative Feedback

  • Activity Time

  • Class Size

  • Class Modality

The Pedagogical Reading List https://teaching.tools/resources is comprised of a community-generated database of resources for college teaching around topics including Accessibility and UDL

  • Active Learning

  • Assessment

  • Curriculum

  • Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

  • Education Research

  • Educational Technology

  • Experiential Learning

  • Graduate Students

  • Learning Analytics

  • Mental Health

  • Online Teaching

  • Problem/Project-Based Learning

  • Race and Anti-Racism

  • STEM

  • Science of Learning

While the Lesson Planning Tool https://teaching.tools/lessonplanner provides an interactive template for creating college-level class sessions. You can use the tool without an account. You must sign in to save your lesson. Accounts are free.

Best Practices for Using Rubrics

Weimer (2016) reminds us of the advantages of using rubrics for students: Rubrics clarify assignment details for students. They provide an operational answer to the frequently asked student question, “What do you want in this assignment?” They make grading more transparent and can be used to help students develop those all-important self-assessment skills. For teachers, rubrics expedite grading and can make it a more objective process.

She also points out the advantages rubrics offer instructors: The power to clarify thinking about the knowledge and skills an instructor wants to assess. Faculty can do a great deal of assessment, across multiple courses, semester after semester. It’s easy for the response to student work to become habitual, automatic, and not always thoughtful. After grading so many hundreds of essays and short answers, the good, the bad, and the ugly are easy to pick out.

Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation states: Grading consistency is difficult to maintain over time because of fatigue, shifting standards based on prior experience, or intrusion of other criteria. Furthermore, rubrics can reduce the time spent grading by reducing uncertainty and by allowing instructors to refer to the rubric description associated with a score rather than having to write long comments. Finally, grading rubrics are invaluable in large courses that have multiple graders (other instructors, teaching assistants, etc.) because they can help ensure consistency across graders and reduce the systematic bias that can be introduced between graders.

While the Purdue Owl recommends the following for technical writing in engineering, many of these tips are universal regardless of assignment type:

  • Give students the rubric you will use before they turn in their writing assignments. This helps students understand the basis on which their writing will be scored, and it makes both you and your students accountable to the same set of standards.

  • If students are completing their writing assignments in class, make the rubric available to them as they’re writing by putting it up on the projector screen in a Word document or PowerPoint slide.

  • Consider creating the rubric with your students, because it provides them with a chance to reflect on the assignment and promotes their metacognitive awareness of the rhetorical writing tasks they must perform. Furthermore, if students dictate the parameters of the rubric, they are being held accountable to standards that they set for themselves rather than by an instructor or TA. To get students to think about important criteria for a particular assignment, instructors or TAs might try the following strategies:

    • Open a class discussion by asking students why they think the assignment is important.

    • Ask students to write a response where they describe what effective and ineffective examples of the assignment would look like. Then, have them share their examples and generate criteria based on the characteristics that they describe.

    • Brainstorm evaluative criteria as a class. Ask students to volunteer what they consider important traits or characteristics for this assignment and write their ideas on the board. After all answers have been shared, ask students to rank which traits or characteristics are the most important.

    • Put students into groups and ask each group to come up with several criteria for evaluating the assignment and rank each one according to their importance. Then, have each group share their criteria and use the most important from each group.

  • Have a quick discussion with your students to make sure they understand what each category in the rubric means.

  • Discuss why certain categories in the rubric have higher point values than others. For example, you may discuss why showing conceptual knowledge or having adequate evidence to back up a claim is more important than grammatical correctness.

Quick Tips on promoting inclusion in Computer Science

The following is an excerpt of tips compiled by Cynthia Lee. Dr. Lee is a Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at Stanford. See https://bit.ly/inclusivecs for the complete list.

Mid-Term:

  • Email top performers on a recent homework or exam to congratulate them; be sure to include a diverse group. (Message students from Canvas based on their grade: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-send-a-message-to-students-from-the-Gradebook/ta-p/741)

  • Provide students with clear and timely feedback, including class-wide distribution data. Women and minority students often fear the worst about their position relative to the class and can be reassured by data.

  • After a midterm exam, step through the math showing the class that students can still pass the course even if they did poorly. It’s just some multiplication but take the time to talk about it. Be factual—no need to “sugar coat”—but provide facts that will help reassure students who think things are worse than they really are.

  • Reach out to students who have filed a disability accommodation form with you and ask them if their needs are being met in your class. See: https://studentaffairs.indiana.edu/student-support/disability-services/index.html Reaffirm your commitment to complying with their approved accommodations and your willingness to receive complaints if there is a problem.

Everyday:

  • Review today’s lecture slides to make sure that your slides are free from gendered pronouns, especially those used in ways that conform to stereotypes (e.g., “A programmer should always write comments in his code, so he can remember how it works”). Use of “they” (and their/them) as a singular pronoun is now widely accepted as a neutral alternative, and better than the awkward “he or she” construction because it also includes genderqueer and non-binary. 

  • Start class today by renewing your invitation to students to come to office hours. Understand that not all students have had the mentoring necessary to know how you expect them to interact with you, so explicitly instruct your class on how to do it. For example: “You don’t need to have a particular question—you’re welcome to just stop by for 5 minutes to introduce yourself,” or “I’m not just here for homework questions—if you are considering changing your major to CS and want to talk about it, if you want to know what it’s like to work as a software engineer, or if you are thinking about applying to grad school but don’t know where to begin, I’m happy to discuss that kind of thing as well.” 

