teacher training – tea for teaching

338. Diversifying the Education Pipeline

Posted in access, classroom community, diversity, engagement, equity, evidence-based practices, feedback, first-generation, graduate training, higher education, inclusion, instructional communication, learning, pedagogy, professional development, social justice, teacher training, teaching
April 24, 2024

Diversifying various fields and disciplines requires intentional work to create and support a pipeline of practitioners. In this episode, Laura Spenceley joins us to discuss specific initiatives to increase inclusion in the PK-12 sector. Laura is the Dean of the School of Education here at SUNY Oswego. She is an Impact Academy Fellow through the national non-profit organization Deans for Impact which works to strengthen and diversify the educator workforce.

Show Notes
Transcript

Show Notes

Deans for Impact
Teacher Opportunity Core Grant
Cultivating Representation in School Psychology Grant
Teach Grant program
Bransberger, Peace (2024) Navigating Learning Loss and Changing Demographics in Education, WICHE insights. February.

Transcript

John: Diversifying various fields and disciplines requires intentional work to create and support a pipeline of practitioners. In this episode, we talk about specific initiatives to increase inclusion in the PK-12 sector

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

[MUSIC]

Rebecca: Our guest today is Laura Spenceley. Laura is the Dean of the School of Education here at SUNY Oswego. She is an Impact Academy Fellow through the national non-profit organization Deans for Impact which works to strengthen and diversify the educator workforce. Welcome, Laura.

Laura: So great to be with you two today. I’m really excited for our conversation.

John: It’s overdue. We’re really happy to be talking to you today. And we’re talking to you from a new room which the School of Education has graciously loaned to us because we lost our old recording space, and we’re now able to keep the podcast going. So thank you.

Laura: You’re most welcome. And truly, I can’t think of a more symbiotic relationship between Tea for Teaching, the opportunity to host you here in the School of Education, and continue this great work and digging into pedagogy issues across the education continuum. And having you right here in-house makes a lot of sense.

John: Our teas today are:… Laura, are you drinking any tea?

Laura: I am not a tea drinker. But I do have a robust French roast in my mug today.

Rebecca: A popular flavor of tea, as we’ve noted multiple times here on the podcast. I have Hunan Jig today, John, I thought it was a good celebratory sounding tea.

John: And I have a spring cherry green tea in a brand new School of Education mug, which I just received today. Thank you.

Laura: You’re welcome.

Rebecca: In your role as the Dean of the School of Education, you’re involved in the entire P-20 pathway. The School of Education has received two large grants to help support students pursuing careers in education. Could you tell us a little bit about these grants?

Laura: I’m thrilled to talk more about these opportunities. And these two projects are our teacher opportunity core grant, that’s our TOC grant and our Cultivating Representation in School Psychology grant. Both of these grants are, as their name may imply, designed to help us recruit, support, retain and move through into careers, teachers and school psychologists from a wide range of backgrounds. It’s a well known fact across most educational spaces that folks who are delivering instruction or providing support services don’t always represent the constituent student populations with whom they work. And each of these programs are designed to 1. help ensure that we have a representative and diverse education workforce. But more importantly than that, they’re also designed to ensure that as we recruit and matriculate students into our teacher preparation programs and school psychology program, that we’re investing in those candidates along the way, recognizing that students from historically marginalized groups are often more likely to have challenges in persisting through their academic programs, both undergraduate and graduate. So each of these programs has some similar foundational elements. That includes financial support along the continuum of their educational program, again, undergraduate or graduate, support for things like transportation, professional development opportunities. And those professional development opportunities are really designed to empower our students from those historically marginalized or underrepresented spaces in their fields with contemporary activities that will help them address systemic discrepancies in schools. So making classrooms more responsive to the needs of the multicultural communities in which they reside, helping ensure that our future psychologists and educators have opportunities to work with people along the way that look like them, that share their lived experiences, and build that really continuum of care around their success. It’s also a great opportunity for us as educators, leaders, teachers, to be invested in those spaces with them and hearing from their mouths, what their challenges are, what their opportunities are in districts and really working to empower them for a career in education.

John: And the School of Education has always been engaged in working with students from all these marginalized groups that you’ve mentioned. What other types of support, though, have you been working on developing in the School of Ed for students who are first-gen students, Pell-eligible students, or from historically minoritized groups?

Laura: It’s a great question, John, and I’m so thankful to have the opportunity to chat about it because I think sometimes, as is human nature, we want to create responses or programming from a perspective of “all first gen-students might need this thing” or “all Pell-eligible students might need this thing” and we’ve been certainly sensitive to the realities that those populations experience, but also have tried to take a step back and take a more nuanced approach to that work. I’ve had the opportunity to be in the Dean’s position for about three years now. And when I came in the door, it was the year after the global pandemic. And so, so much of what we knew here on a college campus and in our P-12 spaces in the community had just been turned on its head. So when I came into the dean’s office, one of the things that was really important was to hear from our students, our candidates pursuing their degrees, what are the challenges that you’re experiencing? And I need to give a shout out to Dr. Nicole Brown, our director of our clinical practice and partnerships office, she really had this vision of surveying students, engaging in some listening sessions with those students. And we took the opportunity to deploy a survey about how students were experiencing their programs, but also the challenges that they were experiencing. And those data were humbling, to say the least. We learned back in 2021-22, about one in five of our students was having to make the choice between eating and paying for gas to get to their placements. About one in four of our students had to go without a meal at a certain point so that they would be able to engage. We recognize, and this was not a new problem, but just how challenging transportation to and from their clinical sites was becoming particularly in a time where we were very sensitive to being in enclosed spaces. And so we took that opportunity to reflect on the ways we weren’t just to use quotes, “utilizing the resources,” like our teacher opportunity core program, but to really recalibrate the way we were engaging with all students. And so what that looks like right now is we’ve really taken an approach to engage with our students from the time they’re prospective students all the way through graduation and career placement. And so what that has looked like is we’ve had active faculty and administrator presence at recruitment events, helping prospective students and their families understand not just the phenomenal financial aid resources available to them, but demystifying grant programs like the Teach Grant program, like public service loan forgiveness, which is available to many of our graduates after a period of time, it’s also about helping those families understand what contemporary classrooms and contemporary educational careers look like. There’s so much animus in public media and in the dialogue around what’s going on in schools and giving our prospective students the opportunity to hear from our current students and our partners, what they can actually expect, not just out of their degree program, but the field, has been really impactful. On a more nuanced level, as a result of that survey, we have utilized a range of resources to help offset some of those specific concerns regarding transportation, costs related to certification, and food instability. I do need to call out our amazing student affairs team on campus that has made enormous investments in this space as well. And I think always connecting students to the most local resources has been a really effective way to ensure they can take advantage of those supports in a way that makes sense to them. For us, I was lucky enough to inherit a 12-passenger van that had been purchased right before the pandemic, and we’ve taken the opportunity to hire student drivers. We offer daily routes to and from the Syracuse area at no cost to our students, leveraging the generosity of our alumni and donors who have invested in the School of Education, we have made a commitment for any candidate that needs to get to or from their site and can’t use the van, that we’ve created an Uber voucher system. And so we’ve been able to put those funds directly in front of students. We’ve expanded our supports for certification exams and fingerprinting through really simply asking students: “Are these barriers?” and creating a process again, through our foundation funds, that we’ve been able to offset those costs in time of need. And then lastly, I think another part of this is helping our faculty understand the realities that our candidates are experiencing as they move through their degree programs. Bringing those data back from not just the survey but listening sessions we continue to offer as an open forum for students to share their concerns, bringing that back to our faculty and helping them understand in both a formative and accurate sort of way, what the experiences of our students are in looking to make changes, whether it’s to our core sequences, the way that we administer fees, encouraging open-access resources, building resource libraries within our departments, so that we can continue to wrap our arms around students, give them a great experience, and also ensure that something like a meal isn’t getting in the way of their ability to get to and from their site.

John: And one thing we should note is that Syracuse is about 40 miles or so from here. So the commute time for a student would probably be about 45 minutes to 55 minutes, depending on where the school is located. So transportation would be relatively expensive for students.

Laura: Yes, and it’s such a good point to make, and I know we’re likely to talk about partnerships later, being where we are here in Oswego, we are lucky enough to have amazing partners along the I-81 corridor from Syracuse to Oswego, almost to Utica, almost to Rochester. And so it is not unusual that our candidates are driving up to an hour each way. So absolutely.

Rebecca: And it’s a problem that campuses that are in a more rural context experience when they’re doing any kind of placements, whether it’s internships, student teaching, or service learning, or anything like that. It’s very different than an urban context.

Laura: Absolutely. And I think we’re really committed, we embrace the idea that we are a rural educator preparation program, while also embracing the fact we have large urban partners just down the road. And we see that as an opportunity to diversify our candidates’ experience and give them a broad sampling of school structures, organizations, what’s possible, both in large districts, small and the in-betweens. And so that’s been a really critical part of our preparation framework for many, many years here in the School of Education.

Rebecca: It’s always great to hear stories, and we’ve heard more of these since COVID, of schools really paying attention to the actual needs of students and what barriers they’re facing, and really being responsive to them and finding ways to solve the barriers that they’re facing. Because often, the barriers are great, but often there are solutions that we can put into place that aren’t actually that complicated when we get down to what they are.

Laura: Rebecca, I love so much how you framed that, because one of the driving mantras that I often remind myself is we can solve problems if we choose to. And I think to solve problems, we need to be able to describe the problem, we need to understand it from a compassionate perspective. Recognizing every candidate that declares a School of Ed major sees themselves as a future educator in one form or another, and partnering with them, to actualize that vision is the best part of my job.

Rebecca: Well, and we would hope they want to do the same thing for their students. So modeling what we’re hoping to bring into the land of education is certainly a good place to be. We talked before COVID, with the School of Education about some of the really great partnerships you all have both locally and regionally, both as school districts and community organizations. Can you talk a little bit more about some of the outreach you’re continuing to do in those spaces?

Laura: Absolutely. And frankly, we would not be a school of education without partners. Every program housed within the School of Ed requires an applied learning experience. And so even our non-teacher preparation programs in counseling psychology and management programs require some sort of applied experience. And so strong relationships and a strong understanding of the context for our partners is really important to our success and our candidates’ success. So I’ll talk about a few examples since there are many day to day here in the School of Education. For context, in 2020-23, for example, we placed more than 1000 candidates across I believe 246 different settings, kindergarten all the way up through high school. Don’t quote me on the number, but I think I’m close. But we have made a couple of purposeful efforts over the last few years. And in particular around our professional development schools. These are schools where we have an agreement to focus professional development activities for our pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, so folks who are classroom teachers in that district, and align that with our faculty areas of expertise to create what are called that third space for learning, where we were bringing in a range of expertise and perspectives. Here in Oswego County, we have professional development school partnerships with six of our nine local districts. And those partnerships have focused on strengthening support for technology and STEM-oriented initiatives at the junior high and high school level. In another district, it’s included a dedicated focus on early elementary school literacy outcomes and improving the way we’re preparing kids to read and write. Other districts have focused on more systems-level change with strengthening the way that we identify students who are struggling before that becomes a significant impediment to their learning, and organizing teacher and leader responses to ensure that those processes are unbiased, that we’re making decisions that help us put resources around what kids need to thrive. But that’s just a sampling of the types of partnerships that we have with local districts. I think, given the fact that education continues to be a domain where the public dialogue is not always framed as positive, partnerships with our local practitioners and districts, give us opportunities to 1. change that narrative and help people in our communities understand the value that schools can bring to that community. And Rebecca, you mentioned the way that, coming through the pandemic, schools are really regarded as kind of community centers. And I think we’ve seen those types of initiatives be really effective, whether that is including opportunities for families to access medical care, dental care, social services and supports when they’re in district, we have something to offer to that conversation because of the range of our preparation programs here on campus. And so we really tried to engage with our partners in the P-12 sector to ensure that we are operating as a true continuum of care for our communities.

John: During the pandemic, there were some fairly substantial learning losses that disproportionately affected students from low-income households, and low-income school districts. And a study was just released by WICHE in February of 2024, which found that those learning losses are still persisting, which means the students who are teaching in schools are going to face students with a fairly wide variance in their prior preparation. What types of things do you do to help prepare students to address the diversity of student backgrounds in terms of how much they come into the classes with?

Laura: Coming through the pandemic, one of the things we were reminded of was the power of a direct positive relationship between a student and an adult in the building, that can look like a wide range of folks, coaches, teachers, mentors, administrators, volunteers. But that’s something we have continued to embed in our curriculum and helping our candidates understand that day to day, the way that we make students feel is often the thing that will be really critical and helping ensure that they walk through the door the next morning, the next day, or ask for help when they’re having a tough situation. And so empowering our students to respect the dignity of people’s lived experiences, we embed before they move into their clinical experiences in schools, quite a bit of reflection, self-reflection on their own lived experiences, what education has meant for them, the spaces where they have been privileged or perhaps oppressed through educational structures, protocols or policies, and building that capacity of our students to both identify and address bias or embedded bias in the spaces where they work. Getting down into the curricular focus, it is frankly staggering to see how children have been impacted, particularly in the early elementary levels and the older adolescence ages when we think about both academic skills, but socioemotional skills, wellbeing, and I think one of the things that I try to celebrate is the resilience that’s been built into this generation of learners. On the other hand, that comes with a certain amount of exhaustion, anxiety, uncertainty about their future, and so coming back to that element of relationship building, it’s so key. At the curricular level, there is an enormous focus here in New York on the ways that we can do a better job in preparing children to be literate, contributing members of a just society. So right now in New York, there’s a lot of focus on the science of reading. And I want to be really clear to listeners, the science of reading isn’t about a curriculum, it is about embracing the empirical evidence towards a systemic approach to the instruction of reading, writing, and literacy across grades. There’s an enormous amount of energy around this work right now recognizing that we can do better in preparing kids to be literate. And I’m starting to see an equal attention to a focus on math and frankly, STEM preparation. Here in our community in central New York industry has returned with a bang. And there are wonderful opportunities for employment for students with a wide range of educational experiences starting right out of high school for gainful and lifelong employment in these sectors. But what we’ve heard is that math proficiency is often a barrier for those students. And so trying to incorporate elements of curiosity and creativity, bringing science, technology, and math into creative spaces, like art, design, dance, helping students understand that math and science, quite frankly, isn’t just about memorizing equations, or knowing your multiplication tables. But there are a range of application of math, science in our day-to-day lives. When I think about when I was a kid, we had a great lesson on fractals, and we went outside and we found fractals in nature. I remember it to this day, almost like it was yesterday, trying to engage students in their learning, that incorporates their lived experiences, having access to textbooks, readings that reflect their family structures, their linguistic background, the realities of their lives. And so our students ,when they move into those first teaching positions, carrying with them that, I’ll go back to respect for the dignity of all persons, that recognition that kids carry much more with them into a classroom than a backpack, and finding ways that we can empower their learning not just through curriculum, but through curriculum that is delivered at their level, that celebrates individual students growth, that isn’t anchored in some specific outcome, but recognizes individual student’ s growth as meaningful. And I’m really proud to say our data suggests our students do move into their first teaching careers with those skills. And I think the next phase of the conversation starts to focus on how can we, as an educator preparation program, be part of the community in delivering professional development? How can we bring the great work that’s going on in schools to our faculty and have that kind of recursive flow of information, and also ensuring that we are preparing school leaders to create conditions that help us achieve all of these goals. And with our programming here in the School of Education, we’re uniquely positioned because we offer those range of preparation programs and have the luxury of great relationships with partners.

Rebecca: We’ve talked a little bit about learning losses in K-12. But obviously, that has an impact on our college students as well. They also survived the pandemic and are here. What are some of the things that your faculty are doing to help these candidates feel like they have what they need to go into the community having maybe had some experiences of remote learning or challenges with some of these subjects too?

Laura: This is a really important question. And I think it’s one I’ll both answer from the school of education perspective, but also the broader campus perspective, frankly, because we don’t do this work in a vacuum or in a silo. And so I’ll pick up on some of the elements of the last answer, which is making sure that we on campus are framing the opportunity to serve our students as a positive one. We have an opportunity to meet students where they are and that will look different for different students. On the other hand, I think our faculty have been eager to try to crack this code, so to speak, on bridging our lived experiences in K through 12 and transition to college through the framework of the contemporary student experience and those are not parallel for many of us or really even comparable. I have been trying to, as dean of the school, make sure that we are approaching this from a perspective of strength. What students do come to us with us is a resilience that students of prior generations may not have. They come to us with skills and knowledge of technology and how to leverage it in a way that students didn’t in the past. And frankly, it was because they had to learn how to use that technology. Students coming to our campus today have access to more information at their fingertips than any generation of student has ever had in the past. And where we have opportunities is to help students both identify where they may have gaps, whether in their knowledge or experience, put those experiences in front of our candidates, and also help them navigate this world where it’s not always easy to identify what is good information and bad information. Now, let’s drill into some more specific examples there. I think one of the most critical things that we have done in the last few years and again, I’ll give kudos where they’re due to our student orientation groups. We have been embedding ourselves into some of those opening week sessions, where we’ve had the opportunity to talk to our future majors and undeclared students around college- level expectations. And while that might sound silly, I think when students can hear from us, from me, from my faculty colleagues, our stories that many of us are first-gen, were Pell-eligible, have student loans, worked while we were in college, struggled to purchase textbooks, come from different backgrounds, are new to the state or the country. I think that goes a long way as a formative first step in building that trust in the relationship with our candidates. It also gives us the opportunity to begin to plant those seeds around what supports are available to them. Whether that is to help them address their mental and physical health needs, their academic needs through our tutoring center, our office of learning services, the embedded tutoring services, and also come to see us as people that are here to help support them and what their vision for their success looks like. I had a young person come up at the end of our first orientation and said, “I’ve never had someone like you say, you walked in the same path as I have.” And it was really a moment where I understood that coming to the table and being authentic with our students is so critical at this point. The other piece of it, John and Rebecca, is recalibrating the way that we orient our classrooms to continue to give students frameworks for utilizing technology and AI and the wide range of information, also helping them become critical consumers of that information, providing formative feedback to their assignments in real time, flipping our classrooms and allowing students to lead the conversation. I think providing choice as much as possible around what literature students choose to present in classes, for example, have been ways that we have said to students, both overtly and more discreetly, you matter, your story matters and you and my classroom matters. I’ll also share we have been taking a look at the way we offer our curriculum to try to identify, and again as part of a larger campus focus on retention and success for our first-year students, where are the pain points, so to speak, in their degree program, particularly for transfer students, we’ve heard that there isn’t always as seamless of a transition to campus as we may assume. And so really starting to tackle some changes in our course sequence to ensure that our academic programs are set up in a structured sequential way that also gives enough flexibility for students to pursue some of their areas of interest, be student athletes ,be club leaders, or frankly, support their family, which many of our students need to do.

John: Recently, we’ve seen a lot of attacks on education at all levels, with books being banned in the classroom, removed from libraries, and restrictions on the types of topics and the types of history that can be taught in classes. What are some of the things that you do in the School of Education to help prepare students for a world in which they may be facing more challenges from parents and political pressures?

Laura: This is a critically important question and will be critically important action. I hope I could say in the next year, but I have a feeling this will be a long road. Too often I hear colleagues, neighbors, friends say, “Well, Laura, at least we’re in New York, you don’t have to deal with this in the same way.” And while it is true, I am proud to be in a state that has been very overt about people’s lived experience, respecting the civil rights of all persons here in the state. It is also the case that that can change very quickly in an election cycle. And frankly, we have seen that across the country. I’m particularly concerned right now about the way that civil rights discussions have been framed. And there are some cases in litigation right now around bullying initiatives and carving out exclusions or exceptions in those bullying protocols or policies that would allow, for example, trans students to be targeted without recourse. We see that replicated in both sports spaces, but also classroom spaces. I’m deeply troubled that this is a place that we’re going in a country that was frankly built upon public education and access. And we haven’t always gotten that access piece right. Many of our school policies and procedures have been built on an exclusionary clause rather than an inclusionary mission. On the other hand, we’ve made such great gains over the last 10 to 20 years in ensuring that schools are more responsive, supportive, dignifying places. I’m really troubled by this work. For our students, we have a commitment to social justice embedded in the framework of the School of Education. And that is more than transactional or it goes beyond the words social justice. Our curriculum prior to students going into schools is focused on those ways that schools have been exclusive spaces, have not always dignified the realities of the people who walk through the doors. And so for our students, what we tried to do is help them understand the threats or attacks on people’s civil rights or their histories is not new. On the other hand, it’s taken a very different tone in the way that it’s being implemented. So 1., it’s giving them the tools in knowledge and understanding of history to understand schools don’t have to be exclusive places, schools can be responsive, welcoming, encouraging spaces for all students from all backgrounds. It’s also about helping students understand that I want to be a teacher, I don’t want to be a politician is not a reality in which they will live as an educator. We try to empower them without encouraging them to engage in any particular behavior, to stay attuned to the realities of how legislative efforts, school board votes, and other sorts of community oriented book bans and dialogues might impact their ability to teach a particular lesson, utilize a particular academic resource. So you may have seen coming out of Florida, among other things in the last few weeks, a school district teacher had thought that it was prudent to send home a permission slip to alert the parents, that their children were going to be exposed to a black author. It wasn’t about the content of the book, it was simply the fact that they were going to be reading a book from an African- American author. I can’t think of a better example to highlight the importance that an apolitical stance is not one that classroom teachers can take, that school leaders can take. And that’s not about voting for a particular person or a particular party. But it is standing up to ensure as educational experts who have preparation, expertise, and insights that the community may not, to share them and be vocal about the ways that diverse learning materials, accurate historical representations of the world are critical towards ensuring that we do not replicate them. And so I am both incredibly disheartened at the turn that this discourse has taken. I’m also incredibly optimistic when I look at how young people, how educators, how experts have shown up and linked arms to say: “This is not right. We are not going to correct the wrongs of our history by limiting access to that history or by building smaller tables with fewer voices.” And so I tried to stay in that headspace as much as possible.

Rebecca: Definitely some good reminders and things for all of us to be thinking about in our role as educators. So we always ramp up by asking what’s next?

Laura: I love that question, because I could probably read you a laundry list of the things that we’re thinking about in our School of Education. Right now, here in New York, there’s a lot of robust conversation around, what does a high-quality teacher look like? What are they ready to do in their classrooms? And there’s a lot of engagement there. And again, this relates to helping the public understand not just what we do day to day or what the outcomes are, but the opportunity space towards preparing children for lifetimes of success. Here in the School of Education, we’ve got a range of new programs that we’re lifting in the fall of 2024, including our new master’s degree in behavioral health and wellness. And frankly, I think we have a range of new programs. As we talked about industry thriving here in central New York. There’s also a lot of energy in the school of education around our career and technical educator preparation programs, and of course, our technology education programs, some great investments in our lab spaces, looking at opportunities to do more in partnership in and with local districts to ensure, as we were talking about kids across Oswego County, have great opportunities to engage with science and technology and math in ways that bring them out of the classroom and into the world and creative spaces. So I’m really excited to see what the year ahead is going to look like for us.

Rebecca: Well, thank you so much for joining us, Dean Spenceley and for our wonderful space.

John: …and we’ll be talking to you much more in the future.

Laura: I look forward to the opportunity. Thank you both.

[MUSIC]

John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

Ganesh: Editing assistance by Ganesh.

[MUSIC]

241. Teaching Matters

Posted in graduate education, graduate training, higher education, pedagogy, professional development, scholarship of teaching and learning, teacher training, teaching, teaching centers
May 25, 2022

Graduate students often receive little or no training before their first teaching experiences. In this episode, Aeron Haynie and Stephanie Spong join us to discuss the need to support graduate students as they transition into their roles as teachers. Aeron is the Executive Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of New Mexico. And Stephanie is the Director of the Center for Digital Learning, also at the University of New Mexico. They are the co-authors of Teaching Matters: A Guide for Graduate Students. We are also joined today by Jesamyn Neuhaus, who is filling in once again as a guest host.

Show Notes
Transcript

Show Notes

Spong, S., & Haynie, A. (2022). Teaching Matters: A Guide for Graduate Students. West Virginia University Press.
Hrach, S. (2021). Minding Bodies: How Physical Space, Sensation, and Movement Affect Learning. West Virginia University Press.
Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed https://ptoweb.org/gatherings/conference/
Neuhaus, J. (2019). Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers. West Virginia University Press.
Boice, B. (1996). Classroom Incivilities. Research in Higher Education, 37(4), 453-486.
Bessette, L. S. (2020). Affective Labor: The Need for, and Cost of, Workplace Equanimity. EDUCAUSE Review. March 26.

Transcript

John: Graduate students often receive little or no training before their first teaching experiences. In this episode, we discuss strategies and resources we can use to support graduate students as they transition into their roles as teachers.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

[MUSIC]

John: Our guests today are Aeron Haynie and Stephanie Spong. Aeron is the Executive Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of New Mexico. And Stephanie is the Director of the Center for Digital Learning, also at the University of New Mexico. They are the co-authors of Teaching Matters: A Guide for Graduate Students. We are also joined today by Jesamyn Neuhaus, who is filling in once again as a guest host.

Jessamyn: Hi, everybody.

John: Welcome, Stephanie. And welcome back, Aeron.

Aeron: Thank you.

Stephanie: Thank you.

John: Our teas today are… Are any of you drinking tea today?

Stephanie: Yes. I was telling Aeron, I was most excited about this question because I drink tea every day. But yeah, I’ve got a really nice lavender chamomile today.

John: Very nice.

Jessamyn: Just hearing about that sounds soothing and calming: lavender and chamomile. [LAUGHTER]

Aeron: And I usually drink Earl Grey tea. But this afternoon because I’m having a little issue with my teenager, I’m drinking some mint tea. [LAUGHTER]

John: Which can also be calming.

Jessamyn: Yeah, that’s the theme. I’m drinking plain water. John, how about you?

John: And I am drinking Twinings Irish breakfast tea. So we’ve invited you here to discuss Teaching Matters. Could you tell us a little bit about how this book project came about?

Stephanie: Yeah, I think that this really is a testament to some of Aeron’s really wonderful mentorship of me when I was a graduate student. So we met when Aeron came to the University of New Mexico. I was finishing up my PhD there, and we had the opportunity to work together. And we had a lot of really great conversations about what it meant to teach as a graduate student, how often we were both told to put our teaching last, and really focus on our research. And Aeron was one of the first folks I met who really wanted to have serious conversations about teaching with graduate students. And so I think that that was the real kernel of where this book came from. And Aeron, I don’t know if you want to add to that.

Aeron: Thank you, Stephanie. Yeah, as part of a graduate teaching certificate that I helped develop at the University of New Mexico in cooperation with grad studies, I realized that although there’s some books out there that are specifically for grad students, and then some really nice new books that are coming out that are about teaching in general, that I was really having trouble finding a text that I felt really spoke to graduate students as complex intellectual people who could really think about teaching with the same intellectual excitement as they’re thinking about their research projects. And so we batted around the idea of: Why don’t we write a book ourselves? And that’s how the project started. And we, really, it took years for us to find time to work on it. But oddly, we finished it during the pandemic. So there you go.

Jessamyn: Following up on that, can you say more about that intended audience? Who do you imagine reading and using this book?

Aeron: Yeah, this is definitely a book that is written with graduate students in mind, but I think can still be very useful for new and actually established faculty and part-time instructors who didn’t get pedagogical training or who got some and would like a little bit more. But in terms of the writing of the book and the audience, we also really wanted to acknowledge the very particular positionality of graduate students, the competing demands that graduate students have, to be sometimes new instructors at the same time as they are learning to do important research in their fields. And we also found that we wanted to include as well one of the things that will be, I think, somewhat surprising in this book is that we really wanted to prioritize graduate students as human beings, not just as “brains on sticks,” Jessamyn. [LAUGHTER] That we wanted to think about them and really encourage them to address their own well-being, both mental and physical and social well-being, at the same time as they develop as teachers. We found that when that doesn’t happen, there can be a lot of oppression flowing downward. When grad students feel bullied or not supported by their graduate faculty, then what we sometimes see is a lack of empathy for the students that they’re teaching. So we thought it was very important in our book to really look at wellness and self care, as well as developing solid teaching practices.

Jessamyn: And just to give a shout out to the source there, that wonderful quote, “brains on sticks,” is from Susan Hrach’s book, Minding Bodies, also WVU press.

John: So this discussion of people as human beings might get us banned in Florida, [LAUGHTER] but other than that, I think is a really valuable approach. I thought it might be helpful if maybe we could all talk a little bit about our own experience in grad school in terms of preparation for a career in teaching. A very large share of the people in PhD programs end up in teaching colleges and yet tend to receive very little preparation in teaching. And I think the fact that there were no other books in this category is an indication that that’s an issue that has not been very well addressed in general in pretty much all disciplines. So what was your experience in grad school in terms of being prepared? Stephanie has mentioned a little bit about hers.

Stephanie: Yeah, actually, I think that I was really lucky. In the English department at the University of New Mexico, we got quite a deal of preparation in terms of writing pedagogy. So there was a two-week practicum. And then the culture of the department, when I was there, at least, was really focused on sharing, sharing with one another. So people shared materials, they shared syllabi, sequences, all sorts of things, people were really open to that. And then there was also a real welcoming atmosphere for graduate students to participate in different large assessment projects. So I feel like that was, even though not necessarily directly pedagogical training, it really was for me to really think about… How do people conceptualize learning outcomes? And what makes a good learning outcome? And what happens when you don’t have good learning outcomes? And we also, in the English department, did have a practicum for teaching literature. It was a semester long, but it was much more focused on creating a syllabus, thinking about how to select text. And it really wasn’t as focused on… What do you do in the classroom or online? What do you do when you’re interacting with your students? And what do you do when things don’t go the way that you had planned? I do think that I’m really lucky, though, in the amount of pedagogical training that I received. I think that’s a little bit rare.

Aeron: Yeah, and I’ll add to that. I’m a bit older than Stephanie, and so I had some training, but it was more minimal. But like Stephanie, I learned from my fellow graduate students. Also, I was really fascinated with pedagogy early on. And the one place that I found a community was going to the Pedagogy of the Oppressed Conference that is based on the work of Paulo Freire, and that was wonderful for helping think about early anti-racist pedagogy. But it was very theoretical at the time that I attended it. And what I wanted was… Yes! This is great, this is why I care about teaching. This is why it matters for issues of equity. But how do I actually do it? And how do I do it in my area of expertise, which is also literature? So I’m excited that there are so many more great books, including Jessamyn’s, and other books that are published by West Virginia University Press.

John: Jessamyn?

Jessamyn: I got zero training. I do think it’s changing a little bit, increasingly graduate programs include some attention to teaching. But why do you think it’s still a neglected area? Why does teaching get the short end of the stick when it comes to graduate programs?

Aeron: Yeah, I think that one of the tension points is that PhD programs are at research universities. And faculty at research universities are really brilliant and really good at getting jobs at research universities. And so they’re able to help mentor their graduate students toward those types of jobs. And for some of the graduate students who want a research-oriented job, and who are lucky enough to beat the odds, that works out very well. But I think, as we’ve mentioned earlier, that the majority of jobs, if you’re lucky enough to get a full-time job with benefits, it’s probably going to really emphasize teaching. So I think that that’s part of that disconnect, that faculty often are training their graduate students for jobs like the jobs that they have. I also think, and when we were developing the teaching certificate at the University of New Mexico, one of the things that I realized is that there’s a hesitancy to tell different disciplines how to teach because there’s such a difference in disciplinary teaching. So there’s a difference between having a teaching assistant who is grading for a faculty member, having a teaching assistant who runs a lab, having a teaching assistant in a large sociology class versus having a teaching assistant teaching undergraduates how to write. So because there’s such a difference in what we’re asking graduate students to do, I think that generally folks want to leave it to the disciplinary departments. And I think that that would be great, that would be ideal. As I joke, in Haynie University, when I finally am able to endow a private college in northern New Mexico with my younger brother’s music monies, then I think that ideally, we would have a faculty member who is an expert on pedagogy and an expert on training grad students embedded within each department. But until that happy day, I think that there needs to be a general orientation to the fundamentals of college teaching across modalities, and I think really importantly, that really focuses on equity and inclusion, and the costs when we do not try to teach to the students we have.

John: In my own experience heading our search committee on my department, we normally get a couple of hundred applicants. And typically out of that group, there’s usually three or four who have had some background in teaching or something beyond a one- or two-hour session designed for teaching assistants at some point. And I think part of the problem is exactly as you said, that the people who are selected to teach in graduate programs are selected on the basis of their ability to publish in top journals, and that tends not to favor people who are spending more time improving their teaching and learning. The exceptions tend to be when the people who are in our department, at least in the field of economics, actually work in the scholarship of teaching and learning as their area of expertise. And there’s a few departments that do provide really strong training. And those are the people who tend to move right up to the top of our list when we’re going through a search. Because when we look at the teaching philosophies, for example, that people share… in economics, it probably is worse than in many disciplines… where it says, “Well, I use PowerPoint instead of the Blackboard.” [LAUGHTER] Or, “I try to leave room for students to ask some questions at the end of classes,” or, “I try to bring in the news once in a while into the lectures.” And most of them don’t really go much further than that. So it’s a scenario where I think graduate students would have a bit of an edge in many academic markets if they did have this sort of training. But there’s a shortage of supply given the emphasis on training within the disciplines. So this book is a nice step towards that. And I think one of the things included is that you include a section on writing a teaching philosophy. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Stephanie: Yeah, yeah, we can. It’s so funny that you all asked this question, just about a week and a half ago, a grad student that I’ve worked with before reached out to me and said, “Hey, a group of my colleagues and I are trying to write teaching statements, and we don’t know how. And can you bring up your personal experiences? Should we talk about things that we’re doing in classes?” And it was so nice and handy to just say, “Actually, I have this appendix, let me just send it to her.” And we try to give graduate students a really clear guide, like, “Hey, here’s what you want to do in the first paragraph, here’s what you want to do in the second paragraph.” And try to help them leverage the different kinds of experiences that they have. As Aeron mentioned earlier, you might get a TA for a course and only get to head up one or two sessions or just the lab session. So you’re going to want to think about how to leverage those experiences a little bit differently than say, if you’re the instructor of record for the whole semester. So that is something that I think is really valuable. And in that appendix, we also give graduate students a sense of, you know…If you’re doing a teaching demo on campus, here’s what to bring, here’s how to plan for it. Teaching demos vary wildly across hiring processes, so we try to prepare students for the range of things that they might be asked to do to make them really successful in that job hunt. And I think that one of the things that’s really helpful in the way that we describe, specifically, the teaching philosophy is this notion that you don’t have to be perfect, that the hiring committees really want to know… What are the interesting things that you’re doing? How can you really talk to a group of gen ed students and make this subject come alive? And then also, where are you going from here? You are not expected to be the expert in teaching this field yet. So what are you going to do to learn and grow? And specifically, what are you going to do for this student population to learn and grow and to serve their unique needs?

Jessamyn: I love that point about being perfect. I think everywhere we can chip away at this myth of the super teacher, that professor that we see in all the movies and TV shows, lecturing effortlessly, no notes, and students learn magically, just by listening to this incredibly entertaining person talk. Anywhere we can chip away that, hurray. [LAUGHTER] And actually, speaking of falling flat on your face when you’re teaching, I’m especially interested in chapter five, it’s called “Navigating Classroom Challenges.” I think there’s way too many books about college teaching that don’t adequately empower readers for when things go wrong. And something always goes wrong, one way or the other, at least once. So can you give us an example of a classroom challenge that you discuss and a navigation strategy that you describe?

Aeron: One of the things that we do in that chapter—we also think that’s a very important chapter because everyone is going to have things go wrong or unexpected things happen—is we think it’s very important to distinguish between what we term “rude, disruptive, and hostile,” because oftentimes, we lump them together: Students do things we don’t like. And how do we deal with that? And often, too often, the response is, “Let’s just write everything into the syllabus. Every time someone does something we don’t like, let’s add it. Don’t wear bright colors, don’t drink in class, whatever.” And it becomes a long list of “thou shalt not.” And so in the category of rude, we have a really great anecdote. For this book, by the way, we interviewed many current and former graduate students from lots of different groups and in lots of different disciplines. And I think one of our really interesting anecdotes comes from an international graduate student from Egypt, who had come here, he had gotten lots of training, and he came to the University of New Mexico. And he’s brilliant and a committed teacher. And one of his first classes here on an American campus, he went in, and there were students with their feet up on the desks in front of them. And in his culture, that would be seen as a sign of horrendous disrespect. And so he didn’t say anything, and he left the class at the end. And he went to one of his mentors and said, “I can’t believe this happened. Clearly these students are really rude, and they don’t respect me.” And this mentor, a fellow international graduate student, was able to say, “That’s actually just the American classroom. In certain contexts, it’s much more informal than in some countries. And so it’s not a sign of disrespect, in fact, it means that they’re feeling very comfortable and relaxed in the class, and they feel comfortable with you.” So that I think was a really great example because it, first of all, shows the fact that when we talk about teaching in our book, we really are very much talking about within an American college classroom, and that’s important. But it also highlights the importance of establishing community guidelines, and assuming the best about your students. So spending a day or so or part of a class period, with the students constructing some sort of common guidelines so that you’re all on the same page, and that you can reduce the number of, to use Boice’s term, incivilities in the classroom. Now, there is, of course, quite a difference between a student doing something rude, which could be falling asleep, putting their feet up, doing something disruptive, which Stephanie has a really good example of, or something that could be hostile or threatening. So let’s Stephanie give a really great example of what we would call “disruptive” and how we might handle that.

Stephanie: So I have a story about a class that Aeron and I were actually co-teaching. We were using specifications grading for this particular class, we were really interested in alternative grading methods for our students. And on one particular day, one of our students was, it was at the point in the semester where she was expressing a lot of concerns about her final grade. And so we were talking about it before class started informally, and then the rest of the class kind of filled in, she’s still trying to talk to me about it, I needed to get class started, get the activities rolling. The students were starting that particular day, taking a knowledge-check reading quiz. And she was still trying to engage me in this conversation, even as other students had started doing their work. And this is what we would call kind of disruptive, right? Her actions were making it challenging for the other students to proceed. And so on that day I went over, and I sat down next to her, and I just said, “Hey, other folks are starting the reading quiz. Why don’t we talk about this after class?” And that worked out just fine, she moved forward. I don’t think that she was particularly happy with me during class. But that’s that difference between rude and disruptive, if you are in class, and you’re simply exhibiting that you’re unhappy through your facial expressions or through crossing your arms, then that’s okay, I want to check with you after class, but you’re not keeping the other folks around you from learning. We chatted about it after class. It turned out that this particular student was honestly just really stressed out at that point in the semester about all of her grades. And I think having that 45 minutes to cool off a little bit was helpful for both of us. And then I was able to go through the grading schema with her and make sure she understood what she would be accountable for, what she wasn’t accountable for. And one of the things that was really interesting to me is, I said something along the lines of, “I was really surprised to see your reaction in that way.” And she thought about it for a while, and she said, “Yeah, I’m surprised, too, that’s not really like me.” So I think just making sure that there’s a time and space to talk with students, that doesn’t escalate the situation, we could have continued having this dialogue with everyone around, and that might really escalate the student’s sense of embarrassment, my own sense of needing to preserve some sense of order in the classroom. So having a little space and time was really helpful for that particular instance.

Jessamyn: That’s such an instructive example. And I know personally, learning that I could say, “Thank you for bringing this up, let me think about it,” was transformative. And the way you can de-escalate, as you said, both people’s emotions, just by taking a little bit of time is pretty magic. And the other important point of your story, for listeners, is the reminder that non-traditional grading can meet with a lot of anxiety and resistance. And we go charging in all fired up about our revolutionary practices, [LAUGHTER] thinking, “Oh, students are going to love it.” But if they haven’t done it before, there’s going to be a lot of anxiety and being prepared for that by reading chapters like this, is so important.

John: And that goes far beyond just the alternative grading system,it goes with any new technique that’s being used in the classroom that students are not used to. Because we’re all creatures of habit, and we don’t always accept change as nicely as perhaps we might like others to do.

Jessamyn: So what does your chapter say about the worst-case scenario, the real threatening or dangerous situation?

Aeron: Yeah, thank you, Jessamyn, the hostile or we could say threatening. We want to acknowledge that those exist. And that even if you do everything well, even if you start with the community guidelines, and you establish a sense of classroom community, and you talk to students about things, you can’t control for variables, particularly as we’ve seen in the last year with mask mandates and other unexpected things. So we acknowledge in that chapter that there are groups of instructors who may really feel that hostility more keenly: minoritized faculty members, younger faculty members, faculty members who have some kind of visible disability. So there’s all sorts of things to take into account. But I think that what we want to say for those folks is that, first of all, you want to think about this, [LAUGHTER] you want to think through what might you do in these situations. And then most importantly, realize that you do have the right to ask a student to leave. You do have the right to end class and have you and the other students leave. You have the right to feel safe in the classroom as an instructor. And we encourage everyone to seek out all of their campus resources, whether it be dean of students, whether there is a teaching center, campus security, etc., and really know what your rights are as an instructor. And without scaring new graduate student instructors, we want them to really be armed with that knowledge of what those resources and what their rights are.

John: It’s better to be prepared for the eventuality and to have resources available to address it than to be in that situation and not have an effective strategy to work through. Are there other things that you’d like to share with our listeners about your book?

Aeron: Yeah, I mean, I think going back to the question about our audience, our intended audience, I think, I want to say that we really see this book as being something that a graduate student could just pick up and read on their own, that we’ve written it to be not at all a textbook, but to be very conversational, as well as full of research and resources. We also see that it could be very useful in graduate seminars on pedagogy and a really nice supplement with discipline-specific texts. And sort of along the lines, though, about our intended audience that we realized that graduate TAs are often the least trained, doing the hardest job. That’s something that Stephanie’s always reminding me. And we’re asking them, also, to be in classes where student success matters keenly. Large general education classes are where students can make or break our students and particularly for first-generation college students or college students at risk. Having well trained, having supported graduate instructors is, I think, really key to student success and the health of our research institutions.

John: In my own experience, I had a fellowship, so I didn’t start as a teaching assistant. I was in my third year of graduate training when an instructor left, and they needed someone to teach an upper-level course. And so about three days before the semester, I was asked if I was willing to do that, and I agreed, but the amount of preparation was, as Jessamyn said, non-existent. [LAUGHTER] And I feel really bad for the teaching that I provided that year. And the worst thing is, I ended up with the highest teaching evaluations in the department, something that rarely happened after that. But it says something, perhaps about the emphasis on teaching in a graduate program. I think it was just my enthusiasm for doing it that got me through that. It certainly wasn’t the way in which I taught, it was very much entirely a lecture-based class with lots of exams and assignments. And it’s certainly not the way I would teach anything today. But it was not very good preparation. But you know, we still have a lot of people coming out of graduate programs without that training and arriving on campuses. Might a good audience for this book also be those people who are starting their teaching careers, having left grad school, in preparing for their first semester teaching?

Aeron: Stephanie, do you want to talk about our “Help! My Class Starts in Two Weeks?”

Stephanie: Yeah, absolutely. We have this really nice appendix, that is exactly what Aeron described, “Help! My Class Starts…” I think it’s even just a week, I think that [LAUGHTER] two weeks might be too generous. But it is for exactly the case, John, that you’re describing, when you get handed an opportunity, often, right at the last minute, and you really want to take advantage of it, even though you know, you perhaps don’t have the preparation that you need. And so there is a really nice condensed, basically a checklist in the book, like figure out what you can get access to, figure out what you need to build, here’s how you can move through week by week once the semester starts. So yeah, I think that’s a really nice asset to the book. And I think that there are other ways too in which the book might be suitable for somebody who’s a brand new professor who feels like, “I didn’t really get this in grad school. And now I’m here, and now what?” Because often folks who are brand new to departments feel not quite the same, but also feel kind of betwixt and between the different power structures in a department in ways that, you know, we’ve written about specific to graduate students. But I think that brand new instructors, or faculty, or contingent faculty might also feel particularly in their own experience as well. And I wanted to add this is building off of the story that you told, John, about your first time teaching. One of the things that I do also think is really unique about our book is the number of graduate student voices in the book. And how comforting it might be for a graduate student who doesn’t have anyone else in their department to talk to about this, to hear from some other folks who also maybe had a really hard time their first class and then figured out their way. Or someone who maybe felt like they were experiencing microaggressions in their class. And what did they do to seek out help? So I think that it’s really powerful to have access to in this book is the number of graduate student voices who were really willing to share their story, because they cared so much about it, and their own teaching. So I think that that’s a real gift for readers who are graduate students or who might be new to a job.

Jessamyn: It’s really astounding what a closed-door practice college teaching is, and how it would be seen as really rude to just come into someone’s class. And you have to be really careful if you just want to observe someone else teaching just for your own edification, but it would be a whole big thing. So that’s such an important point about this book. And the way… keeping in mind too departmental cultures might be especially, so that that message, “You’re not alone in this,” is really at the heart of all the best scholarship of teaching and learning, I think, and of professional development, generally.

Aeron: Absolutely. And I think that the notion, as you pointed out, Jessamyn, that we often valorize or highlight these extraordinary teachers, who by the way, are like Jaime Escalante in Stand and Deliver, have heart attacks or you know, that really burnout with that kind of teaching. But what we don’t really talk about are the rough drafts of our teaching, or the false starts, or the things that we’ve done wrong, and the things that we polished, and the things that we’ve had to change and adjust. And I think that’s what we try to really focus on in this book, as well, as a kind of growth mindset on teaching, if you will.

John: We try to encourage that in our students, and it’s probably really good for us to encourage that in each other as well. I know on my campus, we’ve been doing some open classrooms, where we’ve been encouraging people to open up their classrooms and have other people visit, and to meet to talk before the class and then after. It hasn’t caught on as much as I’d like. Partly, it’s because we really got it started in March of 2020, and things seem to be a little disrupted for a bit. [LAUGHTER] And that disruption hasn’t entirely changed. But it’s been a really valuable experience for those people who have participated and the discussions that they have after it are really helpful because, as Jessamyn said, we tend to do all of this behind closed doors, and when things go wrong, we tend to blame ourselves for what’s not working. And it’s really reassuring to hear from other people that they’re experiencing exactly the same barriers and challenges. And I know in the reading groups that Jessamyn and I have done jointly in our two institutions, it really helps people to hear from other people that they’re facing exactly the same challenges and to share some solutions that either have failed miserably, or that worked really well. Because it’s much easier when we recognize that these problems are global, and they’re not local to our own classroom.

Jessamyn: And I couldn’t agree more about learning from our mistakes, having that growth mindset, we’re always learning how to be an effective teacher from our first class to our last. But the pandemic’s really taken a big chunk out of people’s energy and abilities in regards to pedagogical learning. The learning curve was so steep, I mean, really, for everybody, no matter how much you pivoted or not, we were all teaching and learning in this unprecedented time and conditions and still are. So how would you say these past… it’s two full pandemic years now, influence or shape the teaching challenges generally, including maintaining that growth mindset? And what parts of your book do you think are going to be really helpful for people right now?