  • Look around your office and/or lab space. Consider if there are things you could add or remove that would make the space more welcoming generally, and also signal welcome to a diverse student body (e.g., remove very masculine or heavily CS-stereotyped movie posters).

  • Actually write a tally of how many times you call on students of different genders in class today. People of all genders are prone to calling on men more often. You may do this unconsciously unless you consciously do otherwise.

  • Go through today’s lecture slides and add “alt text” written descriptions of all images and diagrams. If you’ll use a video clip today, transcribe it. You will need to do this for all your class materials when you have a student who requires these accommodations, so even if that doesn’t apply this term, doing it now is a good head start. Make sure that students who are red-green colorblind will be able to interpret all the graphs and diagrams in your slides. -(Note the Office of Disability Services (ODS) will provide video transcripts to videos you produce if a student who is deaf or hard of hearing is enrolled in your course and registered for ODS services. See: https://studentaffairs.indiana.edu/student-support/disability-services/index.html Additional resource: https://accessibility.iu.edu/creating-content/multimedia/transcripts-captions.html

  • Thinking about today’s lecture, do you plan on using any examples or anecdotes about your childhood or daily life that may cause students to feel excluded for economic reasons? (e.g., talking about pricey gadgets or vacation travel as normal) Even if you know that you did not experience these things and are simply using them as an example, students don’t know that and can assume you are referring to them in a normative way. 

Tips for Successful Team Management

Teamwork can increase knowledge and skills in ways that enhance individual learning. Teams need to be formed, guided, and managed carefully and deliberately in order to achieve desired learning objectives.

Here are some additional tips that can increase the likelihood of success of teamwork techniques as paraphrased by Oakley, et al. (2004) and Felder & Brent (2016, p. 255).

  • Clearly establish team policies and expectations and follow consistently throughout the course.

  • Make the team assignment too challenging to be completed individually. This necessitates group members to rely on each other.

  • Define unique and distinct roles for team members (e.g., coordinator, recorder, monitor).

  • Allow students to bring their unique expertise to the team or provide supplementary training for unique technical contributions.

  • Give bonus points for good team performance on tests.

  • In oral reports, arbitrarily assign team members to report on different parts of the project. All team members should be able to explain various parts of the project.

  • Collect one final product per team but adjust the team grade for individual performance.

  • Ensure individual student accountability:

    • Give individual tests on project content

    • Monitor individual understanding

    • Give credit only to active participants using team signatures

    • Use peer ratings to adjust team project grades for individual performance (see Peer Assessment Rubric for Group Projects)

    • Provide last resort options of firing and quitting

    • Use self-assessment strategies to monitor progress

  • Explain how and why teamwork is being used.

  • Deal with difficulties as they arise using active listening and conflict resolution. This may be performed as an in-class-crisis-clinic or out-of-class-special-cause as deemed appropriate.

Felder, R. M., & Brent, R. (2016). Teaching and Learning STEM: A Practical Guide. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. https://iucat.iu.edu/catalog/16014698

Oakley, B., Brent, R., Felder, R., & Elhajj, I. (2004). Turning Student Groups into Effective Teams. Journal of Student Centered Learning. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.422.8179&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Scaffolding

Why do students ask what’s going to be on the exam?  This question can come after you have: 

  • placed learning objectives in your syllabus, 

  • provided students with a course packet, and 

  • spent weeks lecturing and providing lab or discussion activities related to what is going to be on the exam.

As college-level instructors, we have high expectations for our subjects and our students. However, we can forget what it’s like to be a learner in their first or second year of college, especially if we didn’t struggle with passing courses in high school or during our undergraduate experience. Students come to college at all different levels in a variety of different subjects, and can get overwhelmed, particularly if they did not develop the type of study skills that are needed to be successful in college. It can be useful to some students to explain how to incorporate strategies into your course content, whenever possible to help students be successful in the first- and second-year courses you teach. One such approach is Scaffolding.

 To achieve these high expectations, we should aim high and build in scaffolds for all students to reach the top level, as suggested by Oakley, et al., (2021, pp. 27-29) and Tomlinson and Javius (2012).During scaffolded instruction, students move incrementally (via ‘scaffolds’) towards a deeper understanding of material and concept, enabling them to gradually build understanding. Consider how the learning styles approach can help to scaffold instruction to support and enhance student learning. The scaffolding strategies below can reach all types of learners, considering differences in learning styles, learning speeds, and memory capacities (Alber, 2011 and “Scaffolding,” n.d.):

Resources:

Alber, R. (2011, May 24). 6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students [Web log post]. Retrieved June 24, 2020, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/scaffolding-lessons-six-strategies-rebecca-alber

Oakley, B., Rogowsky, B., & Sejnowski, T. J. (2021). Uncommon Sense Teaching: Practical Insights in Brain Science to Help Students Learn. New York, NY: Tarcher Perigee. https://iucat.iu.edu/catalog/19574677

Tomlinson, C. A., & Javius, E. L. (2012). Teach Up for Excellence. Educational Leadership, 69(5), 28-33. Retrieved April 05, 2021, from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb12/vol69/num05/Teach-Up-for-Excellence.aspx