Stephanie: Yeah, I don’t mean to be hyperbolic in this, but I do really think every chapter and every strategy. Before Aeron and I started this book, we both took very seriously the notion that, listen, if you’re getting a teaching job, now, you’re going to have to teach some sort of hybrid online course. And this was pre-pandemic, it was just like, if you look at the growth in online learning, there’s no way to believe that even in 2019, if you were entering the workforce, that you were never going to have to teach an online course in your career. So we built in the idea of teaching across modalities across the entire book. And then the other piece that we took really seriously, was this notion of asset-based pedagogies, teaching diverse student populations, and really capturing the strength, their cultural wealth, they bring to the classroom. We teach at the University of New Mexico, which is a Hispanic-serving institution, it enrolls a high number of first-generation college students. And it also enrolls a particularly high number of our American Indian or Native college students. So we wanted other folks to get that chance to learn from whose institutions will likely look this way, if they don’t already, in the years to come, to learn from the really great things that we’ve discovered about the kind of strengths and skills and ways of knowing that our students bring to the classroom every day, if we’re able to tap into those. And so I think that those are the two things that the pandemic really uncovered for folks, people’s discomfort with teaching with technology, who hadn’t been asked to do that previously. And then also, all of a sudden, instructors were confronted in a very different way with the variety of lived experiences their students were bringing in, because they were Zooming right into whatever their living experiences were. And so I think that the book really stands through the pandemic experience in a way that can actually really enhance somebody’s experience teaching, because those two things were particularly important to us when we started writing.

Jessamyn: That sounds really empowering for people going into a classroom, those two approaches.

Aeron: We hope so.

Stephanie: Yeah, absolutely.

John: You mentioned that our students bring in many different ways of knowing. How can we adjust our teaching to better serve all of the students in our classes?

Jessamyn: And following up on John’s question, one of your chapters is called “How Can You Create a Welcoming Classroom Community?” How do those strategies empower students?

Stephanie: Absolutely. I think that one of the things… you know, Aeron mentioned earlier, this sense of starting with a community agreement. And part of that process is really getting to know the students in your classroom, and what makes them feel like they’re gonna belong in this space. And what sorts of things make them feel like they wouldn’t. What kinds of things do they need to learn successfully? So there’s a lot in that chapter about establishing a welcoming space, making sure that students know that they belong, and are part of the classroom community. There’s an instructor that we work with here at UNM, she’s in the College of Education, and she always says, “The sum of us is smarter than any one of us individually.” And I think that that’s a really powerful thing to bring into a classroom and help students internalize. John, to your question specifically, in terms of alternative ways of knowing, we had a really great example of this from one of our graduate students actually, who works with the Center for Teaching and Learning. He was sharing recently on a panel, how he teaches in architecture and planning, and he does a lot with water management. Here in New Mexico, we have a really beautiful system of acequias, which is a way to bring water from the Rio Grande into agricultural communities. And so he talked about being able to explain the importance of water management and water resources to his students. And then for them to share back with him memories of being with their parents and cleaning out the acequias or those kinds of experiences. And so there is this way in which, when you take the time to learn about the students that have come into your classrooms, those opportunities can really bubble up for you. And those can be as simple as phrasing questions about course material that allows them to speak about personal experiences in relation to it. It doesn’t have to be a massive unit or changing an entire syllabus, it could be as simple as the kinds of things you do to warm students up for the beginning of a class period, or something you do at the beginning of the semester.

John: To remind students that they’re assets in their classroom, that their prior knowledge serves as an asset that can enrich the classroom environment and discussion.

Stephanie: Absolutely.

Jessamyn: But it’s such a vital point for your book, it’s so great it’s included because I think, coming out of graduate school, we all know that diversity is an educational asset. But it’s like it’s so ingrained and trained in us, I don’t think a lot of people are well equipped to help undergraduates get there as well and perceive diversity as an educational asset. So flagging it in this way in your book is so great.

Aeron: I wanted to add to what Stephanie mentioned that we also address that in our chapter on assessment and assignments. And that, if nothing else, giving your students choices in how they wish to demonstrate their mastery of the subject is quite important. Because they will surprise you, and no matter how clever you are at designing assignments, if you give them some flexibility and allow them to bring in their creativity, then they can show you what some of those connections are. And they can use the technologies that maybe they’re more familiar with even than you are, they can bring in a different approach to the assignment. So that’s something that we encourage as well, that really helps a student’s sense of belonging in that classroom, is choice and autonomy.

Jessamyn: Practically speaking for teaching, especially new teachers, offering students options like that, even if for some reason no student took any option except the very standard one, nonetheless, you have conveyed to them that you care about the diversity of ways that people might express their knowledge and learning. And that’s an important part of a teaching persona and communicating to students that you care about their success. So it works on many levels.

Aeron: Absolutely. And I think being transparent, as transparent as one can. And of course, we want to think about the positionality of graduate students, and there may be reasons why, for instance, graduate students don’t want to come in and say, “Hey, I’ve never taught this before!” I mean, that’s a kind of transparency that might not work for everyone. But as you do gain in expertise, and you do gain in experience, saying, “Hey, I’m going to be doing labor-based grading, and here’s why. Here’s why I’m doing it.” Or, “I’m going to be giving you some choices in how you want to do these assignments and show me your mastery. Here’s why I’m doing that.” I think that the students are smart, and they’re very invested in education, and they’re going to go on to be in lots of other classes. And it’s good for them to get the tools to understand some of the ways that their education can operate and should operate. And then also, I think giving them metacognitive tools as well, encouraging them to reflect on their own learning and their own learning strategies.

Jessamyn: Well, and I think the way you’re prioritizing making the classroom a welcoming, inclusive community goes such a long way. And I won’t say it’s a free pass to totally screw up your class but I also think that when you’ve established trust and communication with students, if you’ve flubbed something, it’s not the end of the world. You’ve already prioritized their success and demonstrated that you really care and hope that they do well. That’s going to cover a lot of, I think it’s Maryellen Weimer’s term, like, teaching sins. You might not be so great at XYZ, but if you’ve paid attention to the things that you’re laying out in the book that goes such a long way with students. Like you say, they know, they know, they’re smart. And when they know that somebody is putting effort into creating a welcoming classroom space, then that really goes such a long way.

Aeron: Absolutely. And I think, to sort of end on a positive note, that if nothing else, what we’ve learned in the last two years is the importance of compassion and recognizing the human, which means that instructors are human as well. And I think if they see, as you put it, Jessamyn, if they see that you are coming from a place of investment in their success, and of common decency, and personal compassion, then you’re going to see that in most cases, they’re going to extend that compassion to you. And we all know there’s going to be times when we need it.

John: Certainly, that’s been a lesson of the last few years, if there’s no other lesson that came from the pandemic. We always end with a question, What’s next?

Aeron: I’ll start and then I’ll let Stephanie add to it. So here’s my boring administrative answer. [LAUGHTER] What’s next is a reorg. We have, at the Center for Teaching and Learning, we’re actually doing away with some of the boundaries between student success, faculty success, online success, face-to-face teaching. And that’s very exciting. So we’re a very large 30-person center that helps support students in terms of student tutoring and student learning, graduate student support and online support. Stephanie and I are also part of a group of staff who are working on a culturally-responsive teaching research project, where we’ve interviewed a number of students to find out from their point of view, what’s working to help them feel a sense of belonging and inclusion in the classroom and what’s not working. Stephanie?

Stephanie: Yeah, I think overlapping with that, the only two things I want to add is, Aeron sort of glossed over this in the reorg, but I think it’s in keeping with the ethos of the book, is that one of the things we’re really focused on as a team in CTL right now is how to treat ourselves as whole humans at work. And how, I think a lot of CTLs all over the place, really took on a lot of work during the pandemic. And some of that is very visible, and some of that’s really invisible, the kind of affective labor that I feel like Lee Skallerup Bessette talks a lot about, that particularly comes to people working in centers for teaching and learning. And so we want to make sure that we’re also a place to work where you can be a whole human in this place, and where we’re also extending compassion to ourselves and taking care of ourselves. And then we’re also working on a project on literary pedagogy. So we’ve been doing some interviews with folks who teach intro to lit courses and trying to figure out… What do you really value? And how are you imparting that to your students? And it’s a project that really grew out of some early research dissertation project from Dr. Angela Zito, who is at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And she’s been partnering with us and was kind enough to let us expand upon her project.

Jessamyn: Great, all of that stuff sounds great.

John: It does. And you know, if you’d like to come back and talk to us about this on the podcast, we’d love to have you back.

Jessamyn: That’s right. [LAUGHTER]

John: So, let’s stay in touch.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Jessamyn: Thank you so much.

John: And thank you, it was really great talking to you. And I’m looking forward to seeing the book. I’ve got it on preorder, and I’m looking forward to its arrival.

Aeron: Thank you so much. Lovely speaking with both of you.

Stephanie: Yeah, thank you so much, everyone.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

John: Editing assistance provided by Anna Croyle, Annalyn Smith, and Joshua Vega.

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230. Students Who Are Teachers

Posted in classroom community, graduate education, graduate training, higher education, learning, online learning, pedagogy, teacher training, teaching
March 9, 2022

Degree programs designed for practicing professionals need to be flexible and adaptive. In this episode, Kathryn Pole joins us to discuss the online master’s program in Literacy Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington. Kathryn is a literacy researcher and teacher educator in the Curriculum and Instruction Department at this institution.

Show Notes
Transcript

Show Notes

Spice and Tea Exchange
UT Arlington – Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction – Literacy Studies Online
Ferman, M. (2022). Texas leaders warn of “treacherous” driving conditions and possible local power outages as freezing weather approaches. The Texas Tribune. February 1.
Wolfe-Lyga, K., Dzintars, K. (2022). Student Mental Health. Tea for Teaching podcast. Episode 224. January 26.
Croyle, K. (2021). Preventing Workplace Burnout. Tea for Teaching podcast. September 8.
Costa, K. (2020). Trauma-informed Pedagogy. Tea for Teaching podcast. April 22.

Transcript

John: Degree programs designed for practicing professionals need to be flexible and adaptive. In this episode we examine one online teacher preparation program.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

[MUSIC]

Rebecca: Our guest today is Kathryn Pole. Kathryn is a literacy researcher and teacher educator in the Curriculum and Instruction Department in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Arlington. She is also the Program Coordinator for the online master’s program in Literacy Studies. Welcome Kathryn.

Kathryn: Hello, it’s a pleasure to be here.

John: Our teas today are… Are you drinking tea?

Kathryn: I am drinking tea. I have a black chocolate tea from the Tea and Spice Exchange. It’s good, and it reminded me of Valentine’s Day, and it pairs well with Girl Scout cookies.

Rebecca: Sounds like a good combo. You’re rocking the afternoon.

John: And to put that in perspective, we’re recording this a day after Valentine’s Day. It’ll be released a little bit later.

Rebecca: It sounds like a real tea cup with a real saucer.

Kathryn: That is true. I love real tea cups.

Rebecca: I love it. I have just an English breakfast today, John.

John: And I am drinking ginger peach black tea.

Rebecca: Yum! We’ve invited you here today to discuss the online advanced graduate teacher certification program in Literacy Studies at UT Arlington. Can you tell us a little bit about the program and the students in the program?

Kathryn: Sure, it’s a master’s degree program designed for already practicing teachers. So these are people who are already teaching in the classroom, but they want to become literacy specialists, or instructional coaches, or curriculum developers in literacy. And currently we have about 325 students in an 18-month program. So somewhere about 100 join in the fall semester or the spring semester or the summer. Many of them are from Texas, but some of them are from other places, and we’ve actually had students around the world in our program. And they range from just a year or two of experience up to… some people say, “Oh, I’m bored with teaching, I’ve been teaching the same thing for 25 years.” And so they decide they want to come back and hone their skills so they can apply for a new job. So they’re kind of from all over the place.

John: And I believe you mentioned that this was an entirely online degree program. Could you talk a little bit about why students might prefer an online degree program?

Kathryn: Yeah, so this is an entirely online program. And over the years, we’ve asked students, we’ve done surveys, or asked even informally, why this program appeals to them. And for one thing, they have to be a practicing teacher to be in the program. And so if they had to come to campus for face-to-face classes it would have to be either in the evenings or on weekends. And a lot of them are women and mothers and they have things to do, they have got soccer practices to get their kids to, or just family time, helping with homework, and all of that. And so they don’t really want to come to school in the evenings or on the weekend. And probably the number one reason is that they appreciate the flexibility of when they work, because while we do a little bit of synchronous work, we have office hours. They’re always optional, and students can either come or they can view recordings that we make following those meetings. So they feel like there’s a lot of flexibility. We have very solid deadlines for things. If an assignment is due on a Friday, it’s due on a Friday, but students can work on it at two in the morning if they want, and a lot of them do. We also have a 100% pass rate on our certification exam for those students who end up taking that, the Reading Specialist exam. And I think a lot of them indicate that that’s really appealing. So those are the two big reasons, I guess. The flexibility and then they know that there’s quality in the program. And then some of them come because they know a faculty member in the program that draws them to us.

Rebecca: So I believe the program started in 1998. Can you talk a little bit about how it evolved?

Kathryn: Yeah, it started in 1998, which was well before my time there, but it started out, they used to call it the “TeleCampus” where the instructors would actually go and be filmed reciting lecture notes and things in front of cameras. And then it just evolved into something that is much more flexible and appealing. And so that’s just evolved a lot. At this point it’s online, and it’s mostly asynchronous. And it’s a 10-course program, so a 30 credit-hour program, that students can finish in as few as about 18 months. Each one of those 10 courses has a lead instructor. And that lead instructor’s job is to select the course materials and set up the objectives and map the course and the assessments to the standards that we’re trying to address. And then that person designs the master course shell. We’re using Canvas right now, and so they’ve got a master shell that they designed so we can easily, pretty flexibly move it from the master shell into a live course shell as courses are beginning so people aren’t constantly rewriting courses. They also create the rubrics and the assessments and the course structure and policies. And then we also have support from our Center for Distance Ed. So if an instructor who’s designing a course needs some help with any aspect of designing a course and getting it up and running they can get help from there. And so we do that because it’s more consistent than those old TeleCampus courses where people were just kind of talking on the fly. And we feel like having this lead instructor idea ensures quality across the program. Our courses change, but if we have an adjunct or a graduate student teaching a course, for example, they don’t change the course at all, they teach what’s handed to them, and it’s pretty standardized at that point. And a couple of other changes. When I first took over the leadership of the program, it was a 36 hour program. And then we were told that we had to shorten it to 30 hours by our university. They were looking to shorten all the master’s degree programs. Figuring out, how do you cut two courses without losing content? That’s been a challenge. And then because we’re a teacher ed program, we have certification standards that we have to meet and our state certification agency change their rules pretty often, and maybe they won’t let us know until about the day after they’ve done it. [LAUGHTER] No, it’s not that bad, [LAUGHTER] but sometimes it does catch us a little bit by surprise. We’ve changed to meet that. And then at the university level, we’ve changed our learning management system a few times. Now we’re with Canvas, but we’ve been with Blackboard, and before that there was this TeleCampus structure. So that kind of changes the way things have worked. And then we’ve also changed, not we but our university, has changed the way we collect and archive important documentation. So that has been all over the place. So there have been a lot of changes along the way. And we just do our best to roll with the punches. I think it’s working really well right now. We’ve maintained this 100% pass rate on our exam, and our students are happy, and enrollment is looking good.

Rebecca: So you mentioned having master courses. How many sections do you usually have of each course?

Kathryn: We have one section of each course each semester, so fall, spring, and summer. And so, sometimes there could be 100 students in one section, but they’re divided into smaller groups, so students really only see about 20 classmates. So we put them into smaller groups, and then we have the equivalent of a TA, we call them instructional associates, who lead those smaller groups as far as discussion boards and those kinds of activities. So one section, but broken into smaller pieces.

John: What would a typical semester’s course load be like for a student in this program?

Kathryn: Every semester, a student will take a full semester-long course that is called a practicum. And so there’s learning within that course, but there also are practical pieces that they need to be able to demonstrate by sending video. And so we assess the video, looking for specific things that they can do that demonstrate how they’re meeting our standards. That’s one course that is an umbrella over the semester, either August to December or January to May. And then they also will take two, seven-week courses. They’ll take one seven week course the first half of that time, and then another seven week course, the second part of that time.

Rebecca: So your practicum is interesting, because we typically think about these as being in-person experiences, and you have an online program, and you mentioned video. Are teachers using the classrooms that they’re already teaching in to do their demonstration videos? Or is there a different structure?

Kathryn: So for the most part they use their own classrooms. And because they’re seeking advanced certification, that’s fine. Typically, each practicum has a different focus. The first practicum is on learning best practices within the field of literacy. So they learn what is good reading instruction, and what is good writing instruction. And how do you move students along based on research. And then the second practicum is working with diverse learners. So they might be looking at working with special education students, or students who speak another language than English at home, or some other form of diversity. And then the third practicum is on literacy leadership. And so in that course they actively mentor another teacher or a paraprofessional or someone who is interested in learning more about literacy within their school. And then they also plan for professional development within literacy. And so they’ll lead, maybe, a workshop or another professional development opportunity for teachers in their school. So they create these videos within those practicum courses. And we have instructors, but we also have people called “field supervisors.” Field supervisors are also experts in the field, and their role is to help the student prepare for these practicum videos. And then to eventually analyze them, evaluate them, and then write up a practicum report helping the students grow along the way. So it works really well to do this online surprisingly. We do think about these in-person practicum supervision, but with these videos we have opportunities to go back and look at things and to call attention to something that we want the student to see. It’s like, “Oh, look, here’s something that you did that was really effective,” or, “Here’s something that if you had asked this question a little different way you might have gotten a different kind of answer or a better answer.” So it gives us really good opportunities to work with our students.

John: One issue that might come up with some of the shorter terms is what happens when there’s some type of natural disaster, say a power outage in the middle of winter as happened in February of 2021. How did people adapt to losing power and internet access and so forth and still keep the online courses progressing?

Kathryn: Yeah, so that was a really interesting thing. I live in a part of Texas where we didn’t have power for… I don’t know, 10 days? Like we had power, but we might only have it for an hour, and then we wouldn’t have power for two hours. And so people’s priority wasn’t hopping on to Canvas to get their work done. It was more like, “Oh, how am I gonna cook dinner?” It was a really tough time. And so what our instructors did was, they just stayed in contact with students as best they could, sending emails and messages through Canvas, and letting students know that we weren’t going to ping them for something that completely wasn’t their fault at all. Even other adults, they need a lot of hand holding. Sometimes they think, “Oh no, I’m going to be in trouble. I’m going to get a bad grade because I didn’t do this work,” and we all understood and so we sent those kind of messages. So if there’s a natural disaster—even if it’s not in Texas, maybe it’s a wildfire in California, or a hurricane that hits the East coast—our university is really good at identifying those online students who are most likely to have been impacted, and they’ll send us those names. And so we can match that with emails that we’re getting from panicking students, and just let them know that we understand and we’re as accommodating as we can be. It’s not that they have forever to finish the assignments, but we do give them grace. We’ll give an incomplete if we need to, to let them catch up. That was a challenge. And of course COVID was a whole different challenge, because we had people who were supposed to be doing practicum in schools and their schools were shut down. And so it was the same sort of story, we just said, “You know, we get it. We’re all in the same situation.” And so we gave a lot of grace for that.

John: Now, you also did a study at some point about the times when students were participating in your classes where you looked at the timestamps on their student submissions. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Kathryn: Yes, another colleague and I, one day we both were talking about how tired we were, [LAUGHTER] and we’re like “Oh, I was up until 11 o’clock working with a student.” And so we thought, ‘Well, I wonder how many of them are actually emailing us, or posting things in Canvas, or trying to get our attention at odd times?’ And so we actually did a study. We requested timestamp data from our Distance Ed office, they were able to pull together all the time stamps that involved students for a period of about two years. And so as we looked at this, we realized there was a really good reason why we were tired, because a lot of our students were logging in and doing work between about 11 o’clock at night and two in the morning, that was a pretty heavy time. And then a lot of them would get up early, and we would see that they were working from 4 a.m. until about 7 a.m. And then, I guess, going on to school. It might not be every day, but it was some days, especially, probably days when assignments were due that evening. They would try to make sure that they had it done in the morning before they left the house. But a lot of our students were working on Saturdays and Sundays, which I guess is to be expected as well. And sort of strange hours then too. Again, early mornings and in the evenings after they were finished with family time. It was very interesting. And so we’ve kind of made a little bit of a shift ourselves, realizing when our students needed us most. I’m not one to be online with my students at 11 o’clock at night, I’m way too tired for that, but I do try to hop online every night between 8:30 and 9:30 or so just to make sure they’re doing okay. And I wake pretty early, and so I’m usually looking at Canvas by about 7:30 in the morning to try to catch those who might have questions in the morning. And also, we’ll hop on Canvas more on Saturdays and Sundays, because we know our students are active and there may be some timely questions. But we’ve also decided… You know what? If I decide to take a nap from one to three, it’s okay, because I’m doing all these other things at different times of day. And I think looking at that has really helped us understand what our students are doing and why it’s important for us to practice self care in this kind of a program as well.

Rebecca: I can imagine. You’ve mentioned family commitments and work commitments of your students. There’s a lot of challenges associated with going to school while you’re a working professional. Are there other challenges that your students have faced or mentioned that you’ve been trying to accommodate in addition to the timing?

Kathryn: There’s always something, you know? [LAUGHTER] Especially now, we’re on the getting better side of it now, but one of the things that was a surprise to us was the impact of COVID. It’s like, well, we knew that they were closing schools, and that that was a disruption. But what we didn’t expect until we started asking students about it and digging deeper into it was that all these other issues, like technology. They were parents whose kids were home all of a sudden instead of being at school and the kids needed to use the computer and their schools were expecting them to be logged in. And maybe that family only had one computer, or maybe if they had two, they had five kids. The parents needed the computer, the kids needed the computer. And so that was a really interesting thing to discover: how much sharing of devices happens in a family. My kids are all grown and they have all their own computers, and so that wasn’t anything that I had to face. But I have a couple of colleagues with younger kids, and they were definitely feeling that as well. But it was a surprise how much device sharing there was. And then also, we realized some of our students were staying at their schools to get their classwork done because they didn’t have internet at home, or they didn’t have stable enough internet at home. And so when their schools were not opened any longer, we found out that they were thinking creatively, I guess. They were going and driving their cars to a McDonald’s or Starbucks and logging into free public Wi-Fi. So those things were challenges and surprises to us. And then just the impact of what it’s like. They’re teaching all day normally, but when it’s your own children, and they’re in your own house, you don’t have quite the same control. And so they were saying, “Well, my kids are just going crazy in my house. If I was at school, I would have everybody at their desk doing work.” And here they were, like, [LAUGHTER] “Oh! Kids.” And also we had students dealing with their own issues. Many of our students reported having COVID themselves or having family members who came down with COVID and they were having to be caretakers. And we had a good number of students and even some of our faculty members who lost a family member to COVID. There’s just a lot of stuff going on. We’ve always got something popping up to deal with and thinking about creative ways to handle it all and keeping people moving along. That’s always an interesting challenge to coordinating a program like this.

Rebecca: Did you find that during COVID, and even now, while these teachers who are also students are handling COVID in their own classrooms, are they using this classroom space or your discussion boards to collaborate and troubleshoot together?

Kathryn: Absolutely. It was fascinating to me to see them because they were sharing. And a lot of instructors, me included, we changed our discussion prompts. Because for a while we were saying, “Okay, well, discuss how guided reading might look in your classroom,” and then all of a sudden it became, “Discuss how guided reading might have looked in your classroom, but now what are you doing in this hybrid, or high flex, or totally online teaching situation?” So they were hopping onto discussion boards, and they were sharing those things, and they were talking about what it was like in their classrooms. And even we as instructors got some really great ideas. It’s like, “Oh, well this might work.” Sharing ideas was a really important piece, but also, this whole sense of built camaraderie. It’s like, “Oh, this is not just me. I am part of this bigger community of people who are trying to find the floor under our feet, while all of this stuff is shifting.” And so they were absolutely doing things like that. They were using the discussion board, I know for sure. They didn’t invite me to it, but they had a Facebook group for second grade teachers who are doing high flex or something. They had several different ways that they were communicating amongst themselves and sharing ideas. And they let me know that they were doing that, and that it was working. So yeah, and I think in a program as big as ours, that was probably one of the more helpful things for them. They got to see what other teachers were doing and what other school districts were doing, or other principals were doing. And some of them would say, “I’m going to tell my principal this.” The things that worked anyway.

John: Now we’ve done some past podcasts where we addressed issues of the emotional pressures put on students or the emotional challenges that our students are facing. We also have talked a little bit on previous podcasts about issues of burnouts among faculty, but the students in your program are kind of getting both sides of that. They’re students working through COVID, and they’re also teachers during COVID. What sort of challenges has that presented for your students?

Kathryn: A lot, even though we’re kind of at this point where we’re almost pretending that COVID is gone, it’s still on our students’ minds. In my county, we’re still seeing 800 or so cases a day, and it’s better than the 4000 we were seeing a few weeks ago, but our students are really feeling this. And I don’t know what the next new thing is going to be because it seems like there’s always something. Probably last year was the hardest because we had both power failures and COVID at the same time, and how do you use technology when you can’t turn on your lights? I think part of the coping that they did was trying to stay in touch with one another and then our faculty being more present than we might have been otherwise, I think we’ve learned to be more present as part of what we learned from that timestamp study. When are our students hanging around? And if we can answer their question 10 minutes after they ask, that’s a whole lot better than making them wait 8 or 10 hours. So I don’t know that there’s a great answer, but I think it has to be something about being present. Both our students being present for one another, which we’ve learned better ways to build into our courses, and then for faculty being more present to our students as well.

Rebecca: You mentioned too, kind of at the top of the episode, about faculty in your program being careful about self care and managing hours and managing time. Could you talk a little bit more about some of those boundaries that you’ve set? And then also the ways that you might be supporting your students in setting some of those same boundaries and finding some similar balance for themselves when they’re taking on quite a bit all at once?

Kathryn: I have a colleague, and I can’t remember exactly how she puts it, but her email signature says something like, “I am responding to this in hours that I have decided are within my work day. Please respond only in those hours that you have decided are within your work day.” And I love that, and I feel like using it on my signature, but I don’t want her to think that I’m stealing it. [LAUGHTER] But I think it’s really important that we do set those boundaries, but at the same time being present. And so being present doesn’t mean being present 24/7. It means being present in those times when our presence is the most helpful. And so we know for sure that our students are not typically working in our courses between 9 a.m. and noon. They might hop on during lunchtime for a little bit, and then they’re not usually in our courses working between one in the afternoon and three or four in the afternoon. And so if we’re going to adjust our schedules, and run our errands, and do those kinds of things, that might be a good way for faculty to think about their use of time. When are the times that we’re most helpful to our students? And when are the times that are best for us to take care of ourselves? And so I think we’re all still working, probably, more than eight hours a day, because that’s just kind of the nature of our work and that’s our passion as well. But we’re not feeling like we have to work all day and late into the night and all weekend, the way that we first thought that we needed to in order to be that presence that our students needed. Did that answer your question?

Rebecca: Yeah, the second part was thinking about supporting your students and also finding balance.

Kathryn: So we also give our students a calendar so they know exactly when things are due. And we typically have them due at some time that is… you know, if they like working at night, we might have something due at 6 a.m. or something like that, just so that those people who want to work at two in the morning can get it done. And so we think about those kinds of things. And we let our students know that the entire course is released at the beginning of the term. And so they can see everything, they can start reading ahead if they want and working ahead if they want. Other than discussions that need to be relatively live within a week’s period of time, they can still prepare in advance if they need to. And if they anticipate something, if their school is having some particularly busy or stressful week, they’re free to work ahead and move things off their plate. And we encourage those kinds of things. And then also, another piece of it is just, again, faculty reminding students that we’re human, and we get it and if things come up, just keep communicating with us and letting us know so that we can be of the most help to them as well.

John: We always end with a question, What’s next?

Kathryn: Oh, we have so many different directions to go. I’m working with a group of colleagues from across the country, about eight different universities in eight different states. And we’re looking at the impact of COVID and beyond. What can we pull out of what we’ve learned from COVID to help refine online teacher education courses? Because there’s a lot there I think. And as we look at it, we find more and more interesting things to analyze. And so we’re working right now on getting that more refined and getting that information out. And then our programs themselves are constantly being refined. We’re looking at new state standards soon and other issues that just pop up. And so keeping in touch with our students and figuring out what’s going to be the next new things that we learn to support them and to keep them moving along, I think that’ll be part of the next steps as well. So there’s kind of no shortage of where to go.

Rebecca: It’s kind of the biz that we’re all in. [LAUGHTER]

Kathryn: Right! [LAUGHTER] Yeah, I think so. These are such interesting times, because we don’t know. I keep reading all these different opinions on whether or not COVID will be over pretty soon, or whether the next new wave is coming. Just thinking about what’ll happen in the future that’s outside of our control, and then figuring out ways to mitigate that in ways that we can control, I think that’s gonna be really important. I don’t think that higher education is going to ever look like it did four years ago. I think that’s gone.

John: Whatever happens with the pandemic, I think we’ve experimented a lot in higher ed, and I think there’s a lot of lessons we can take away. We’ve observed a lot of things that were hidden in the past from faculty as students moved into working from home with very different technology and so forth. So I think you’re right that we are going to see some pretty substantial permanent changes. What they are though is open to discussion, and so your study could be helpful in helping to shape that, perhaps.

Kathryn: Yeah, and some of these things will be decided at levels above our heads. State boards of regents and university administrations will make some of these decisions, but figuring out what it means to be faculty in these programs and then getting everything to align right so that we’re doing the best job for our students I think is going to be really important.

Rebecca: Definitely. Well thank you so much for sharing some of your insights and experiences with us.

Kathryn: You are so welcome. I’ve enjoyed talking to you both.

John: Thank you. It’s great talking to you.

[MUSIC]

John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

[MUSIC]

John: Editing assistance provided by Anna Croyle, Annalyn Smith, and Joshua Vega.

[MUSIC]

199. Revisiting Diverse Classrooms

Posted in access, community of practice, diversity, equity, faculty learning community, higher education, inclusion, inclusive pedagogy, learning, professional development, reflective practice, teacher training, teaching
August 4, 2021

As diversity and inclusion initiatives mature, evaluation and improvement are prioritized. In this episode, Melina Ivanchikova and Matt Ouelett join us to discuss how one such program has evolved. Matt is the Founding Executive Director at Cornell University’s Center for Teaching Innovation. Melina is the Associate Director for inclusive Teaching in the Center. They developed Cornell’s EdX MOOC on Teaching and Learning in the Diverse Classroom.

Show Notes
Transcript

Shownotes

Teaching and Learning in the Diverse Classroom – EdX MOOC
Melina Ivanchikova and Mathew Ouelett (2019). 92. Diverse Classrooms. Tea for Teaching Podcast. July 31.

Transcript

John:
As diversity and inclusion initiatives mature, evaluation and improvement are prioritized. In this episode, we discuss how one such program has evolved.

[MUSIC]

John:
Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca:
This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John:
…and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer.

Rebecca:
Together, we run the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego.

[MUSIC]

Rebecca:
Our guests today are Melina Ivanchikova and Matt Ouelett. Matt is the Founding Executive Director at Cornell University’s Center for Teaching Innovation. Melina is the Associate Director for inclusive Teaching in the center. Welcome back.

Mathew:
Thank you. Delighted to join you again.

Melina:
It’s great to be here.

John:
It’s good to talk to you again. This is overdue. We had planned to talk to you after we had taken a group of people through the Inclusive Teaching MOOC that we’ll be talking about, and then this pandemic intervened, and we didn’t quite get to that. So I’m glad we’re finally able to schedule this. Our teas today are:

Mathew:
I’m personally not drinking anything right now. But if I was, I’d be drinking something in the family of Earl Grey. I like a black tea.

Melina:
It’s definitely the Earl Grey time of day,.I’m just drinking water, because of the heat.

Rebecca:
90 degree weather.

Melina:
I want to hold up a tea that Matt occasionally brings for us at staff meetings, which is a gift. You put this little bulb into hot water and it opens up slowly into a flower and has this beautiful aroma to it, and everybody delights in it. So it just causes this moment of group joy. But Matt will know what the name of that tea is.

Mathew:
It’s a green tea, I think it’s sometimes referred to as a lotus bloom. So, thank you, Melina, that’s really kind of you to mention that.

Rebecca:
And I have sa easonally inappropriate Christmas tea. [LAUGHTER]

Melina:
That sounds good.

Rebecca:
I was looking for a little spice.

Melina:
Spices are cooling.

John:
I also have a seasonally inappropriate spring cherry green tea.

Mathew:
They both sound delicious.

MELIN: I wish we could be in the same room together.

Rebecca:
and tea testing. [LAUGHTER]

Melina:
Exactly.

Rebecca:
We have all the teas. [LAUGHTER]

John:
In our conference room, we have hundreds of teas. If you’re ever up on campus, we’re happy to share some with you. In an earlier podcast, we talked to you about the Teaching and Learning in the Diverse Classroom MOOC that you were developing at Cornell and were to release shortly. We had agreed to discuss this after we had a cohort of our faculty go through it. But we had a few other things intervene, including a global pandemic, and we’ve actually had three cohorts go through it. And we’d like to talk to you about the MOOC, and, in general, how it’s gone and where it’s going. But because it’s been a while since we’ve talked about this, could you provide a little bit of background on the origin of this MOOC?

Mathew:
in 2017, when the Center for Teaching innovation was first formed, we were trying to discern strategic projects that were of interest to our selves, but also serve the common good sort of attach themselves to initiatives that were campus wide. And Melina and I gained the support of senior academic leaders to do a course for faculty on campus related to teaching inclusively. So initially, the genesis of this idea was a professional faculty development experience on campus. And then the more that we got sort of embedded in the project, it became really clear to us that it could also answer another strong desire that we had, which was to contribute something broader, something that other institutions could take advantage of, as well. So that’s where the genesis of the idea have moved from an on campus resource to something on a platform like EdX. They’ve been great colleagues, and really wonderful to work with. But it galvanized us, I think, to think both more broadly, but also more specifically, and by more broadly, I mean, we were trying to think about what in the US context stands up to an international conversation around social justice, equity and diversity, and what is uniquely American, and also, for u,s what was uniquely Cornell’s context versus what might have resonance more broadly. So the process of putting it together was really driven locally. But our eye was always on trying to deliver something that might be of use to our colleagues more broadly. Melina, does that resonate for you?

Melina:
Yes, I think we were doing our best at the beginning, floating ideas, and pleasantly surprised when we got the confirmation from our senior leadership. They really thought it would be a good way, and a different way to provide an opportunity for people to engage with this kind of a course, either in groups together or asynchronously by oneself to have a private learning experience. But what appealed was an online asynchronous experience, that wasn’t going to be hours and hours. Early on, we had a lot of conversations about how to keep this to four or five weeks, something reasonable, for professional busy people.

Rebecca:
That length was one of the things I really appreciated about it in that it was a really nice concise, but very specific and detailed, all at the same time. So it really felt manageable. I know we had like three cohorts go through on our campus and I was unable to follow along during the first ones but I was following along right when the pandemic hit and found taking the course at that particular moment really poignant.

Mathew:
This was our experience on our campus too. I’ll be just very honest with you and say I felt honor would be served if Melina and I offered the course one time on campus and we had anybody take at it. It’s sort of like we delivered and after that it’s sort of up to the universe to find footing. But we have consistently had really excellent participation on campus. And I’ll let Melina speak more to the facts and figures. But even this spring, we’re literally just now completing a spring version of it on campus. And we’ve had a really lovely distribution between faculty, graduate students and staff… almost a third, a third, a third, again, and the interest doesn’t seem to be diminishing. And so, Rebecca, I can’t wait to hear more from you and John about what your experiences were with your cohorts. Because part of the joy of doing this is hearing back from campuses. Did it help? Did it galvanize and help facilitate some conversations that were context specific? And we really hope that we could provide the general introductory sort of framework, provide some useful resources in terms of exercises, but then really trust the process would unfold at a campus level in the way that it needed to. So that’s not a rhetorical question, I would love to hear more.

Melina:
To be honest, I was really hoping we could turn the conversation there, too. I really wanted to hear how your local learning communities went three is a significant number.

Mathew:
It’s fantastic. Yeah, that’s serious dedication, and a sign of positive response. So we’d love to hear more.

John:
Each time, I think, we had between 30 and 45 people attending, somewhere in that range. They were mostly faculty, but we did have a few administrators. And one thing that was really effective is one of the faculty members, in the third iteration of that, brought in a couple of her students. And that made it much more powerful. Because while the stories that are provided in the MOOC, in the videos from Cornell students and Cornell faculty are very well done and very moving, when a student gets up and talks about their own experiences and the challenges they face, as a local example of that it’s even more powerful. A number of people signed up for it on their own. But most of the people actually met every week, where we provided three or four times to let people come in at times that were convenient. We’d watch most or all of the videos, and then we discuss each of them. Sometimes we didn’t get through all of them, because the discussions went for a long time. Other times, we were able to get through most of them, and then people did the rest of the work on their own outside. But the discussions were really effective. And having people talk about it in person worked really well. And I think it helped ensure that everyone finished the MOOC, or that nearly everyone finished the MOOC. I know we had some people who didn’t do all the written work, but they at least attended most or all the sessions. And for us, at least, I think having the weekly meeting served as a nice commitment device, which tended to help maintain persistence. And it worked really well. And people have been asking about when we’re going to take another cohort through. And we’ll be planning to do that this fall. I think overall it was a tremendous success on campus. And we did have a few administrators attend, but not quite as many as you received. And we did have some staff members too. But it was mostly faculty.

Rebecca:
I think it was a really nice complement to some of the other work that we had already started doing, but just didn’t have the capacity to roll out the equivalent of that course on our own. And so it was really, really helpful to us. We had done a couple of reading groups related to racism previous to that. We have a really robust accessibility program on our campus and have been doing a lot of professional development around disability and accessibility. And so leveling up to inclusive pedagogy is really where we wanted to be going. [LAUGHTER] And this was a really nice structured way for us to get there. So we’ve been really thrilled with how many people have participated. And I think it really informed a lot of the work that folks did over the past year during the pandemic as well, people became really aware of some of the inequities that weren’t as visible previously.

Melina:
Thank you so much for sharing some details. It’s delightful, even just to picture briefly how you chose to facilitate those and the responses. I love the searching for authentic stories from your own campus, with having students present. That seems really exciting. This might be a good time to mention a couple of things. One is that we made the decision in January to move from a instructor-paced model to having it be a self-paced model, which means now that the course is open all year round. And the reason for that was to give campuses and facilitators more flexibility to run the course on the schedule that worked for them, because we kept trying to guess and get it right, but sometimes we’d get right in the middle of the busiest part of the semester, which some people loved but other people… it didn’t work so well for them. So I think that’s a good decision. We started to wonder more about how are people facilitating the course we’re doing and trying to reach out to them and have conversations or looking for a little bit of feedback, even informally, just like this, to see how things were going. So, we heard similar things from a few others like they got inspired to look for the stories that were from their own community, in their own students. And there’s many places to look for stories like that: the student newspapers, conversations with faculty, as you’ve described,

Mathew:
I love your strategy of a faculty member bringing their own students and that there’s no substitute for that. So I love that…that’s a great idea. Can I say too, Melina, this is a little bit of the inside part. But it was a big moment for us to let go of the instructor-led version of the MOOC and partially, we just needed to have a reassurance that we had done a good job, that the quality of the work was substantial enough that it could just sort of go forth. And we were always confident that our colleagues could facilitate it well. I think, John and Rebecca, it’s such a compliment to your on campus facilitation, because we know the number one thing here is not the advertising, it’s word of mouth. And if colleagues are saying to their friends and associates, “Oh, yeah, it wasn’t a terrible thing, you know, it was an okay use of my time” …then we know that’s so much more persuasive than any kind of blitz you could do through email or anything else. And if you’re continuing to get this large group, and that’s a significant proportion of your faculty continuing to find this a good use of their time, then Melina, we can take a deep breath now. We can sort of say, “It’s okay, we let our baby go out into the world, and it’s gonna be okay.”

Melina:
But last year was a very unique year. So we had a giant boost. As soon as the pandemic started, people enrolled in the course. We decided to run the course again, earlier than we had planned in response to the street movement and fighting for racial justice. And we had a giant leap in attendance here at Cornell as a result of that. And then we run another learning community series in October. And then Matt mentioned, we ran one in the spring too. We do have some fun things to report out on in terms of patterns of what people are saying about what they’re learning. We have a pre-post survey that gives us a sense of how people feel at the beginning, and then matches to their experience of how they feel at the end. And so I was surprised by the things that floated to the top. So I can share what the top four things were. The number one thing that they moved the most on… so this was things that they’ve collectively they move the most on… So the first one was, “I’m aware of campus resources to support colleagues and students in sustaining inclusive learning environments.” I don’t know why that one’s surprised me. But I think even though our course is sort of the Cornell example, most college campuses in the US have all sorts of support and offices in place. And so this might have been the place where they finally got to hear the list of all the different offices that support student learning and accessibility. The second one was “I feel prepared to address controversial comments that may arise in class.” But that was one worry that we had initially, was that an asynchronous online course would never take the place of a face-to-face learning experience. This shows me and Matt’s bias also, because we’ve been strongly face-to-face instructors for most of our teaching careers. So we had to learn, ourselves, how to be online instructors, and what that meant… how to have a stronger presence in the course itself. So between our pilot version of the course and the second iteration, we added more videos of ourselves. And so we were very gratified by seeing this number of people feel more competent around this. The other one is “I’m informed about specific strategies for creating more inclusive classrooms.” And the fourth one is “I feel confident I can evaluate my course structure and materials for inclusivity.” So that’s where things are trending very strongly. We’re hoping to publish some findings pretty soon about that. And then the other response that we hear over and over again, is how moving the videos were, which to me is personally gratifying, because from the moment when I was a little girl, my father used to read to me every night before bed and, tried and true, I do the same with my kids. Stories were just my way into learning about the world and continue to be so. So it’s just the thing that moves us, our emotions, it’s the thing that makes us open to caring about systemic change, because the door opens to us through individuals… the stories and experiences of discrimination. When we share in community about our own experiences of discrimination and bias, and even our own mistakes that we’ve made with others. I think that kind of learning is so powerful. And so I think that we were able, through the videos, to lift that experience of storytelling,

John:
The narratives in there are extremely powerful, and people reacted really positively to them.

Rebecca:
…especially because there were such a wide variety of disciplines reflected, which I think is really important and sometimes can be challenging for an individual campus to do a small workshop series or something and get that broad of representation at each little event. You might have representation throughout a whole semester or a whole academic year, but maybe difficult to have that much representation in a single sitting of something

Mathew:
Absolutely. Even like the tried and true method of a panel, It doesn’t really necessarily lend itself for people to really do a deep dive or really share. The other thing that I’ve come to appreciate even more deeply is the power of getting out ahead of a crisis and providing an opportunity for folks to just talk, to grapple with ideas, provide them some frameworks. They may not like Melina and I had this very interesting conversation with one of our colleagues who was going through the reading list saying, “too aggressive,” “not deep enough,” and was just sort of a typical faculty critique of the reading list. I was like, “Super engaged, I love it.” Absolutely. Bring it on. I’m not changing any of the readings, but I loved having that conversation, because I thought, that’s someone who’s really gotten engaged and is trying to figure out how to apply this in the context of her work and her discipline and her students. And for me, that’s the best that it gets. But it is this capacity building or resilience building. So all of your cohorts, all those folks who sat together, that’s a transformative human experience. It sort of harkens back to the sitting around the campfire. They’ve had this moment together that… I don’t know when or how, but I’m positive it will do good. It will do good for the campus. And it will do good for students. And nothing else, like Melina was suggesting, it gives you a small cohort of colleagues to rely on and to say, “I’m not really sure about this, what do you think? What would you do in this situation?” And the other thing that we came to learn, which I have to say, Melina and I were both very slow to want to do anything online. But we also were very suspicious of lurkers. And we were sort of like, “Well, where are these people? They’ve signed up, but they’re here, but they’re not posting anything in the discussion board. But I’ve now come to really embrace lurking as a form of learning. I’m not dismissive of it at all. I think some people want to be in the conversation. They’re taking it in, they’re absorbing it, but they just don’t feel like they have a lot they want to say yet. Or someone else has already said it, or they’re waiting to see what other people have to say. So Melina and I have, a number of times, come back around to this conversation about what does it mean to really be engaged. And I think our growth edge, our learning, has been to really expand that definition of what it means to be engaged. So if you sign up for the course, but you never log in, that’s not engaged, that’s wishful thinking. But if you sign in and you tap through any of the videos, or even look at the resources, like I had to smile when you said your colleague maybe didn’t do all of the writing. Not a problem. What we’re finding is that people will circle back around. Like we’ve had a number of people who’ve taken the course twice. I think that’s a phenomenal commitment on a faculty member’s part, I mean, just given how stretched everybody is for time.

Melina:
Yeah, I have a faculty member who emailed me today saying I can’t wait for next spring, when will offer learning community opportunities again, so that I can take it for the third time. [LAUGHTER] And she was trying to remember where she could find the references to active learning strategies. So I’m like, “those are in Module Three.” “Oh, great.” That’s what she was really looking for. There was a new faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh who contacted me what seems like ages ago, it turns out, it was only last December, but it feels like three years ago, and she wanted to talk about how we made the videos because she wanted to make videos on her own campus. And so that was really inspiring. And she recently reached out again, and I met with her this morning, and she’s gotten all her academic leadership on board, they’re going to make their own asynchronous class, they have a video team in place to make it. This is inspiring, because our action plans are always inspiring. And sometimes a person’s action plan is this is a draft of my syllabus diversity statement, or this is my plan for TAs or graduate students. Sometimes they’re thinking of a plan that will be years down the road, or they’re thinking how to bring in diversified speakers. All of those are strategies that we took all of the action plans that people had submitted locally and made word clouds with them, and the word student is the thing. It just stood out as the most giant thing. And so I thought, wow, this is telling me that student centered learning strategies are the thing that people are walking away with. It was a litmus test, but this person took it over and above. And so I just thought, it’s a ripple effect. It’s her project. And she’ll go on to inspire others. We’ve had people come back and say, “Can you do one for librarians? Can you do one for teaching graduate students? Can you do one for the law profession or medical profession?” She’s making one that’s anchored in the medical profession. So I just celebrated her and said, “I hope you can make it a MOOC and not just for your own campus.” Maybe the same thing will happen to them that happened to us, which is they’ll start small and then dive out.

Rebecca:
It’s amazing how projects sometimes balloon like that.[LAUGHTER] Like, wow, that’s not quite what I had in mind and now I have this giant thing that I’m doing. We’re glad that it happened. I wanted to comment a little bit, Matt, on lurking. As a lurker, I thought I might just confess, like what lurkers do. So I followed along twice, the first time I was an active lurker, in part because I was doing a lot of self reflection, and I didn’t want to communicate with other people while I was processing. I had to have some of that time and space to process for myself and how that related to other diversity, equity and inclusion things that I was engaged in, and so that I could then articulate to other people how that fit in with what I was doing, because I needed that time and space to process. And then the second time, I was an active, engaged participant, but I definitely lurked the first time and it was really to have that self-reflection time.

Mathew:
I’m so glad you did. You have to do that. Otherwise, the tension between making ourselves vulnerable and protecting ourselves can be immobilizing. I’m delighted to hear that. I actually think, Milena, that might be something interesting. We figured out early on that people needed us to normalize posting to a discussion list is not academic writing, just post your thought and let things evolve. And we sort of struggled with that and figured out some language on that. But now I’m wondering… Rebecca, do you think it would be helpful if we posted a little something about the benefit of being a lurker, to just sort of normalize that and say, “This is really emotional, and it’s deep And maybe you just want to slide through and focus on yourself, and that’s perfectly fine.”

Rebecca:
Yeah, maybe we don’t call it lurking. But really, it’s more like a journaling

MATTHEW: Yes.

Rebecca:
Like a self reflection kind of activity. Like I did a lot of the activities a first time just kind of in my notebook and was thinking through things.

Mathew:
See, I think you’ve put your finger on one of the attributes of life in academia and higher ed that stymies this kind of work, which is we leap to action, and we don’t provide enough opportunity for ourselves to just do the kind of internal work we need to to feel some sense of groundedness. What do I think? What have my experiences been? What has worked for me and what am I still working on? …kind of things. And to be quite honest, you would have been my favorite student. If that was what you got in round one, I would have been totally happy, but moving it into the campus or into a discussion with your colleagues. That for me is icing on the cake, because you as a teacher will be transformed by that, where you’ll never approach any of this stuff the same way again.

Melina:
I have a friend who’s an internet scholar, so she actually researches lurking. I read a draft of an article that she wrote where she actually talked about the importance of lurking for learning about different others… like basically, it was making an argument that lurking is a really good way to learn how to be an ally, to learn about groups that you’re not a member of, to learn what new vocabulary is out there, in terms of how to talk about certain topics. I know, there’s a lot of anxiety about offending people and getting the terms right. And I’m at the point now where I’m likely to make mistakes, because things have changed enough within my own lifetime that the vocabulary is constantly really being updated. I think that anything we can do to reduce anxiety and help people feel more connected to each other, to the course, to have opportunities to just reflect on their own experiences. And you’re not the only one who engaged with the course that way, Rebecca. The woman I talked to this morning did the same. She posted, but she would only post at the end of reading every other person’s reflections. And I’ll say, just in case somebody goes to the course and says, “Well, where are the discussion boards?” …that was one of the things that we ended up giving up in moving to the self-paced modality. And that’s because we couldn’t staff moderators 24/7. Before we were able to have a robust and temporary staff in place that would help us moderate the discussion boards. We just know that sometimes there are bad actors who aren’t there for learning. We never had trouble in our discussion boards, they were lovely, so that was such a difficult decision to make. But we revised the guide that we wrote for facilitators to just encourage thinking about and talking about alternative means to supplement those, whether it’s a closed Facebook group or a discussion board in Canvas, or leaving extra time during the face-to-face opportunities. But it sounds like, in your structure, your face-to-face opportunities are giving people plenty of opportunity for discussion.

Rebecca:
Can you talk a little bit about how you facilitated at Cornell?

Melina:
Sure, I’d be delighted to. It’s complicated because it’s not the same every time. So just to give you a sense, I co-facilitated with another staff member from our center, we did a faculty interdisciplinary learning community, same person with addition two other staff, one person from the graduate school. We did the one for graduate students and postdocs together with a slightly different curriculum. I partnered with a faculty member from the school for integrative Plant Sciences and we anchored that one in the department this last time. This is like the story of my life. I used to team teach as a community college professor, but I was the one that had to be the team teacher with everybody. So every year I had two or three new teaching partners for the same course. So I’d be basically begging them to use my course syllabus so that we could have a little bit of sanity for me. So I love this because people have different facilitation styles, they bring different skills to the table. So it’s very inspiring, and they’re very different. So the interdisciplinary faculty cohort is one kind of experience. The faculty there basically love hearing about similarities and differences, like they’re so relieved to find colleagues who care just as much as they do about inclusion. And they’re delighted to hear about strategies that maybe they can try and they’re also relieved to share the knotty points of difficulty that others may not be facing that are discipline specific to them. And then, in the cohorts that we’ve led that are anchored in the department, those conversations are just as rich because you can focus on things that are important to that group. So in the School For Integrative Plant Sciences, we asked the chair to provide a scenario for a difficult conversation so that we could have a little practice around that. And they’re remodeling their entranceway. So they’re having these discussions about how to portray their discipline. And so the argument is about the history of the discipline and all the white male people versus wanting to diversify the discipline nowadays and what they want to do. So we had a pretty amazing sort of hot topics dialogue that I think left them feeling more empowered and more ready. And the person who’s actually truly leading that initiative was also relieved to hear all the different opinions. And it was really important to hear the different perspectives. I don’t know if that completely answers your question. I’m just right, fresh out of doing those. So I kept a journal where I just kept writing down little ideas. Matt and I keep talking about writing a book about this. Like, I want to make sure I write about this and write about that and write about this. So it was a deeply reflective process for me. I keep learning a tremendous amount. And sometimes, to go back to Matt’s earlier comment, we’re not going to change the readings, but sometimes we do go and make updates or add references. we weren’t able to touch on every single identity category. And sometimes people don’t find themselves and they say, “Why didn’t you talk about this or that?” And so then we make an effort to do that. And I have a running list of edits that are ready to be worked on for the next version of the course that gets posted.

Mathew:
If I could tailgate, Melina, there are two points that you made that I just think are so evocative of our approach to this. One is we really wait to see who’s registered and how they fall out. Are there cohorts? Are there natural cohorts that emerge from that, and that was your point, Melina, about it being complicated, and sort of last minute, because we sort of wait to see who’s on board. And then your second point that I just want to reiterate is, it’s organic. And I think we’re both learning both about the DEI issues, but also about teaching and teaching in an online environment. And what does it mean to have a global perspective in a MOOC? This is new to both of us still. And so it’s always really interesting. And we’re trying to still… like Melina has revised the handbook for facilitators every single semester, because we keep getting really good ideas from folks across the spectrum who have tried some things out and said, “This really worked, and this didn’t.” And our goal always is to make it as useful as possible. So it also keeps it really interesting. So it’s the same course. But it’s never the same course, you know that, you’re both deeply embedded in teaching as well.

John:
Yeah, the discussions vary dramatically depending on the specific composition. And when we were meeting three times a week, or four times a week one time, each discussion with a little different depending on who happened to show up that day. And it worked well, though. I appreciated the fact that I got to participate in many of those discussions.

Mathew:
In the ideal world, that’s exactly what it would be, you would sort of have a flipped classroom, you would do the online course. But you would always have a cohort of people to talk through your ideas with and I think that’s, for me, the ideal scenario. And I have to ask, are you assessing this? Obviously, people being there is one key assessment, that’s a huge vote of confidence. So clearly, you’re doing really well. The fact that they come back, that’s even better evidence.

John:
We have not done any formal assessments. We’d like to, but we’re somewhat understaffed. We’d like to assess many more of the things that we’re doing at the teaching center, and certainly the effectiveness of this would be useful. I wish we had a good answer for you on that.

Mathew:
Actually, that’s a really good answer, John, because it’s sort of provoking me to think, together with Melina. We’ve got the protocol that we use, the pre-post, and Melina and our other colleague, Amy Cardace Ardays are working on publishing that protocol. But that might be something that if we can move that process along, that would give you something at the campus level, easy to administer, and really, really interesting. So it’s all self report, of course, but it at least gives you a sense of over time, in general, and an aggregated level, what our faculty finding useful about the experience in terms of their own learning and development. I hadn’t thought of that. Yeah,

Melina:
I did a presentation at the IUPUI conference, and, as a result of that, I have started collaborating with a couple of other institutions who are in particular interested in how to assess their inclusive teaching interventions. And so, in one case, they started by wanting to use our protocol, but embed the protocol in the other part of their plan that they had in place. So we’ll be presenting together as a team this year at IUPUI, which I’m excited about. And I also think that assessing the learning communities is its own sticky wicket. The learning goals are both the same ones that are in the course and you also want to know whether the learning community itself went as well as it could have or what you might do differently because I still have a goal here locally at Cornell to have more of these department level immersions because those are the ones that have been pretty exciting because colleagues suddenly see each other with new eyes, like they see their colleagues as co-agents for change and social justice work instead of having the experience in the interdisciplinary group that I mentioned where they’re like, “Thank goodness, there’s someone over across campus who cares as much as I do.” So part of assessment is being able to tell your story persuasively about what you’re doing and why people should participate.

Mathew:
I think also, part of what assessment can do is reflect on what’s next. What’s the growth edge here? What would help people in the next step and so as Melina said, departments are our big go-to next step. We’re really interested in working with a coherent subset of people we’ll never get an entire department. And we don’t need that. We don’t need unanimity. We just need a core of consensus that this is a worthwhile use of their time. And what Melina hasn’t mentioned, is this other project she’s working on with another colleague of ours that I think is super interesting, which is curriculum mapping through a DEI lens. And so really, when we think about systemic change, in building more multicultural, inclusive institutions, the department is really the unit of analysis. That’s where the work happens. And it’s also where the chief stakeholders stay the longest. And so, Provosts rollover, Chancellors rollover, presidents come and go, but departments mostly stay intact. And so, if they choose to invest in this sort of critical analyses of DEI issues, there’s great possibility for really changing long term the experiences of undergrads and grads and also the people who are part of the department. It goes to recruitment and retention at every level, from undergrads,to grad students to new and junior faculty. So we’ve been sort of building, socializing the course on campus, building a sense that this is a good use of your time globally. And then Melina has… how many departments have you’ve worked with now? Four? Three?

Melina:
We have three on deck for the fall, and had those initial conversations about getting things started and meeting them specifically where they are at in their process. People have expressed different beginning points or interests for where they want to get started. But this is what my colleague Kathleen Landy, who is really helping us to visualize difficult concepts in a very simple way. She’s basically created some tools that we can use to lead people through this process. And we’re socializing… it might not be the right word… but we’re basically getting the word out that this is a program and a service that we offer, and having some initial conversations with folks to just let them know what this is and how the resource works. And, so far, the reception has been really positive. And I think there’s just a different set of needs. We sometimes just talk about different entry points, maybe people want to think about curriculum, maybe they really want to think about pedagogy. I met with a group today that really wanted to help getting a discussion started about social identities and implicit bias. And so that’s really about instructor self reflection, and what our lived experiences have been, and then how we translate those into our teaching practices. So, one fantasy that I have is that our portfolio basically runs the gamut around that framework, so that people who want to work on curriculum have a rich tool for curriculum mapping, and then they also get the benefit of the facilitated dialogue and deeper conversations.

Mathew:
Yeah, I’m a big follower of the sort of John Dewey approach, start where the learner wants to start. And in many cases, all roads lead to Rome. It doesn’t really matter where we start if we have a holistic systems perspective.

Rebecca:
… and the desire to start.

Mathew:
Absolutely. [LAUGHTER] That’s the critical piece. Exactly.

Melina:
Which is an important threshold to cross over… the desire to start. People come to us because they want to, as opposed to this is now a university requirement or something like that, because that threshold is so important and meaningful.

John:
I think a lot of campuses have reached that threshold now because the pandemic, as Rebecca had mentioned earlier, has revealed a lot of the inequities and challenges that our students face in ways that were always there, but that faculty may not have been as fully aware of. It’s much harder to ignore some of the challenges our students face when you had to deal with them in class every day, when you can see them struggling with things that would be hidden when they were on campus. Many people are ready for addressing these issues and these challenges.

Mathew:
I couldn’t agree more. I think timing is everything. And our hope is to build a port of entry. That, like Melina mentioned very early on, we do everything we can to bring people’s anxiety down so they can relax and be in a mode that allows the learning to take place. If it’s okay, I’d love to hear from the two of you about what would you like to see in Teaching and Learning in the Diverse Classroom? What would you see as a next step?

Melina:
We were thinking of maybe starting a podcast. [LAUGHTER] Just kidding, just kidding.

John:
We’d be happy to help.

Melina:
We love your podcast.

Mathew:
Yeah.

Rebecca:
That was one of those projects that started small that blew up big as well. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca:
I do have an answer. One of the things that I think that we struggle with… limited resources… and also, the complexity of timing is always a challenge being able to bring people together at a specific time, so we offer things at multiple times. One of the things that we always have trouble measuring or reporting out Is what do people do with this information? And so some of the pre- and post-testing that you were mentioning before, I think, gets at that a little bit. But what’s the reflection that happens a specific period of time afterward, is something that we haven’t done yet. We haven’t engaged. I think we both have this inclination to want to do some of that stuff, but like, not always the capacity to do it. And then also, we’ve tried a couple of things like badges if you want to tell your story. And sometimes it’s hard to collect that information in a way that’s useful, that doesn’t take ages for someone to produce to submit it to us. And then also to like, analyze it. [LAUGHTER]

Mathew:
That’s a great point, we’ve bandied about this idea of sort of a retrospective survey, like a semester out, a year out, two years out, what remains important or salient? or what have you done differently? And we’re still, I think, in discussion. Is that a way to say it, Melina? We haven’t really resolved yet how to do that. And for us, it’s the same issue. It’s bandwidth.

Melina:
I appreciated the fact that Matt was writing down your idea, Rebecca, [LAUGHTER] because sometimes it’s a matter of timing, getting us at the right flow of the creative curve, and also the amount of times that we get the same ask. So if somebody else had asked for more videos that had faculty talking about successful strategies and how to implement them. So we might be able to talk to your point and meet that person’s invitation. And the other requests that we’ve had, which we haven’t had bandwidth for, was to present a wider variety of different types of institutions, especially in module five when we’re talking about institutional change efforts. So that was one idea. We would love to explore these if we had the capacity.

John:
On that issue, though, I do have to say that the people you chose to speak, I think, speak to all institutions. I think some people may have been concerned that this was coming out of Cornell, and we’re four-year public institution. But no one really left with any concerns about that. I think the issues that are addressed are pretty universal. I think that part works really well. One thing though, that I know a number of faculty were looking for is more specific guidance on what techniques could work to make their discussions a little more inclusive in class and what other techniques could be used to help improve the success of students who are struggling. And there’s so many things there that the issue gets really wide. And I think the topics you chose are really good and universal and apply to everyone. But I know a lot of people would like some things specifically, that could help narrow some of the challenges in STEM classes, where the success rates vary very dramatically. And a lot of faculty were raising questions about that, particularly in math and in the sciences, and so forth. There’s a lot that’s already there. There’s just so much you can do in a five-week class. And I think what you have there is wonderful.

Rebecca:
What you’re saying, John, actually makes me think about a need to send a reminder to people that have participated in a cohort about all the resources that were available there, because now you’ve had time and space to reflect, maybe have tried some things in classes, and it might be worth revisiting some of the material again.

Melina:
One thing that I wished we could do, which we just couldn’t quite figure out a way to do this, but in the MOOC, we had people post what their action plans were on the discussion board. So now we’ve lost access to being able to see those, but the ones that we get through our Cornell cohorts are pretty incredible. And the quality of those jumps up significantly when we have a learning community, like the learning community action plans. I think John said this earlier, like it just helps people finish the course and actually get through it just to be part of a learning community. But then also the quality of the action plans, I think because they’re presenting them to each other… our last session in our learning community is them presenting their plan… and then hearing their colleagues questions and feedback. And those have been really impressive. And I like, John, what you’re saying. I think people want to see some examples of this in action. Like sometimes I wish we could get sort of live footage of a classroom where someone’s doing a really great job and have the camera be… people know it’s there, but they can forget about it.

Mathew:
Melina and I’ve talked at length about sort of what’s missing in this experience is the experiential aspect. And there’s a certain component in the dialogue, the discussion that you host or facilitate that helps with that, that’s super helpful. Because even though you may not be having people do psychodrama, or acting out role plays or stuff like that, but just the act of talking through these moments can be enormously helpful. But we’ve been really trying to think about how the next step might be something that’s more experiential, because oftentimes, people just need literally the physicality of a practice, of a walk through. He says this, she says that, what do I do? Then something else gets said, then what do I do to that? And that sort of is part and parcel to building a sense of efficacy, like you don’t need to have all the answers but you do need to have some strategies that you feel are useful in the moment and don’t dig you into a deeper hole. So that’s one of the other things… I don’t have an answer for that yet, but we’ve been thinking.

Rebecca:
Our DEI officer, Rodman King, has ran sessions on our campus that are like that,like little scenarios, and did small groups where people were talking through it and those are some really popular sessions, they always needed more time. People got really engaged and really wanted to talk through the details and really process. So we often didn’t get through more than one or two examples in a session, but it was a incredibly popular sessions when we’ve offered those.

Mathew:
Yeah, I love that idea. And people feel like there’s an expert in the room who can help them. And it’s theoretical, it’s a scenario, so they can risk making a mistake, but the practice is real, that level of physicalities It’s a wonderful idea.

Melina:
Can I circle back to something John said earlier about the people being worried about the Cornelll voices being like too Cornell or something like that? I think that the reason that that doesn’t happen is because people were willing to make themselves vulnerable during the interview process. So they really come across as three dimensional complicated human beings who are willing to tell their stories of struggle and the background. And I actually think that we have a situation at Cornell, where the name of the institution itself basically has almost everybody suffering under some kind of horrible imposter [LAUGHTER] syndrome, which makes us maybe nicer people, I don’t know. But my experience here has been that my colleagues are incredibly kind and welcoming and eager to support their students’ learning… that always is shared among faculty everywhere, but they’re also eager to support each other’s learning in adult spaces. And that has continued to be a delightful point of engagement. I used to teach undergraduates and now all of my work is through our teaching center. And I really far prefer working with adults thinking about social identity in a different way, like maybe they arrived already. Oh, no, wait, there’s new things to learn.

Rebecca:
I think that authenticity really comes through, which is really powerful. And I think you’re right. On camera, everyone feels really authentic. It doesn’t feel scripted. And I think that’s what’s important about it.

Mathew:
I totally agree, Rebecca, I’m really happy to hear that that’s your perception. Obviously, we picked the people. And part of it also was people relish the invitation to be honest, and to tell what their stories are as they are unfolding. And so I think, Melina, this is where you started, the power of the story, but it’s also the power of inviting people to share their story, that indication that “Yeah, we really want to hear it.” And I do want to do a little bit of a shout out for Melina, she was our… I don’t even know what to call her… executive producer. She was our talent manager. And so she did a lovely job of engaging everybody and getting them centered and made sure they had coffee or water, just sort of genuinely set the stage for a real dialogue, much like you and John do in this podcast. You just make it really easy to be present and say what’s on your mind.

Rebecca:
Thanks. Speaking of invitations, we always invite people to tell us what’s going to happen next. So what’s next? [LAUGHTER]

Mathew:
Next is action plans, Melina and I still have to wrap up the class so… which is actually, even though it’s July, it’s our favorite part of the class. We love reading and responding. So we’ve chosen to do the responses to the action plans by brief recorded videos, mostly because it warms up the classroom. And also we start talking about it, and I think our feedback is far more robust. And we read for different things. So it’s always so interesting to me to hear what resonated for Melina and why. And so I’m really looking forward to that. And then, Melina…

Melina:
What’s next… I want to do a deeper dive on the importance of storytelling. So this isn’t next on our MOOC, but just on what we’re thinking of offering next year through our center to support inclusive teaching, but just really enlivening and bringing to bear this idea that storytelling is an inclusive pedagogy, how to do it, when to do it, when it’s appropriate. It goes back to John’s question about how do you facilitate lively discussions? How do you bring in the personal and the individual when you’re wrestling with difficult scholarly ideas? Sometimes we get folks from STEM saying, “Oh, this is Social Sciences, like the humanities and social sciences should deal with this. So making it relevant, making a case for why who we are as people really matters to the way we learn, how we learn, how we feel in the classroom about affect. So we have a few projects related to that new avenue.

John:
And there was also a brief mention of the possibility of a book. Is that something planned in the near term? Or is this a longer time horizon project?

Mathew:
Well, we have an outline. I think…

Rebecca:
…that’s a start.

Mathew:
Yes, it’s a big start. We have the will, and we have the way, we just now need to do the work. But I think we could help people. I think we have some things to say about how campuses can galvanize around teaching and learning inclusively, as a modality for systemic change. People want to, like you were saying earlier, John, there’s a great interest in these issues now. The salience is higher than it’s ever been before. People I think are just not really sure how to get started. And I think that the Teaching and Learning in the Diverse Classroom course tries to break it down and say there are multiple points of entry, any one of which is useful. We could sort of do that at the department level. Teaching in a course is one point of entry but also curriculum mapping and sort of the other things that we do with folks could work as well.

Rebecca:
I love the idea of the ports of entry.

John:
Thank you. It’s great talking to you again. And next time I do hope we can get together and have some tea in person, either on our campus or on yours or at some conference somewhere.

Mathew:
I would love that. And good luck to everybody who’s still teaching. Thank you all so much. It’s a pleasure.

Rebecca:
Thank you.

Melina:
Thank you.

[MUSIC]

John:
If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca:
You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

[MUSIC]

146. Lessons Learned Online

Posted in covid-19, higher education, learning, online learning, teacher training, teaching
July 29, 2020

Faculty new to online instruction often attempt to replicate their face-to-face learning activities in the online environment, only to discover that they don’t work as well in this modality. In this episode, Alexandra Pickett joins us to discuss evidence on effective online teaching practices, gathered from a quarter century of experience in a large public university system. Alex is the SUNY Online Director of Online Teaching and an Adjunct Professor in the Education Department at SUNY Albany. Previously, she was the Director of the Open SUNY Center for Online Teaching and prior to that the Associate Director of the SUNY Learning Network for over 12 years, and has directly supported and coordinated the professional development of over 5000 online SUNY Online faculty.

Show Notes
Transcript

Show Notes

SUNY Online
Pickett, Alexandra (2010) A Series of Unfortunate Online Events and How to Avoid Them.
Simunich, B., Robins, D. B., & Kelly, V. (2015). The impact of findability on student motivation, self-efficacy, and perceptions of online course quality. American Journal of Distance Education, 29(3), 174-185. (the Kent State study that Alex referenced).
The Twitter thread that Alex referenced
Designing equitable, inclusive, accessible online teaching environments
Self-serve/Self-paced openly licensed tools and resources including Bb templates to quick start effective course designs for various modes of Remote Online Teaching
Online Course Design Resources
D iscipline Specific Resources
SUNY Online Teaching video series:
Interested in Teaching Online?
Ready to Teach Online?
Checklist for Remote Teaching
List of icebreaking activities

Transcript

John: Faculty new to online instruction often attempt to replicate their face-to-face learning activities in the online environment, only to discover that they don’t work as well in this modality. In this episode, we examine evidence on effective online teaching practices, gathered from a quarter century of experience in a large public university system.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer.

Rebecca: Together, we run the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego.

[MUSIC]

Rebecca: Our guest today is Alexandra Pickett. Alexandra is the SUNY Online Director of Online Teaching and an Adjunct Professor in the Education Department at SUNY Albany. Previously, she was the Director of the Open SUNY Center for Online Teaching and prior to that the Associate Director of the SUNY Learning Network for over 12 years, and has directly supported and coordinated the professional development of over 5000 online SUNY Online faculty. Welcome, Alex.

Alex: Hi there. Thanks for having me.

John: We’re happy to have you here.

Alex: It’s so cool to be able to sit here and talk with you both and I’m just really excited to be here.

John: Our teas today are:

Alex: I drink only Darjeeling tea… organic, of course. It’s the most delicious tea. I just can’t drink anything else. That’s what I drink.

Rebecca: I have my very last cup of Scottish afternoon tea. All gone. Last one.

John: And I am drinking Tea Forte black currant tea.

Alex: Wow, that looks interesting.

John: It really is.

Alex: Does it have caffeine in it?

John: It does. It’s a standard black tea with a really wonderful blackcurrant flavor, and it’s in this nice little silk pyramid-shaped object with a little wire leaf at the end.

Rebecca: It’s nice and light too. It’s a good summer tea.

Alex: Well, I used to use tea as my sugar and cream delivery system. [LAUGHTER] But, I have, over the last year and a half or so, cut sugar out and so I still use it as a cream delivery system. But, I just love my Darjeeling tea… at night… I usually have that at night.

John: Yeah, I’ve been using a lot of black teas in the mornings and early afternoons and then switching to green tea and herbal teas later in the day, with a lot of iced tea on the warmer days.

Alex: So, that’s never bothered me… the whole caffeine thing. Like I could drink whatever caffeine right before I go to bed and not a problem. My husband I’m not sure he agrees with that, because he thinks I stay up too late. [LAUGHTER] But, I don’t feel a problem.

John: You’ve been involved in online education for as long as I’ve known you. I think the first time I met you was at one of the Sloan-C conferences in Washington back in the mid- to late-1990s, when I was first getting involved and you were already working with the SUNY SLN network. So, what are some of the major lessons that we’ve learned since the early days of online instruction?

Alex: I was the first Online Instructional Designer in SUNY starting back in 1994, and have been working in this space for that entire time. We’ve learned a lot over the last 25 years, or whatever it is. I think when we first started, we were in a period of time of research and development and thinking about what works. We then spent some time thinking about: Will it scale? How do we scale it? and synthesizing our models and our processes: the procedures, infrastructure, support services, thinking about all those things. We then had a period of time where we were kind of in full-scale production, and this is SUNY Learning Network that I’m talking about, and then somewhere around 2006 to 2009 we really were in a process of transition and migration from our homegrown learning management system to ANGEL. And then right when we finished our migration with ANGEL, Blackboard bought ANGEL, and so we immediately started another migration. And so we have had these different phases of proof of concept to scalability to institutionalization to today where we are, which is continued evolution and scale. We have continued to grow and to learn and to scale over the many years that we’ve been doing it and we went from the SUNY Learning Network to Open SUNY and now from Open SUNY to SUNY Online. And at each of those evolutionary stages, we have shifted in either technology or focus or thinking or certain initiatives. And so today, the transition has to do with scale… and though by many measures, one would say that the SUNY Learning Network was large. At one point, we were one of the three largest online asynchronous learning networks in the country, and Open SUNY certainly continued that scaling trend. But the scale today that we’re talking about has to do with really focusing in on online degree programs that are specifically identified to support the needs of New York State and the needs of adult learners in the workforce and to increase the ability to serve larger and larger numbers of students.

So, things we’ve learned… I think, over the years, we focused on things like the models that we used, and learned a lot of lessons about having peer trainers and having interdisciplinary cohorts of people, and using our experienced faculty to help and mentor our novice faculty, we interspersed face-to-face training and online training and mentoring and one-on-one work with instructional designers. We integrated and developed templates to quick start online faculty into really effective research-based course environments so that they could just focus on their discipline in their content rather than the wrapper. We implemented courses for observation, which helped novice faculty actually see and visualize what an online course could look like. And we then began, as the numbers increased of existing experienced online faculty, we started to devote energy and efforts and professional development towards the growing group of experienced online faculty. So, support was another thing that we developed and have learned how to do better over time, and really focusing on supporting the instructor, supporting their course, supporting instructional designers, which was not a role that existed back in 1994. That’s evolved over time. I mentioned courses, faculty, IDs, and students, obviously. So, that has changed and evolved and grown over time. In terms of our approaches, we’ve learned a lot of things, and shifted that as we have done scholarly work to understand how people can teach and learn well online. Having access to large groups of faculty and large groups of students, we’ve been in a unique position in the SUNY system to really use it as an organic petri dish of research to continuously observe, to continuously apply interventions, and study the effects of those, and then to learn from those, and feed our learnings back into this sort of organic process that we have. And then, of course, we’ve always had a focus on quality to inform and influence course quality and developing things that allow us to better do that, I guess I’d say. We build into the processes, into the models, opportunities to integrate research and our lessons learned to extract information from students and from faculty and to build in time for faculty to reflect on their own experiences so that they can then infuse those lessons learned into their own ongoing course design, and their evolving pedagogical practices.

Rebecca: What are some of the most important things for faculty to do in online courses? You have such a rich history of experience, what advice that you have for faculty moving online?

Alex: Somebody just reminded me the other day of this paper that I wrote and did some presentations, and I can’t remember when it was, but it was quite a while ago, and it was called “A Series of Unfortunate Online Events and How to Avoid Them.” And it was all written in sort of the style of that story, A Series of Unfortunate Events. So, I had things like the “atrocious assumption” and the “bad beginning” and the “purloined pearls” and the “dreadful design” and all kinds of… [LAUGHTER] the “dilatory dawdler…” it was hilarious. All of these were tongue-in-cheek in terms of the style that it was written, but all trying to focus on things that faculty either should do or shouldn’t do. And all of this, I have to say, I learned directly from faculty themselves, from looking at their course designs, from looking at what students reported and said about their experiences in online courses. And because we started doing research pretty much right from the first day, we have a tremendous bird’s eye view over thousands of courses and hundreds of thousands of students to really see some trends. And so, one of the first things that we learned was the quantity and quality of interaction with the instructor is the thing that influences student satisfaction and learning the most. And so anything that you can do to improve the student’s perception of interaction with the instructor is gonna help that particular finding. it’s going to support that particular finding. And so one of the first things that I did in our template was to add a simple discussion forum labeled “Ask a Question.” And in that “Ask a Question” discussion, the expectation is that students will be able to ask any question that they have, and the instructor would monitor that area and answer it in one place. Because if one student has the question, it’s likely others have it and then over time that evolved to our understanding of teaching presence that extends out to students, and it allowed for students to express their teaching presence, so that they could help each other out, because the second most significant effect on student learning and satisfaction is the quantity and quality of interaction between students. So, the first one with the highest impact is between the student and the instructor and the second one is between the students. So, by having students help each other out in the “Ask a Question” discussion forum, they were able to support each other, express their teaching presence, and attend to that particular finding as well. It’s a simple discussion forum just labeled “Ask a Question” that meets those needs. And that is underpinned by the research that we did. The other thing that I added to the template was an “Ask the Professor” question area. So, it’s distinct, between the straight up “Ask a question” where the students interact with each other, or the expectation is that they can and will, and this is when a student wants to hear specifically from the instructor. And so, this supports that interaction between student and instructor. Interaction, I think, is one of those things that instructors need to pay particular attention to, it’s particularly important.

Another is, for example, setting expectations very explicitly and very clearly. I think that sometimes for novice faculty, they underestimate, because they’re so used to being in the classroom where someone can just ask a question, it can be quickly answered. In the online environment, the only thing that the student has is whatever you have actually typed out or recorded and put into your course. And so any sort of question that they have, you sort of have to anticipate what questions students are going to have, and then respond to it somehow in the design of your course and have it be findable. One of the things that we found, and that there is research to support, is that findability is an incredible predictor of satisfaction or of not satisfaction in an online course. So, if a student has to spend a lot of clicks, and a lot of time… and by a lot of time we don’t mean like an hour, right? [LAUGHTER] Like it’s just really having trouble finding the piece of information that they need in that moment. When they have that experience, their satisfaction goes down. Actually, in this particular study by Kent State on findability, they found that the student’s perception of the course was not only lower, but they also had a perception of the instructor as not being qualified to teach the course when they couldn’t find something. So, setting expectations for the course, and making sure that those are in a very visible place… not like buried somewhere in the syllabus… but in a very visible place that is easily findable by the student. So, things like how to contact the instructor, how they’re going to be assessed, what types of activities are going to be required, what the percentages of how they’re going to be evaluated, those kinds of things. They want to be able to find those things very easily. And while all instructors no doubt have those in their syllabus, it’s important, how it’s communicated, and where, and that it be easily findable for the students, I think the main areas that online instructors need to think about are how they’re going to present content effectively and efficiently, how they’re going to facilitate interaction and collaboration between students, with the students, with the content, and how they’re going to provide feedback and authentically assess the students. What kinds of activities they are going to design and how they’re going to facilitate the feedback and the assessment of those activities and really understanding that they need to pay attention to. And in some ways, this notion of backwards design is critical for faculty so that they can really understand: What are the objectives of the course? What are the activities that they’re designing that are targeting specific objectives? What’s the content that’s necessary for that? And then how are they going to assess and give feedback on those specific objectives? And that formula is a magic formula for an online course because it immediately helps faculty understand how much content they need. That’s a question novice faculty always have. Without this kind of a formula, faculty will end up creating a course and a half. So they put everything and the kitchen sink into the course because they don’t want their students to miss anything and they know a lot about their discipline. And so they want to make sure that everything is in there. And then they also, because they don’t really know how to judge the amount of work that the students should do, they end up having a course and a half so the students become overwhelmed and it could potentially be very disorganized. And so that backwards design really is a magic formula to help faculty really hone in on what the specific content is that’s necessary, what the interactions need to be in order to address those objectives, and then what specific feedback or assessment they’re going to be doing in order to address those.

Rebecca: Alex, based on your experience, where do students struggle if they’ve never had an asynchronous experience before? Obviously, you’ve hinted at things that faculty can do to make that online experience better. But, if you’re not used to controlling your own destiny, in an asynchronous environment, what are some things that students really need support in, that we don’t always think about?

Alex: There are definitely behaviors that successful online students have either intrinsically or are able to adopt. They need to really understand how to set goals for themselves and how to plan. And so students who are not good at that are going to struggle. They need to have some kind of approach to organizing their study materials and their work. They need to have a stable, structured environment in which to work. And it’s not like they have to have like an office…that’s not really what I’m saying… just that they have to have a sense that when they go to school, online, when they go to class, that they’re in a setting where they’re comfortable, where they have what they need, where they can have access to the stuff that they need in order to not be struggling. They need to be willing to ask for help, which is not always something that students know or… there’s this wonderful thread this week from a first-generation student in Twitter, talking about all the things that she didn’t know or didn’t understand that was assumed that she did. And asking for help was one of them. And in some cases, they don’t know that the help is available. In other cases, they are self conscious about asking for help and appearing stupid or deficient in some way. And so I think successful online students are willing to put themselves out there to ask for help when they need it, and they also are aware of where the different help sources are, and how to approach them. And assumptions that faculty might make are that students already know this or should know this. So, I think it’s kind of like faculty can support student success and students need to understand what helps them be more successful. I think being able to self monitor… like checking the gradebook, for example, checking how they’re doing in terms of the progress of the course, with the deadlines of the course… simple strategies like not typing their paper or their discussion posts straight into the discussion forum where if you lose connection, you lose your post. A simple strategy of drafting your responses in Word, for example, where you can spell check, or in Google Docs where there’s auto backup, before you post it into the forum. These are strategies or behaviors that students know somehow, but many, many do not. Another thing in terms of supporting success is self reflection and metacognition, thinking about what’s helping you learn, thinking about what’s hindering your learning, making checklists or using rubrics if they’re provided. That notion of student self-efficacy is another one that you want to develop these self-regulated learning strategies to help support your belief in yourself, that you are able to achieve whatever it is that’s being asked of you. Obviously having goals, that whole notion of self-motivated student. And this is often something that is talked about, or that characterizes the difference between pedagogy and andragogy or heautogogy, that is the notion of motivation. In children or young people, the motivation is sort of forced on them… they have deadlines, and they have things that sort of scaffold them and that they don’t have to do a lot of that pushing of themselves, because they’re kind of just going through the motions with everyone else. As an adult learner or a non-traditional learner or a post-traditional learner or an online learner, I would argue, you really have to find that motivation to go to class because there is no one point, one time, one place where you’re going to meet on a certain day, at a certain time, with everybody. You have to actually get yourself in there, understand what is being expected of you, and be able to produce it In an effective way, in a high quality way, and in a timely way. And so there’s a tremendous amount of self pushing that needs to happen. So, those are some of the strategies or the things that students stumble on, and the strategies that successful online students need. And like I said, I think that this comes both from the student and from the faculty and from the course design, all of those things can work in concert. I have heard recently with the influx of tons of new novice online faculty, and I remember hearing it when I was working with cohorts of novice faculty, there is this tendency to feel, from the faculty perspective, this is like babying them or hand holding them. And while that might be true, I’m not going to say whether it is or not in a face-to-face environment… although I have an opinion about that… it’s definitely not true in an online environment. I think because of the nature of the environment. It is different when a student only has the computer screen in front of them, it really needs to be crystal clear to them… what they’re supposed to do, when they’re supposed to do it, how they’re supposed to do it… and any supports and any efforts to help the student understand what’s going to help them be most successful is going to help them. And ultimately, at the end of the day, we want students to have successful and positive experiences, and faculty to have successful and positive experiences, in an online environment. So, anything any of us can do to support that, I think, is particularly important. And when you think about students who are disadvantaged in any way, whether we’re talking about first-generation students, or whether we’re talking about COVID-related students who come from such varied backgrounds and who are not opting to learn online, it’s being foisted on them like it is on all of us, it’s particularly important to pay attention to anything that will help them be as successful as possible.

Rebecca: I think what you described is a bit onboarding method that needs to be done for students, especially if they weren’t expecting to be online, and now that they are.

John: And I think faculty probably underestimate the amount of cues and support they provide in face-to-face classes. At the beginning and end of the class, they’ll talk about what needs to be done… they’ll talk about deadlines. When they see problems occurring in student work, they’ll provide immediate feedback. And that just doesn’t magically happen in an online class. explicit instructions need to be provided so that students online get the same type of instructions they’d have an in-person class.

Alex: That’s exactly right, John, and the immediacy of it… one student may be there at 12 midnight, and another student may be there on the weekend, and another student may be there at some other time. And it is at any moment in 24/7 time on any day of the week that a student needs to be able to find the answer to their question right then. Otherwise, there’s a boulder in their way from moving forward in their learning. And so I always say that faculty should try to first, make no assumptions, which is difficult to do, because sometimes you don’t know you have an assumption, but to try and anticipate every question or any question that a student might have, and have something in the course that attends to that question. And it’s not an easy thing to do, because the assumptions are insidious there. And if you’re coming from a face-to-face environment, you have a lot of assumptions. And this isn’t intuitive, that teaching online is not an intuitive exercise. And it doesn’t just happen magically. There is effort and energy that needs to go into the design of the course, the sequencing of the course, the pacing of the course, the content, the interaction, the feedback, the assessment, all of that needs to be thought through, given the environment. So, you’re not thinking about it in a face-to-face way, you’re thinking about it in an online way with the lens of online students who only see what’s in front of them on the computer screen. So, it’s just a different way of thinking. And it’s not rocket science or anything, but I think faculty need to see examples of it, to have some of the foundational research understanding about it, and to be guided, maybe mentored, in some ways. It’s not like the first time you teach an online course you’re going to be a master at it. It’s the practice of teaching online, also. Practice means you keep doing it, and you keep getting better at it, hopefully, and keep improving. To me, it’s a practice in iteration. You do your best the first time when you’re dealing both with the learning curve of the technology and the learning curve of the different types of pedagogies required. And so the first time you do it, you’re dealing with these two major things. So, your first online course and online teaching experience, you’re going to learn a lot and your course might be somewhat vanilla. Nevertheless, it can be a really good tasting vanilla and then you can add some sprinkles and chips, and whatever, some sauce, as you continue to improve your ability to use the technology and your understanding of how you’re using the technology in pedagogically effective ways. What’s cool and wonderful about it is that faculty starting today have the benefit of 25 years of faculty who have been doing this and 25 years of research and best practices and lessons learned from all of us who have gone before, so they don’t have to invent the wheel the way that some of us did back in the early 90s.

John: Going back to that issue about providing explicit instructions in a face-to-face class, faculty often make assumptions, as you noted, about what they want students to do that may not be clear to students. In a face-to-face class one student will observe that, will raise a question, and it will be answered for everyone. If you don’t have that degree of explicit instructions in an online class, you’ll get some work that isn’t quite what you expected from students or you’ll be getting, perhaps, dozens of students asking the same question. So, having explicit instructions is not only helpful for the students, so that they know what you want them to do, but also it’s helpful for the instructor so you don’t have to explain the same thing to many different people. So, if you do get a question from a student online class, it’s probably good to use that to improve your course, as you said, in an iterative way to deal with that, so it becomes clearer in the future.

Alex: I totally agree with that. And it’s actually a practice that I have encouraged faculty to adopt, because you will know immediately in your online class where there’s something that needs improving. Because if you get a ton of questions on the same thing, then you know, you have to address that somewhere, either in the design of your course or in the information that you’re providing. You know immediately and so that “Ask a Question” area is specifically to address you know, those kinds of questions that one student has that likely all students have, so you can do it just once. But, it also is a pointer as you suggested to things that you need to shore up in the design of your course or in the information that you’re providing. Instructions come up all the time. If it’s unclear, you will know that immediately and you know that you have to fix your instructions on something.

Rebecca: We have a lot of faculty preparing to teach online as they’re preparing for the uncertainties of the fall with COVID-19, or the explicit decision to be teaching online this fall that maybe they didn’t plan for. And so the planning and development time might be much shorter than it would be traditionally for an online class. What are some priorities? We already talked a lot about priorities. But is there any tip that you might have in this situation, which is a little different than a regular online class, to get faculty going?

Alex: That is a great question. I would say, in March, when everything shut down, it was an emergency situation where we all had to pivot really, really quickly. And many, many…I think the statistic I read was 98% of the faculty and courses across our country… went from being face-to-face to online in some flavor or another, it was a traumatic period of time for all of us, faculty, students, administrators, the country, academically, professionally, socially, very, very crazy. I would argue that even though we have time now to prepare for the fall that we’re still in a state of thinking about remote learning rather than online learning, because we still have uncertainty about the fall… number one. So, there are still folks and campuses and administrations and states who are still grappling with what they’re going to do in the fall regarding education. And is it going to be fully online? Is it going to be partially online? Is it going to be synchronous online? Is it going to be hybrid or HyFlex? Are they going to do things like changing the curriculum to, instead of semesters, be quarters are they going to have freshmen and sophomores come for the first seven weeks of the semester and then juniors and seniors come for the next? We’re still in some uncertainty about this. And even though we have some time to prepare, the problem is that we have many, many, many more faculty that are needing to think this through and prepare than there are people to support. In an online program or environment, you have 16 weeks, you are selected, or you get told that you’re going to teach online. You’re assigned an instructional designer. You have a process that you go through. And this is if it’s a well thought through developed program. You have a faculty development program that helps you with course design and then transitions you from course designe to effective online teaching practices. And so you get a full professional development period of time in advance of your first delivery of your course. And that’s really how it should be done in a well thought through environment and program. But what we have right now, even though we have time before the fall, we just have many more faculty than there are resources and because of the uncertainty of the modality for the fall, there is uncertainty in terms of the designs of the courses. And many, many institutions are not prepared, unless they’ve been doing online teaching and learning historically. My daughter’s school, for example, is a small liberal arts residential college that doesn’t do online teaching and learning. And so they like many schools, and even some within SUNY, are not as prepared as others who have been doing it for some time. So, I think we’re still in this stage of remote teaching where there are some unique circumstances for faculty and for the people who support faculty. So, I think for faculty who are trying to be flexible and anticipate different scenarios for the fall, I think the important things for them to think about are things like: prepare for whatever the most online scenario might be, and you have to take your cue, I think, from your state and from your administration, but if it’s likely that you’re going to be online for even some of it, thinking through what the course might be for all of it would be prudent so that you are better prepared, and so it’s a little easier to roll that back, then to start from scratch and have to develop it all. So to prepare for the fall, thinking about what pieces of your course absolutely would have to be face to face. So, I think there are some courses, lab courses, hands-on courses, things that require specialized equipment that might have to be face to face or they couldn’t be done, or couldn’t be done well. But there are courses that can easily be done in a fully online way. And so thinking through the nature of your course, the nature of your discipline, and what the assessments or evaluations are going to be so that you can understand what pieces might have to be face to face if they do and whether or not any or all of it can be online, and then thinking that through in terms of how you would lay that out and plan that out. I think thinking about your students, as a first step in your considerations for what you’re going to be doing in the fall is really, really important and not making any assumptions. And again, this is an area where there’s a lot of uncertainty because we don’t know what the Fall is going to look like for other aspects of life. Will the K-12 people go back to face to face, because if not, the kids are home. And if the kids are home, there may be burdens on the family regarding child care… whether or not students have safe and secure places to live, whether or not they have access to the internet… whether or not they are able to either financially or physically do synchronous components to a course. If you’re assuming that you can do a three-hour lecture once a week with your students at a specific time, there’s a lot of assumptions in that: that your students are in the same timezone, that your students are available at that time, that they have a data plan that will allow them to do that, and so forth. So, I think you need to think about things in terms of your course from those perspectives as you think about the planning and the design of your activities and how you’re going to go about it. For remote faculty, I think reviewing your syllabus, revising your syllabus, reviewing your objectives and articulating them in ways that are measurable, in ways that are really thinking about Bloom’s and what you’re targeting in Bloom’s, depending on the level of the course, the discipline, and really thinking if any revisions are necessary there so that you can do some of that backwards design that I mentioned earlier. Really starting out with a good solid set of objectives will help you do that backwards design, that magic formula, in a really effective way. I think thinking about the types of learning activities is a good exercise. I always say that it is impossible to duplicate what you do in a face-to-face classroom online, you actually have to reconceptualize your online activities, your online interactions, you have to reconceptualize those things for the online environment, given the options and limitations of the online environment. And that’s not to say that online environments… I mean, face-to-face environments have options and limitations as well. I guess my point is just to say you need to be attentive to what those are in an online environment in order to design activities that are going to be as maximally effective and engaging as possible. I think you need to pay attention to accessibility. You need to pay attention to your feedback and your assessments. You need to be attentive to developing a sense of class community and how you interact and where you interact and where you scaffold and support student-to-student interaction. I think you need to know and understand best practices in synchronous interaction or asynchronous interaction if you’re doing either of those or both of those. And accessibility is another one you need to pay attention to. Accessibility is an important thing because those courses where you see everything and the kitchen sink… it could be PDFs that you’ve had for years, or it could be a favorite video, or it could be that cartoon that you like to post from the New Yorker… whatever it is, you just need to pay attention to the fact that, in an online environment, there are issues and especially for those who are differently abled, let alone copyright permissions and so forth. But you do need to pay attention to making things as universally accessible as possible. And so the Universal Learning Design principles are really helpful in that regard. And if you plan for an inclusive, equitable, accessible course from the get go, you address all of those things without having to go back and retrofit which is super, super hard and annoying. So if you do it right from the beginning, it makes it a better plan.

John: And for those who are working towards preparing for the uncertainties of the fall, knowing that there’s a good chance that at least some of the semester will be spent online in some form, you’ve worked with other people to create quite a few online resources that perhaps we could talk a little bit about. One of those is the SUNY Online Teaching Effective Practice video series. Could you tell us a little bit about that? And some of the other resources?

Alex: Yeah, sure. I’d love to, I would love to have people check these resources out. In our YouTube channel, and over the years, we have sort of on an annual basis, I guess, now created a series of videos that have themes, and typically I collect these at our annual summit event. So I’ll have a theme and we will interview guests and participants around that particular theme. And so some of the collections that we’ve put together… =We have an effective practices series for example. We have advanced topics in online learning. We have faculty questions, there’s 23 videos in the collection on questions that faculty typically have about online learning. We have some ideas for new online faculty. We have recommendations for experienced online faculty, we even targeted topics that were targeting instructional designers and questions and issues that they have and online learning administrators, topics and themes that they would be interested in. There’s 12 videos in that collection and 21 videos in the instructional designer collection. There’s one collection that is about relationships, both with students and with instructional designers. There’s one about assessment. We have an ideas for engagement series that talks about helping faculty to think about how to create effective and engaging environments and all of these videos are beautifully produced by my friend Jeremy Case at Monroe Community College, who is a fabulous instructional designer and videographer and he has been my partner in crime here on all of these videos over the years and has done a fabulous job, so I need to give a shout out to him. In that “Ideas for Engagement” series, for example, we talk about things like assignments with real-world applications, using case study, critical thinking, teaching leadership through self reflection, preparing online tests, making team projects work, incorporating service learning, teaching in scientific method through example, using Wikis. So, there’s a lot of depth to these videos, and you can go and look at each of the playlists and they’re very well described, and they’re well titled, so you can just hunt for one within the collection that you might be interested in, based on the topic. Or you can just listen to them in an ad hoc way. There’s multiple people that are interviewed in each of the videos from varying perspectives, varying disciplines, various sectors of institutions (from community colleges to research institutions). So we have a really wonderful video collection that I would love people to know about and to explore.

John: Another resource that you’ve worked with is the online teaching course. Could you talk about that a little bit?

Alex: Sure. So I developed this self-paced online course that is really basically just a website and it is the “Interested in Teaching Online?” self-paced course or resource. It’s designed like a course, so it has modules, and it has three modules. And every module starts with an overview. So you have some objectives for the module, there’s some presentation of content and it’s either in video or in text, and there’s several sections for each of the modules, and then there is a check your understanding self test at the end of each module. So, you can go through the content from start to end in order or you can look at it like a website and just browse to the topics that are of interest to you. You could just go in and take all the little self assessments if you wanted, just to check your understanding of the content if you already know things about online teaching. This really is intended as a prerequisite to any online teaching activities. So before you start getting trained by your campus to teach online, this could be a prerequisite to that to help everyone establish a common lexicon, for example, about what the common words are, that are used in online teaching in SUNY and beyond. It also helps to establish what we mean when we use the word online teaching, which does not mean a MOOC in this particular case… not to say that there aren’t MOOCs in SUNY or anything about MOOCs. It’s just that in this context, we’re talking about a different type of online teaching and which is now called traditional online teaching, [LAUGHTER] interestingly enough. So you can use it in a variety of different ways, like a website or like a course. You can earn a badge if you’re interested in completing all of the activities and submitting the evidence for the badge. There’s also optional interaction that you can have. You can join an online networking group with other people who are taking the course and interested in online teaching and interact with them around the course and around topics around online teaching. And so there’s a variety of different ways you can use it and a variety of different activities that you can do. There’s a lot of videos in there and a lot of good information. One of the pieces, kind of the first step, is the online readiness section of the course which is kind of like a mini course in and of itself, and it presents some checklists where you can self assess on things like your computer skills, word processing skills, your email skill, so all of the technical skills that are necessary to have a good foundation to take the next step to teach online. Because if you really need some of those technical skills, it’d be best if you get that shored up first before you start thinking about teaching online. And so there’s a bunch of information presented in that readiness section of the course. And this thing is just set up in WordPress, so there are little checklists that will retain your checks from session to session in the same browser, but it’s maximally open and it’s also openly licensed and freely available for anyone to use or adapt in any way that they would like. And it has been used and adapted and adopted in a lot of different ways across SUNY and beyond. So, I try to openly license and make freely available all of the tools and resources that we produce in the SUNY Online teaching unit. I’ve taken that open that we had when we were Open SUNY really to heart and I’ve been doing open pedagogy and being open since before it was a thing, because I feel very, very strongly that we just happened to be where we are because of luck and the position in which we sit, which is at the top of an enormous system with many, many years of experience in this. And these are public funds that have been used for the benefit of the people of the state of New York and beyond, I would argue, and so I’m very, very committed to openly licensing everything that we do. And so you will see that on all of the resources. And I love to hear from people who have adopted and adapted our tools and resources because I’m a learner too. And I want feedback. And I want to improve the things that we have created. And I want to know about things that others have created based on our things, so I can point to them and recognize them and talk about them and learn from them. So yeah, both of these resources, the readiness set of inventories and the teaching online course, are openly licensed.

Rebecca: You also have the remote teaching checklist, which might be really important right now.

Alex: Yeah, when all of this started happening, I thought it was really important that faculty who are novice and instructional designers who are in a position all of a sudden of having to deal with many, many more faculty than they anticipated, to have a little bit of a framework and a guide to help them. And so I did develop this checklist, and it starts out with helping faculty to think about what’s first, what things should they think about first. So putting the lens of the student on is a good first step, checking their syllabus, revising their syllabus, thinking through their activities, checking their accessibility and thinking about the modes, are they going to be primarily synchronous? …so some stuff online asynchronously, like their syllabus and materials maybe, like a paperless situation, but primarily, they’re going to be meeting synchronously with students either through Zoom or through Collaborate or WebEx or some sort of a synchronous tool like this one, or are they going to be primarily asynchronous or are they going to be hybrid in some way. So some face to face and some online and maybe that online is a mix of synchronous and asynchronous or maybe it’s totally asynchronous. I know some campuses and faculty or programs are playing with this HyFlex notion that allows maximum flexibility for students, which allows them at any point to determine or decide whether they’re going to be face to face, synchronous, or asynchronous. I think that is going to have to depend on the campus, because if the campus is not supporting face to face, then the HyFlex is not part of the equation because the whole point of HyFlex is giving students the option of face to face, online synchronous, or online asynchronous at any point. So I think remote faculty need to think about how they’re building community, whether they’re doing that in a synchronous online way or an asynchronous online way. They need to know and understand the effective practices of interaction either in a primarily synchronous or primarily asynchronous or combination kind of a way. And so this checklist gives them lots of resources to mine and suggestions and tips for all these things that I’ve been mentioning. Online assessment is another thing they’re going to have to think about. And this is an area where, with some time, it will be better than if you’re trying to think this through right before you have to deal with it. So I would really recommend that as soon as you are able to start thinking through some of these things. Because, as I said, you want to reconceptualize, you can’t duplicate. If you think you’re going to duplicate you can, you can duplicate, but it won’t go well or not from the students’ perspective, right? [LAUGHTER] …and you’ll be frustrated and the students will not be happy and your evaluations will not be good. So you really need to think about assessment and if you’re super, super concerned about online cheating, you need to put a lot more energy into this because you need to reconceptualize the multiple choice test that is 50% of the grade, mid term, is a way to assess something. But in an online environment, I would argue that that is not an authentic assessment, really, of much. And we could talk about what I think about that for a face-to-face class as well, [LAUGHTER] but I’m focused on online. So you need to really think, how is it that you are going to understand how are the students making their thinking and their learning visible to you? What opportunities are you giving students to do that? And then what feedback and ways of assessing them are you able to give? …and it takes some time to think that through. I would also recommend for remote faculty to take as much advantage as possible of any instructional design support that you might have on your campus. And always, always check with them first because there are standards. If your campus does online teaching and learning, they have a learning management system already… they have, potentially, templates for you to use to Quick Start your course design so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. They have training and supports and resources to help you think through all of these issues, and they may have things that are required in some ways ,or approaches or methods that they’re recommending for the fall that you need to know about and your students need to know about. So I would recommend very strongly that you check with them first before you start doing anything on your own so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel and get down the road aways when you learn that you have to start over again and do something differently. Oh, the other thing I want to make sure that they think about is how they’re going to end their course. So, this has to do with class community and teaching presence and social presence and so paying some attention to how you wind down your course and end your course, I think, and being deliberate, intentional about that. I always have a discussion group at the end of my online course that allows students to reflect on things, to say goodbye to each other, and where I say goodbye to them. And so there’s lots of different ways to do that. So, similarly, I don’t think I said at the start, you want to think about how you start your course… thinking about how do you create a sense of class community? How do you acknowledge that you’re about to embark on this journey together, in some cases, both instructor and students for the first time in different modes, and acknowledging that and saying, we’re in this together and breaking the ice so that you can immediately sort of break through that two dimensionality of the computer screen so that you can begin to establish this sense of learning community, this sense of class community, establish trust, get to know the students, get to know their names, have them get to know you. So, icebreaking, I think, is also equally important. And that’s not something that just happens. Anyone can say, okay, introduce yourself. But if you’re more deliberate about it, and think through how you might be able to create an engaging, interactive activity that is more authentic, that really gets people to know each other. And I have a list of 50 plus different icebreaking activities that we can put in the links for folks to mine for ideas for that.

John: We’ll include all that in the show notes along with links to the resources you refer to.

Alex: Yeah, I guess I would say that there are as many ways to teach online as there are faculty. And there are some effective practices, there are some things that will work better, that will work best, that you should know, that you need to know, in order to have good experiences,your students to have good experiences, to be effective. There are some things that you need to know and there is technology that you need to master and can leverage in a variety of ways. But I think that within that there is so much flexibility and there is so much innovation and so much freedom to do things outside of the four walled classroom box that I’m hoping that faculty will be able to experience, and even though we’re constrained by the limitations of the rush to figure out what to do in the fall with the remote teaching being pushed into things that we may not be ready for. I’m hoping that people will be open to the possibilities that are there. It’s kind of limitless in some ways,

John: We always end our podcast with the question. What’s next?

Alex: I am not sure what’s next for all of us in general, I’m waiting along with the rest of us to understand what COVID is going to do and how that’s going to impact us in August or in September. And I am coping professionally and personally the way that everybody is, and in terms of work, I am working on continuing to develop tools and resources to help instructional designers be more effective, have their lives be easier so that they don’t have to recreate wheels and tools and resources and supports for online faculty as well. We have, like I said, the benefit of years and years of experience, years and years of knowledge, years and years of things that actually already exists that can be leveraged or adapted for this moment in time. And so coming up with tools and resources and supports that make people’s lives easier and better, given the circumstances is what I do. And I always get up in the morning convinced that I can impact the quality of online teaching and learning in the State University of New York. It’s what motivates me and what I love doing. And so I feel very grateful that I am able to do that in my position, and to be able to share that with the folks in SUNY and beyond, and to be able to continuously learn and showcase and turn the spotlight on amazing things that are going on out there from our campuses, from our instructional designers, and from our faculty within SUNY who are doing amazing work. I feel very grateful to have been able to be where I sit, to be able to be witness to all of that, and to observe it. and to learn from it and be able to share it out in multiple, multiple ways. So, maybe that’s what’s next, I think. That’s what I would say.

John: It’s been a pleasure working with you and learning from you over the last couple of decades

Alex: Ditto, John, ditto. [LAUGHTER] Thank you, Rebecca, too.

Rebecca: Thanks so much for joining us and sharing your knowledge and experience, lots of experience.

Alex: You’re welcome. It’s been so much fun. Thank you so much for having me. I love having a cup of tea with you and chatting about this stuff that I really, really love to talk about.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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124. The Missing Course

Posted in higher education, learning, motivation, professional development, teacher training, teaching
March 11, 2020

Graduate programs provide very strong training in how to be an effective researcher, but generally provide grad students with little preparation for teaching careers. In this episode, Dr. David Gooblar joins us to discuss what all faculty should know to enable us to create a productive learning environment for all of our students.

David is the Associate Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching at Temple University, a regular contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the creator of Pedagogy Unbound. He is also the author of The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You about College Teaching.

Show Notes
Transcript

Show Notes

Center for the Advancement of Teaching at Temple University
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Pedagogy Unbound
Gooblar, D. (2019). The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You about College Teaching. Harvard University Press.
Augustana College
Finkel, D. L. (2000). Teaching with Your Mouth Shut.
Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2010). How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. John Wiley & Sons.
Polly Fassinger, Director of Institutional Research at Macalester College
Benjamin Hassman, Lecturer and Director of the Conversation Center at the University of Iowa

Transcript

John: Graduate programs provide very strong training in how to be an effective researcher, but generally provide grad students with little preparation for teaching careers. In this episode, we explore what all faculty should know to enable us to create a productive learning environment for all of our students.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer.

Rebecca: Together, we run the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego.

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Fiona: My name is Fiona Coll. I teach in the Department of English and Creative Writing here at SUNY Oswego and this is my turn to sit in as a guest host.

John: Our guest today is Dr. David Gooblar. David is the Associate Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching at Temple University, a regular contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the creator of Pedagogy Unbound. He is also the author of The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You about College Teaching.

John: Welcome.

David: Thank you so much. I’m happy to be here.

Fiona: Today’s teas are…

David: I’m drinking green tea.

Fiona: That sounds delicious. I have a cup of wild orange something that’s quite delicious, but not as memorably titled as one might hope.

John: And I have a pumpkin spice Chai today.

David: Wow. Okay.

John: A little out of season but I wanted to try it. We invited you here to talk about The Missing Course. This book is intended for those of us that never received formal training on how to teach, which applies to most college faculty, and maybe we could start with this question of why don’t faculty receive more formal training while they’re in grad school, since most people do end up in teaching careers?

David: It’s a great question. And one that’s not that easy to answer, I think. To me, our graduate programs, almost across the board, almost across all disciplines, still sort of operate with an outdated model of the industry that they’re training students for. And I’m not sure that the model was ever actually something that applied to all graduate students, or even most, but there’s this idea of an academic career as being a tenure-track career where you teach two courses a semester, and the rest of your time is for research, and you are evaluated on your research and scholarship. And so our graduate programs still, for the most part, train students for that career. And what is clearer and clearer to more and more people is that that career is for a very slim minority of people who get PhDs. And as you mentioned, the job for most PhDs if they managed to stay in academia is, for the most part, teacher. And so I do think as well, there’s this notion that teaching is something that content knowledge is enough preparation for, so that if you know something really well, obviously, you’ll be able to teach it, that is not something that needs training in and of itself, that it can be a sort of byproduct of scholarship. And really, anyone who’s had a teacher [LAUGHTER] should be able to see the holes in that logic, that there are better teachers and worse teachers, and that doesn’t depend on how well they know their subject, that depends on how well they know how to teach. So this struck me as a big hole in our education system, and something that I thought would be, at the very least, a good frame for a book about teaching.

Fiona: That hole you describe, the missing part of graduate education, is something that produces a phenomenon you describe early in the book, which is your sense of surprise at discovering a community, a community of people interested in teaching as itself an intellectual and technique oriented discipline, I suppose. And it’s an amazing feeling to happen upon a group of people who are thinking the way you are. And I do wonder if you could maybe expand on what you talk about early in The Missing Course, which is a discussion of how your own view of teaching evolved from that initial focus on content coverage that you’ve just described. Could you tell us about your own transformation in that respect?

David: Sure. I don’t think unlike most people, in that I wasn’t trained to teach at all, I was thrown into the classroom. And to some extent, that’s not the worst way to begin to learn something, is to be thrown into it. But I of course did what most people do, which is that I sort of mimicked what my professors had done. And so my background’s in English, I’m not sure I would have been conscious of this, but my idea of what an English professor does in the classroom is to go and be brilliant about books in front of students… to go talk really smartly about the book in question. And I guess the idea is that you’re modeling interpretation, but you’re not really showing students how you arrived at your interpretation, you’re just showing them the fruits of it. So I would prepare, I was a very devoted teacher as a grad student. All my preparation went to uncovering smart things to say about texts. And what the students would be doing never entered my mind at all, for sure. And so this is kind of how I taught and it seemed to be successful. I don’t know how I was measuring success, but it seemed to go okay. Until I, as an adjunct at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, was given (as adjuncts are often given), a course in which there was no real content to teach. It was a skills-based course, the course was called Rhetoric in the Liberal Arts. And I was meant to teach students how to write academic papers, how to critically read, critical thinking was a big part of it. I was supposed to promote an understanding of the value of the liberal arts sort of broadly. And there were a couple of essays that I was given to teach, but for the most part, there wasn’t really a central text to teach. And so my old method of being brilliant about texts really quickly showed itself to be insufficient. I really scrambled. I had no idea what I was doing. I remember that semester so clearly, because I worked very hard to figure out day to day, there was such panic, “How am I going to fill the class period?” And I guess what I came upon is that it was the students that were my material, rather than material that I needed to explicate for students. Actually, it was these human beings in the room that I was tasked with improving, or helping to develop, or helping them to see things. And that’s just a completely different idea of what teaching is… and it changed my life. It changed how I see the job and the job became increasingly important to me. Because, and you’ll forgive me for rambling, but if the job is saying something interesting about books, well, that’s something that I think can be mastered pretty easily. If the job is help a new set of human beings to reach their potential or grow in ways that they didn’t think were possible, that’s an endlessly fascinating, endlessly challenging, and mostly difficult task. And that, to me, is something worth devoting yourself to. So that really, really sort of turned me on to teaching as a discipline in itself.

John: When you started to change your focus to students, what were some of the first things you did to focus on the students you had, instead of your earlier approach?

David: I think a lot of it comes down to, maybe strangely, trying to find out more about the students themselves. And I often tell faculty now in my role at Temple that the beginning of the semester is really a time to learn about the students in your room and to win their trust. If you’re going to be asking them to do things during the semester, you can’t assume that they’re going to trust that you’re doing it for the right reasons, you’re doing it in their best interest. So, forging that relationship is really the most important thing we can do at the beginning of a semester. So that starts, I think, by turning the tables a little bit. Usually students come into a class and they know the deal, which is that they’re there to find out the professor’s rules. They’re there to read the syllabus, “What’s this class going to be all about?” And the professor sets the course… and the students, if they’re good students, they sort of follow. And so I really like to advise faculty to try to switch that around, and from the very beginning, try to signal at every turn that the course is for the students’ benefit, and this should be their course. And therefore the opening weeks should be about finding out about them, and what they want to get out of it, and why they’re taking this course. And even if the answer to that is “it was required,” that’s good knowledge for you to have too. So, sort of going from there, from trying to find out who these people are, what their goals are, what challenges they foresee, how they want you to help them. That to me is the starting point and signals to them and to you that the point is the students, not the stuff you came up with beforehand.

John: Are you doing that through class discussions, or are there specific activities that you use to try to elicit information from the students?

David: Yes, certainly, I like to do a lot of class discussion and that’s going to depend upon your class size, for sure. A lot of class discussion. I also like to do a sort of initial, no- stakes writing assignment where I ask students for their goals for the course. And this helps me, of course, see more individually, and in a way that doesn’t make them say things out loud, which can be a problem for shy students or for students who maybe need a little more time to formulate an answer. To see what they’re going for, I ask them sort of what things have helped them in the past, you know, what their best teachers have been like, what challenges they foresee. I have to teach writing, it also helps me see their writing level really early on, so I can see where to sort of aim my writing instruction, what kinds of things they might need help with. So, a sort of diagnostic, low- or no-stakes writing assignment can help. But, a lot of it is trying to just be human in the classroom, and be actually curious about these people, and make that a subject of the early class periods in a way that, I hope at least, that the students will get to know each other as well. Is that gonna help as well with motivation down the line?

Fiona: You focus on teaching as this drawing out process from students as opposed to the fill the cup model, which is perhaps the older lecture-based content delivery model… but you do, you focus on this drawing out and you pay some attention to the verb “elicit.”

David: Yes, I do love that verb.

Fiona: It’s a very good verb. But part of the way you use that verb is to turn your attention towards active learning techniques…

David: Yes.

Fiona: … in the classroom. And could you give a brief sense of what you feel are the most important evidence based nuggets to know about active learning as a technique?

David: Sure. I’m increasingly convinced that more than any particular strategy or technique, the most important thing for teachers is to have a solid understanding of how people learn. And what we know about how people learn is that it doesn’t work by pouring knowledge into people’s heads. You don’t learn by someone giving you knowledge. We learn by actively revising our preconceptions. And so even just to have that as your starting point, that students aren’t blank slates to be filled up. But students come in with all sorts of ideas, usually wrong ideas, but all sorts of ideas about our subjects. The job is then to help them hold those conceptions up to the light, see that they’re lacking in some way, and revise them. So I try to let that guide whatever strategies I use in the classroom, so active learning strategies is a really vague term to refer to anything you do in the class where students are doing stuff. So, there’s nothing wrong with lecture per se, but lecture that assumes that just telling students information is enough is going to fail. So if we lecture we want to lecture in a way that elicits… there’s that word… that elicits students’ attention, that intrigues them, that sort of draws them in, that can work really great. We’ve all had really good lecturers in the past. And usually they’re the ones that get our attention, that present us with a puzzle that we try to solve. It’s us, as students, who do the learning, we, we can’t do the work of learning for our students, students have to do it. So, if that’s our guide, then that can sort of help us chart class periods. Active learning strategies are often a combination of trying to get students to see what their intuition is, get to see that the intuition is in some way insufficient, and try to solve that problem. If what I initially thought was wrong, how can I be right? That’s often what I’m trying to do with an active learning strategy is help students do that, if that makes sense.

Fiona: Most definitely. And one of my absolute favorite parts of The Missing Course is the sheer number of practical, applicable ideas for this nurturing, motivating, eliciting process you describe. It’s wonderful just as a resource for ideas, the book is fantastic. Do you currently have a strategy you’re trying or that you’re feeling very excited about? Do you have an anecdote from your recent teaching to put something into focus a little?

David: One thing that I really love that I’m kind of endlessly fascinated by is this idea of naive tasks. I do mention that in the book, but it’s something that I often talk with faculty about. It’s particularly helpful if you do need to lecture if you have large classes, or if you teach in a discipline that is very content heavy, and you have a lot that you need to tell students. The idea of a naive task is you give students a puzzle, or a challenge, or a question that they’re not yet equipped to solve. And you give that to them before you give them the information that would equip them to solve it. The example that I always use comes from a guy named Donald Finkel who wrote a great book called Teaching with Your Mouth Shut, and he writes of a physics professor who gives his students before a lecture, this challenge, which is that he wants them to picture a canary in a very large sealed jar. And the jar with the canary inside is on a scale. And the problem is this “if inside the jar, the canary takes flight inside the sealed jar, does the reading on the scale change?” So, I put the challenge to you two, what do you think? Does the reading on the scale change if the canary takes flight?

Fiona: I’m feeling very elicited at the moment.

David: Yeah.

John: I read that, and I wondered that, because I don’t think you answer the question in your book, do you?

David: Oh, good. I’m glad I didn’t. I don’t remember. You got to make the reader do the work. So, what’s your intuition? Does the weight change when the canary is flying in the air inside a sealed jar?

John: My intuition would be no.

David: The weight stays the same, there’s still a bird in a jar, even if it’s in the air?

JOHN and Fiona: Yeah.

David: And does your intuition change if the jar is open, does that change things?

John: My intuition would change, then, I would say no in that case.

David: That the scale would change?

John: My intuition was that the scale would change if the bird took flight.

David: Okay, that is correct. In a sealed jar, the amount of force pushed down by the bird’s wings is exactly equal to the weight of the bird. That’s how flight works.

Fiona: Of course, right?

David: And so that would keep the reading on the scale the same. If the jar is open, the air can escape.

Fiona: Yeah, right.

David: So, this is a great example of a naive task for students who have not yet learned the laws of weight and mass and force. They have to struggle with this, and it’s kind of an intriguing puzzle. It’s a challenge. And in trying to answer it, and of course, you can sort of prod them along and help them consider the various factors, they’re engaging with the material in a way that they’ll want to know how this works after working on the subject. You’re priming them for your lecture. So I often like to work with faculty and I give them this example. This is always my example, because it’s one I remember. I actually don’t know very much about physics, but I can tell you this. And then I ask them to try to come up with naive tasks for their own discipline. And that’s sort of like “What’s a puzzle? What’s something intriguing that you can give students that they won’t be able to do yet, they won’t be able to solve yet or you think they might not be sure about?” and try to give that to them before you give them the information that would help. So I do like that idea of that the timing of when we give students activities can matter, and can make it more effective when we do tell them things. That’s been something that increasingly I talk to faculty about.

John: And the nice thing about that, too, is not only does it make them curious and want to know the answer, activating that curiosity, it’s also forcing them to activate whatever prior knowledge…

David: That’s right.

John:…whether it’s actually correct knowledge or any misconceptions they may have, but it makes them consciously aware of what they know and what they don’t know. So, they’re not only primed to find out more, but they’re also ready to make more connections and try to integrate the materials.

David: Yeah, ideally, it will leave them in a place of sort of dissatisfaction with their current model of how things work, which is where you want them.

Fiona: You do describe the learning process as a process of revision… revising, exactly as you’ve described, preconceived notions or prior knowledge, updating it, expanding it, refining it. But, as you suggest, this doesn’t feel easy to students. There’s a lot of pushing of comfort zones…

David: Right.

Fiona: …There’s a lot of truly difficult risks sometimes involved for students.

David: Yes.

Fiona: And so how do you approach that piece, the effective piece, or the willingness of students to maybe trust your methods or to actually engage in these essentially revising oriented activities? What do you do about student motivation?

David: It’s a very important factor. I mean, what we know about student motivation and a lot of this I take from the great book How Learning Works from a lot of folks at Carnegie Mellon that came out maybe 10,12 years ago. Their chapter on motivation sketched three main factors from the literature that govern motivation in educational context. And the first two are probably maybe the more apparent. One is value. The more students value a goal, the more they’ll be motivated to pursue it. That seems obvious. The second is efficacy. If students feel like they’ll succeed, they’re more likely to be motivated to pursue something. That makes sense to me too. The third one, which is maybe less obvious, is the extent to which students perceive that their environment is supportive. It’s a very important factor. If, as you say, we’re asking students to take risks and significant learning does involve taking risks, they’ll be more motivated to pursue those risks if they feel like they’ll be supported if and when they fail. We want them to be comfortable with failure. We want to give them the sense that they’ll be supported. So, how do we do that? That to me is again, part of this opening weeks of a semester trying to cultivate trust. And part of that is through signaling to them at every turn that your intentions are for their benefit to help them, not because of your agenda. But part of that, I think, is also trying to cultivate a supportive community between students, among students, kind of apart from you. I mentioned in the book a number of times research by the sociologist Polly Fassinger who tried to sort of pin down what are the most important factors that govern why students participate in class. And what she found, maybe surprisingly, is that more important than anything that the professor does is the students’ sense of their peers as being a supportive group. And that makes sense to me, that students wouldn’t feel comfortable opening their mouths if they felt like they might be the object of fun or they felt like maybe they weren’t in the mainstream of the class. Again, a lot of this work is best done early in a semester. Cultivate community. Often that means trying to encourage students to bring in informal parts of their lives to class, get them to share bits of themselves, get them to, if not become friends, become comfortable with each other as people they can talk to and share an experience with. If I’ve got that, if I’ve got a class that seems to genuinely like each other, respects each other, wants to find out what other people are thinking might want to learn from each other, that makes my job so much easier. And I think most professors can think back to classes they’ve had where the students really gelled. And those to me are the best classes, and not just because it’s pleasant, but it seems to magnify the possibilities for learning if students want to be there, and usually what makes students want to be there is not that they like you so much, but that they like each other.

Fiona: Could you give us an example of a relatively community building activity you can do early in a semester?

David: Yeah, what I really like to do, and it does take a little bit of time, but I think it’s worth it. This is an idea that came from a colleague and friend of mine at the University of Iowa, Ben Hassman, he calls it question roll, and it’s a way to take attendance at the beginning of each class. And it’s certainly easier with a smaller class, but you can do it with larger classes with a little bit of finagling. Instead of just calling out people’s names, you ask a question, and you go around the room and everyone has to answer the question as their way to signal that they’re there. And the best way to do it is for these questions to be absolutely easy to answer. They should be like “What is your favorite movie?” or “What’s something that your parents cooked for you when you were a kid that you have fond memories of?” And so they’re often informal. I like to make them have nothing to do with class content. You can, of course, make them be lead-ins to discussion, but I like to give students an opportunity to speak up that is so easy that they’ll speak up. Basically, I think there’s something that happens after someone speaks up for the first time in a class period that makes it more easy for subsequent times. So, that’s one reason to do it. The other thing is that if you do it regularly, students get to know each other, they remember that so and so likes spaghetti. They remember that so and so likes comic book movies. And so that’s a kind of easy ritual that helps students bring a little bit of their outside lives into the class. And again, signals to them that this class might actually matter to those outside lives, class might be something that they want to do not just because they have to, but because it’s something central to their goals and ambitions.

Fiona: And I’d imagine that’s an approach that also includes you in that learning community, right? You learn?

David: Of course, I have to answer the question.

Fiona: One of the chapters in your book is devoted to what you call teaching the students in the room. Could you give us a little bit of an overview of that approach?

David: Sure. I do think that if there’s anything that teaching is about, it’s about helping particular people develop and learn. And so that is going to change. This is what I was talking about earlier, that’s going to change depending on the human beings in the room. And so I do think that as much as most professors are preparers and were good students themselves and like to do lots of preparation to make sure that they have every “T” crossed and “I” dotted before entering the classroom, there’s a limit to what you can do without meeting and understanding the people you’re going to teach. And again, it’s that idea of thinking of the students as the material rather than the course content or the text. So I do think it’s important that we do more than just tweak our teaching, depending on who’s in the room, but we try to leave a lot to the particular people we have in our classes.

John: One of the things you described is something I’ve been doing recently which is starting with a shell of a syllabus and letting the students pick some of the content on that. And I’ve done that to a varying degree, but I found a dramatic increase in the amount of student engagement when they have some say over the course concepts. Could you talk about some examples where you’ve used or heard good examples of that type of tactic?

David: Yeah, I do love that tactic as well. I recommend to faculty to make a list of things that they absolutely have to have in their courses that are non-negotiable that have to be in their classes, and things that aren’t on that list give to students to decide. This is, again, a way to get as you say, greater engagement, have students have a sense of ownership in the class. I’ve had real success when I taught a survey of American Literature. And I gave students as the assigned text one of these big Norton Anthologies of American literature, these huge 1200 page, very thin paged, big books of poems, and short stories, and excerpts from novels. And what I did was I left slots throughout the semester, throughout the calendar for poems, but I didn’t choose any poems, and I had each student assigned to a slot on the calendar and I said “On your slot, we are going to read the poem you choose. You’re going to introduce it for the class, talk maybe five minutes about it, but then we’re going to talk about it, you’re going to put it on the calendar.” You can do this with bigger classes through voting, through putting them in groups to choose, there are ways to do it. And then I had as the first writing assignment, the first essay for students to justify why they chose the poem. “Why should your classmates read this poem? What’s so good about it?” And the reason I loved how this worked in that particular class was one, of course, that it had that engagement that students owned part of the class, they had their little patch of land, but it also made them read the book. They had to look through this anthology that otherwise they would have just flipped to what I assigned, this made them browse and look for a poem that they could pick and I think it made them think about, “Well, what makes a good poem? What kinds of poems do I like?” Certainly, some students just picked very, very short poems, and we were grateful for that too. But I think students surprised themselves. They discovered things they wouldn’t have found otherwise. And they thought a little bit about, “Well, what’s my taste in poetry?” which is a wonderful thing to encourage, at least in my students. I’ve also had success, I do this all the time now, with letting students determine policies for the class. I do it all the time with technology policy, using technology in class. This is easy for me to give to students because I don’t care at all about what students do with their phones or laptops. I’m not a stickler, other professors feel differently, and that’s fine, of course. But that was an easy thing for me to offload to students because I don’t care. And what I found is that inevitably, students come up with a technology policy that is more strict than anything I would have come up with. I asked them to think about what really annoys them about people using phones in class and come up with regulations, and they tend to regulate pretty heavily when left to their own devices. And it works better if the rules are coming from them than from me. I just don’t like to play policeman, that’s not a role I’m suited for. So policy is a good thing to give to students, whether that’s a technology policy or late policies some professors do, they leave it to students to come up with. And that’s another thing where you’d be surprised that students are not that laissez faire. Some tend to be quite strict when they suggest late policies. But sort of going through your syllabus and looking for “What can I give to students to come up with?” And I think that you’ll see that there are sort of outsized effects from letting students decide. Student ownership is, I think, a really helpful concept for professors.

Fiona: And a totally practical question. So is this an activity you do on the first day, first week kind of thing? And then do you codify it in a formalized syllabus in some way?

David: Yes. So, usually, if I do a technology policy activity, it’ll be on the second day, it’ll be sometime in the first class periods. And what I usually do is I put them into small groups and have them brainstorm possible challenges with using technology in class and possible rules that they want. And I tell them I want them to think about their experiences as students, that they are veteran students, they’ll know probably better than I what comes up from a student’s point of view. And then I open up a document on the screen and I say, “Call out your suggestions.” And I type them as they call them out on their transcriber. And sometimes I have them vote if there are some things that are different, but often they kind of find consensus. I sort of try to guide a discussion, we find consensus. It’s a sort of constitutional document that I add to our learning management system. It lives there for everyone to see and I almost never need to refer to it. But there have been times where I do refer to and I say, “Let’s remember the rules we put in place.” And again, it helps that they’re not my rules. It helps enforcement if I can say “This is what you came up with, do we want to revise them? Maybe this doesn’t work anymore, that’s fine.” I would much rather be their learning coach, for lack of a better term, than to be Nurse Ratched in enforcing rules.

John: The only problem I’ve ever had with this strategy is the secretary keeps nagging me for a copy of the syllabus a week or two before the semester and I say “We won’t have a syllabus until after we meet” and I just open up a document which has the learning objectives and broad categories, and then we spend that first class period just working it all out.

David: I tend to make a distinction between the syllabus I give to the people upstairs and the sort of living document that governs what we do in the classroom. Some people make appendices to their syllabus. I think there’s things that the college needs to know, and I think that’s appropriate. And there’s things that the college doesn’t necessarily need to know.

Fiona: I wonder if I might turn the direction of our conversation towards the way that you talk about faculty and teachers themselves in this book, because many of the ideas: that learning is a process of revision, of challenging your preconceived notions about how something might work, you actually suggest that teachers themselves do the same sorts of processes in terms of their own experience as learners of teaching.

David: Yeah.

Fiona: Could you talk a little bit about how you ask people to revise their teaching?

David: Sure. I think you’re right that how I think about students learning influences how I think about giving advice to faculty on improving their teaching. And I think it’s important to remember that most of us did not have a rich education on how to teach. And so we sort of have to teach ourselves as we go, which does mean that it’s a process of revision. It’s also the nature of teaching that it’s such a complex pursuit. The product in question, the thing that is produced by our teaching, is spread out over a whole semester and diffused by how many students we have. And it’s very difficult to assess how well we did. And you can come out of a classroom thinking “That was a great class, I did wonderfully.” And you can come out of a class period thinking “Oh, that didn’t work well,” and equally have no idea why it worked or it didn’t. So, I do think it’s important for faculty to know that it’s a difficult process and to give attention to trying to assess, trying to evaluate, trying to stay on top of what they do that’s healthy and works, and what they do that doesn’t work. So, I do try to encourage what we might think of as good writing advice for teaching. And that’s thinking of a drafting process when coming up with a lesson plan, just as I tell my writing students to write a really bad draft as their first draft just to get something down, knowing that you’ll come back to it. I do the same thing with teachers I work with, I say, “First just fill the class period. Come up with a class period and then try to be critical in looking at what you came up with. Does that meet your goals? Does that do what you think students should be doing? Does that engage students?” And keep going back to and going back to it. The other thing that I think is really important is after a class period, or after a unit, or certainly after a semester, writing down how you think it went before you forget. I find that, especially in August for a fall semester, but even in January, if I’m teaching something I taught before, I am always kicking myself for not having taken good notes on how I changed things from what I wrote down, because our lesson plans don’t often survive a class period intact. And so trying to keep good notes, trying to see teaching as a sort of career long pursuit that you’ll benefit from having an archive of notes to self. Just sort of developing those habits I think are really important. I try to be aware of this whenever I talk teaching, but certainly when I was writing the book, that most faculty members are, without a doubt, overworked and underpaid, and almost without exception, not given enough credit or time for their teaching. And so I think it’s all the more important that we try to come up with strategies that help us to be better teachers that don’t keep us up all night grading, and that don’t add to our considerable anxiety and stress. I think we need to sort of navigate within what’s still a pretty unfair system for most faculty members when giving advice. So I really try to be aware of that.

John: Talking about that issue of the effort required for grading, you do recommend giving students the right kind of feedback. Could you talk a little bit about how we can do that? We know that students benefit from having feedback. But the more feedback we give students, the more time it requires. What type of feedback would be most helpful for students without overburdening faculty with the work of grading?

David: That’s a really good question. I think the most effective feedback comes at a time when students can still use it. So, too often I think we give students feedback after the fact, we give students feedback on their essays or on their assignments when we give them their grade, and then we’re already moving on to another unit. Often, because of time constraints, it might take us a month to grade a paper. And we’ve already moved on for a month to another unit when we’re giving them feedback on something they did last month. And so that can tell them a little bit. But most students, it doesn’t help them that much to find out that a month ago, they made an error with a too long paragraph or something. So I really try to give students feedback while they’re still working on something. And so the way to do this without doubling your work is to give them much less feedback after the fact. So I think it’s entirely appropriate to give just a grade and very minimal feedback at the end, if you give lots of feedback in the middle. So when I teach writing, I have all of my students, for their essays, they have to turn in a rough draft, and this is after a number of checkpoints where they’re working on components, but they turn in a rough draft at a midway point. And I meet with them one-on-one. Again, this is something that can be adjusted for bigger classes. But I try to give them feedback at that point, like really extensive feedback. That’s where they hear from me the most. And why that’s effective is, well one, because they still haven’t gotten a grade, there’s still something they can do with the feedback, but two, it allows me to be much more of a coach rather than evaluator. And that’s where, at least personally, where my strengths as a teacher lie. I’m much worse at justifying a grade than I am at giving advice on how to improve work. So I never answer in those conferences, questions like “What grade do you think this will be?” Or if they ask me that, I say, “Well, it’s not done yet. This is a draft, I don’t grade rough drafts. Here’s what I think you need to do for this to be better.” I try to sort of strenuously resist being evaluator there. But I do think looking for ways that you can shift when you give feedback to earlier in the process can help you keep that feedback formative. I think it’s useful to have this distinction between formative feedback, which is feedback designed to teach, designed to help students grow and learn, and summative feedback, which is feedback designed to deliver a verdict on their performance. Summative feedback is important. Certainly an engaged student will want to know whether their work met the grade. Certainly we have institutional pressures that want us to give them a summative grade at the end of the semester. But to me, formative feedback is so much more valuable, it is teaching rather than just grading. And so looking for ways whenever possible to make our grading formative, I think, is good practice.

John: Do you recommend giving some sort of light grading though, even just “They completed this or not” just to provide incentives for those who may not be as intrinsically motivated?

David: For sure. 34:21 Yeah, I think that can help. I think that it’s worth considering the ways that our grading policy, like how much weight we give to each element of the course itself, is a rhetorical signal that tells students what we value and so I think, unless you’re able to do away with grades altogether, and most of us are not because of our institutions, it’s worth looking for ways to use that to help us teach, for sure. And extrinsic motivation is not worthless, even as most people, I think depend on it too much. But if you’ve got the grades yeah, I try to use them strategically.

Fiona: Could I ask about the chapter which you’ve entitled Teaching in Tumultuous Times, which in many ways pulls together all of the threads we’ve been discussing. What it means to meet students where they are, what it means to work as a learning coach in order to develop long-term, perhaps civic oriented ways of being in the world, but also opens up into issues of inclusivity in teaching and what it might mean for teaching to be a space in which we can actively address some of the more alarming directions that the world is tending at the moment. Could you talk about teaching in tumultuous times?

David: Yes, I believe very strongly that teaching matters. And I believe that because of my experience in the classroom. I really think that the transformations that can happen through working closely with young people are real, and they are incredibly meaningful to me. And once I realized that teaching is the pursuit of helping people develop, or change, or learn, it then became inevitable that I’d have to be committed to helping every single student develop, or change, or learn. And I recognize that I am not going to be successful in reaching every single student, but my practice needs to be committed to helping every single student. So what that means on the one hand is student centered teaching, as we’ve been talking about what that means, on the other hand, is looking closely at our status quo of teaching and realizing that it doesn’t serve every student equally well. I think it is decidedly the case that our normal way of teaching rewards students who can navigate the school environment, it rewards students who have better preparation, it rewards students who are mentally healthy. It rewards students who are physically capable and we want to ask ourselves, “Is this what we want to promote in our classrooms?” It’s not what I want to promote. And so that sort of led me into thinking about inclusive teaching practices, which I talk about not nearly long enough in that chapter, but as part of that chapter. I do think if we’re committed to helping every student learn, we need to think about making our classrooms more accessible. We need to think about practices that unwittingly, unwittingly, privileged students who have had better schooling, we need to think about ways that we are reproducing inequality. The other part of that chapter, or one other part of that chapter, has to deal with talking about politics in the classroom. And to me these things go together in a sense, because they are, as you implied with your question, they’re kind of about taking responsibility, or seeing that teaching does produce changes in our students and trying to be responsible for creating citizens. And I think that’s kind of a difficult pill for some professors to swallow, who say, “Well I teach chemistry. I don’t produce political thinkers,” but I do think that we have more influence than we know. And it’s worth thinking about what kinds of thinking we’re encouraging in our students. For those times when politics do come up, and they do come up more frequently than you think, it’s worth thinking through what we’re trying to achieve and what we’re trying to avoid. What really helped me in writing about politics in the classroom, and you’ll know this if you’ve read the book, is coming across some material from philosophy of education on the concept of indoctrination. And I really like this because indoctrination is one thing that everyone can agree we don’t want to do. And so it helped me to clarify my thinking to get clear on what we’re trying to avoid. So there are a number of philosophers who have worked to define more closely this concept of indoctrination, and what they’ve come up with is that indoctrination requires us to use our authority to inculcate an uncritically adopted belief. And so keeping that in mind that we have authority that can be used for ill, and that we want to avoid as students adopting beliefs without examining evidence without being critical. That helps me think about how I do want to talk about politics. So I want to privilege open mindedness rather than closed mindedness. I want to foster students to have more control rather than me having the control, I want to work against the authority that I might have. So things like that, I think, came out in that chapter. It’s a chapter that I get asked about probably most of all, I think these are subjects that are on a lot of teachers minds. And I think for good reason.

Fiona: The other piece of this puzzle is, of course, how the authority you just described that inheres in the figure of the teacher in some way in the classroom is itself not evenly distributed. So different sorts of teachers do and don’t match students’ ideas of what an authority figure is, what a professor looks like, what a teacher looks like.

David: Absolutely. Right.

Fiona: And so I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how these techniques you suggest also are risky?

David: Yes.

Fiona: For professors or for teachers who are already themselves in some way at risk just by trying to be in a classroom in the role that we call teacher.

David: Yeah, I think that there’s a real problem in advice given to teachers that ignores the many kinds of teachers that there are and ignores the, the huge differences in power that belong to different kinds of teachers. I learned this very vividly when I worked with grad instructors, all novice instructors, particularly young women struggle with authority in the classroom with students not respecting them, with students openly challenging them. And it’s something that I think we need to take very seriously. So it’s worth remembering that there’s no one size fits all teaching advice. You need to take a teaching approach that works for you particularly as a teacher. But it’s also worth remembering that no matter how powerless any one faculty member feels, institutional realities ensure that students have less power, at least within the institution. There are many other kinds of power, and those are real as well. But as long as we have the power to grade students and the power to fail students, we have to remember that giving students more control, giving students more power where we can, is almost always going to benefit us, no matter our position. And so that’s a difficult thing to get across, particularly for me as a white man, relatively healthy, relatively young, though that’s less and less each day. So I do try to be aware of that, that what works for me is not going to work for every teacher. And that’s pretty clear to me. And so no teaching approach is going to work if it makes the faculty member uncomfortable, if it makes the faculty member feel like they’re going to lose the room, as it were. So this is things that anyone who gives advice, which I guess it’s something that I’m doing professionally now needs to keep in mind, for sure.

Fiona: It also points to the importance of collaboration and community building among teachers, which is something that all of your work points towards, and your suggestion that we take co-teaching opportunities if they come along, or at the very least sit in on each other’s classes.

David: Yes.

Fiona: Which is something that I don’t think we think about as an actual pedagogical strategy.

David: Yes.

Fiona: But which seems so, so important, both in terms of what you described, which is seeing the classroom from the students’ perspective, but also seeing another teacher…

David: Absolutely.

Fiona:… In their environment dealing with what they’re dealing.

David: Yeah, I often think that so many of the problems that afflict teaching as a profession, so many of the reasons why teaching isn’t taken seriously as a discipline. So many of the reasons why students and learning is not understood as well as it should be, has to do with how private connectivity teaching is, how thick our classroom walls are. And actually the traditional independence of tenured faculty, which tells everyone else to stay away and “don’t tell me how to teach.” I do think that we do ourselves a disservice when we don’t pay attention to community, where we don’t try to learn from other people who are doing the same thing we do. Almost every other profession tries to take advantage of this. And so it’s a really strange and terrible tradition that we don’t get in the habit of seeing other teachers. It’s really amazing actually that you can go your whole career as a professional teacher and never, unless you’ve been required to evaluate someone for promotion, never see the inside of someone else’s classroom.

John: We’re starting to introduce an activity this semester where faculty will sit in on other people’s classes and then get together informally, and I think more and more colleges are doing that, but it is a relatively recent phenomenon. And I think it’s one we can all benefit from. One of the things you suggest, and we just talked about a little bit, is breaking down some of the barriers caused by that authority figure in the room. One of the ways you recommend doing that is by letting people know that you don’t know things.

David: Yes.

John: Could you talk a little bit about that strategy?

David: Yeah. And this is something that I often get pushback from faculty of color, from women faculty, but I get a lot of mileage out of self deprecation as a teacher. And again, this isn’t gonna work for everybody. But I do think that in that pursuit of students feeling like they own the class, part of that has to be me, giving up some of my ownership. It doesn’t need to mean inviting disrespect, but it does, to me at least, mean showing students one that I don’t know everything, which is pretty easy, for me at least, but two, that learning is a process and that you’re never done. And it’s not just that I’m not so smart, but that anyone, no matter how much they’ve learned, they’ve got more to go, and they’re going to make mistakes, and they want to keep learning. So I’m trying to encourage this to my students. A lot of it comes from being a parent actually and trying to encourage this in my children, this idea that I can always learn more and that curiosity is the best engine. So I do try to model uncertainty. This is quite common advice, but I do tell faculty all the time that it’s very powerful to tell students “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” When students ask something, to not feel the need to pretend like you know everything, I think, is really powerful and can take away, in fact, some of that anxiety that young instructors have about being found out, which is something I certainly felt very strongly when I was starting out. If you take away from your concept of teacher this idea that you have to be the supreme authority, it can actually, maybe paradoxically, increase your authority a little bit because you’re no longer aiming so high. You don’t need to know quite so much. You can be a sort of fellow searcher with your students. And that’s a great place to be, where you’re part of that community of looking for answers of learning. You can model along the way for them.

John: And you could also work with them perhaps in trying to explore how you would find an answer to model that more explicitly and get them involved in finding the answers themselves.

Fiona: That sounds great.

John: One of the problems we had in preparing for this is in reading through the book, there were just so many wonderful things that we wanted to discuss that it could have taken days to go through all of this.

David: That is wonderful to hear. Thanks for saying so.

Fiona: We do end by asking “What’s next?”

David: I’m very excited about what I’ve been working on. I’m working on what I see as my next book. We’ll see if it gets there. But I’ve been thinking more and more about what I think of as one of the most important and most persistent problems in higher education, which is inequality of outcomes. We still have quite shocking completion rates in America. These numbers can vary depending on how you measure or what you’re looking at. But typically 70% of all White students in universities graduate within six years. That number for Black students is 40%, which is shockingly low, I think. For Hispanic students it’s at 50%. We see similar gaps for first generation students, we see similar gaps for students with disabilities. We see similar gaps for academic achievement for women in STEM still, we see similar gaps for low income students. So it’s something that I’m looking at in my research. Most universities are aware of this problem and are tackling it, or trying to tackle it, in one way or another with diversity and inclusion initiatives. And what’s really interesting to me is that for the most part, these initiatives don’t tackle teaching. They very often target students support networks. There are financial incentives, of course, but they don’t really tackle teaching. And I guess my intuition is that there’s a lot we can do in the classroom to affect these outcomes. My initial research so far has borne that out, that actually there’s been quite a lot of research in the scholarship of teaching and learning in the past decade on narrowing academic achievement gaps within particular classes. And I guess my running thesis is that by changing teaching approaches, we can do something about these broader completion gaps. So that’s the big picture project. I do think it’ll take a number of years to turn into a book, but that’s where I’m working right now. And I’m finding it very exciting, I think it’s something that’s really important.

Fiona: Your work is exciting and inspiring to us, we look forward to hearing about the developments in this newest direction.

David: Right, thanks so much.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer. Editing assistance provided by Brittany Jones and Savannah Norton.

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